Something Fishy

Here's what I'm thinking for a future colour scheme for the car. The body is all flat black apart from the rear quarter, door, and c pillar on one side, which will be painted to look like a rough old race car (inspired by the 15oz coupe). I love the idea of having a two sided car. Here's a link to some side views.

Little details

Made a little bracket for the dipstick, this sort of thing is fun to do. I'm also happy with the plug lead routing, I made brackets that hold the two rear most leads on either side right up tight to the block. The leads clear the overkill headers nicely, and I'll be running heat shields where the leads are between block and header tube.

Rollbar

Welded up the rollbar, a most enjoyable day at work!

Such pretty colours!

Not bad for my first TIG welding project.

It even fits, bonus!

Modifying the intake. Here's the stock Edelbrock Performer RPM dual-plane intake.

The heads in my 440 have been quite heavily ported. The gasket here has been trimmed to the head port size, quite a bit larger than the stock ports on the intake!

After opening up the runners I lightly sandblasted the ports to give them a slightly rough texture, as this helps fuel mixing, intake runners shouldn't be polished apparently.

I also did a bit of work to the carb pad, as it had some ledges and a blunt divider that were an issue with the Wilson 1" 4 hole blended spacer between the intake and carb.

I cut the coil mounting castings off the front of the intake, as I'm not running the coil there. Then gave it a coat of black enamel to match the motor.

Done. I've also been working out the mounting bracket for the fuel pressure regulator, as well as the plug lead routing and the fuel line plumbing.

I got my TIG welding to the point where I'm confident welding up the half cage/roll bar. TIG welding is such a great process, I love it.

Here's one of the backstay mounting plates.

Concept image of the Kuda. Here's the original photo.

Engine run stand

Finished fabricating the drivetrain dolley / engine run stand. Now to finish the motor, wire it up, and run it in! Big thanks to Weta for putting up with this in the hallway!

Working on the drivetrain dolly. The K member bolts on via the sway bar mounts, and the engine, bellhousing, and gearbox fit up so you can wheel the whole assembly around easily. The nose of the car can be dropped over this unit to install the whole drivetrain as one, as the factory did. I have also built a separate frame that bolts to the front that mounts the radiator, along with the battery, fuel can, and gauges etc so the engine can be broken in on the dolly. Great to see the whole drivetrain together too, it looks fantastic!