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Daytona

The Daytona: October 3, 2006

by on Oct.03, 2006, under Daytona

A nasty skin infection has kept me out of the garage for a couple of weeks, but I did manage to paint all of the welded areas on the core support and the new intercooler-related bracketry.  I also welded lips onto the intercooler pipes by carefully tacking 1/16″ stainless steel rings make from rod stock onto the edges.  My initial plan was to roll beads into them with a Harbor Freight bead roller that I got on sale.  Well the rollers were too large to fit into the tubes, so that didn’t work.  I was going to try to have different rollers made, but it wasn’t worth the effort.

The issue I was having at the track with the clutch in the CSX was a good reality check that this LUK T3 clutch isn’t going to hold.  I had purchased a TU “Dual Performance” ceramic/organic clutch for this powertrain, however I found that I accidentally ordered the early small spline version (the small shaft has 18 splines, while the large shaft has 17 splines).  I had a new T3 disc kicking around, so I just tossed that in instead.  I’ve ordered a TU Kevlar clutch (appears to be a Clutchnet clutch disc) that should hold well.  It has a little less holding power than the ceramic puck discs, but I should get much better mileage out of it.  The 6-puck that I had in the CSX before was shot after about 30k.  It sucks to have to drop the trans again, but it’s a lot easier now than it will be when it is all buttoned-up and covered in the inevitable grease.

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The Daytona: September 15, 2006

by on Sep.15, 2006, under Daytona

So a while back I picked-up a Relentless Performance “Triple-Core” intercooler (three stock cores welded together in parallel).  The photo on the left shows (from the top down) the Spearco “1080” that is sold by a few of the vendors, the RP Triple-Core, and the early Dodge Conquest intercooler that I used in my Shadow for several years.  I finally got it and all the plumbing fitted.  It just fits behind the early Daytona fascia after some trimming to the plastic structure.  I wanted the plumbing to fit without having to move the radiator or the battery.  The intercooler pipes are all 2.25″ T304 stainless steel (one U-bend, one U/J-bend, and a 45 degree bend).  The silicone couplers are from Silicone Intakes, which is by far the cheapest I have found.  I chose 2.25″ pipes because the intercooler and airbox had 2.25″ connections and that was the largest that would squeeze between the battery and the radiator.  The only change I had to make was I switched to a P-body coolant overflow tank to give me the gap next to the radiator fill neck.

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The Daytona: August 23, 2006

by on Aug.23, 2006, under Daytona

Actually have quite a bit done, just haven’t updated in a while.  The interior is in…just have a few odds and ends to hook up (like the guages) that need to wait until the end.  The picture shows the interior after the dash was up and the center console was finally mounted, but before the carpet/seats went in.  The power train is in, as is the core support.  The front part of the core is tacked to the sheetmetal on the cowl, but I’m going to wait until I have the intercooler plumbing all figured out before I finish it up and paint it.  The RP triple core intercooler is mounted and I have designed the layout of the tubing.  It’s a really tight fit, but I’m pretty happy with it.  I didn’t even have to move the radiator.  The early G-bodies have a lot of room behind the nose, but some carving of the plastic was required.

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The Daytona: June 23, 2006

by on Jun.23, 2006, under Daytona

Completed a major rewiring under the hood.  It’s now a hybrid 1987/1989 system that can run either the 1987 Turbo II LM/PM or the 1988/1989 Turbo II SMEC setup.  It was a lot of frickin work, but I wanted something that I could use as a test bed to play around with SMEC stuff.  I compiled a chart that I used to do the actual splicing that lists all the circuits and how they need to correspond between the two.  Luckily the SMECs are functionally close to the LM/PM setup, so it only got hairy in a few places.  All connections were soldered inline without cutting any of the original wires.

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The Daytona: May 7, 2006

by on May.07, 2006, under Daytona

Got a little work done.  The ATC is all installed and seems to work OK.  The CSX broke again, so more detours.

