Rusty bucket into Solo toy, Some highlights of my budget autocross build from rust to rocket Options

[Han Solo]

Temps have been in the 90's all week and I managed to get some things done to the race car despite a really busy work schedule. Early in the week I decided I couldn't stand looking at the front trunk any more. I stripped it, treated the metal and painted with POR 15. This weekend I pulled out the fiberglass kick panels I traded for months ago. Those were a bit beat up, so I got some fiberglass bondo, doctored them up and painted. This morning I got side tracked by a repair job on the wife's Boxster but I got the passenger side panel installed before it got too hot in the garage. Most of the bottom screws were rust froze and sheared off when I took the original metal panels off. So I used the large head pop rivets I got for the fender flares. Three on top and two on the bottom for now. We'll see how these non-flare kick panels work with the flares.

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[Han Solo]

My progress over the last week or so... Although this car will need quite a bit of body work, I decided to go ahead and put the fender flares on. Same thought process - get as much together as needed for testing and if the car holds together - move forward with more improvements. I started by drilling the rear flares for pop rivets. A center line hole and then every 5 inches. Some of the spacing near the bottom of the flare was adjusted to keep from getting too close to the edge. After drilling, I painted them satin black. Next day I started mounting by centering the passenger side flare up with the wheel opening, marking the center three holes to be drilled and drilling those out in the fender. That enabled me to hang the flare loosely and confirm alignment before marking the remaining holes. Then I pop riveted the top three holes and worked my way around the sides to the bottom of the flare. Drilling, riveting and moving to the next. Satisfied with the passenger side - I then did the drivers side. The front fenders needed some POR 15 touch up before mounting those. So I decided to strip the rear trunk walls and treat that area while I had the can open. That was a two week night process that I completed last night. The only untreated area on the car now is under the sail and around the top sides of the engine compartment opening. I'm considering over-spraying all the exterior areas with primer but I need to make sure that enamel primer will adhere to the POR 15 properly.

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[Han Solo]

Front flares installed last night. Sweet!

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[Han Solo]

To strip the front hood I decided to get out my media blaster. I use the black diamond material. It's messy but inexpensive. My blaster is the 5 gal portable type. Anyway I just figured it would be so much easier to take the hood outside and blast it as opposed to the wire brush on a mini grinder. I got the two sacks of the medium grind, some fresh tips and started fiddling around trying to find the right pressure, tip, etc. Eventually I found it and was stripping paint like a charm. This hood had minimal rust but the under structure would have made it tough to wire brush. Of course I ran out of material with a small area left so I had to brush that. I'm not spending a lot of time on the hoods because they'll probably be replaced with fiberglass if everything works out. What I will have to figure out though is how to get the headlight covers mounted without the mechanism.

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[Han Solo]

The end of a three day weekend and another trip to Tractor Supply for more Black Diamond. I blasted the two rear lids. The trunk lid has some pin holes from inside rust along the rear most edge but I'm not going to patch. The POR 15 should stabilize that until I get fiberglass. On the engine lid I masked off the sheet metal and PORSCHE letters. Then I painted the underside and grill satin black. The underside of the rear trunk lid got primer grey (same as front trunk lid) and the tops of all the lids got POR 15. Yesterday I cleaned up the brake master cylinder. I really didn't think it would be salvageable but after soaking in the parts cleaner and liberal application of PB Blaster I opened up the cylinder and the plunger came right out. The little seals look pretty good and it seams to be working well. I bolted the master cylinder to the rebuilt peddle cluster and I'm pleased to report that the metal work I did in the floor board is working good. The base of the peddle cluster sits off the floor pan about an inch but I believe that's because I don't have the additional sheet metal support that's suppose to be there. My fix for that will be some spacers cut to fit where the two bolts pass though the floor board. It's been a productive weekend and things are moving forward!

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[Han Solo]

Earlier in the week I took delivery of the Redline dual Weber 44 kit from DRD Racing Heads. I went with them for the setup per engine build specs. Installing those took a couple of evenings and several attempts on the linkage. There's instructions included but the illustrations aren't the greatest and I suspect those apply to several different engine types. I did get just about everything mounted by Friday evening and Saturday morning I was back in the garage.

