This is one sick FB.

Are you gonna make to DGRR? LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Well I probably could have had it at least together and running in time if I wasn't so picky about having it work just right. I have rushed too many projects in the past to meet a deadline, and have always regretted it. I am chomping at the bit to get it running again though. I was hoping not to have it down this long, but sheiss happens.

Since we were having the discussion of whether an oxygen acetylene torch was still useful, or just old school BS, I thought I would show what you can do with the "Torch" that can't be done with the new fangled toys. Questioned by ta Bawbers of all people.

The gussets are 3/8 plate and the reinforcing covers are 1/8" plate. None of the covers are actually straight. They had to be heated to cherry red along the bend lines and beat into place with a hammer. Welding as you go and doing a section at a time.

I also had to put in a piece of tubing on the driver's side for a pass through for my brake line and wiring harness. It's getting a bit tight over there for room. Then made a cut on the extra left on the brake master cylinder side, heated and beat into shape to form the bottom of the pocket in my wheel well for the master cylinder.

I love my plasma cutter, but there are some things it just won't do.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3438/1...a964a4e6_z.jpg
upper arm perch 3 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3546/1...9d01155b_z.jpg
upper arm perch 4 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7407/1...c823e33e_z.jpg
upper arm perch 5 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

As you can tell, lots of grinding for clean up left to do.

Looking good Kevin :icon_tup:

You got just over a month to finish it. ;)

I hate you. :lol:

Almost looking like a real car! Gunny I know all the hard work, blood sweet and tears you have in that. Hope you can bring the car this year!

Done filling the extraneous holes and doing the rough grind on the new front frame structure. I was asked for pictures so here they are, you folks are gluttons for pictures. :lol:

It doesn't look that much different from the previous pictures, but it does look a lot cleaner than before in person. I'll go to my orbital sander and paper before I lay down the primer. No sense getting too carried away until I have it closed all the way up. Some of the welds were damn ugly, but I have most of the ones that will show in the engine bay cleaned up. The ones in the wheel wells wil get a good coating of primer, seam sealer, and undercoating. Again no sense getting carried away tidying those up too much.

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2834/...83812f11_z.jpg
filled and ground 1 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3700/...12cf7428_z.jpg
filled and ground 2 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7069/...5a1c94ba_z.jpg
filled and ground 3 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2886/...15d5e7f1_z.jpg
filled and ground 4 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

Looking good gunny but are you going to have enough room for a turbo in there?

Not sure. I've only lost about two inches of room across the engine bay. I've been trying my best not to encroach on the space for engine stuffs, but some compromises had to be made.

I've actually been really interested to see how AJ's screw style supercharger worked out for him. By the time the procrastinator general gets it on there though I'll probably be pushing up daisies.

Whooooooo!

Just got back from scoping out the salvage yard. I need to replace the sheetmetal structure that I removed to put in the new spring perches and framing. Trying to build something that looks half assed decent will be a royal b****. Looking at the metal inner fenders from a 1967 Country Squire wagon. They were still made with real metal and appear to be about the same gauge as my original inner structure. It would save me a ton of metal forming work for 40 - 50 bucks. The stamped metal would also look a lot cleaner than my hacked and welded original plan. It will still need to be cut to size and welded in though to make sure the unibody structure remains at least as strong as the original. They have lots of cool stuff over there, I need more money, and time.:lol:

Looks really fucking great man. Awesome job! For damn sure.

After the primer goes down are you going to skim coat the entire bay with some plastic and then sand it down before more primer and then some sanding and then some plastic and then some primer and then some primer surface and then some more sanding and then some primer and then some color and then some clear and some clear and some more clear?

There's always room for one of those :D

Depending on where those 2" are will determine how bad it will be to get a little turbo in there....

He's doing a blow through right? How hard would it be to keep the damn thing FI?

That right there is a great idea...

Danke

No! keep your evil thoughts away! ;) I plan to just get primer on there and run it that way until I know for sure where everything is going to be and all modifications are done. I've painted cars before and only want to go through that bullpuckey once.

If I were to go the supercharger route that's what I would do. Use an engine setup for turbo(s) and just get my boost from a different source. AJ has to do things the hard way though.

Yeah, right, look who's talkin'. :lol:

:cheers:

Truff... I meant after everything is done and welded and you're getting the entire car painted. I did it with the FC and plan on doing it with the 'vert.... closed up all the holes and filled and faired a little.. on the FC.... the 'vert I want to make a much cleaner engine bay..

Gotcha... sounds like an idea... how much power are you looking for? I'm assuming you'd be using either 8.5 or 9.0:1 rotors?

:smilielol5:

When I'm ready for paint I'll probably media blast the engine bay then yeah lots of sanding, sealer, primer, et al. I have some ideas for subtle body mods I'd like to do before that though. Such as extend the wheelbase front and rear (which I should be able to do with my setup) and move the wheel openings, clean up the bumpers, lower the front edge of the windshield so the roof line is flat, etc. Just a clean up of the lines without actually altering the intended shape. Mostly ideas taken from the Hot Rod realm. Who knows if I'll ever manage to get to that point though. Suspension, chassis reinforcement, electronics, and engine will be enough to keep me busy for quite a while.

I'd like to be in the 300 to 350 hp range, but even the stock REW numbers would be an improvement. I was planning to look for some S4 TII 8.5s, durability would be very high on my desirability list.

Not sure if serious....