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The Daytona: January 20, 2006

by on Jan.20, 2006, under Daytona

Got some custom brackets welded to the front of the frame rails so that the new beams inside the core support have something to bolt to.  Yes, bolt…no dinky welds on the edges of tin foil sheet metal.  I can’t believe these things stay on for as long as they do.  I noticed some cracking on the CSX near the spot welds, just like on my old Shadow.  I painted it all with POR-15.  The frame rails are inside being prepped for paint as well.  While I was painting, I painted the inside of the floorpans with POR-15.  What’s that?  I already did that?  Yep, it’s true.  For reasons I don’t fully understand, the paint on the inside of the pans (only) bubbled up and delaminated from the new metal.  I followed the directions and did all the right metal prep, but the surface of the new metal was very smooth which seemed to have effected the bonding strength of the paint.  I also did the first coat of that paint with an older can of flat black and did the second coat with newer gloss black.  Perhaps that was a factor.  I hit the metal with a 40-grit sanding wheel on the angle grinder.  I suspect that it won’t happen again.

I also built up the adapter harnesses that I need to install the ATC system.  I have the heater/AC out and the ATC parts are all installed on it.  I completely failed to notice the respirator for the passenger cabin air temp sensor in the donor that I got the ATC from.  Apparently it’s behind the instrument cluster somewhere.  I managed to identify the thermistor type of the sensor based on some diagnostic data I found in the 1987 and 1991 FSMs.  A small computer fan, a little RatShack project case, and some tubing later, we have one respirator.

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The Daytona: January 3, 2006

by on Jan.03, 2006, under Daytona

Hacked off the old core support and the 20lbs of random steel that had been welded to the frame rails for it.  Wore out 2 cut-off disks and one grinding wheel for the angle grinder to do it.  Brad just so happened to hack the whole nose off of an ’88 J-body a while back, which I picked up from him a few weeks back.  The spot-weld drill bit from Eastwood was really handy in separating the two halves.  I’m going to add some reinforcements to this thing on the inside so that it can take some abuse.

I also fabbed the brackets and installed some bolts/studs in the tunnel to adapt the ’91 center console to the car.  I finally have my head around the different types of late-style G-body center consoles and I finally have the parts I need to do what I want, thanks to Paul Fosen.

There are two completely different center consoles and underlying bracketry available.  There is the “cockpit” sytle, where the console is several inches higher than the normal one.  The extra height is split between the top plastic part and the side “fuzzies”.  The ash tray then completely blocks off the lower two bays in the center instrument panel.  All you get is the radio and the heater/AC controls, which means the bezel around these is missing the bottom half.  It also requires a different e-brake arm and the bracket under the console raises the shifter partly, but not completely up.  The leather boot around the shifter is huge as a result.

The “normal” style lowers the center console by several inches, revealing the lower two bays.  The bottom bay, used for the factory CD player, may be blocked off by the plastic in front of the ash tray.  It may also be filled with a little fuzzy storage bay when there is no CD player.  I’ve seen both.  The instrument panel bezel is then extended to surround these two bays and meet the center console.  If you ever do anything like this, grab all of the center console parts and anything that goes near it.  If you factor in manual-vs-automatic, there are four possible setups for these things.  The cockpit style console may have been obsoleted after 1991, as I have never seen one in a ’92 or later.

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The Daytona: November 7, 2005

by on Nov.07, 2005, under Daytona

Just shot the clearcoat on the doors.  Spent the past month filling dents and primering the doors and the new hood.  Shot the color on the doors last night and now they are cleared.  The clear refused to lay flat unless I loaded it on there good.  There is a fine line between accomplishing that and ending up with runs and sags.  Got a couple of runs and lots of orange peel.  What a pain.  I had this same problem with clear before.  I think I need to use a different clear coat system.

I don’t have time to do the hood due to the cold weather approaching, but the old hood is still on the car and if I can get the fenders off of JT’s black ’87, then I can at least drive it.

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The Daytona: September 2, 2005

by on Sep.02, 2005, under Daytona

Remeber the pics of that nice turbo?  How about these?  On the left is the “S60” turbo mentioned earlier.  On the right is the new “Super 70″ turbo from Turbos Unleashed with their 3” swing valve bolted to a .63 A/R exhaust housing (compare it to the .48 on the S60).  Not sure how the lag is going to be, but I got my hands on an FM ported 2 piece intake and a Spearco, which will hopefully help out.


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The Daytona: June 30, 2005

by on Jun.30, 2005, under Daytona

Didn’t come close to making it for SDAC.  Oh well.

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