I've been advancing on two fronts this weekend - body work and brakes. Saturday I actually rolled the poor beast out of the garage. That's the first time it's been outside since I rolled it off the trailer! Reason... to media blast the final bits of exterior for treatment. I got under the sail, around the engine cover area and the engine compartment side of the rear trunk bulkhead. The black diamond material I'm using is really messy and there was no way I was going to do that in the garage. That went well and after extensive vacuuming, I rolled it back in for treatment and POR 15. As that was setting up I put all the removed brake hard lines on the wire brush and cleaned them thoroughly. I noted that all those appeared to have a thin plastic coating that probably prevented them from corroding more than they had. Those all cleaned up very nicely but the long line for the rear passenger side had broken off when I pulled that caliper. I salvaged the fitting out of the rubber hose and had to drill out the fragment of hard line. The net loss was about 1" of hard line so I figured if I could straighten that tube out and double flare the end - it was worth the effort. The double flare kit was $29 from Harbor Freight and I learned a new useful skill. Getting that 3/16" tube to flare like OEM took a while but I think I got a decent flare. I'm also using small segments of old fuel hose split for padding on the tube retainer tabs. A local O' Reilly's had the rubber brake hoses (surprisingly) and after I got all the hard lines back in, I installed those. I will have to get a few more of the retainer tabs as 3 or 4 were completely rusted through. I also got some more fuel hose, heater hose and clamps to complete the plumbing on the engine. The Weber linkage is installed as best as I can get it but I will have to get a vacuum fitting for either one or both carbs for the vacuum advance distributor. What's the recommendation on that? A single hose off one carb or T the two carbs together and then run to the advance?

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[Han Solo]

Not a lot of time in the evenings this week but I did get the head light covers mounted. It was actually quite challenging without having the lift mechanisms in the buckets. The first thing I did was blast most of the top coat off the covers and eyebrows. Those had been painted and skimmed with body filler multiple times so it was pretty thick. No rust through holes though. Then I welded the eyebrows to the covers after bending the joining surfaces for a tight fit and sprayed with weld through primer. There's a slopping contour to the eyebrow edge for the arc of the cover opening. Those of you that have pulled them off know the eyebrows are just held on by three rubber stoppers that mate with holes in the top sides of the buckets. I used those for alignment but that's certainly not strong enough to hold the two joined parts in place. Then I got the idea to use the adjusting bolt to hold the top of cover. I fabricated a right angle bracket out of sheet metal and welded that to the underside of the cover. After aligning the cover/eyebrow, I marked a hole and drilled that out on those brackets to accept the adjusting bolt. That worked fairly well but still wasn't strong enough to hold the assembly securely. I needed a day or so to figure out how to proceed so that gave me time to treat and POR 15 the cover/eyebrow. This evening I got inspired, drilled one hole between the two stoppers that join on the trunk side and pop riveted that. That helped quite a bit but I'd still like to get another fastener on the fender side. The problem is I can't get inside the bucket and the space inside of the fender is really tight for drilling for another pop rivet. I'll figure something out...

Tomorrow, a buddy who's an auto repair shop owner and race car builder is coming over and we're going to wire the engine and instruments. I don't think we'll get as far as starting it up but it's getting close to that time.

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[Han Solo]

Huge day today! My buddy and I bench tested the engine and it's strong! I started the morning putting the engine on my come-a-longs, raising it off the dolly and draining the shipping oil. Filled it up with Mobile1 10-30 and then set it back down on the dolly. That's about when Jim showed up and after reviewing the perimeters of the build - we started making cables to connect the ignition, oil pressure sender and fuel pump. I had a really handy racing panel with a disconnect switch, start button and a couple of indicator lights which was perfect. We wire the coil, oil sender and fuel pump to the disconnect switch. Returned the oil sender to the yellow light. There's a jumper from the disconnect to the start button which connects to the starter. For fuel supply we just stuck the hose into a gas can (I know, just a little dangerous). Then we disconnected the coil wire and started turning it over looking for the oil pressure light to go out. It took a couple of minutes of cranking (we pulled the plugs also) and sure enough - oil pressure! We then checked for spark from the coil but none. Jim traced that down to the points. We pulled the points and after some quick work with a small file, put them back in and gaped. The plugs go back in, distributor back on and coil wire in - we crank it again and it fires immediately. A couple of blips on the throttle lever and we got that sucker running like a champ! The Webers came dialed in pretty darn close. I made some adjustments to the linkage and idle screws, it settles right down. The only feeling I've had close to this is when I got the floor pans in. The progress today gives me real hope and expectation for this race car. All the hard work is starting to pay off!

