The 14 Car Performance Therapy Project Rushforths, Baers, Yokohamas, and more

[NOT A TA]

I've been working on stripping a lot of the small body parts that have to be painted. Some get media blasted and some sanded bare. When I get sick of stripping I recondition a part I can install or have ready for install when the time is right.

With the cowl painted I removed the windshield and reconditioned the inner cowl, wiper motor, and wiper transmission. Since I didn't relocate the wiper motor to make a fully smoothed firewall I decided to jazz it up a bit with custom paint and made a flat cap for the washer pump since I don't need windshield squirters and I really don't like the look of the white plastic (usually yellowed) piece with the hose nipples.







One of the things I'd wanted to do while doing the safety upgrade project several years ago was to block off the trunk area from the back seat in case of fire. These cars were designed with several large holes in the seat support and package tray and a back seat made with burlap. So I made some panels for the large openings and spot welded them in, the smaller openings are also being covered with metal. The idea here is to slow a fire down as much as possible without getting carried away fabricating a new rear firewall. I will retain rear shelf speakers but will make them removable to be replaced with steel plates for track days, races, etc.





I'd removed the stock padding/sound deadener on the firewall behind the dash when I was closing off the AC opening and blower opening and I wanted something to provide a heat barrier that isn't easily flamable. I decided to cover the firewall with Thermo Tec Cool It aluminized heat barrier and ordered it from Ron Sutton Race Technology. It's a thin adhesive backed lightweight material designed for radiant heat applications. http://www.thermotec.com/products/13...t-barrier.html When it arrived I tested pieces of it for flamability and heat resistance when stuck to sheet metal and it seemed to work well so I installed it on the firewall, toe panels, and front of the transmission tunnel.







I media blasted the park brake mechanism and gas pedal then installed Modo Innovations pedal pads.

[NOT A TA]

My donor car arrived today. If all goes well I'll be using the subframe out of it for my car.

[NOT A TA]

A while back I cleaned the subframe I took out of my car. Then I started checking alignment of the mounting points and found that the lower control mounting points on one side didn't line up as well as I would have liked. Soooo, I brought the subframe to a buddys body shop and mounted it up on a frame rack to tweak it a little with help and guidance from an experienced bodyman who straightens frames damaged in collisions in a production shop. We chained down the frame and started bending things a little at a time getting the LCA mounting holes lined up better until..... Oooooops! We kinked a rail. So after searching around and not finding a good used subframe for sale locally (new aftermarket out of my budget) I made a deal with a buddy of mine.

My bud wants to build a 78 TA for his wife and has a 81 Formula with a good unibody and a 78 TA with rusty back half from being in the Northeast early in it's life. I made a deal with him to take his cars and swap the front of his 78 to the rear of the 81 and he'll finish the tail panel swap later himself so it will look like a 78 TA. I get the leftover front subframe in exchange for the work swapping things enough for it to roll away (on a trailer) in one piece. This will save him a lot of work trying to do rust repair on the 78 unibody.

I began by having the 81 Formula dropped off to strip to the unibody. Stripped it, checked the subframe I'll be keeping then started cleaning the frame while waiting for the 78 to arrive. The 81 was a rear disc car so I'll be selling off the rear end and disc/disc specific components as a package.







Once the 78 arrived I started taking it apart enough to roll the unibody away from the subframe. Once it's separated I'll join the two halves. I plan on leaving the front of the 78 as complete as possible with the engine, trans etc. all in place. I've disconnected the driveshaft, shift cable, backdrive, speedometer cable and am working on the steering column now. I only have a couple hours a day after regular work so it'll take a few days to complete the swap.

[NOT A TA]

Although the LCA mounts were off a bit on my original subframe they certainly weren't out enough to be worth going through all the effort moving cars and labor swapping to get another frame! The LCA alignment was only off roughly 3/8". If I'd known we'd damage the frame I would have left it alone and used it as it was ( car drove fine and no binding of control arm) OR I would have stopped trying to make it perfect when we were within 1/8-1/4". Hindsight is 20/20 ahahaha.... live and learn!

I finished up the body swap over the weekend and the owner picked up the car with his trailer while the white shell met up with it at the owners shop via a rollback flatbed. Then (maybe eventually) the owner will swap the interior etc. from the white shell to the new car. Also he wanted the fenders left off for bodywork.

Whenever possible I have someone watch when I do weird stuff just in case something goes wrong or I need a hand. I had my bud Jeff hang out a few minutes while I moved the body into position and bolted the subframe to the new body. People ask how I do these kinds of swaps by myself so I had him shoot a quick video of moving the body onto the frame. Body was within 1/4 " alignment with the subframe at the end of the video and all bolted up in about 15 minutes.

