metaruss

I am slowly collecting parts to build up the new power train for this thing.  Who knows, maybe I’ll have it done for SDAC.  Hahahaha…yeah right.  Via a series of junkyard trips and parts cars, I finally have all the interior bits for a complete ’91 interior.  The center console was a bit of a challenge, as it changed between ’90 and ’91.  I wanted a manual shifter and trying to find the right center console pieces in the right color was tricky since I am partial to the ’91+ style.  I am still confused about how the whole center console works with the navigator and CD player slots.  I am not going to install a factory CD player, but it would be nice to understand this.  I don’t see how one could get at them with the console up so high.  The service manuals didn’t really have any diagrams that were terribly helpful.  I have my hands on a parts car that has everything else I need and more…bwahaha.

I found this thing sitting back in the corner of the garage.  Something about being a 2.2L common block with a forged T2 crank, T2 rods, JE forged pistons, big oil pump, etc.  I dunno, maybe it’s good for something….

Well, the car made it through the rest of the winter and spring.  The mileage is about right and the idle has been getting better and better all by itself.  I beat on the car quite a bit, so that may be helping it a bit.  Could be the warmer weather too.  I fiddled with the trans kickdown cable figured out how to do the proper adjustment procedure.  It helped a little, but it’s still upshift-happy.  Oh well.

Well, the common problem theory is out.  The fuel guage had a cold solder joint, the tach had a bad tach module (the ’86 module works in the ’91 cluster, BTW), and the temp guage had a bad sender.  I had the meter connected across various grounding points relative to the battery and everything seems to be OK.  I also wedged a piece of plywood under the passenger side engine mount, which may have reduced the front-end shake even more.  I will probably swap the mount (it looks bad) and shim it up perminently to see if that helps.

I’ve fiddled around some more, but can’t seem to get the last of the gremlins worked out.  The tach still likes to go wonky for no reason and the fuel and temp gauges read lower than they should.  All of this screams grounding problems, but I have been over them again and again.  Either both the fuel and temp senders are hosed and the tach board needs a going-over, or there is a single problem at the core of it all.  So far I haven’t been able to figure it out.  Aside from the exhaust clamps slipping and a few new squeaks added to the collection, the car seems to be working OK.  It is actually starting to run better, though the fuel mileage seems low (hard to say the the speed/distance sensor is intermittent).

Well, it took far longer than I could have possibly imagined, but the Daytona is back on the road.  Updating all that wiring and getting the new interior installed turned into a complicated ordeal.  I installed the doors that I got with the ’91 interior, but they didn’t have power-anything, so I had to transfer the door lock motors and window tracks (plus the harnesses).  Everything was really dirty, so I spent a lot of time cleaning things up and sorting through the boxes of ’91 interior parts to try to figure out what goes where (I have never taken one apart before).  Unfortunately, a lot of pieces were broken or missing…the guy that removed them must have used a hammer.  There were plenty of other things that were broken that needed fixing, such as the steering column and various leaks in the trunk.  I also installed the front-end portion of the ’89 Daytona Shelby brake and suspension components.  This proved to be fatal:

I got it back on the road last week and took it straight to the alignment shop.  I noticed that one of the wheel studs on the right side was bent, but I figured it would be OK on 4 studs until I get a chance to replace it.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the two of the other wheel studs on the passenger side were fractured.  On the way to the alignment shop, the combination of the excessive toe-in and missing/broken studs caused the remaining studs to sheer off.  I was only travelling about 20 MPH at the time, but it was enough to bend the hell out of the front fender.  Needless to say, I was pissed.  I got towed to the Bill Meisner’s Precision Alignment and we replaced the entire hub assembly and pulled-out the fender so that the door would open.  He also did do the alignment.

The car seems to handle fairly well and he was able to get the front end pretty straight.  There is a problem with uneven caster in the front, which makes the car want to drift slightly to the right.  It is possible to add caster by slotting the upper strut bolts and sliding the mount back a bit.  Bill can also compensate for the drift by tweaking the backend.  I plan to install the solid rear axle assembly from the ’89 Daytona Shelby this summer.  I will try to add some caster on the left side as well and then take the car back to him for a full 4-wheel alignment job.  For now, the car handles better than it ever did before, but it still runs kind of crappy.  Went over most of the wiring, cleaned and/or replaced the ground points and straps, and the ignition system has been swapped out.  It still has a miss at idle and hesitates between 0 and 5 psi of boost.  Now that I have the Cyberdyne on, I see that it goes way lean in that area, but comes on nice and rich above 5 psi.  There seems to be a problem with at least one of the fuel injectors, so that will be the next thing to check.  I don’t want to replace them, as I plan to pitch this motor in a few months.

The floorpans and all associated nonsense are finally, officially completed.  All the welds and seams have been caulked from underneith using polyurethane roofing caulk.  It takes a long time to cure (especially in this weather), but it sticks to anything and resists solvents better than silicone (which turns to jello when exposed to gasoline).  I don’t care for the water based acrylic caulk, as it doesn’t stick as well and…wel it is water-based.  I also coated the fenders with the stuff as a replacement for the rubberized coating that I stripped off.

I have been working with the wiring to update to ’87 electronics and the ’91 interior.  I have the complete harnesses from the ’91, but they are so different from the ’86 that it makes no sense to try to put them into an ’86 body.  The big differences are that they flipped the gender of the bulkhead connector (the male side with the bolt is inside instead of outside) and the body connectors are next to the rear seats instead of under the dashboard.  It appeared to be much easier to adapt the ’86 dash harness to the ’91 dashboard.  The ’86 wiring has a seperate dash harness and body harness (behind the dash), which I see in most of the early body styles.  The ’91 combines the dash harness with the body harness so that you have one, huge body harness with a bunch of tails going into the dashboard.  I found a way to neatly route the ’86 dash harness in the ’91 dashboard and solder the appropriate connectors from the ’91 harness into the ’86 harness.  I chose NOT to cut any of the ’86 connectors off in the unlikely event that I want to go back to the ’86 interior.  The instrument cluster and message center are easy, but the headlights and windshield wipers/washer is more complex.  The ’91 electronics uses a HUGE bank of relays to control everything,  The switches on the dash are tiny and cannot control these accessories directly.  Therefore, a small relay module is needed to adapt the ’86 exterior lighting and windshield wiper/washer circuits to the ’91 switchboard.  In the near term, I hope that I can just keep my old steering column and let the old headlight switch dangle until I have this figured out.

The floorpans are painted.  I got stalled over the weekend because I ran out of paint.  I had ordered more the previous week, but it was delayed until yesterday due to the holiday.  I also painted the area under the rear passenger seat, which was fairly rusty around the rear seat belts and in the bowls.  It looks like it rusted from the inside and I’m not sure where the water came from.  The rear quarter panel windows are the most likely candidate.  I still have to replace the center section of the passenger side front seat crossmember, which had to be removed to replace the rusted metal underneith.  Once that is done, I can finally reassemble.

I am seriously considering upgrading the interior to the 1991+ style.  I have a line on a mostly-complete black interior from a ’91, plus a pair of doors.  Supposedly, the new interior will mount to the old body.  The exceptions are the door panels and the center console (and the wiring, of course).  Since I would get the new doors, that is not a problem.  Some fabrication will probably be needed for the center console, though.  The other part I’m not sure about is the steering column.  I’d like to keep the one I have, so hopefully that will work.  I have not run across anyone who has really done this before, so it should be interesting.  In the interest of time, I may have to delay this until the spring though or perhaps do a partial conversion.  It would be a shame to put all the old stuff back in just to rip it all out again, but I am pushing my luck with the weather as it is.

Well, all the pans are in, the holes are patched, and the surfaces prepped for final paint.  The surface is rusty from the acidic etching solution used for POR-15 (“Metal Ready”).  If the weather holds, I will finally paint the thing this weekend.  I will be very happy when this is done so that I can start putting the car back together.  There is a fair amount of mechanical stuff to do along the way, but I don’t have to worry so much about the temperature with that.  I just want to have it back on the road before the first serious snowfall so that the CSX can be put back into the garage.

On that note, I have collected a nice array of parts for it.  I have the rear axle assembly, front springs, knuckles and calipers, master cylinder, and proportioning valve from a 1989 Daytona Shelby.  The should handle awesome once everything is aboard, though I doubt I will have time for that this year.  I have stainless steel braided brake lines, Koni struts and shocks, and polyurethane control arm bushings as well.  I hope to have the struts, shocks, and bushings in this year yet, since I have it all apart anyway.  I’d be a shame not to upgrade the brakes too, but I am missing various bolts and bits and I don’t want to get stalled.  I guess we’ll just see how it goes.

Got the driver’s side welded in.  I didn’t do quite as nice a job forming this sheet.  I sort of got it close, tacked it in and beat the crap out of it with a large sledge hammer to form the front of it to the weird shape of the floor pan around there.  I also did not try to reproduce the channels like I did on the passenger side.  I did kink a couple of diagonal dents with a cold chisel and hammer on the right portion to keep the panel from wobbling.