1st start!

[Han Solo]

With renewed vigor and interest I'm back into the build. After our successful bench test I'm thinking what's next is to get the gauges and instruments into the car. First I got the car back on the hillbilly lift and raised it enough to get the engine on the dolly under it. Then I start making a wire harness to go from the dash into the engine bay and have enough extra to reach the engine on the dolly. In fact, I think I'm going to keep the wires just long enough to drop the engine and keep it hooked up. That will be very handy for adjustments and service that's hard to get to inside the engine compartment. Using the hookup info from our bench test and changing a few of the colors I taped up the bundle (with appropriate labels) and ran that down the original path on the tunnel. Then I went to work fabricating some brackets for the switch panel. I got that mounted under the dash with pop rivets, crimped on the terminals and connected everything. Next I mounted the tachometer above the dash and ran the three wires from it to the switch panel. When I got home this evening, I went to work mounting the two gauges (head temp and voltage). Sticking with my Use What You Got principles, I simply used the same panel from the OEM console with some brackets. It took a little while to wire that end as I decided to add a ground bus bar behind the switch panel. I wanted to insure good grounds on the instruments and the panel itself. Added a couple of cable brackets to keep the wires in place and it's not looking too bad so far.

Next will be to continue wiring back into the engine compartment, down to the engine and prepare for one more bench test before putting the engine in. I'm also taking delivery on a carb synchronizer in a few days so I'll attempt that at the same time.

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[Han Solo]

It's been a couple weeks since the last post, so those of you with interest - let's catch up!

The wiring project is mostly complete. I finished the hook-up on the racing panel and OEM gauge panel. I did add two 4-way terminal strips under the dash. The two toogle switches were just too cramped with all the leads. The main switch has the battery positive home run and a jumper to the first terminal strip. From there I wired the starter button, oil pressure sensor, and tach. The first switch also feeds the second switch which connects to the second terminal strip that has fuel pump, head temp gauge and voltage gauge. Pretty handy that I can kill the fuel pump without turning off ignition. I've decided to put the battery in the former gas tank compartment so there's #2 welding wire running from the starter, through the firewall, along side the cable harness on the tunnel and up through the right side foot-well vent. A short segment of welding cable grounds to the under dash bulkhead.

With all that done I ran several tests to meter charging voltages and there's something wrong. I'm seeing 16-17 VDC at the gauges and battery terminals while running. When I meter at the starter it's really weird, anywhere from 6 to 50 VDC and jumping all over the map. I checked grounding on the voltage regulator and that's good. But the case of the voltage regulator is quite warm. I called the guys at Alternator Starter Exchange and they said the first thing to check is the battery. Apparently a bad battery can cause high charging voltages. So I'll take my battery to the parts store and get it checked this weekend. I'm also going to check the extensions I had to make to the voltage regulator harness to get that where I wanted it.

I've got two electric fuel pumps I can choose from and I've found neither likes being above fuel tank and carb elevation. I had planned on mounting one near the OEM battery tray position but it's going to have to be lower to self-prime. If I can get this electrical sorted this weekend, I'll start running the braided fuel lines from the front trunk tank position to engine compartment. I think the best path for those will be along side the drivers side long where the vapor lines once were.

I'll catch up on photos next post guys!

