Assembled the front brakes with Loctite and safety wire. Installed all the brake lines that have been in storage for a while....under my side of the bed LOL....and I now have a closed system. Filled it up with fluid and bled the brakes today. Did I have any leaks? OF COURSE I did . After addressing the drips it does have a nice firm pedal and having brakes now is a small milestone. Think I'll go watch the Super Bowl and rest.

 

Looks great!

Andrew

 

One step closer!

 

On this project it never ceases to amaze me how one thing leads to another and how easy it is to get off track. Soooo I'm ready for a brake check and started to install the shifter and cable. The cable mounts to the seat riser, and at that point I realized there was a hole left in the middle of the floor that needs to be covered before I assemble the seat riser, shifter cable, etc. So here we go. Lets build part of a driveshaft tunnel. Here's the challenge. VERY little room to work with and the cover must seal good so water can't get to the computers and fuse panels which are close to this area. And prefer not to weld on the car at this point so I'll mock everything up and weld it on the bench.


Here's a shot without the seat risers. The silver lines are the boundaries to stay inside of.


Used this handy dandy fixture I built a while back so the main cross member can be taken out and give me some working room.


Built a tunnel flange I could seal off to.


Beginning of the structure. The second hoop was placed right over the tunnel flange.


More frame stuff


Frame welded out and covers made.


Installed in the car, BUT now waiting on seat belts that will mount somewhere near the back of the driveshaft tunnel. May have to modify the tunnel when the belts get here so holding off finishing it for now.

 

Had to wait on some seat belts, but they are here and very nice thanks Juliano's ! My wife requested 3 point belts, which is probably a good idea, but this car didn't come with any belts at all from the factory so this may require a little fab work LOL. Also bought a piece of steel for the B pillar of the car, but it was basically a large piece of keystock that I ended up machining to fit. Starting from left to right I whittled a wood pattern from MDF, then drug out the table saw and dado blade to make the next wood pattern out of poplar. It stayed together much better and I used that pattern to make the real piece. Third piece from the left is what the steel pieces start out life looking like. Fourth piece is finished piece.


This is quite a busy piece when all said and done. This is the back side. The center tapped hole is where the seat belt actually mounts. The other 2 tapped holes is how it mounts to the post itself. I would like to weld it also later just for insurance. The holes in the end is for the string to pull it up through the post. There is another clearance hole for a window garnish molding, which by the way, had to be drilled at a slight angle.


Installed


My side is figured out, done, and fits me well. Now on to my co pilot's side

 

It's been a while. Any updates? Driving it yet?

 

Eric thanks for checking on me! Short answer is no not driving it yet as I'm recovering from surgery. I had been having sharp leg pains for about a year and I jumped through all the insurance hoops to have back surgery. I just couldn't take the pain anymore so I scheduled the surgery and it went as planned, and I went home the following day. A couple days later I was in SEVERE pain and had a 2nd emergency surgery. For those who may have been here before, my spinal canal filled with fluid and put lots of pressure on the nerves. To quote the surgeon "those nerves don't play" and boy is he correct on that !! That surgery did fix all the issues and all the pain is gone, but man after that 2nd surgery and a few days of broth and jello in the hospital I was pretty beat down. I've been working real hard at rehab and I'm starting back to work tomorrow at probably less than full speed. Earlier in the year my wife had actually registered us for Cruisin' the Coast in October because I thought it was a possibility to maybe trailer the car and just cruise a little. Obviously that's not going to happen now, but we are still going with some friends. In the meantime, I bought my wife a Cadillac XT5 because her car died so we will just drive that car down there and relax. Are you or anybody else on here planning on going to CTC?

 

I hope you heal up quickly. Spinal surgery is no joke.

 

Oh damn, Keith, sorry to hear about that. Hope you get back to normal soon. I've never been to CTC, but it's on the list of 'someday' shows.

 

First time in the shop yesterday and man did I enjoy it! I have some Physical Therapy left and hopefully this surgery pain will be in my rear view mirror . Found something easy to do as I ease back into things. Built a relay harness for a couple of phone chargers that will go between the seats. While I was in the shop a retiree from my work brought me a couple of old cans to add to my collection. The KMart trans fluid was definitely one I didn't have...pretty cool can if you like that kind of stuff!

 

Even a can stabber, as we called them! Cool stuff, man!

 

It's been a while......After my back surgery rehab I can now get down on a creeper and also manage to get back up LOL. The first thing I wanted to tackle after I got mobility was a heat problem on the driver side floor. Its a cramped area with exhaust, brake booster and a master cylinder. My first course of action was to get some exhaust sections ceramic coated. Santa Clause dropped these by JetHot and had the work done just in time for Christmas. They always do a nice job thanks to Andrea Richardson for your help! More soon on the hot floor................

 

Hopefully the coated exhaust will help control some heat. The next step was to try to insulate the floor pan.. I have friends who have used LizardSkin and I've seen the product demos at different shows so I decided to try it for myself. I figured since I was doing the driver side I might as well do the other side too. The LizardSkin calls for some good Epoxy Primer so that was the first step. Here are both floor pans underneath the car in primer and the products used.







I taped off the areas and built some cardboard boxes to protect everything else and it worked just fine. The process was straightforward and not hard to do at all. I cant wait to see the results when I get everything assembled back together and measure the temp of the floorboard. More soon on that.....In the meantime I'm going to try to use the rest of the LizardSkin since it does have a shelf life. And I need to take advantage of this borrowed spray gun (thanks Bill !)

 

Did you spray the Lizard Skin inside or underneath?

 

Underneath, but according to LizardSkin you can do either side.

 

I used my leftover material on the transmission tunnel and the sheet metal parts that cover the subfloor. Thanks to Mark Dunbar for putting all these parts in Epoxy Primer for me!



Parts curing with the help of some lights. The instructions said the best cure temp is at least 70 degrees and the lights did a great job before and after the spraying was done to help the cure process. The shop was at 70 and my temp gun was reading in the 80's on the parts



I had some flanges and many holes to deal with. I used a variety of wooden corks, bolts, and some washers to keep the holes clear. The picture shows a panel with some dzus fasteners that are a little tricky because the LizardSkin material is so thick, but I found some thin washers just the right size that did the trick on all of the countersunk holes.



On the flanges I wasn't sure if one layer of tape would hold up to the abuse so I used blue clean release tape to mark it off. Then I went over it again with some much tougher green tape. The tape combo ended up making a real nice edge.



All the parts finished.



Bare subfloor where all the parts go,



All the parts installed and test fit. They seem to scuff easily. The instructions say you can topcoat it with anything so I will probably pick a color and do that later. Next up is reassembly of the exhaust and brake system.

 

Glad to see you're back at it. I've heard good things about Lizard Skin, but have never personally tried it. I'm curious on your thoughts about it and how well it works for you.

 

First let me apologize for the lengthy post, but its cold as heck in Texas right now and I didn't have enough time to heat up the shop this evening so I'm bored in the house LOL

Hey Eric here are a few key points about LizardSkin. 1) This first point won't have any affect on you because you're set up for spraying primer and paint, but for other folks reading this, a good Epoxy Primer (no rattle cans) is recommended for the LizardSkin to have something to bond to. I hired someone to put all my individual parts in Epoxy primer, and for the small areas underneath the car I tried a roll on/brush on DTM Epoxy Primer offered by Eastwood. It actually worked very well. 2) you do have to use their gun to spray the LizardSkin or have access to one they cost about $100 bucks 3) The process is not that hard to do, but there are multiple coats and cure times involved so plan on a few days to get all the coats laid down. It's water based so gun cleanup is pretty easy. I bought some pipe brushes at Harbor Freight to help make cleanup easier when the gun is taken apart. 4) The product looks good and is either grey, which they call black, or you can also get white. It can also supposedly be top coated with anything but I have not done that yet. 5) I think a trunk or interior might be easier than all the small parts that I did, but just keep in mind with sound control and heat control the total thickness can be around ..080" so you kind of have to plan for where you have holes, parts fitting together, etc. Also the spraying pressure is around 50-70 psi so you have to figure out ways to hold the parts so they don't blow around during spraying 6) Also something to consider is the shelf life after its opened is 6-8 months so plan accordingly because it is a little pricey 7) Cure temp has to be at least 70 degrees 8) It will add some weight to your car if that's something that's a factor 9) There is no doubt it kills alot of sound. The panels sound completely different. Although I don't have a way to measure the sound improvement, I can already tell that I would like to do other areas of the car. 10) And now for one of the main reasons I used it....to take some heat out of my floorboard. It's not like my entire drivers side floor was hot, but one particular small area about as big as my fist would heat up to 136 degrees and now it's 113 so it dropped that temp 23 degrees. I really don't want to reroute my exhaust at this point so I may do the inside of the floorboard eventually as well to maybe improve it some more. My conclusion without driving the car yet is that I like the product and would recommend. Hope this helps anyone who is thinking about trying it!

 

Non car related but an interesting shop tip. My compressor pump housing was 25 degrees this morning and it complains a little bit on startup until it warms up a bit. This light took it to 70 degrees relatively quickly and made it happy LOL

 

All back together with exhaust and brake system. Cooled the drivers side floor 23 degrees with the LizardSkin. May still do some on the inside later. Fabbed up a brake light switch as well. The brake pedal doesn't return like I would like so I'll probably do some sort of return spring. Anybody have ideas on this? Next steps bleed brakes and dig out the shifter for install.