Very short video. No it's not speeded up or edited video, thats real time. Just over a minute up the driveway and ready to bolt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-XA...ature=youtu.be

[Mikael A]

Nice work John #14 is coming out great.

[WSSix]

glad to know work hadn't slowed on the car, John. You're doing great work. Keep it up!

[NOT A TA]

I've been working on figuring out the differences between the early and late 2nd gen frames so hopefully I'll be able to modify the 80 frame so it's suitable for the 70. It's better to use a 70-74 frame for cars built during those years or a 75 - 81 frame for cars built 75 and later. I looked for an early frame for quite a while locally without finding one so I'm trying the later style with mods. Meanwhile I've been prepping the top and bottom of the rear shelf area for paint. The inner filler panel between the rear window and deck lid on 2nd gens usually get rusty and need replacement. This one had surface rust but was only rusted through in one small area so I cleaned the whole area, used some panel bond to fill pits, put in some new metal where it was rusted through, and skim coated the whole area with filler. Will seal it up with epoxy primer.



My adjustable G-braces made by PRO-TOURING F-BODY under the Gen-II Racing Products label arrived. I got them from a member on a forum that purchased them and decided against the install. The spherical front spring eye bushings I showed in previous posts were from the same company and I also purchased them from a member on a forum. I'm planning on using PTFB solid body mounts. I was running Poly body mount bushings previously with bolt in frame connectors because thats what was available many years ago when I first built the car but now I'll use the PTFB solid mounts.

These G-braces triangulate the firewall with the subframe attaching at the upper control arm. I'll be making additional braces to work with these to stiffen them up more.

[/QUOTE]

[NOT A TA]

I shot some epoxy primer and then some high build primer on the inner filler panel and then did some prep work on the underside of the filler panel as well as the rear seat firewall I'd welded the panels in. Then I shot them with some red epoxy primer that kinda resembles the original primer which will show in the trunk in some areas after splatter paint gets applied giving the trunk a somewhat stock appearance. I know it seems silly "restoring" the trunk area appearance of such a modified car but it's what I want. I even have a reproduction trunk mat I use unless the cars getting raced or tracked.

I made a panel to cover the rectangular opening in the package tray I haven't installed yet and am still considering options to cover the speaker holes during track/race events to complete the firewall between trunk and passenger compartment.

[NOT A TA]

Rushforth wheels and Yokohama tires were both prizes I won in the contest that got me started with this project. I've gotten a lot of questions on why I'm switching to the different size wheels and tires for the new combo, so I'll try to explain it as well as I can in this post.

My old wheel/tire combo was 17 X 9.5 with 275 40 tires in front and 17 X 11 with 315 35 rears. The tires were Yokohama AO32's which are DOT R tires and while street legal they are meant for track day road course use. They were offered in soft compound for lightweight cars (imports) and a harder compound for heavier cars (like my 3500 lb. bird). I was very happy with the 17's however I found out that the possibilities for improving my braking system (stock with braided flex lines and Porterfield race pads/shoes) was very limited due to the rim design and diameter. Sure, I could switch to a 4 piston caliper in front and an entry level 4 piston rear disc setup but I'd probably end up spending a bunch of money with a marginal bang for the buck improvement in braking over the optimized stock setup.

The prizes for the contest included a set of Baer brakes. I called Baer and spoke with Todd (RIP) for quite a while about tracks, brakes, and other things while he questioned me about my use of the car. At the end of our conversation he recommended and offered to send me their 14" 6 piston front brakes with spindles and matching 14" rears along with a rear bias valve. This was waay beyond what I'd even hoped I would receive as a "give away" prize in a contest.

The Baers certainly wouldn't fit in my old 17" wheels and with wheels and tires also on the list of prizes I started considering what to get. A discussion with Jay at Rushforth confirmed that I'd need to go up to at least 18" wheels to fit the Baers and he informed me that the wheels could be any one of their models with whatever options I wanted up to 10" wide for the prize. The offer of any wheel custom made to order was great and like the Baers was above and beyond what I thought would be awarded as a "give away" wheel in a contest. He also said if I wanted them wider than 10" I could just pay the difference to get the hoops widened which was a great offer but not in my budget so at that point I was looking at a 10" max width wheel with a minimum diameter of 18"

Having researched and followed discussions (debates) on the performance of wheels over 15" for years I decided 18's would be good if I could get tires to go with them and I'd prefer not to go up to 19-20". Seems like 17-18 is the sweet spot for most of us with PT type cars and unless you have ungodly power the increased MOI of larger diameter wheel/tire combos might actually reduce lap times. Yokohama had stopped producing the AO 32's I ran previously and released the AO 48 which is a newer version of the DOT R tire with a slightly different tread pattern. AO 48's are not available in a 275 or 315 width in 18" but are available in a 285 and 295 width which are ideal widths for a 10" wide rim. I'd experienced a slight rub under certain conditions on track with 315's out back anyway and had been considering trying some type of panhard bar or watts link but really had no desire to do that unless it became necessary. So with a 10" rim limit and a narrower tire I wouldn't have that problem anymore with the right backspacing.

