On the road again

But not literally unfortunately. Just moving along real well now. With the engine in I'm freed up to do a LOT more stuff. Yesterday, I did these:
1. Mounted the seats
2. Adjusted and 'set' the steering wheel
3. Finished bolting on the oil pan
4. Installed the driveshaft
5. Installed the clutch cable
6. Installed the accelerator cable


Everything went great until I got to the accelerator. When I was mounting the accelerator bracket to the engine, I broke the bolt off. I had to rig something up to fix this mistake, but only after cutting the broken bolt and nut off the accelerator cable (very carefully!) Here is a picture of the ugly bracket.

While I was bolting my bracket up, I dropped it and it fell. It fell bad. It fell under the intake manifold so I could barely even see it. I couldn't reach it with pliers and couldn't grab it with a hook. So I got a magnet off the fridge and tried to lower it down with a zip tie. It was too big, so I smashed it with a hammer and tied some thread around it. I tried fishing it out, but it kept swinging to the side and hitting some magnetic object. I eventually stuck the magnet to a socket extension and was able to fish it out that way.

Here is the driveshaft - looking down from above.








Thought you might enjoy this picture showing you just how much room there is between the driver footbox and the engine. None! It's pushing it in about a half inch - and that's after I ground away some of the engine material.

The beast has a heart ... but not a pulse.

The engine is in!








It was a slow process, and the engine really BARELY fits. I had to grind away some of the aluminum off the engine and it's pushing against the drivers foot-box a little :-) But we finally got it in there and bolted up - then got the new oil pan bolted up. That was also quite horrible. The bolts were terrible to get to. You could not fit your hand up there - only a finger or two, and you couldn't see the bolts to tell what you were trying to do. Horrible. Also, Josh brought over his buck for the fiberglass body so I can get started on the body now.

It was a long process, but it's in! Stay tuned, a lot should get done in the next few weeks!

Been a bit slow BUT...

Things have been a bit slow working on the car in the last few weeks, but the engine is just about ready to get dropped in, and once it is, it's a downhill run to get it ready to drive. I don't see many more roadblocks, at least for awhile.

Meanwhile for Christmas I got all kinds of goodies - like 1200 watt work lights, ratcheting wrenches, various breathing apparatuses (apparati if you will), a shop vac and more!

Engine Prep Continues

Today I got the broken stud out of the engine block. Also, I bought a tap and new studs so once the engine is off the cradle, I can retap the bad threads and everything will be good as new.

I test fit the EGR plug in it's new location and there IS room for it, although it will be tight. Also, I came up with a great way of blocking off the open ports - by using the old fitting, and welding a piece of scrap metal to the top of it. Oh yeah, things are going pretty good again :-D

Engine prep starts

I wrapped up a bunch of loose ends on the chassis and then got to work preparing for the engine install. First I removed the smog related stuff and removed the belt and cleaned it up a bit. It's certainly not a show-queen, but it's a lot better :-P Then I put the dead-pulley in place where the A/C compressor was and re-routed the belt. After that I bolted the transmission mount up to the frame.

Before








After








So left to do before installing the engine and transmission are these:
1) Fix a broken exhaust manifold stud and a stripped stud. I want someone who has done this before to help - I'm nervous because the aluminum block is softer than the stud.
2) Re-route the EGR using the smog pump stuff. (requires some ingenuity and welding). I need someone who can weld to hook me up on this one.
3) Block off all open EGR, smog, and vacuum openings. I hear that the EGR port is really hard to block off because the threads are odd shaped. Hopefully the smog port wont be too bad. I might just order an EGR blockoff kit just for the EGR plug. What to use to block off the vacuum lines? I heard irrigation plugs will work.
4) Swap out the oil pan. I can't do this one until the engine is up on the hoist. That should be fun...

Brakes done!!! Whew.

This morning I headed over to NAPA to pick up my brake line stuff...again :-P So at long last the brakes are complete. Also, the fuel lines are connected to the fuel tank and run up to the engine bay. I ran the vapor line from the back toward the front and have mocked up where the battery cable will go. I haven't decided for sure where to mount the battery - mainly because I don't understand the instructions :-D

In preparation for the engine installation, I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and install the heater box. Here's a pic of he box installed. So now I really do have to figure out what I'm going to do with the EGR and Smog stuff.

Brakes are about 95% done

So I went back to NAPA and the guy that ordered the stuff realized he ordered the wrong thing and went back to the catalog to remedy the dismal situation. Only then did he realize, and soon thereafter portray to me, the actual depth of dismality of said situation. NAPA does not even have the fitting that I need in their catalog. Which means instead of 2 fittings, I now have redo the plan for that section and I now need 4 fittings and 2 new lines. The good news about this is - NAPA can't really screw this one up.

It will be Saturday before the parts are here, but I think that is ok because I have everything I need to run the fuel lines and battery line. I will knock those out in the next day or so then spend most of vacation working on engine preparations.

Still aiming for a Jan. 1 engine drop-in.