Super nice! I come back daily hoping to find more updates :D. Great quality improvements to an already nice ride!

VEry nice pc. Do you recall the length of the airfilter? It looks like a Spectre pc. Any P/Ns? It looks like this would work for my needs.

Thank.,
Jim

Lol! Even worse, I'm from about 30 miles West, in Mt Vegas! :lol:

Hey Jim, no problem, I'll post up some part numbers for you here shortly. You're right, the air filter is a Spectre piece. I was paying close attention to the air filter length as well since I had an idea in my head for how i wanted the finished product would be. Thanks to everyone for their kind words!

So the rubber coupler to the throttle body is Spectre SPE-9771, the Spectre filter is SPE-HPR9617K. The 4" aluminum tubing is from Vibrant Performance. The 90* elbow is VPE-2876 and the straight section is VPE-2877. These are all Summit Racing's part numbers so you'll drop the SPE/VPE prefixes if you wanna shop by the mfg part numbers.
The air filter specs say it's 6.75" long... Hope this helps!

Ok, so not much to report in the way of progress. Just got back from vacation and got the car ready to go to the upholstery shop for carpet and headliner. This is actually the first time in probably 6 months that I've seen it sitting on the ground...definitely the first time it's been on the ground with the new wheels/tires and drivetrain installed! Gotta admit, I didn't think it'd be that exciting but seeing the stance and the ride height, I'm totally blown away!! :excited::excited::excited::excited::excited:I really didn't expect much difference as the car sat fairly low before and I'm running almost the same overall diameter wheel/tire combo.

The roof of the car sits 49" off the ground and just standing next to it, it feels like you have to climb down into it. Needles to say, it got me pretty excited. Anyway, here's some pics for your viewing pleasure!

....

But wait, there's more!...

Looks fantastic even without fenders on it 👍.

Ok, so I got my car back from the upholstery shop after getting the carpet and headliner installed. I took it to a somewhat local guy that supposedly does a lot of work for the car crowd around here. My dad actually just had him do the interior of his 30 Model A street rod which turned out well. For me, however, it's not the same story. The headliner, sail panels and rear pkg tray turned out good but the carpet work was totally horrendous! First of all, he ordered the wrong carpet, I wanted the 80/20 loop in keeping with a factory appearance and he put cut/pile in. Even worse was the the amount of wrinkles and just all around half-a$* way it was installed. I specifically told him I wanted the rear passenger foot wells filled in around the subframe connectors in order to simplify the install and keep things looking tidy. What I got was probably the most piss poor attempt at carpet I've ever laid eyes on. :bang:

I know I should count myself fortunate as this has really been the first horror story I've had with this build so far but it frustrating none the less. Long story short, I spent my Saturday redoing his work and managed to salvage it. Anyway, here come the pics...this is what it looked like when I got it back...he didn't even bother vacuuming it after finishing!:brix:

Another shot of the rear seat area...

Here's how he decided he'd fill in the rear footwell area around the subframe connectors...and he took the liberty to also fill in the front footwell areas for some unknown reason. :hairpullout:

Driver front footwell area. The one thing he did do which I'm thankful for was to use minimal glue on everything. Not only did the trip home do half the work by blowing the carpet loose but it made my life easier having to rip it out to redo it.

So my plan was to try and salvage the carpet if possible...if not I would just rip it out and think of another plan. My dad and I spent the better part of a day making filler panels for the rear foot wells and refitting everything. It has a couple of areas I'm not happy with such as around the dimmer switch, a small section on each side where it BARELY meets up with the sill plates and he totally massacred the area around the throttle pedal so I had to take out a lot of material leaving it terminated lower than it is on the other side of the steering column...none of which you can see without bending down and looking under the dash (more like laying down as this thing is LOW to the ground). Overall, I think that most people will never notice anything and it'll do for now in the interest of getting the car done so I can enjoy it a bit!

So here come the "after" pics...

Since it's all black, it's a little hard to see much detail...

Here's a shot of the rear footwell areas. We didn't fill it in completely because I wanted to leave some definition and contours...even though this will all be basically unseen once the seats are in.

Wow! I cant believe he would let that carpet out of his shop. No pride of craftmanship. You did a great job cleaning it up. What did you use for filler on the pans?

Thank you! I was shocked although at first I didn't think it was as bad as it turned out. Once I got it home and had a better chance to look it over, it became apparent that it was a hot mess.

For filler I went and got a 4x8 sheet of 5/8" thick blue housing insulation. I layered up each area and used a 4 1/2" grinder with an 80 grit flapper disc to "grind" the styrofoam into the shape I needed in order to follow the floor pan or side slopes. I was going to top it off with a 1/4" layer of furniture grade plywood for rigidity, but honestly, the foam was quite sturdy by itself once the layers were glued together and since there's really low probability of someone jumping up and down on it once the seats are in, I didn't see the point in adding anything else. I may change my viewpoint once it's in use but all the cars I've seen running similar setups with Recaro's have just barely enough room for someone's feet back there so for now there's a "No high heels" rule in the back seat!

I'm certainly not an upholstery guy so my method may not be the best but I'd be interested in what others have done. I've seen in some of DSE's build photos where they use wood to fill in the areas. Not sure if they're using it as a template for something else or if that's what actually stays in the car but I do know that they "smooth out" the rear footwell areas (and front too in most cars) with some type of filler.