[Han Solo]

After two weekends of motorsports I'm back in the garage this morning. Earlier this week I rebuilt one of the rear brake calipers while watching the PMB Performance You Tube video. It was very informative and I highly recommend anyone considering that task watching it. I had handed off all the calipers from this car to a buddy but family issues caused his progress to stall. The rears were mostly dis-assembled and cleaned. Same with the fronts but the pistons were stuck. I didn't have any luck getting those out so I'm getting rebuilt fronts. Anyway, the rears turned out pretty good and I saved quite a bit doing that myself. So this morning I finished the second rear caliper. Then I went back to the electrical issue. I rebuilt the extension on the voltage regulator harness, getting rid of the butt splices and soldering the connections instead. I also ran a chassis ground from the voltage regulator to the body ground. I fired the motor back up and I'm still getting 17 VDC at the battery and starter. I still haven't replaced the battery so that's next. I'm going to get a Optima and that will be $250. A little frustrated with that issue, I decided to fit the fuel cell in the front trunk. That required cutting some of that lovely front pan which I didn't mind at all because of those horrible welds. I raised the tank with some spacers from Lowe's and the out-flow hose passes over the front axle. I had thought of running that hose down the drivers side long behind the kick panel but I decided to run the braided hose down the inside of the tunnel. That required drilling a 3/4" hole in the firewall by the clutch tube but all that turned out pretty good. So I'll probably mount the fuel filter on the firewall and follow with the fuel pump mounted to the passenger long near the suspension console. I was cooked after those tasks with temps in the 90's and I'm glad to be in air-conditioning this evening!

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[Han Solo]

I returned home about noon Saturday from a business trip and worked on Porsches pretty much the remainder of that day and Sunday. First on the list was a nagging issue with the wife's Boxster that had me remove the intake manifolds looking for vacuum leaks. I finished that job up this morning and went right to the 914. It's odd that a rusty race car is more enjoyable to work on that a modern daily driver. Maybe that's because I'm building the car the way I want it and not sticking to a form that's complex and highly engineered.
Anyway, I had painted the front calipers Saturday in between wrench turning on the Boxster so those were dry this morning. I loaded up the pads and installed them. They look pretty sweet with those Koni yellow strut tubes. Then I'm back into the fuel delivery system. I drilled a 3/4" hole in the pan to get a better insert on the braided fuel line going through the tunnel (that hole and the firewall will need grommets). After I fished that through, I put the AN fitting on and started looking at how I was going to tie that into the fuel pump. I have a nice Fram fuel filter that I wanted to use but there was a couple of brass fittings that were needed to mate that up so that's a trip to the auto parts store. Another thing I wanted to do was put a primer bulb in-line because the fuel pump is above the tank level. Did you know they have those at Walmart? So with a couple hands full of parts here's what I ended up with...
fuel tank to fuel filter - steel braided 3/8" hose
fuel filter to primer bulb - 3/8" fuel line
primer bulb to fuel pump - 3/8" fuel line
fuel pump to tee fitting - 38" fuel line
I did have a fuel pressure regulator after the pump before the tee fitting but it failed and started leaking badly. So I eliminated that and I suspect I won't need one. After I plumbed all that up and used padded clamps to tiddy everything up - I gave the bulb a couple of squeezes and fired the engine up. Nice! I've got a combo timing/dwell/RPM/volt meter on order so next up will be to get dwell and timing set. Once I've done that, I'll sync the carbs and the engine should be ready to go into the car.

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[Han Solo]

Mid week I got the combo dwell/timing light and I'm glad I spent the extra cash over a simple timing light. This unit has the digital display with volts, rpm, dwell, timing and advance timing. I had a couple hours in the evening to take a look. When I first checked dwell, it was actually really close, 43. I tried to tweek it but loosening the screw just made it much worse. So I used a feeler gauge and got it back to 43. Then I set the light to zero advance and got the engine running about 850 rpm and the timing mark was right on the money. Then I set the advance timing to 27 and rev'd up to 3500 rpm, again, right on the mark. Having the rpm display right on the light is great! Then I got out my flow meter for the carbs to see how those were breathing. With the linkage off the passenger side is 7 and the drivers side is 3.5. That's with the idle adjustment 1 1/2 turns out like the Redline manual recommends. Tweeking that adjustment enough to move the flow meter on the drivers side only makes the engine run rough. Also, with the engine on the bench stand, it's bouncing about and hard to get a good flow reading. I set my target on this weekend to get the engine in the car.

