[elky] A coupla progress photos

  • From: Ray Buck <rbuck@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: elky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:27:03 -0600

First, redneck engineering at its finest.  Red duct tape to cover the torn bumper cover on the Beater:



It otta get it past safety inspection.  I don't think it'd pass with the ragged edges exposed.  I dunno whether it's rated for 200 mph, but with the little 2.8L motor, I don't think it matters a lot.

I've replaced the front wheel bearings, found a coupla cracked/broken vacuum lines that seem to have been causing the intermittent Check Engine light (I hope) and replaced the transmission mount.  All tolled, it wasn't a lotta money, but I sure spent some time, especially trying to make a TH350 tranny mount work with a T-5.  I had to kluge my own intermediate mount to the crossmember.  The T-5 mount is a dealer-only part and when they were available, the price was over $300.  No way.  My kluge works and it's stayin that way.

I haven't been able to fix the temp gauge, so I tore into the dashboard:



Don't ya love those crazy $20 seat covers?  :)  Anyway, I replaced the burned-out dash lamps, but didn't find anything that would have caused the temp gauge not to work.  So I'm gonna run a long jumper wire from the instrument cluster plug to the temp sender.  If that doesn't fix it, I'll do two things.  First, I'll just assume that I don't know a damned thing about basic electricity and then I'll go buy an aftermarket gauge.

One other thing visible in this photo is the red/red w/black stripe wires hanging down from the area of the fuse box.  I figgered they might be for the horn, since it doesn't work, but I couldn't find anything in the wiring diagrams (the set I have is for 82-83) but that doesn't mean a lot.  It looks like the connector on the end should plug into the back side of the fuse box, but I couldn't see a way or a place that it would fit.  Any ideas?

And then the race car.  This is a "middle-of-the-project" shot of the wiring "tidying up" process. 



There's a lot more work that's gone on than is visible in the photo.  I relocated the coil, redid its wiring, shortened a lotta wires and did a lotta re-routing.  It's gettin closer. 

I just called the vendor and my 4 3/4" cowl induction hood still hasn't been received from their manufacturer.  I've still got some time, but it's gettin closer and I already paid for the damned thing.  Oh, well.  One of my favorite sayings is, "everything takes longer and costs more." 

More when I have it to report.

r

Other related posts: