I just love your builds
 

I am still upset that I did not try and buy the 914 from you.

Lookiong forward to more progress on this car.

thanks! I am sure the guy that picked it up will have a blast taking it over and hopefully taking it further. That car is more about the driver than anything - I know I never found the limit of its potential. One day I got mad as hell - which then turns into an attitude of either it wrecks or it sticks - and I picked up 2 full seconds in one section of the track and was my fastest lap ever. I had never had the huevos after to hang it out that hard again. I am sure a pro driver would have killed the Porsche cup record, I was only 1 second off of it that one lap.

As for the Nova, I have had to be patient to say the least the past couple of weeks.

1. The ZR1 hubs showed up but were "early" hubs and not the "late" hubs I asked for. While their is no difference in the bearing and fitment, the pre-09 cars are 30 spline like all Vettes and late cars are 33 splines. The sales rep didn't realize this so he got them swapped out no cost and I got the 33-spline items last Monday. Basically just trying to make things right works for me, so they are back on my "good list". Next time I will be specific to just order a specific year, as in, order 2011 ZR1 hubs.

2. I ordered a mid-mount for the engine from Summit that is listed as 3/8" thick which is basically perfect for spacing the LS bellhousing back when using an old-school SBC (technically the spacer should be .400" and is what I used in the Porsche before). It showed up last friday - 1/4". :bigun2: So I grabbed some .150" thick alum scrap I had laying around and quick fabbed up a shim to space the bellhousing correctly at exactly .400". PITA nonetheless and apparently my rant continues :bang:

3. I did manage to do some measuring and cut the firewall out a bit in preparation to start placing the engine, then found out my buddy with the "communal" cherry picker was on vacation and I didn't know he was to be gone. Not his fault, but caught me off guard.

So, I have been doing a fair amount of waiting :popcorn2:

Brett at FAB 53 has a pink one you can have......

unfortunately that would be a bit of a drive for me to pick that up :lol:

little update - started placing the engine
 

Ended up cutting a lot more of the firewall than I originally anticipated but overall it will be much cleaner to build it all back in v. plug up holes and so forth to keep the old stuff. The engine face essentially lines up with the center of the front wheels. The pedals are going to be a fun item to place and I am thinking I will either have to mod the mid-mount I just bought or dump it and make something custom. If I moved the engine forward just one more inch it would make a few things a bit easier but I am hell bent to not do that so I am going to keep at it. I can envision a few different header designs so I have some room to mess with engine location if I must. Figuring out what I want to do about the steering rack looks to be the next serious hurdle - hopefully Unisteer and others have a bunch on display at SEMA next week I can pore over.

I also cut the torque tube down for the front bearing assembly to support the input shaft and test fit that with with the new mid-mount and custom shim plate I had to make to get the LS bellhousing placed correctly and that all fit perfect with almost 100% support on the pilot - can't get better than that.

small update - been making slow but sure progress
 

it's the little things that bite and take time to get right... Got the alternator spaced correctly and ready to mount. Took 3 trips to multiple FLAPS to get the right belt length; I would get 4-5 at a time as I narrowed down to the length required to fit. Inevitably, the lengths I needed to try wasn't available at one so I would head off to the next. Always a busy day for me when belt day comes along :sieg:

As for the oil pump, those belts come in very discreet lengths, so I have to make a size work; there are no small increments to dink with, they are in increments of 1.5" in the range I am working with. My 22.5" from the Porsche was not going to work but fortunately I had a 25.5" that was left over from a previous iteration of the Porsche and it works perfectly. Had to make a new mounting bracket which is easy enough. The fuel pump on the opposite side is nearly dead center between my suspension mount as I had planned so I simply moved the pump spacing until the pressure out and scavenge out are exactly between my suspension mount as well.

Just that took a 3-day weekend. Amazing how much time is spent to fit all this stuff.

