Thanks for the update!

 

Chassis work continues.....Hats off to Moser for the quick turnaround and the great fab work on the housing and machine work on the axles!

 

Round 2 for trial fitting wheels. Special thanks to the Arnolds for the use of their wheels and all their support!! All the chassis work made the car match the vision in my head. I really like how the car sits and how the wheels fit. Plan on pulling the trigger on some wheels this week .

 

Wow, man! Those wheels look RIGHT on that car!

 

Looks like it is all starting to come together.......GREAT JOB !!!!!!!!!

 

Wheels on order......loooong lead time . While I'm waiting on wheels I'm finishing knick knacks and nothing exciting or really post worthy, BUT I did get rid of the ugly exhaust tail pipes I had thrown on there just for cranking purposes. I wanted to barely see the exhaust and angled it down 20 degrees to get it away from the car but maybe not throw up any dust in parking lots. Also spent a good bit of time trying to make them even from side to side. Should be plenty good to start out with. Cranked it today and let it get up to operating temp

 

Exhaust looks good! What wheels did you go with?

 

Wheels are made by Schotts. They had this pic their gallery.

 

Carlos Juarez and Schott Wheels did great on these rear wheels! Look great and fit great! Thank you!! If only FedEx could find the front ones LOL!!!

 

One of my coworkers who is following the build reminded me I hadn't posted in a while . Fedex found the other 2 wheels and I had them mounted on some tires. It sits exactly like I wanted, but I only took a handful of pics on my phone before I set the pinion angle and took it apart. The driveline angles turned out great. Hopefully it rides smooth. The housing is now all welded up as well as the lowering blocks, shock mounts, basically everything to install it. Eric I took out the wood lowering blocks you were so fond of . I did have to change some brake line routings due to rearend travel so I got those knocked out today. Mocking the housing up on the bench is the way to go instead of working under the car when it's possible to do that. I sent the center section to Quick Performance for a ring gear and pinion setup (settled on 3.55 for gear ratio). The housing looks so cool on the bench I hate to take it back apart but I need to get it to Powder Coat next week if possible. When I get the housing and center section back it will be time for final assembly and install. .

 

I started cleaning the rear housing for final assembly and had to back up a step. After powder coat, the housing had leftover sand from the sandblasting prep, and I just couldn't get it clean enough to suit me. Sort of like trying to get a short block clean enough to assemble. Anyway, I decided to install a drain plug so I can break in the gears and then do a gear oil change. The gears and bearings should appreciate that . I didn't really want a bung hanging down that makes the car hard to jack up and usually cracks/and or leaks over time. My friend John Burgess gave me an idea about plating the bottom and I took that idea one step further. I made a bottom plate to fit my jack pad. Here's the pattern.


Made the plate with a nice size pilot hole for drilling to size later. Made some end pieces to hold the housing level for drilling and tapping for a 1/4" pipe plug.


Tapped until the plug was flush on the outside and is just shy of being flush on the inside.


So far so good on the leak test. Took a few days to round all this stuff up for the little simple plug, but I'm glad I took the time to figure out a design that I like and should hold up over time. NOW back to assembly LOL

 

Rear end all together and car back on cribbing blocks. Driveshaft ordered. Visited the interior shop and I'm the next car in line so I came home and dug out the seat frames to finish them. Interior shop will only be the seats this go around. The interior guy asked for some extra standoffs on the tie off rods for a little more strength to pull on. Only finished half of the rear seat today....I gotta get it

 

Just because you see a guy at Dollar General buying up the toilet brushes doesn't necessarily mean he's going home to clean house LOL


Assembly in process


This is the first opportunity I've had to push the car out and look at the new wheels and stance from all angles






While the car was out I painted the seat frames to take to the interior shop


I fought the Wednesday Thanksgiving traffic to get the car to Bradillac's. They have done some really nice rides and I can't wait to work with them on Penny. This go around will only include seats to match the original interior to get the car on the road, but I'm hoping to brainstorm some ideas for later while the car is there in his shop.

 

Upholstery guys been busy shaping foam. Hey Eric, everything BARELY fit under the backseat and they don't hate me LOL. Went for a test "sit" this week and the wifey gave them the green light for some material

 

Looking real good! But are you sure they don't hate you and are just being nice to your face? You never know what they may be saying behind your back! LOL Just kidding, I'm sure it's all good. Wish I could work on mine, but for the forseeable future, it's just sitting in the garage...

 

They've been smiling when I write the checks LOL. When I get Penny running down the road I'd like to make a Missouri trip and come see you sometime. Maybe bring you some parts and talk about hot rods........

 

That would be awesome! You better keep working! They moved the Dallas GoodGuys show to April this year, so I may try and make it down there for that since the snow should be over by then.

 

I don't know how this car will drive yet, but during this particular build I've learned how to make the heck out of some miscellaneous brackets LOL!!. This one will keep the anti knock sensor wires out of trouble since they were right in the path of my brake pedal travel.

 

I'm posting this in the hopes that it may help someone searching for info on brake booster hoses. My LS3 crate motor has a large vacuum port on the back of the intake that I'm using for the power brake booster. By the way my gauge says this particular port pulls 17 inches of vacuum at idle. To get that actual number I bought a Dorman vacuum tubing connector variety pack (part # 47308) at AutoZone to adapt from the large intake port down to a very small size for my vacuum gauge. Running plumbing from the intake to the booster wasn't completely straight forward and I can see why this question appears on other forums because I couldn't find much info out there. Use this info for ideas and reference only . Starting at the intake here is how I got to the booster.
Step 1 dropping to the right size - the intake port OD is an odd size and maybe/probably metric?? I didn't take the time to figure out the metric size because I discovered that 1/2" heater hose fits nicely, but my port on the booster is 3/8" so I needed to drop to that size. I bought a brass barbed adaptor that drops it from 1/2" to 3/8". I found mine at Lowes in the plumbing section.


Once down to 3/8" size I discovered Gates actually makes some hose for this application. It's 11/32" ID and has a thicker wall and it is a little stiffer than 3/8" fuel hose. I'm sure there are 3/8" fuel hose examples out there with no issues, but I would rather not take any chances on this and I think its a good investment at $3.50/foot. Here is a pic of the difference in fuel hose and brake booster hose with the booster hose being on the right (Gates 27230 bought at O'Reillys). O'Reillys also has the 1/2' brake booster hose, which is actually 15/32" ID, and is Gates part number 27231 if you don't have to drop the size down.


Step 2 making a hard line - I had some 3/8" aluminum tubing leftover from something so I made a pattern for a hard line and then made the final hard line out of steel. I did the first step of a double flare on the ends to keep the hoses on there tight. My booster is under the drivers side floorboard so this hard line clamps to the floorboard and runs to a bracket on the back of the drivers side cylinder head. So the hard line makes most of the run with a short piece of the Gates 27230 hose on each end connecting to the intake and booster. Now back to the brake system LOL

 

Many thanks to Kevin Tanaka at E Stopp for helping me with my emergency brake! When I fabbed up the actuator and the bracketry for the cables I just used wire nuts to test everything out and it worked fine. When it came time for assembly it wouldn't work and turned out to be the controller. No idea what happened in between?? Kevin and E Stopp more than honored the warranty and sent me a new one. Thank you sir! Finished wiring it today and it works like a charm . The pic is under the rear seat.