Future Missile

A quick concept image exploring future paint ideas for the car.

Updated concept image of the engine bay. Added an info plate on the firewall that has the LVV Certification plate, VIN tag, and original fender tag. There's also the KRC racing power steering pump, hydroboost brake booster, and power steering cooler with duct. This duct will seal to the underside of the hood, where a channel will direct air from a NACA duct in the hood (the duct is on the other side as this helped with looks and packaging).

Seat brackets

Final mockup of the seat brackets. The seat just clears the subframe connector in the floor, and the driving position is good for an E body, with a good range of adjustment. Feels good sitting in there. The final plates will be 5mm alloy.

Lately...

I have been working on the car, but most of it isn't really worth posting on here. Stripping paint, mocking things up, planning, etc...  But here's some work from today:

Added the braces that tie the rollbar into the c-pillar sail-panel area. These bolt on via the upper seat belt mount and an additional 10mm bolt.

Here's the plate welded to the sail panel to reinforce the area. There's a 10mm nut welded to the back for the additional bolt.

The plates on the rollbar are fixed with a bunch of heavy MIG tacks for now. I'll grind these back and TIG the plates on just before the car is done, in case any thing needs to change.

I also added a couple of braces to the firewall to inner-fender-brace area.

I wasn't satisfied with the way the stiff inner fender brace butted into the weaker cowl area. So these plates will help spread the load.

Steering Quickener

Working out how to mount the 1.5:1 steering quickener.

Once I'd worked out the design I plasma cut it out of 3mm steel.

Here's the finished result. Fits perfectly and is very rigid.

Bolted in place with the steering quickener.

Should work great. Next up are the seat brackets.

Seems like not much has happened on the cuda lately, not much blog worthy stuff anyway. But here's a few random pics from the last couple of weeks:

Mocking up the steering column, steering wheel, pedals, seats etc to work out the seat brackets and steering quickener.

Fabricated an alloy shroud for the fans, and just starting the wiring of the run stand.

Finished lower control arms. Reinforced, sway bar brackets added, powdercoated, with Firm Feel heavy duty greasable pins and nylon bushings.

Lots of fun to spin the shell around.

Made an exhaust/muffler system for the engine/cam break-in on the stand. You void the warranty on TTI headers if you run them on break-in (as the ceramic coating needs to heat cycle before being fully set, and the exhaust gets too hot during the break-in), so I blasted a pair of old log manifolds and used the old mufflers off my car.

Garage

I've tidied up my garage so I can finish the car there, Weta Workshop is currently too packed with orcs and robots to fit an old muscle car back in.

Here's a before photo of the garage during the tear down of the car.

Coming together...  Parts back from powdercoaters, suspension mockup, valve cover modification, custom fitted plug leads.

Hotchkis upper control arms, strut rods, tie rod, sway bar. Firm feel heavy duty lower control arm pin and nylon bushing. Magnum Force 2" drop spindle. Reinforced lower control arm and K member. Should be fun to thrash!

I had to modify one of the valve covers to make room for the headers. My first alloy TIG project, and it didn't turn out too bad. Alloy sure is trickier than steel.

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!