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z :: veteran's day

Here's a picture that I didn't get to post last time of my fuel pressure regulator, mounted to it's aluminum bracket. I love teh look of steel braided line and AN fittings.


Woohoo! For a savings of 70 dollars, I picked up the 150 dollar "Street Fire" MSD ignition over the more popular but more pricy 6AL. I didn't want to have to buy this, but I couldn't find a wiring diagram that had the right wire colors for my "stock" ignition box, which was probably an aftermarket piece.


I spliced together two flexible radiator hoses to fashion the lower hose, which had some crazy bends to it. It's very interesting - the flexible hoses maintain their diameter with the help of a visible coil inside the hose. It looks like spring was shoved into the hose. As you may be able to see, I zip tied the hose to the sway bar to prevent it from bouncing into the drive belt setup. There's a fair amount of tension in the hose, I hope it doesn't cause the plastic radiator end-tank to crack over time.

Also picked up a shorter fuel filter. This inexpensive piece saved me the 75 dollars it would have cost to buy a ford motorsport right angle adapter.

Obligatory "old and busted, new hotness" shot.
Here you see the wires "test routed" to the various engine components. I want to try to start the car first, then splice the wires to length, in case there's any issues.
And a post-cleanup shot of Yvonne hanging out with Jeff's beautiful bikes!

I feel like I'm within spitting distance of test-starting the engine now. It's very exciting!

z :: old shots

yay.

z :: big bracket business

I actually did this about three weeks ago, but I didn't get a chance to update until now. After the debacle with the Holley mounting bracket (that I could not machine with ANY tool in my garage, something that's never happened before), I rummaged through my scrap pile to find a piece of aluminum angle that, shockingly, had two holes drilled it that fit the mounting holes on my car perfectly. Check it out:

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I'm not sure what this bracket was originally used for, but it came out of the scrap pile ready to go on one side. I just had to machine it to fit the fuel pressure regulator.

The new bracket is a little bit bigger, but will be much easier to machine. Drilling the small holes on each side of the giant hole was easy, but I had to figure out how to do the big one. It's probably about 1" in diameter.

At first I tried to make several small cuts with a dremel then grind out the difference, but the 1/8" aluminum didn't grind well - it was too soft and too thick.

After some head scratching, I decided to work on my accuracy with a .22 rifle, and by .22 rifle I mean drill press.

I again tried to use the dremel to clean up the difference, but it turned out that a curved file worked much much better.


I then cleaned the bracket up with my new favorite tool, a gasket cleaning disk. Nice brushed look.


Here's a decent shot of the product. Stupidly, I didn't take a picture of it all mounted up, but you get the idea.

Stay tuned for last weekend's progress: I got the upper radiator hose sorted and the new custom transmission bracket (possibly a prototype) finished.

z :: radiator hose adapters

They is here.

My first goal this weekend is to pull my head out of my ass.

My second goal is to get my radiator hoses properly sorted out.

My third goal is to find out who fucked up my blogger settings.

z :: wires, couplers, and solder oh my!

After a few days of drinking and enjoying my week-long Fall Break, I finally got two solid days of wrenching done. I'm going to let the pics tell most of the story:


Got the JTR radiator mounted up. The Taurus fan fits the brackets perfectly and looks super clean. The whole engine bay is starting to look great.


Phong overlooking our "handiwork."


Yvonne is a classy girl and deserves nothing but the best.


I'm almost done sorting out the fuel system. The bracket that you see pictured here must be made out of diamonds; none of my diamond dremel bits or tool steel drill bits will get through that galvanized steel bracket. I am still working on a mounting solution that doesn't require me to buy a frickin plasma cutter or something.

The next few pictures are of the heater hose trim piece. It looked pretty grody so I pulled it off and cleaned it up for the engine bay:

Before:

During (after gasket prep disk, before paint)

After: (forgot to take a pic before we screwed it back on)

This is one of those "little" things that goes a looong way towards making the final product a good one.


Bought this overpriced Flex-a-lite thermostatic switch. It comes on when the temperature probe reaches a set temperature. I'm not so sure about the build quality of this little guy, and I hope it holds up to the "high speed" amp draw of this fan.


Phong recommended I mount it lower so the fan shroud would stay clean...an awesome suggestion.


Jen Chien came over and helped me install the plug wires yesterday. Take note also of the air filter, which goes a long way towards making the car feel like it's getting closer.

Other things completed: trimmed the oil pressure switch adaptor to fit and extended the stock wiring so that it would reach the new mounting location.

chicago at night

Fall break is less than a week away!  Yes, the car will be running soon...