More progress this week!
Eric has been busy assembling the front of the car, and it's amazing how much different the project looks and feels with the front sheetmetal on again! It's as if I can 'feel' the end of the project in sight now! As seems to be the case for all of these assemblies, there has been a lot of adjusting and tweaking to get to this point, but the gaps are looking great around the front, especially considering these parts were just painted and assembled without any actual bodywork on them...
He also replaced the RB hood pins with the Aerocatch units. I love these, and I'll be a lot more comfortable driving down the road and not watching the pins wiggle their way out of the RB units. We had to mount these sideways due to the inner structure of the VFN hood, but I think they look just fine this way.
I'm trying to determine which of the available drop-shaker bases will be the closest to working for me. Strangely, I'm having trouble find some simple dimensions for the couple that are available. Eric and I have discussed it, and we may just have to buy one and cut it as needed. I need to get something on the way...
As for me, I continue on the seemingly endless saga of wiring this car. I'm really sick and tired of laying in the car on my back and side trying to cleanly route wires. Hopefully I'm finally done under the dash. We stuck the VA evaporator setup in for the last time this week, and I made the used a pair of 15-pin Painless Wiring disconnect connectors for my gauge panel. I had the panel powder coated this week, and I was able to stick the Speedhut gauges in it too.
Then I had to take the painful step of cutting up a brand new reproduction Firebird dash. I bought this piece 2 years ago, and it's been sitting in wait for this day. The Firebird dash has a lot of plastic structure behind the gauges where the heater control, dash vents, etc were mounted originally. With my gauge layout, all of that stuff was going to be in the way. Out came the air saw and the drum sander, and I started cutting. I tried to leave as much as I could, and I still have vertical support across the opening.
Then the perhaps even more painful step of cutting the radio opening for the head unit. The Firebird dash has the radio opening cast into the ABS plastic, so again with the air saw and drum sander. It's a tight fit height wise, but it's in there...
After all of the cutting, I put the dash and gauge panel in the car to check all of the fitment. It looks GREAT in my opinion.
I sadly had to take it back out since we still have a little under-dash work to do on the AC ductwork, but I was glad to at least see it in place.
Then I started wiring up the gauges and lights. I'm almost done, but needed some small gauge wire to wire the turn signal, brake, high-beam, and warning lights. I picked that up this afternoon, so on my next trip to the shop I will wrap all of that up. The dash should be in place next week.
I picked up all of the bulbs for the rear of the car and installed those too. Thankfully, everything worked.
There are a few other odds and ends to be taken care of this week too... Eric is going to heat and bend the shifter stick once we have the console in place, it's a little too close to the dash as it sits now. I already mentioned the shaker, and the stereo amplifier needs to be mounted. We are going to switch the circuit breaker from a 120A unit to a 150A unit. We tripped it once starting the car last weekend, so on a hot day it may pull too much current. I also need to contact Fesler about a set of hood struts. The ones I have don't hold the VFN hood up, so I need to get another set...
Requisite pictures below...
Here was my temporary gauge setup when we fired the engine last weekend.
The blank panel after powder coating:
Panel assembled, without the LEDs:
Dash pad after cutting the gauge area:
Stereo installed (I may do something to cover up the knob depression areas):
Dash and gauges in the car (you can see how close the shifter handle is, and that's without the knob):
And working on the wiring:
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
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