Where my plans sort of failed, tho' technically a non-issue, is in my 2x3 crossover placements. I was a bit concerned they would be in the way as I kept the area under the engine clear of cross tubes on the 914 and sho' nuf I am in my own way. I will get the engine mounted and then I will cut both of those crosses out and weld new ones in a bit more forward and rearward. Forward will go near the rack placement once I get a rack frenched into the frame rails (you can see I was mocking up Ackermann in a pic), the other will move rearward to pick up my new midmount flange off of the bellhousing. This will also make necessary room for exhaust routing near the bellhousing. There is a pick of the driveshaft side of the bellhousing assy with the plate I will use, and that goes in between it and the bellhousing.

I ordered a Stoptech BBK from 3ZERO3 Motorsports (local Audi/Porsche shop) today which is who I got the Forgelines through as well - Blake there gets the concept of customer service. It took going to SEMA and walking into the Stoptech booth to get my tech questions finally answered (turns out Blake had done the same thing!), but in the end the race tech confirmed my thoughts that a C6 Vette kit would be a correct fitment for my Nova given my weight distribution expectations and that I have a fully adjustable pedal assy. I only need to change one master cylinder to make it work. Probably not a common occurrence to see a 15" rotor on a 66 Nova :mock: but IMO if you can't lock all four on race slicks and slide, you don't have enough brake. Of course, it cuts down on fade big time which is my primary concern.

Rear axles assemblies from Drive Shaft Specialists (DSS) are in and fit great - Tad there was another guy that made things right as necessary and gave me good customer service. Ride height in the rear as shown. Their stub axles to convert the Corvette 33-spline ZR1 hubs to Porsche 108mm 930 CVs worked perfectly and I get juuuuuuust enough droop out of the axles to get the back tires off under the lower fenderwell opening.

Got a new trans cooler as well so I will be mounting that down under the trunk to the frame right behind the transaxle, and some thick aluminum engine mounts I can use to mount the engine over to the suspension uprights.

My batteries are going in the camera apparently - the images get a bit jittery when that happens, but some updates are attached nonetheless.

Are you running a dry sump.

Loving this build!
:king:

yessir :) I ran it in the Porsche before and will use the same setup including the massive twin oil coolers.
Thanks, I take that as a compliment! I was checking out your car at SEMA, nicely built, we'll see if I can get close to your finish work. That is normally where I get impatient and fall short...

Ah man! This is so much awesome!!!!

... said by a man that is building one with more than 2X power :lol: thanks!

So is the engine from the Porsche?

I like the torque tube - I havent seen one hooked up to a SBC, or a porsche transaxle on the other end.

I am assuming thats from the P car as well.

I love the engineern and details behind this build!

Thanks! The engine and transaxle are indeed the ones I had in the Porsche. I got the new midmount in place with the front of the torque tube installed and as expected it all fit exactly as planned and I am seeing a lot more space for exhaust and so forth now which is good. I will not be using a torque tube to tie the engine and trans - I will let the frame and cage couple out all of the torque since they are all hard mounted - I am just using the ends to have ends to tie to and am going to simply tie the two ends together with a carbon fiber driveshaft. I am going CF due to the constant high rpm the shaft spins at since it always matches engine rpm in this configuration.

I beat the crap out of that destroked 400 over a 7 year period with zero need for refresh, so with that said, I am worried she may be on her way out and in need of a full rebuild. I ordered some 1-7/8" shorty headers for the build to make life easy for now and save on doing custom headers as I may just step up to a 377 (350 crank instead of 327) with a 15 deg head setup for the next build and sell off this engine.

More stuff from this last weekend, I cut the bulk of the remaining floor pan out of the way and kept the center tunnel to run the stock center console as noted in earlier posts. I will then build all new seat mounting to have a solid foundation, then will just skin with thin steel like a race car. The floors will then look less stock than I wanted but it is really the only way to go to make everything right - function over form. The Paul Walker tragedy over the weekend helps keep a guy focused on making sure it works right first, looks a specific way second. I think it will still have a wolf in sheep's clothing feel overall.

Fortunately I happened to pull the new vent/kick panels out and look at them while working on my pedal assy install - the vent is part of the panel and requires a good 4-5" of space outward to be able to install them! This means I have to be very careful of how close I get the clutch pedal and also be careful of how I intend to box the pedal assy in. For anyone that happens to notice that Jesse James still appears to have a limp on his left side - he was racing in the Late Model Series in SoCal when I lived there and was supporting some friends in their LM efforts (crewing, car work, so forth). I happened to miss the race the night he wrecked at Irwindale so I didn't see it, but heard it was pretty bad and it shattered his left foot and jacked his leg up pretty good. On the Porsche 7 years ago when I did the tube chassis build, I purchased some lower control arms from a company v. make them and they turned out to be crap and the left one broke on the track and shoved the left front tire back right up into the fenderwell just a few inches from my left foot.

So I will be boxing in the pedal assy with 2x2 tube and you guys can already see I have 2x3 in the frame there to do my best defense against losing a foot if something goes wrong and I wad up the left front corner. My initial plans had that tubing over in the corner, but I would never be able to install those kick panels, so I will be moving them inboard a bit. Not as optimal as I initially wanted but will be way better than a car would normally have for bracing so better than nothing. This will be clearer understood when I actually get it all welded into place and snap a pic.

some pics and more parts...
 

Got the Sanderson headers and some other misc parts from Summit last week :ups: These 1-7/8" shorties are pretty bitchin' actually. I also modified some SBC to Model T engine mounts on the vertical mill and they look to be a great solution to having a two bolt engine removal at the block as I can access the bolt between the header pipes. I had some old tubes with heim ends left over from the Porsche 5-link that I can then weld into place (can't see in the pics very well unfortunately).

I was messing with putting the oil tank up in the front on the passenger side but the serious risk of that is having it burst open in a frontal impact and engulf the whole front of the car in an oil fire. It is sketchy enough having oil coolers let alone adding to it, so I am going to consider taking some more passenger foot well and mounting it there. If I get it low enough I shouldn't have too much issue getting the cap off from the engine compartment and putting oil in it.

Right side shots also show, if you look closely, the fitting for the fuel coming in to the pump - I pre-notched the upper A-arm mount and that fits right inside of it. Final shots show what remains of the floor pan, which is to say the center tunnel and the rear seat shelf.

If it wasn't single digit temps all weekend I might have gotten the pedals boxed in but even with a garage heater it gets a bit much to stay warm out there. Every piece of metal is pretty much freezing temp and working with gloves gets to be an exercise in futility. Once I have that all figured out I can match it to the passenger side and that should give me more room for the oil tank and an idea of what tubing will exist to attach the tank to.

more things showing up each day...
 

I might be responsible for my local UPS man's salary this month :ups: Maybe I should ask for a cut. :mock:

Got a tubing bender Monday and picked up a bunch of 1-1/2" x .120 wall DOM last Saturday so it is about time to start teaching myself how to bend up a cage. I picked up my BBK at 3ZERO3 today and got home to find McLeod got my stuff out to me last week as well.

We will see how the "soda can turbo thing" works with brake packages. At minimum at least the Junior Nation has something to appreciate. The kit is the "extra big" BBK for late model Corvettes as I mentioned previously which puts the normal 355mm (14") front rotor on the rear then adds a 380mm (15") front rotor setup. I laid them across the front 295 width tires for some comparison but those may be a little dark to get a good idea. I really wish I had an old pad from my Porsche 930 Turbo brakes - the rear pads are probably twice the pad area those were.

The clutch assy is McLeod's 8" dual disk setup with alum "flywheel". It is really nice and light and the best thing about those setups are if you destroy the disk surface on the flywheel you just get a new steel insert v. a whole new flywheel or dinking with turning it. The TO bearing is supposed to be a direct bolt in for the C6 Vette so we will see how that all works out.