I can only imagine how sick that made you feel. But it turned out great. The foam and plywood sounds good. With my subframe connectors I am needing to level out the rear floor area too. Thanks for the info.

Just a quick update...been working a lot at my J.O.B. but reached a huge milestone last week. What started out as simply getting the gauges to light up and check function turned into "well let's see if the engine turn over" which then turned into "let's puts some fuel in the tank and see if it'll start!" I'm happy to report that the only issue was a fuel leak at an AN hardline fitting that required some attention. Once that was fixed, the motor fired right up, open headers and all!:cheering:

So here's the DD VHX gauges all lit up. This was some of the best money I've spent so far. Super easy to install. Super easy to wire up and absolutely brilliant quality. The pictures really don't do the clarity justice...

I love them they look sweet!

That's a nice steering wheel, is that suede? Was it easy to install?

Thank You!

Yeah, it's black suede with silver stitching. Install was easy, too. Never had a suede steering wheel before but it feels good in the hands!

So not really any huge strides to report, just been going thru doing some detail work. Got the heat/AC lines plumbed up. Everything's done on the engine side, now I just need to get the inside lines done to the evaporator unit.

I got the rear brake lines wrapped up and some detail items on the interior. I installed a Retrosound Long Beach stereo and remote mounted the body of the radio under the rear package tray to conserve space in the dash. It's a nice piece, looks pretty much factory and has a huge amount of features such as Bluetooth, hands free phone calls thru the sound system, Sirius XM, USB ports, etc. Basically the only thing in the dash is the radio face and knobs but you can't tell the difference by looking at it.

I also got my Borla mufflers, extra V-band clamps and odds and ends and have it scheduled for the exhaust shop next week but, until then, here it is sitting on the ground again...

Here's a shot with the finished heater/AC lines...gotta tuck a few wires away and wire up the trinary switch. Once I get the exhaust done where I can run it without scaring the neighbors, I'll make sure there's no leaks, etc. and then get the front sheet metal reinstalled.

I went ahead and sprung for a pair of the Truck-Lite 27270c's... I wanted something more modern yet not out of place sitting next to what's essentially a stock park lamp lens. I searched high and low for a more modern, clear park lamp lens but there's basically nothing out there. These lights are awesome! Worth every penny. They fit perfectly in my stock headlight buckets, plugged right into my wiring harness and put out a bright, clean light. They've got just enough modern flare to be noticeable yet they don't look out of place on a 50 year old car.

Next on the list is an LED park lamp and rear light upgrade...

Truck-Lites on dim...

Trucklite actually make a matching 4.5" fog light (80275), They're only really advertised for Harleys, I'm yet to make mine fit but it'll look great when they do.

Had the car loaded up and taken to my exhaust guy yesterday. Got some 3" stainless bent up to go along with the Borla mufflers...

....

When I get it home, I'll remove it and clean up the welds.

I'm curious, what's anybody else doing to keep the emergency brake cables from rubbing on the floor pan? At the least I'm gonna have to put some type of sleeve over them but I'd love to see pics of what others have done...

He nailed it on the exhaust hangers for the mufflers. I had provided some isolators for the hangers but he ended up using some S10 isolators that had metal inserts so they won't tear or break as quickly over time. I'm still waiting on my driveshaft so they mocked one up from 3" exhaust tubing.

Despite all my hopes and prayers, it appears I'm gonna have to do some surgery on the trunk pan corners to create enough room for the tail pipes to clear:superhack::bang:

The one time I should've cut "cut corners" on this build...anyway, now I get to do it after the fact.

Got my front seat belts today...normally, the "Schroth Racing" emblem would be in yellow, however, I had them cut it off and sew on the black/silver emblem in its place. They went above and beyond on the customer service side to get me the belts I wanted in the configuration I wanted.

did you use the engine setback mounts? i wondered if the dse headers would clear with the factory location mounts.

Great looking build! Cool seeing your progress. Got to drive it yet?

Nice work on the car. Love that it's dark blue.

Yeah, I used DSE's 1.5" setback mounts. I figured since I used their frame and headers it only made sense to go with their mounts. Although they offer standard mounts, I liked the idea of moving the weight back a little. I'll attach a pic of the header clearance around the driver side, which would be the tightest but even there, you'd have plenty of room for their standard mount...probably even more room then me due to how the front primary tubes split to go around the steering shaft. It's a little hard to distinguish in the sea of black, but if you were to move the engine forward, the tube clearance around the steering shaft would only increase and there's no other obstructions close that would interfere.

Not yet, but it's close! At this point, the only thing I need to drive it are seats. I've been waiting for my Recaros for what will be 4 months IF they end up shipping on time at the end of this month. At any rate its scheduled to go into the body shop and have the front sheet metal reinstalled. Then it's just a matter of finishing the trunk mods and having the 3" tail pipes plumbed up.
I still have some small stuff such as modding the rear seat to fit between the tubs and getting the alignment done, etc. but then she'll be ready to drive and tune!
It's definitely a weird feeling when you get this close, it's been a year and a half and so much has changed that you feel like you're forgetting something!:knokwood: