switch faces plastic or aluminum. Either way it could be cnc milled or laser etched. If AL, I would Cerakote them then laser etch the symbols into them for what they are. You can do some very neat stuff with CeraKote and lasers.

@914forme Stephen - The switches are AL but I think I'm going to leave them "blank", at least for now.

And the Momo hub came in so here's the wheel all set to go. It's working out just as I'd hoped.

Today I got the reshaped dog house upper panel welded in.

As always, recent mods looking great Chris!
With all that horse power and as light as this car will be, you might have to load the trunk with lead weights to hook it up.

Time to get all the fire wall panels prep'd for install.
I want all the rivets to align vertically. The fun part is that the rivet line on the main panels is level but the line in the upper panel is slightly curved.
This means I can't just set the rivet fan to the same distance since the rivet line on the curve is longer.
So, I used the laser level, positioned it appropriately for each rivet and marked directly, vertically above each main panel rivet.
It's always a bit more complicated than you think it'll be...

I reshaped the corner radius on the new dog house upper panel then marked and drilled the doghouse for rivets.

My wife was quite funny when she saw all this in process. Her comment:

"Well, you sure know the drill..."

@Andyrew , I hope you got that Cleco stock!

@Morph914 Thanks John! I know, right? It should be "interesting" with this set up.
And how's your build coming along?

I think you should leave them in there permanently!

It’s going well, my goal was to get the tub into epoxy before the humidity hit, and I was able to do that. So what little body work there is to do will be completed in the fall when cooler and drier weather come back.
To keep the momentum, I am going through all the parts cleaning, painting, replacing bushings, bearings, etc., Hoping to paint this winter. I do feel a little guilty already having the car to this point after following some of the builds, like Brent’s. Thanks to you for selling me a dry car!

Cheers

I have a lot of little things to finish. Necessary but not too exciting.
Today, it was fabbing the little extension panels for the driver side lower fire wall so that panel extends all the way to the long, above and below the seat belt retractor recess.

I also took the opportunity to braze in the e-brake guide tubes. It's all coming along.

With the engine all set to go, it's time to run all the systems. Here's the engine side view of the removable bulkhead panel. Fuel supply and return on the right, clutch and brake on the left, throttle cable and battery supply.
The space that's still available is for a bulkhead electrical connector that will support the wiring for oil temp, oil pressure, water temp, tach and the rear Infinity Box Power Cell.

I love the ordered uniformity of all the Clecos but isn't a good part of their usefulness that you don't have to use them on every hole in a string, especially when they are that close together. Though if you own stock, or just a ton of them I get it.

Fair enough, I don't need them in every hole, but I have them, so...
That said, there can be very minor movement in the panel, if there are too few. Not that it's that big a risk, but I'm all about overkill.

Today I designed, fabbed and installed the Infinity Box power distribution block mount.
Those four red wires each terminate on the upper part of each of the blocks, then the battery power mounts to one location on the lower section of one of the blocks. They are all tied together with a bus bar.

I used rubber isolation mounts that also provide clearance for the rivnuts.

Yet another example of a part that'll never be seen once things are assembled.

I had a feeling I might use some of the real estate on the reservoir line bulkhead plate and I was right! The main power to the starter routes nicely through it.

It's a big change moving from the fab stuff to installation. It's forcing me to finalize a number of things - something I've not had to do til now. But I'm happy with how things are coming together, at least so far!

might as well start thinking about it now, unless you already have one,,,l know you like choices so...

Click to view attachment

prob. long gone..but

That system sounds pretty slick. Every time I add an additional electrical doodad I find it harder and harder to keep the installation clean. I'm guessing having power distribution to different parts of the car helps with that issue.

This car will draw enough valid admiration that a vanity plate would only cheapen it.

In a rare move I'm with...

T

You know, those plate suggestions really are quite accurate! I brought them on myself, after all.

And to continue with my "redo it - again!" trajectory, I rethought the location of the power block and moved it out of the frunk to what will be behind a foot rest.

@bbrock , you win again. This is V6 of this panel!

Anyway, the move de-clutters the frunk, shortens the wiring runs (which no longer run through multiple body panels) and means I can service essentially all the key electronics from inside the car.

Sharp eyes will notice this panel holds five power blocks. There's a fifth that supports an electrically (electronically?) controlled battery disconnect. Again, mounting it here, right near the other blocks simplifies the wiring. You'll see it as I get that gizmo mounted.

way better

Major milestone: The very first wires are in! I'm new to all this wiring stuff so this should be interesting and "fun". A learning experience, at the very least.

That cylinder thing under the power blocks, works in conjunction with the InfinityBox brain to constantly monitors battery voltage - when the ignition is off. If the system voltage gets too low, this setup actively "disconnects" the battery, preserving the remaining voltage.

There's also a manual button that I can use to "disconnect" the battery. Push it again and it "reconnects" the battery.

I'll hide that somewhere and claim it's part of the security system!

I needed to narrow the driver-side front area of the console cover to provide necessary foot room - so I started on that today.
Again, it would have been far simpler if all of the planes of this cover were 90 degrees to one another, but no, I opted for a 78 degree inward tip of the vertical wall.

It certainly looks better but it makes it way more work to cut and fit the needed angles.

Here, I've got one transition all but metal finished and the other silicon bronze TIG'd.

Then ClecoBoy made an appearance and got the front top cover ready for rivets.
I also primed things as handling the raw metal was starting to create rust spots.

More

That looks great!!!

ClecoBoy should be a Emoji

You are a great fabricator, but I guess you know that.

Bob B

@burton73 Thanks for the nice compliment, Bob.

A big reason I post all the details is to show others what can be accomplished if one just practices and sticks with it. Many of us ( @defianty , @bbrock @dion and others I'm forgetting) have used the "give it a try it and learn along the way" approach and have achieved what I think are really impressive results.

I had very low skills at all this when I started a few years ago. I couldn't TIG at all, hadn't bent a piece of sheet metal and didn't own a single Cleco!

But think I have developed my skills across the life of my build and feel like I'm approaching a point where I'm reasonably able to get a result that I like.

To anyone thinking about fab work: Give it a try, then give it more tries. You'll get there faster than you'd think!

Chris , I am humbled by that compliment coming from you. Thank you for that.

You always go the extra mile. It always shows through.

Never stop being who you are.

PS Your build always makes my brain hurt! In a good way!

I think I need to do another few projects to get up to your standard of finish Chris

But I hear what you're saying and thanks for that. There's no better feeling than getting stuck in and accomplishing something you've never done before.

Keep up the great build, it's inspiring!

Whoa - that is strong company. I need to buy a LOT of Clecos before I can get anywhere close to any of your level.

If all it took was Cleco's - I'd be DaVinci this weekend - always lovin' on Tyga's work

I like that steering wheel setup - will save me hours of agony wiring up an ECU to actuate a 3 stage vtec setup in my classic mini by manually actuating the vtec solenoids. Just hit the Yo! button somewhere over 3k and hold on. Probably don't need vtec until hitting the straights...

I have been interested in developing metal fab skills, but am never sure where to start investing the dollars or what is a worthwhile compromise of shop space. What would you say are the top 3 pieces of equipment/machinery that you find yourself using most often? I have a MIG and an assortment of hand tools, but nothing substantive yet.

@FL 000 - Hmm, that's a great question! Here's my opinion:
There are only 4 things you can do when fabbing metal: cut, bend, shrink and stretch.

So, depending on what you want to fab, you'll need tools to help do these things.

As you point out, it's down to how much space you have and what you want to spend. Awesome tools are great and can allow you to do things more quickly but aren't required. (says the guy with a plasma table! )

So in a sort of descending order of size/cost:

CUT
- stomp shear
- band saw (not a wood saw with a metal-cutting blade in it!)
- throatless shear
- tubing notcher
- electric shear
- cut off wheel on an angle grinder
- snips

BEND
- finger brake/radius brake
- bead roller
- tube bender w/die sets
- roll bender
- vise

SHRINK/STRETCH
- English Wheel
- shrinker and stretcher
- hammers/mallets
- dollies
- tree stump!

Again, my opinion here and yes, I'm leaving out a number of options and other small stuff like measuring devices, scribes, etc. but this is what's worked for me so far.

If you think it would be helpful, I'd be happy to talk in more detail so PM me, if I can help at all.

Chris

Nice list

In the bend section, I would add simple bending brake above the vice and add vice grips/pliers below it. I'd kill for enough space for a finger brake but you can do a surprising amount of fab work with a simple, cheap brake, a vice, and some pliers.

Down to the shrink/stretch column, don't forget the shot bag along with the stump.

Yesterday and today was FINALLY coming up with a design then fabbing the final part of the console cover.
Simple as that sounds, I struggled for weeks to come up with something that I thought looked cohesive and allowed the entire cover to be removed. I want it removable as this greatly simplifies building and then servicing anything that runs in the tunnel.

But in order to remove the cover, it has to slide forward (to clear the rear firewall lower dog house) before it can be lifted out.

I didn't bother posting the various mock-ups of the "would this work?" ideas I've tried out. In the end, I made this removable "end cap" set up. OK, so it's really the "front cap"...

Installed, it looks like a continuation of the cover but once removed, the rest of the cover has all sorts of room to move forward for removal!

It was really fiddly to make as I had to patch together three pieces to get the shape needed for that passenger side element. It slopes uphill and twists at the same time.

I have a couple of the fastener locations Cleco'd and need to work up a couple/few more but nailing this down is a major item ticked off the "To Do" list.

As always, it starts with, as @914forme calls it, CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) and rough cut pieces.

Oh, and it's SOOOO fun working in the confines of the foot well for what took ~12 hours.

Almost complete!

Throttle cable linkage bracket design and fab in progress.

I figured it was about time to post some actual 914 components!

Today was fitting the Boxster calipers (using Rich Johnson's adapters) and 911 e-brake components.

@ChrisFoley did his full Monty upgrades to the trailing arms. Such nice stuff!

Great work on that center console! Looks factory!

Those 914 bits are just gorgeous!

Thanks @Andyrew . I can't wait to see it in paint!

But lots to do before that happens. Today was finalizing the throttle linkage. It was another fiddly, long-time-to-fab set of pieces. It has to have appropriate travel while keeping everything under the tunnel cover and front cap, protecting the cable and all other moving parts throughout their travel and be adjustable.

It needs to be adjustable because I have no idea what the throttle pedal response of the ITBs will be like and I may need to open them faster or slower, relative to throttle pedal travel. With this set up, I can adjust things in a bunch of ways. I can:
- move the linkage pick up point up / down the throttle pedal
- lengthen the heim linkage between the pedal and the cable pull plate
- change the orientation between the aluminum "intermediate plate" and the black, lower pivot piece
- move the cable pick up location on the intermediate plate
- and worst case, remake the intermediate plate once I have things figured out

But this should get me started.

you might as well run 2 cables....

You mean as in a push/pull set up?

And the 8" / 9" x 16" Ronals are here.
You don't see them all the time and I think they'll nicely compliment the look of this build.
Big thanks to @MarkHoward for spotting these!