Lookin good Tim.... very good... that clutch looks Billy Bad Ass. :thumbsup:

What this guy said.:thumbsup:

Wow! Nice parts!

Do you have any other examples of vehicles with rear mounted clutches ? I'd be very concerned about the harmonics etc. of a full length driveshaft spinning at engine speed. I believe there are some front engine race cars that have teh clutch in the back but I have never seen one and definitely never seen it done at the hobbyist/aftermarket level. I would be giving some serious thought on if you really want to be the engineer for this, doesn't seem like too much compromise putting the clutch up front does it ?

always curious to see what people think about the feel on those small clutches on a street driven vehicle, most end up not liking it but its awfully hard to ignore the advantages. I guess it will still be awhile before we get that feedback !

Enjoying your build, reminds me of when I was making many of the same types of decisions. Its all about the packaging !

thanks all :)

Preston - the clutch will be on the engine just like a Corvette. That said, there are some cars with the clutch in the rear tho'. I think some Alfas had it and/or some Porsches. As for driveshaft at engine speed, that is exactly what Corvettes have had since the C5 among other cars. I am using a carbon fiber driveshaft (ordered it last week, will probably be done around the first of the year) which has many benefits but most importantly its lightweight helps to reduce harmonics and its stiffness to weight ratio makes it good for over 10,000 rpm at the length I am going to run at with the 3.75" diameter they come in.

These race clutches historically haven't bother me. The key is you can't slip them, so I wouldn't take the car out into traffic like commuting on a daily basis. I will just take the car out for a car show here and there or to hit a burger joint on a car night. If I still lived in LA I would have to consider something else if I wanted to roll down Pac Coast Hwy on a Saturday afternoon :D

small update, pics to come later
 

got my tubing bender last week and picked up a bunch of 1.5" .120 wall (11 ga) tubing last Friday and started figuring out how to bend tubes :hitaxeonthehead: I got the bender all leveled out as a starting point and then figured out there was about a 3 degree spring-back/relaxation, but managed to nonetheless hammer the main hoop out in less than a day and get it pretty square so I thought "this is a breeze".

Then I started in on the down tubes and I opted to go the hard route by making the tube extend from the main hoop all the way to the footwell to get me a maximized tight fit to the roof line and A pillar so I could keep my stock sun visors. Well, that basically took all of yesterday and most of today; I wasted about 28 ft of tubing and ended up bending 6 tubes to get 2, but I managed to get a really nice fit and I think it looks pretty darn professional if I do say so myself. The pisser was the compound angles going from the narrower roof line to the rocker width - when I figured it out I have to admit it was really obvious considering hindsight is 20/20 but an interesting learning experience nonetheless. The real beotch was getting the notching correct where the tube bent in to meet the main hoop at its bend. That took me 4 hours of nonstop marking with a pen, cut, fit, mark, cut, fit, and so on knowing that it should only be 2, maybe 3 rather squarish cuts. When it was done, I took the cutoff wheel and had the left tube in place in about 1/2 hour. All while making sure the rear window handles didn't hit the main hoop, the lower kick panels/vents fit and the vents fully open. PITA trying to keep a mostly stock interior.

The cross beam at the visors was about 20 minutes :D Straight pipes are about as easy as they come.

So after 3 days I have a 4pt cage tacked into place. The tubes from the hoop to the rear transaxle area are next on the list and should go pretty quickly I think, then tying into the forward bulkhead. Then I need to figure out the forward tubes and how I am going to pick up the rocker for the inboard shock mounting.

pics and some more stuff in place
 

among the items from yesterday, today I got the forward bulkhead all tacked in, original steering column support bracket modified to mount up with the new bulkhead, and pedals fitted.

In the last image it is clear I am adding some thin-wall 1x2 to bring the floor up in the car and to have beams to build seat supports off of. The nice thing about this is that under the car in that 2" area tucked up in deep will give me a clean route away from the heat of the exhaust and away from the driveshaft to run the rear brake lines down the driver side and the fuel line down the passenger side. Both are a straight shot to where they need to "end".

the first shots were to show the mirror-like similarity in the down tubes, then the cage tacked in as 4 points so far, the last few shots are from the day growing dark and my camera really hates when the lighting gets weird - close enough as they say.

more pics
 

some that didn't fit above

chuggin' along - ran out of tubing but close to done
 

I ran out of tubing before I got both front forward tubes bent up, but I got one done and mocked into place. I need tubing for the door bars and seat belts as well but those will be easy. I order up a bunch of interlocking clamps to make the door bars and diagonal all removable so those are on their way - as for the seat belt bar I am trying to figure out if I want external clamps to get it completely out of the way for back seat egress or not.

inline interlocking clamps
http://www.kartek.com/Media/Images/L...ps-apart_1.jpg
external clamps that will come completely out of the way but are bulky
http://www.synergymfg.com/images/D/PPM-3112-07-400.jpg

I might make the door bars have the same external clamping but worry about the rigidity in a crash. Issue is I don't think any of these items are SCCA legal so having a car I can run in Super Production may be out of the question. The joints that SCCA allows in the rules are straight out of the 60s and about as fugly as they come - I don't understand why they haven't updated the rules to allow for the much stronger, nicer, modern interlocking clamps but I will find out if they do by the time I am ready to tech the chassis. I can understand if they balk at the external clamps since they are able to rotate and tear the bar off in a crash, but the inline ones are as strong as it comes.

Nonetheless, some update shots with the one forward tube mocked in which gives me plenty of room to build suspension rockers off of, the rear down tubes, and I have the oil tank mocked up and feel really confident I can keep it there and it does indeed fit better with the firewall out of the way and back on my new bulkhead. One pic as the front tire turned a bit and even at full rotation it never gets in the way, but the rotation shown in the image is more than I ever expect to turn it. On the track I would turn less than 1/2 turn on any corner in both the Porsche and the new Vette and those have about the same travel/rev (around 2-1/8"/rev. The pic shown is more like one full turn of the wheel and I intend to limit the rack to ~1.5" travel (about 3/4 turn) with a 2"/rev pinion.

The third image shows an S10 rack that Unisteer sent me for test fitting - I will be giving them new dims and mount items I need and get a rack coming hopefully next week here.

Last shot I took the old dash display apart and cleaned it up a bit - really bummed because the speedo numbers started to wipe off with just water and a paper towel! Even so, I intend to leave this in there showing the 64,228 orig miles the car had before I hacked into it and I hope to replace the fuel gauge with a new one if it matches the ohm output of my fuel cell (I have a GM fuel sender in it but I think there are a couple different ohm ranges over the years). I have a carbon fiber gauge but want to use the stock one of possible and then get a Racepak dash and mount it on top of a radio delete panel in the center of the dash.

update
 

been slow since the project was hindered by delivery delays, but since the last update I got more tubing so the other forward down tube bent and both are tacked into place. I also bought a chunk of 6061 alum and began machining rockers instead of using the welded steel approach I started with. I have them all roughed out and the plan is a buddy will finish machine them in a CNC to get the bore for the bearings interpolated perfect v. using a vertical mill.

I am going to hold off on installing the removable tube sections until I have the car fully welded and on the ground so I have half a chance of actually getting the tubes back in after removal (there should be no chassis settling). Statically the bars in question have little support for the chassis - it is more about keeping me safe in a crash - so waiting won't be an issue for chassis deflection when on the ground, maybe a few thousands of an inch here and there, just enough to make putting them back together a total PITA.

Did finally get the seat mounts and got them all mounted up on some 1" angle. I had factory Porsche sliders mounted on the bottom in the 914 to have access to the front of the engine easily. I figured no need in this car. Also, sliders are not as safely mounted as a hard mount. Now I am waffling on what I want to do on this car as there will clearly be zero access to the back seat without sliders of some form. I may figure out a way to rig something up on the passenger side so I can keep the driver side hard mounted. We will see. It is good for weight balance of course to sit so far back and with a deep wheel and quick release the steering wheel should come back far enough.

I also realized the other day that Ultrashield has a new version of their seat covers so I asked if I could still get the old version to match these. They were able to still make a set of seat covers and they showed up the other day so those go into the stockpile to be added at the end.

coming along nicely.

How we doin Tim? :superhack:

byndbad914

You build some ass kicking cars ! I loved the 914 and see heart of it sitting under the hood of the new car. I am the guy (driveability) on the 914 club who had the black, flared V8 914 with the 930 trans and the reverse opening trunk. Looking good ! Have you seen my new 914 ? :D

yeah! Looking great. My new favorite garage build.

thanks gents! Driveability, I do remember you and caught your project earlier this week on here. Should be a rocket when you are done!

As for the past month it has been on-off on the car. I had some travel with work and been clicking the OT clock as well (what the hell, I have to work for this paycheck?) so that has set me back a little. That and the near zero temps pretty much every weekend makes laying on concrete a bit undesirable - I definitely miss living in SoCal during this time of year.

But there has been some progress. I mounted all of the brake calipers and rotors and verified wheel fitment. Looking thru an 18" wheel and seeing nothing but rotor definitely is a turn on :D

The McLeod clutch surprisingly turned out to be a bit of a machining project given the sticker price on it. There were 6 aluminum spacers that look to be surface treated that space the pressure plate away from the flywheel and then there were nine .018" thick spacer washers stacked on each one EXCEPT for one of the six. That one had a .050" shorter spacer and only one extra washer :headscratch: There should have been 3 extra for a .004 difference but instead 1 extra and a .036 difference. Why shim?? Also on a few of the spacers, they were so thin they were able to fit into the threads of the 5/16" stud and pinch themselves so I am sure that torques up really well.

Not too slick.

So I got some steel and made 6 new spacers that were exactly the right length and dumped that mess of shims and spacers. I would like to have the new ones out of aluminum but I don't care to take the time to find out what heat treat those things were done with for the slight difference in overall weight.

Then I put the hyd TO bearing onto the torque tube section and plugged that into the mix - it was off by almost 1.5"!! Not 0.150" which is what it should be at max, but an order of magnitude higher. I wasted time instead of saving time having them send me a spacer that turned out to be .700" long, irritating story, so I ended up back on the lathe at work anyway making a 1.300" spacer to set the TO in the right spot.

While that is exactly why I take this stuff all apart and measure every shim and standoff, etc, it is also what cost me about 3 weekends.

Further, I ordered a new dry sump oil pan a few weeks back that will work better with this car than the one from the 914 and those are always fabbed per order/not stocked. The prediction was to ship to me on Monday but I have yet to see a tracking number. Now that the clutch is set I can pull the engine out, drill and tap for the mini starter and get the new pan on once it shows up and get rolling again.

My buddy at work has been helping me make some billet aluminum rockers for the suspension v. the steel ones I was going to weld up. I roughed them out and he is fine tuning all of the surface profiles in the CNC when he gets some free time on the weekends. So far we have a couple more ops left but that might take a month - free time is just that so I can only ask for so much of course.

Lastly, I am getting ready to order the custom steering rack so I intend to model up what I want in engineering software so they have a clearly defined drawing of exactly what I expect to receive.

finally had a weekend to myself
 

been piling on the OT at work lately which is fine in small doses but I needed a weekend off and between a cold day yesterday that was good for machining and a warm one today good for installing, I got quite a bit done on the rack assembly finally.

