GravelSurfer83

iTrader: (1)

So now sell it to me for 700!!! Anytime you or Jonny want a ride swing on by lmao
Car looks great man.

dannyz

Very nice!
Not many people take the time to put much effort into the older 4th gens.
Well done.

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

definitely not trying to make a show car by any means but mostly trying to undo the years of use and make it a little faster in the process.

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

Im gonna give this 01 4l60e (my old trans) a clean bill of health. New Wix filter and some dex3. Stock pan with drain and truecool 40k should be fine.



Diff cover and 2 quarts of redline gear oil installed. Also welded on LCA brackets. New adjustable LCA on the way, think one of these stockers has a spun bushing.



WTF.




I did have a little bit of white paint left.



Is it stupid in a convertible? Maybe. Dont judge me.





My current disaster. Access panel done wrong. Johnny doesn't get a cut off wheel ever again.



New carpet, new seatbelts are on order. Allstar access panel cut and installed, and Walbro 525 is installed.

SCLT1

Looking great man post a video once you get it runnning!

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

6 hours on the road, and we got a twist to the story. T56, clutch, hydraulics.....are you paying attention, this should be fun. And not running any time this century.



Killmat is done, Allstar trap door is done (10x14), carpet and seatbelts look mint, fuel pump, regulator, and PTFE lines are done. I need pedals (3), console trim, make a crossmember, sell the 60e and converter, hack a big *** hole in the floor etc etc. Not sure what to do with the new trans cooler I just installed. One step forward, three back.





Cant wait to bang gears and miss shifts like a boss! 10 bolt is toast.

JoshHefnerX

That trapdoor, is that 'sealed'?

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

Those are not 100 percent sealed no.

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

Ordered pedals and console insert from Hawks. New, they seem to be nice reproductions.



Did you know the auto driver side hood bracket had a slot for a clutch reservoir? Me either, mind blown.



So yeah, I didnt notice this groove in the stock DS. Ive measured one,its .06 thick. Hmmm.



Sonnax 3" .120 wall DS. Fing money pit.



​​​​​​Against my will Ive become very good at GM Saginaw type steering columns. This one was sloppy, but in overall very good shape, it needed spacers to tension the bearings, an ignition retaining pin (missing) and I installed a new GM ignition.



AFR and boost gauges. We dont need no radio where we're going. Dummy AC gauges installed to fill the hole.



Cole side is done. I hated to use that 90 elbow on the passenger side but I ran out of bends. I said I knew how to weld, I never said i was any good.



Shed decoration.



Column is mint, No slack anywhere. I almost gave up and ordered a race column. I'm glad I didn't. Painful learning experience a lot like marriages, amirite?

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

Chipping away. She runs.

fucter

iTrader: (5)

Cool build so far!
How much $$$ are you in for now?

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

We have a little fun from time to time, went to a 3 doors down/Seether concert. Excellent! No zoom, 4th row.



Johnny got to come over and work on his old car. She kept herself busy. Little dirt rubbed into the paint don't hurt this old girl.



Exhaust is getting built. I forgot to order another vband so it stalled out.



That hold down bracket is welded to the PCM chassis, it welds surprisingly well. Cleaned up the wiring over there as well.



Interior is basically done except some very minor details.

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

I've placed a backup camera......that was originally a spot for "cassette" tapes.



Here's one of the main delays on this car. I drug this home (on a trailer). It was $1500. A cheap, older, non-running at the time BMW......yeah. It's running now and Im dailying it for the time being. Now, on to more progress on the white Z.



The car was close, or so I thought. I was planning on grabbing a license plate and taking its maiden voyage. I went to pull it in the garage to do a front end alignment and it would barely run. But lets recap how we got here. The car was a stockish 5.3, a 98 fbody pcm and harness. This car was tuned by me and has always ran really well. When I turbo'd it, the changes (that would effect it running) were: 80lb Dekas, 3 bar ZR1 map, and a 2bar OS swap. The car has been running very very rich since the get-go. I have one of those junky chinese FPR on the car and it was giving me like 100psi of fuel pressure. Makes sense it would be rich right? Got that all sorted and it was still rich but I figured the tune was off. So when the car wouldn't run anymore I grabbed hptuners and took some fuel out of the VE. Still rich, repeat, repeat, repeat. It just would not act right no matter what I did. I also noticed the TPS 5v reference only had a 2v output which was weird, that was never an issue before, and the car ran fine a couple of weeks ago. Soooo, long story short I have an 01+ 0411 PCM I'm gonna repin the 98 harness and put in the car. It will not be going in the stock location, but moved to under the dash. So that's where I'm currently at, in the seventh circle of hell.

Reaper-Z

iTrader: (9)

Cool build man! Personally I dig the black headlight buckets but that's one hell of a paint job for the time and money! Rowing gears in that is going to be hella fun!

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

Didnt wanna do it but I pulled the engine harness off the car. Two reasons, one so I can trim all the unused stuff out, and two so I can solder it on the table. This has been quite the learning experience AND a consumption of time.



This is the trash pile. Notice the 4l60e connector and all emissions and o2 sensors. Gone.



Why do "budget builds" turn into money/time pits?

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

Update......and I realize some people paying attention may think I'm the slowest car builder ever. But I will clarify some with this post.

We can start with the quick performance 9 inch as you've seen by the teaser pic. So I've been assembling rear ends for me and lots of other racers in the area.....so I've done a lot. Putting this together was aggravating to say the least, not only am I not super versed in a 9 inch (although I tell the ladies that I am) these gears just seem to be not that good. With an absolutely gorgeous coast pattern I get this junk **** for drive side. And I wasted way too much time fooling with it.



1 week later I do a GM 8.5 truck diff and its beautiful. These gears are however cheap so if they break or howl, they will just get replaced. The end product is aluminum through bolt case, 31 spline trutrack posi, QP diff at stock length and powder coated. The housing took 6 weeks-ish to get here.



I left you hanging with the harness situation. Long story short everything was installed and it still wouldn't run. All 5v sensors worked (tps, iat, ect etc.) but the 12v sensors were dead (cam/crank). I decided to buy an ebay complete harness and swap them out. That part literally wasted weeks, all the soldering etc. Not only that, after it didn't run with the new PCM and harness a friend suggest changing the plugs. Wow, it cranked, sometimes its the little stuff you overlook. All is well after some hptuners magic and she is running perfect on an 0411 pcm and 3bar map.

Safelite came out and installed a new windshield to the tune of $500 ouch, and of course i needed new wipers. Most cars are J hooks, super easy right? These goofy things are reverse J hooks and require a special wiper. I'm at the point where I think nothing can possibly go right on this build. I also bought new wiper arm covers (which covers the bolt end) and had to buy new pushpins for the cowl (which I didnt have enough of the right size).



The tach didnt work with the 0411 pcm and everything I read said that it was an unusable signal out for the old school tach. I tried everything after purchasing this and wasn't much was working but I figured it out, now listen close for you googlers who might find this in a few years. This coversion box works IF you grab a signal wire from a coil pack as input, set dip switches 1,2,7 to ON and off 3,4,5,6 to OFF and use the 5v signal out for the tach. Works mint.



Sidenote pic, I'm a welder, have been a long time (not my primary profession I'm actually a nurse full-time), and though I've been running the TIG for about a year I recently picked up the mini-me wire gun to match. Im super thrilled with Primeweld and am proud to post them. Notice I didn't say that about QP?





So in conclusion I still am making progress and I feel like a light is at the end of the tunnel