well, as it turns out, the car is far from done. Evidently the original builder skimped in a couple areas. I dropped the car off at a reputable shop in phoenix, whom a buddy of mine runs to get the carb tuned and get some dyno work done to fine tune the car. however, upon my request to look over the car for any and all issues, we found out that it looked like the guy who had the car built ran out of cash and the shop just threw the car together near the end of the build to get it out of the shop.
because of this approach, we have found a laundry list of new problems.
1. Oil pan leak - with the way the motor is situated, there isnt enough room to access the pan from the bottom of the car. the k-member is in the way. thus, the motor is going to be pulled.
2. major power steering leak. the lines were installed improperly and with the wrong length on some of the lines, some have been sliced open. great.
3. there is another oil leak from the intake where it wasnt sealed properly. oh joy.
4 & 5. a leak has presented itself on both ends of the driveshaft. one on the back of the trans and one on the rear pumpkin. yee-haa.
6-9. the headers have bolt on collectors. the headers were hand made to fit the car. somewhere along the way, most of the welds werent checked and are leaking, and the primaries are leaking where they meet the collectors. on top of this, they decided to neck down the exhaust from 4" to 2.5" and use a hand fabricated x-pipe, which is only tacked together. and they used the cheapest dynamax mufflers they could find. this whole system will be redone. the headers will be blasted and fixed; we will use 3" tubing into a pre-made x-pipe and borla xr-1 mufflers; when everything is fabbed up and in place, it will get taken down and jet hot coated. yippee.
10. the car has a b&m hammer shifter. however, some yahoo decided that he could design a better linkage than what b&m offered, and now you can barely get the car out of park. hopefully this can be remedied with the proper setup, as the center console in the car was designed specifically for the hammer shifter thats in there. outstanding.
in the end, i'll have great, solid car. it just sucks that i have to go through all this when it should have been done right the first time. we do know for a fact that all the body and paint work was done properly, as was the suspension as i just had that finished. the electronics are all immaculate, and the interior is in tip top shape.
That's a bummer about all the issues. But you do have a really nice car. And I would imagine with any ground up build there will be some bugs to work out along the way. Good luck with it!
That's a bummer about all the issues. But you do have a really nice car. And I would imagine with any ground up build there will be some bugs to work out along the way. Good luck with it!
I agree with Eric. She is a great car. Sucks that they skimped on doing the job all the way through. BUT, at least you know that the fixes will be done right and that's what matters. GOOD LUCK & nice car.
dont get me wrong - i love the car. i just despise dishonest people. but what can you do. im just glad that im fortunate enough to be able to afford all this and then laugh when its all said and done.
dont get me wrong - i love the car. i just despise dishonest people. but what can you do. im just glad that im fortunate enough to be able to afford all this and then laugh when its all said and done.
Yeah, I agree. Not cool on this dishonest stuff. Makes them look really bad and that's how people lose customers.
Glad things will be squared away.
got the car back after not having it for a while. had to change a lot of things in order to get it to run right. evidently the car had quite a few issues, but most if not all are fixed. turns out it made a lot less power than advertised, but it still did pretty well on the dyno in phoenix. there is a couple dyno videos and the dyno chart along with some new pictures in the link.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
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