Going back over the past couple months of the car sitting, there were some photos in my camera so will cover those.

first we have the TO bearing spacer that I had to make to space the living crap out of the TO on the Vette setup. then the custom spacers I had to make to get the PP correct on the clutch.

suspension rockers
 

buddy got these done last weekend, turned out really nice. Sturdy as hell as I build it to live thru an off-track mishap :) The second shot is rough placement, I will have to work on shock mounting next time around.

and the rack
 

Set the rack up to just miss the mandrel for the dry sump, slotted the mounts for Ackermann adjustment from zero Ackermann to whatever I measure at full lock once the suspension is all in. Don't need much, 1/16" is a ton and I think there is enough adjustment there to get me from 0 to 1/16". The center take off (CTO) rack is nice because I can offset it and just make sure to build in the offset when I extend the tie rod bar. You can see the pinion box and I have some round bar hanging off to make sure I can clear the headers without a lot of angle.

I trimmed down the way-too-short one this S10 had and will extend out with round bar to the exact width I want. Finally, the last shot shows the tie rod is up near the upper A arm pivot, so I can get a good approximation for tie rod pivot axis based on the upper pivot axis to minimize bump steer.

little update
 

the oil pan finally showed up after over 3 months (quoted 2.5 wks back mid-January) so I am close to yanking the engine out and getting that swapped and the block drilled for the mini-starter. Sucks that it is the only pan I can find with a standard part number that has three evenly spaced outputs on the sump. The hold up now is waiting on Unisteer to send me the right parts - they sent the wrong ones a couple weeks ago, was supposed to send the right ones early this week, I called Friday to see if anything happened and of course nothing. And people wonder why someone who loves cars so much ran away from the automotive world as fast as I could when I got my engineering degree :wacko: Customers rarely believed me when I swore the screwed up lead times weren't my fault - they just assumed I dropped the ball. Anyway, old wounds open back up easy I guess. I want to have the engine in place next weekend when I have those parts (hopefully) and make sure I get the steering input I want without hitting any of the pulley items on the front of the engine.

I also bought some universal seat sliders from Summit and got those installed. The seats were sitting rather low in the car and I was going to quick fab up some spacers, but then just decided to go this route for much more adjustability. Racing series won't allow them but I decided I am not going to try to SCCA this car but just open track day it as I have for quite awhile now. W2W sounds like fun, and actually can be really fun, but I don't see the need to do it with this car at this point. If I change my mind, it is a matter of minutes to swap these out for spacers if I really feel the need. I also took a painstaking amount of time to notch the pedal box out to move the pedals further forward - all the gas pedal linkage was hitting otherwise - and then right when I finished and put the pedals back in I realized I could just move the linkage around and bypass all of that. :lostmarbles: So I relo'd the linkage and it all fits quite nicely of course. Hey, at least it is right in the end I guess :D

Got the rockers mocked up in and verified the wheels will turn enough and not hit anything. All about squeezing it all in. It will be easier in the rear of the car as the tie rods are on the back side, not the front. I also made another adapter for the tie rod cross bar to put super long tie rods in and added even more adjustability to get best overall Ackermann once it is all together and testing on the track.

Looking Good! Packaging is always a problem with these cars. Price you pay for the cool body lines.

quick update
 

Been a little while and I just keep picking at it here and there. Had a 4 day weekend and ran out of welding gas on Sat AM, right about the time the welding shop closed of course. I knew I was getting low, just didn't expect it to go so fast :) Anyway, engine is out, new pan is on, a little massaging with the hammer cleared one offending hose end, need to order a forged one for the pressure in to clear the pan tho'. Also drilled the frame for the sway bar mounting and lathed up some ends to use bushings I get from McMaster-Carr. Did this on the Porsche and it worked really well. 1.25" Speedway Engineering sway bars will fit in nice and tight. Test fitting a link too to get an idea of how wide the bar needs to be. Getting close to where I just need to bite the bullet and get the shocks on order but would really rather figure out how I intend to mount without them, get the car on the ground on tubing and get real corner weights of course. Redid the mounting for the core support and that got me a cross bar that I can weld the radiator mounts to. I have another spot I hope to make my oil coolers fit but as a backup I have already cleared out an area under the core support to mount both of them.

dammit - all my pics need resized, I will add them another day.

had the engine out for the pan install, got most of the front end all welded up as it is looking to be the finish product. Got the sway bar mounts fully welded. PITA getting both sides lined up and staying in place during welding so I have to run a pattern and move the welding around to ensure the mounts don't move. Radiator pulled back a little for example which is what it is but sucks nonetheless as I had it jigged to be tight to the top of the core support. Pulled back 1/8", nothing much, just enough to tick a guy off a bit. Looks like I should be able to mount the electric water pump to the right of the radiator (shifted it a little bit left in the car) and try to keep as much weight to the right as I can overall.