A 10" front wheel with a 285 is too wide for most 2nd gens with stock turning radius and typical inner wheels/suspension/steering. Since I don't really need the turning radius tight enough for parking lots at the mall I decided I'd rather have wider front tires and limit the turning radius. The old 275 17's rubbed my swaybar at full lock so I knew the 285's would require some type of modification for safety.

I also needed to keep in mind the overall diameter because I didn't want to raise the whole car off the ground or have the tire hit the inner fender during bump. This meant I needed to pick a tire under 26" tall and the 285/295 30 18's from Yokohama are just under 25" which is pretty short for a PT car but fits my desire to keep the car low and have suspension travel, everything is a compromise. Performance comes before looks for me so although a bigger diameter tire would fill the wheel well better I think I'll like the tires I've chosen.

The final decision was 285 30 18 up front and 295 30 18 rear tires on polished 18 X 10 Rushforth Night Train rims with no rivets and when I got them the search for an installer started. When going to a tire installer I had to explain that the front and rear rims look very similar but have different backspacing. The tires are directional so each wheel/tire combination can only be used on one corner of the car once assembled so when they're done I'll have RF, LF, RR, LR. The tires are marked for match mounting to reduce the amount of stick on wheel weights they need to use so they need to line up the tire in the proper place on the rim before mounting while making sure they have the rotating direction and tire size correct for that wheel. I got the deer in the headlights look at most shops, and that was before I would even ask about road force balancing.

I finally found a shop that said they could install the tires on the wheels properly. The fit was very very tight and they (and I) realized they were out of their league after they only got the tire half way on the rim with it rotated so the match mounting mark was way off, so I stopped them and took the wheel without even allowing them to try and remove the tire for fear they'd damage the wheel, tire, or both. I then proceeded from tire place to tire place (15-20) asking if they had the proper equipment and could correctly mount the tires with no success. I stopped by the local Porsche race shop hoping they might be able to do them but instead they recommended AMF tire in Boca Raton saying AMF mounted the slicks on big fat race wheels for the Porsche's all the time. So off to AMF I went and even with the rim and tire bead all lubed up the machine wasn't wasn't powerful enough to get the tires on without the additional weight of a large heavy man on a long tire lever to help the machine. Ya, they were really tight. Once the tires were on the rims they balanced up fine.

After they were mounted and balanced I washed them of all the glop from mounting and polished them up for the beauty shots. I'd be nice if the car was ready for them but they're getting bagged and set aside till I start mocking things up and need them. Now if I could just remember where I put the center caps!

[NOT A TA]

Window channel repairs. I'm waiting on weld in trim clip studs to repair the rear one so here's the front repair I needed to make. I have a new (well 20 years ago ahahaha) headliner it the car which is perfect and I don't want to damage or try to replace it with the roll cage in the way. So welding is something I wanted to avoid above the headliner plus welding creates the possibility of warping the roof skin in that area.

To get started the leftover urethane was scraped off with a scraper that holds razor blades using a plastic razor blade. If you've never seen them they are the same size as a single edge razor but without the very sharp edge, great for scraping stuff you don't want scratched (like paint) and don't dig in and snap like metal blades which is why I use them for scraping urethane window sealer. After scraping wax and grease remover with a bunch of rags will remove the remaining urethane then small wire wheels are used to remove the paint as well as any rust.

I found a small rusted area around one of the trim studs and several of the studs were missing. Now I know why the trim kept lifting over 100 MPH and had to be paped down! I'll clean off places to spot weld the new studs when they arrive.

To fix the rust the area was cleaned well with a wire wheel. Then a carbide bit (like you'd use porting heads) was used to "thin" the sheet metal where the rust was taking it back to clean metal. Then that area was carefully dimpled in a little and a piece of sheet metal bonded in with 3M 8115. Once dry the panel bond was sanded flush and a little plastic filler skim coated on, sanded, and then the window channel epoxy primed.

The findings after cleaning the channel were rust around a stud and a few missing? I had used one of the screw in repair studs when I painted the car 20+ years ago where the small hole is left of the rust area but that one along with a couple others were MIA after removing the trim and window.



The rusted area after wire wheel cleaning marked to make a patch panel.



Patch piece and the area ground down for the patch.



Patch installed with panel bond.



Extra panel bond removed.



Plastic filler smoothed and the channel epoxy primed.



While doing the channel I also fixed some pitting in the lower corner of both sides that's common on 2nd gen F bodies. No new metal needed so pits were cleaned, panel bonded, smoothed, primed. Rear window channel needs more metal repair than the front did, will post when I get the studs I need to do it.