1970 GTO V3

[Ummgawa]

So good to see this 70 GTO evolve over the years. Fantastic.

[andrewb70]

Originally Posted by 214Chevy

Everything's looking so damn good Drew.

Originally Posted by Ummgawa

So good to see this 70 GTO evolve over the years. Fantastic.

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words.

Andrew

[andrewb70]

This morning I received this 4 cavity Deutsch bulkhead connector from Prowireusa. They are one of my Go-to vendors for wiring products.



The idea behind getting this connector is that I would be able to wire the boost control solenoids to this connector and have a neat way of connecting them to the rest of the engine harness.




My friend Blake designed this little cover for the boost solenoids and it will hold the bulkhead connector in place and also give the solenoids a much cleaner look. He is also going to 3D print the cover.




Vic also added an elbow to the end of the downpipe with a v-band. The rest of the exhaust system will be built from here back.




This is a terrible picture, but I was just trying to show that the downpipe doesn't hang very low. In fact, the crossover pipe from the driver's exhaust manifold is the lowest point under the car.




Vic also made some adjustments to the short pipe that goes from the wastegate into the downpipe. It was about 3/32" too short which made it difficult to install the v-band. Vic cut that pipe, sleeved it, and welded it all back together.




You can better see the sleeve here.




He also added a small tab to keep the downpipe more stable.




Tomorrow is a big day and I can't wait to share what we have planned.

Andrew

[andrewb70]

I love this country. Yesterday I made a call to a local company and this morning a guy named Matthew showed up with a big computer.



and a 3D scanner...



and a bag of cocaine...(just kidding...baby powder) The baby powder was used extensively to knock the shine off the finish.



Then he proceeded to start scanning the bottom and the top of the hood. The purpose was to crate an accurate model that can the be used to design various options for the hole in the hood.



This is at the start of the process and it took about 4 hours to do the whole hood. In a few days I should have a cleaned up 3D model of the hood.



While Matthew was doing the scanning, I decided to install the new automatic brake pedal. Before installing it, I took some measurements to check the pedal ratio with the existing holes. The top (manual brakes) hole gives about a 6.5:1 pedal ratio. The bottom hole (stock power brakes) gives about a 3.5:1 pedal ratio.

The various information that I could find about the iBooster said that the Tesla pedal ratio is 4:1. So we added an extra hole just above the stock lower hole, which resulted in about a 4.25:1 pedal ratio. This was about as close as we could come given the proximity to the lower hole.



This change resulted in a much more favorable angle for the pushrod.



Andrew

[andrewb70]

Progress is being made. Yesterday I sent off the up-pipe and the downpipe to HeaderShield to have them wrapped. Today I showed up at Vic's and saw that he had installed the firewall shield that we had been discussing. We will probably take the intake off and go all the way across as much as we can with it.



I also pulled the drive's side seat to start mocking up the shifter. What you don't see is that under the carpet I had removed the shifter hump that was installed 20 years ago to make room for the Richmond 6 speed shifter. With that hump gone (it was bolted in) the console that I plan to use actually sort of fits. I ordered a partial left side front floor patch panel that includes part of the transmission tunnel. We are going to use that to close off the hole and have the shape of the floor be how it was with an auto trans. Then the 70 Chevelle console that I got should fit a lot better.



In order to do the power steering plumbing, this little nipple for the fluid return had to be cut off because it was pointing right at the steering box.



The hole is quite small, so we are going to install a 1/8" NPT to AN-6 fitting there.



Andrew

[andrewb70]

A quick trip to Star Performance produced the 1/8" NPT to AN-6 Male fitting, and the power steering return is now sorted.



The next project to tackle was this hole in the side of the transmission tunnel.



The hole used to have a cover that had a shifter hump in it to clear the shifter and linkage for the Richmond 6 speed that used to be in the car. With that transmission gone and the 4L80e in its place, a new cover needed to be made.



Here you can see how close the transmission is to the trans tunnel. My body bushings are 20 years old. They are not cracked, but I am sure they have settled some, which is contributing to the lack of clearance.



A quick Google search showed that partial floor pan patch panels were readily available. I called The Parts Place and they had one in stock and had it at my door in two days. You can see that part of the panel includes the needed piece to start making a new cover for the tunnel.



I trimmed it big to start...



Then trimmed it to the final shape...



and started to drill the necessary mounting holes.



Turned out pretty good in the end, without having to do any custom metal shaping, which I don't have the skills to do anyway....

Andrew

[andrewb70]

I took my intake to Hot Rod Express, where they welded the engraved manifold cover plate to the Holley intake lid.



Today was the day that I wanted to get the heat exchanger mounted and start thinking about running the plumbing (so much plumbing in this car!!!) the A2W intercooler system. When I originally asked Vic to mount the heat exchanger to the radiator, I really had no idea how things would be plumbed. I had him mount the heat exchanger with the inlet and outlet (dual pass) on the driver's side. Clearly this is not going to work.



With the intercooler, fill tank, and circulation pump in place, it was clear that the best option would be to have the input and outlet on the passenger side. Before digging into that further I wanted to make sure that the circulation pump fittings would be oriented in the correct direction. I emailed Tobias at Tecomotive and he quickly responded that the pump inlet and outlet cover can be clocked in any of the 4 positions relative to the pump body.



I unscrewed the top and it sure doesn't look very fancy in here, but this pump is supposed to move A LOT of water.



Not much to see here....



I positioned the pump body in such a way that the connector was close to the fan shroud so that the wires for the pump could be routed along the bottom of the shroud.



I clocked the top so the outlet would face the passenger side (the top is the inlet).



I also pulled both grill inserts so it would be easier to work in front of the radiator. As I was going along, I always had to make sure that I could get to everything without having to pull the grills, because once the radiator is installed, there is no way to access the grill hardware.

Here you can see that the heat exchanger was flipped (the drain is now at the top and can't be used). We couldn't rotate the heat exchanger because that would have required a complete reworking of the mounts and I did not want to do all that. I can live without a drain.



There is a lot more room on the passenger side for plumbing because the radiator core is slightly offset to the driver's side (note the larger tank on the passenger side).



With that orientation locked in, we moved to the bench where some minor fiddling had to be done to make the mounts work.



Both the inlet and outlet hoses fit pretty well using 90 degree fittings. With the fans removed and the radiator top tilted back, there is enough room to access these fittings from the top.



I also trimmed the core support slightly so that the hoses can pass in front of the radiator. You can also see the Low Doller Motorsports temperature/pressure combo sensor in the cooling system.



I still have to finalize the exact hose routing, but this is pretty good progress.

Andrew