Other than that I hope to get the oil coolers tacked in this weekend under the radiator, fans blowing from underneath thru them. Once I get a splitter made and lower valence waaaayyyy down the road, they will be hidden and protected should I have an off-track adventure. I intend to make a removeable skid plate for the coolers and pan and hopefully integrate it all with the splitter for a single piece - time will tell.

For now, a couple images. Way back early on I thought I would lay the radiator down, tipped forward like I had it in the Porsche to keep weight low but the grill is really close to the core support on these cars and such, and with the oil cooler placement and where the alternator will need to sit, it just worked better to give up the fight and plant it in a more normal orientation. I also went ahead and hacked out the core support of factory metal as it was just not going to work out - I will get thin steel and fab/weld something up when the time draws near to actually drive the car.

Will need to work on the rear of the car a bit and have a plan to lower the fuel cell down a little bit more so hope to do that this weekend. Have a bunch of fittings on order from Summit to route the dry sump once the coolers are mounted, here next week, and some more fuel fittings to start routing fuel lines, so I hope to have a productive weekend and 4th of July weekend. If I can stay on current pace, it might be possible to set this on the ground in a month if I had the shocks :)

I couldn't help but notice the first picture you uploaded of a Chevy Nova II race car was that of Norm Beechey who ran that car here in the 1970's to terrorise the Mustangs of his two rivals Pete Geoghegan & Bob Jane. Beechey was the FIRST person to import and race a Mustang here into Australia. I knew Beechey's Mustang & that Chevy Nova well because I was then a teenage motor racing photographer who snuck into the pits without a pass to get trackside so I could capture my heroes on film. Being the first to bring USA Muscle Cars created the Australian motor racing phenomenon known as “Beechey Mania”, where crowds would storm the pits and maroon Norm on the top of his race car just for the chance to get close to their hero for an autograph.

So I thought you might like this one I took of Norm at Warwick Farm to add to your collection & to cheer you on as you continue this great build.

http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/...psf51b3cf8.jpg

I also have rare 16mm footage of this Chevy running at a very tight mountain track at Katoomba (long gone now), but the Chevy got beaten by two Mini Cooper S's. It WAS a very tight, narrow track and it WAS raining - but I'm sure you won't be bothered by any of Alex Issigonis' wee shoeboxes in your monster!

thanks for the history on that car and that great shot! Keeps me motivated to get this thing on the ground soon.

as for updates, I had a "revelation" of how I would like to mount one oil cooler and shift the radiator way off center for overall weight balance and preferential airflow to the oil cooler, so I ordered a CBR radiator to move the outlets from the right to left side, put the filler directly on the radiator, and get rid of that laid forward design from the Porsche and do a standard, upright radiator. Same size, just relocating outlets mostly. Chunk of change to do that, but frankly it will be overall better to just go new in this case. THat should be on my doorstep Friday. I have the fuel cell mounting in place with a steel "blast plate" welded in under it over the transaxle in case that should let go, and have an empty Penske shock on order and should hopefully be here Friday as well to test run it at all four corners thru range of motion. Assuming I haven't stepped on my ding-ding and that all works out, I could have the car sitting on the ground with steel tubes in place of the shocks by next weekend. I am a little concerned tho' that the shock mount is going to want to bind with the rocker so I have fingers and toes crossed that is not the case. That would monkey wrench things if that is true.

assuming the radiator shows up Friday I will try to post some update pics this weekend.

That would be great. Someone needs to be making progress on their project....might as well be you.