I'm up early today to beat the heat. I get the hardware together for transmission and motor mounts and start lower the car down over the engine. That goes well and I bolt up the new solid transmission mounts first. Then I lower a bit more to get the engine mount bar to line up and bolt that to the chassis. I've also got the solid motor mounts so I loosened up the old rubber mounts, put a jack under the sump and swopped the mounts. After tightening everything up and making neat coils out of the electrical and fuel lines (those are a little long so I can drop the engine and test) I get in the car a fire it up. What a difference having the engine solidly mounted! Idle is much smoother because the linkage isn't floping about. I get the flow meter out again and I'm able to bring the drivers side carb up to 7 by carefully adjusting the linkage. Smooth!

Now that the car is quite a bit lower, I decide to finish the peddle mounts. This floor pan is missing the peddle riser so there's a gap under the peddle assemble. I trim a couple of spacers to fit and bolt that proper to the pan. So now the gas peddle needs the same elevation. Instead of using more spacers, I had a piece of sheet metal that was a perfect shape (it's a segment of the floor pan cross member). I bolted the gas peddle to it and then pop riveted the sheet metal to the floor pan. Eventually I will need a large plate for my heels to rest on but that can wait.

Before I gave into to the sweltering heat, I got under the transmission to look at the shifter linkage and clutch cable. I had gotten a refurbished shifter coupler and I installed that on the the rear bar. I got that bar inserted into the correct position but I'm missing some linkage at the transmission. I also put on the clutch cable pulley and housing on but the cable itself is too far gone. Tonight I'm getting a list of parts together for clutch and shifter linkage.

All in all a very productive day!

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[Han Solo]

Another productive day whilst the wife shops with a friend. I put the race wheels with the new (to me) Hoosier A2s on the car this morning and got it off the hill-billy lift. I put the Bilstien shocks on the lowest ride setting and re-indexed the torsion bars to achieve about 6" to the bottom of the kick panels. The left rear tire is contacting the flare so I'm probably going to have to raise the rear one notch. Then I went to work mounting the racing steering hub to the OEM steering rod. The opening on the splined adapter was 19mm and the splines on the rod were 21mm. So I set about with a mini grinder to remove those splines for a bare shaft that would match the adapter. Another issue in that area is the rod has play in it when you remove the turn signal/wiper assemble because that has a bushing that tightens the shaft up. So I got a 2" piece of 1" ID schedule 40 PVC pipe. The inner dimension was just a tad tight so I split it and the outer had do be thinned as well. Basically I formed that PVC to fit as a bushing on the steering shaft. Put a little grease and it works quite nicely. I had to do so very careful material removal to get the adapter to fit snugly. When I was satisfied with that fit, I followed up with a 1/8" hole and roll pin through the adapter and shaft. The steering wheel is a 14" aluminum cart wheel and I love it! My last task for the weekend was to fabricate a battery tray for the former fuel tank compartment. Using 1 1/2" x 1/4" angle iron I cut and welded up a base for the Optima red top battery. I actually used the old Lincoln buzz box and it was interesting to note how much easier I can weld on that after hundreds of sheet metal welds. I fitted the tray into the best spot in the compartment and bolted that for fitting a support. That was simply some 1/4" flat stock bent to conform. That's drying this evening after paint. It was a hot but very productive weekend in the shop!

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[wndsnd]

Nice build but I advise you to scrap that throttle linkage and get Tangerine's set up.

You will know why when you start tuning.

One of the best things I did to the car.

John

[Han Solo]

Nice build but I advise you to scrap that throttle linkage and get Tangerine's set up.

You will know why when you start tuning.

One of the best things I did to the car.

John

Thanks John. I have looked at the Tangerine throttle system and it does look like a better way to go. I'll include that with other improvements should this chassis hold together. We'll find out soon.

[Han Solo]

Just a couple of quick photos to show the finished battery tray. I'm very pleased with the look and rigidity. All cables neat and tidy. I'm considering a master cut-off switch. Positive or negative lead on that?

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[wndsnd]

My guess would be positive.

John

[Phoenix914]

My guess would be positive.

John

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[brant]

excited to see what your total weight ends up at.