That's a no brainer....

FWIW a stock FD will make about 210-215 on a dynojet. I've done 196 on an S5 for a the shops ITS car and over 220 with a halfie and ITB's....

I think 350 plus would be a good time. You can always turn the boost down but who the hell wants to do that? :lol:

Actually I am, but the likelihood of me ever getting to it is slim to none. The kinds of mods I'd like to do would be similar to the kinds of things that Foose does with subtle modifications. Things that you wouldn't really notice unless you were looking for them. Some of the lines of the car don't quite flow the way they should. They still look pretty damn good for a production line compact car though.

Hmmm... What I would really like would be a N/A 20B (I'd settle for a 4 rotor too. :lol:) with the ITBs. However like so many other things, that's probably just a pipe dream and the reality will more likely be a boosted 13B and a paint job.

Hell at this point I would settle for just getting the stupid thing back on it's wheels so I can push it over a cliff somewhere.

I am now the proud owner of a pair of crusty old inner fenders for a '66 Galaxy wagon. It only took me about 7 hours to get the blankedy blank things out of the car. Hopefully they save me enough metal forming time to make them worth it.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7014/...958fbc34_z.jpg
fender wells by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

Was the coffee can in the fender well? Or just a bonus?

believe it or not that's an early charcoal canister for emissions, the car was originally from Califor-Ny-Ay.

Guessing coffee cans were the right size and cost.

and probably more effective than the over-engineered and over-priced units used later.

Now that you mention it I may need to keep that. Put a coffee label on it and use it in the engine bay. After all, the build would never have been possible without large quantities of liquid alertness.

The left front arch is in.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3787/...182f1d26_c.jpg

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7317/...754b761f_c.jpg

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7295/...969bfc39_c.jpg

Like a boss!

Badass Kevin!

Did you still want a bellhousing? I might be able to tow it behind my car LOL...

Whenever you get a chance. Like I said, I kind of have my hands full with this part of the project at the moment. :lol:

Will you have a way of bringing it back to KS with you from DGRR? Or is shipping better?

We'll probably have to go with shipping, as I'll be flying this time. I don't think I'm going to have the car together in time. :o

I finally got the rear portion of the driver's side wheel well done. It was a pain as I had to make it from small sections of flat sheet, heat and bend them, then weld the whole mess in. The welds are smoothed and I have primer on it anyway.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3670/...34d48c7e_z.jpg

Damn fine for no sandbag, planishing hammer, and English wheel

I'm not that fancy. I just want to get it back on it's wheels and moving.

Currently paying the price for trying to work on a GM product. I need to get back on the RX-7, but the @#$%* truck has other ideas. The up side is that it gives a perspective on just how good the Mazda engineers were, (and just how bad GM is).

:rofl: Yeah.... fuck gm :lol:

What's the latest on the 7? Or has she been shunned for the POS PU?

I keep looking at it and wishing I was working on that instead. :(

I've been through 3 engines and two chassis' with this POS and still no joy. All of my spares turned out to be garbage and the original still won't run. If you think Microwreck ECUs are bad, try screwing around with the early stock GM TBI ECU. Finding wiring diagrams and information is almost impossible (Chilton and Haynes books must have been written by people working at GM, utterly useless), it's as if GM thinks they're data is Top Secret. I'm at the point where I'm about to yank the whole works and push it off to the side, until I can afford to build an old school carbureted and HEI ignited small block. They were the last thing Garbage Motors built that was worth a crap. This thing is just not worth the headaches.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3835/...62c22366a3.jpgback to work by GySgtFrank, on Flickr


... and back to our regularly scheduled programming. :)

Cool!

Glad to see you back at it, one of my favorite first gens.
I hope to see it next year at DGRR:icon_tup::icon_tup:

.

Thanks, so do I. :lol:

Do you think you'll have your FB ready by next year?

Yeah, that's the plan but it was the plan last year and it didn't happen :banghead:

.

It sounds like you're on the same plan I am. I need to get a different plan. :lol:

Finally done with the grinding on the left side and threw a quick coat of primer on there. I can no longer get the good 3M etching primer here, so I had to make do with Krylon. Which is why there is a color change in my primer.

Oh well. I'm not going to get carried away with paint yet. A good rattle can job will do in the engine bay until I'm done with the engine and all likely mods. I'll then have everything media blasted and use filler (or lead?) to smooth everything out prior to laying on the actual finish coat.

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5545/...7882af0f29.jpgleft wheel well 1 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3854/...cef4c52596.jpgleft wheel well 2 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5556/...63000863a4.jpgleft wheel well 3 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2905/...d0792ec642.jpgleft wheel well 4 by GySgtFrank, on Flickr



... and a shot of both wheel wells done and in primer. It's amazing how much faster and easier it always is to tear stuff apart rather than putting it back together again.

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5501/...f55474cd_z.jpgleft and right wheel wells by GySgtFrank, on Flickr

I still have to do a little cleanup on the bottom of the right side and get it in primer, then I'll be finished with the sheet metal portion. Then back to the lower K-member/upper shock mounts. *groan* I have to put it all back together again. at least once and probably more, just to check measurements and then take it all back apart again for final fixes to both.

Yes I will get this done this year. At least until I tear something else apart and have it laying in pieces again. I suffer from a little recognized malady known as Brian Treffeisen's Disease, or CQFWI (Can't Quit F***ing With It). :lol: