Project No-Flight Update
June 2006
I had to take the the car out of the garage so that I could get Juliet's C-5 on the lift for new brakes and so took advantage of the sunlight to get some better pictures. The Dzus fasteners were installed on the hood using solid aircraft rivets instead of the pop rivets that came with the fasteners.
Here is a view showing much of the interior carbon fiber work (please excuse the dust, I didn't know Juliet was going to take any inside pictures so didn't bother to clean it). The center panel in the rear is removable and still needs the Dzus fasteners installed after I give it a gloss coat like the rest of the panels have.
A forum member asked me how I did the headlights, and I was surprised to find there were no good pictures of the headlight installation up close on my web pages, so here are a few close-ups.
Not all of the interior is custom made. I managed to find a good deal on the rear halo molding on e-bay. Of course, to get it into the car with the roll cage it had to be modified to install in two pieces.
I wasn't able to find the pieces that go over the door opening (I actually found a pair but the price was a little out of line) so I made some "replicas". They are wood/carbon like the rest of the interior panels, but painted to match the rear halo piece. The special windshield pillar pieces were made long ago but just got a coat of filler and more black epoxy paint.
I did the final install on the Specialty Windows wiper system. I assembled the entire system on the workbench first so that I could cut the drive cable to length, then installed the wiper drives and the connecting tubes, greased and installed the cable (I stuffed the greased cable in a trash bag so I could coil it up and not get grease on any of the interior of the car) and with a bit of juggling was able to hook up the drive motor to the end of the cable. The area around the wiper drives is sealed with normal caulk strips. I may take the wiper grills back off and black-out the inside of the wiper bays instead of the current white. Notice the wiper washer ports, another of the lucky original parts that have made their way onto the car.
I also installed the throttle cable ... twice! I had been planning to have the throttle connect on the middle of the passenger side throttle shaft. I had a custom length cable made and installed it, but with that setup (a flexible pull-only cable) I just couldn't work an arrangement for a throttle return spring that I was happy with. I had a standard sprint car push-pull cable on the shelf, so decided to take another look at using that setup. In the end I decided to return to the sprint car style setup, with the throttle attaching to the rear of the driver side throttle shaft. I still have to install a return spring, but it will be fairly easy to add to the throttle arm and cable bracket to accommodate it.
I am going to leave the transmission pressure cable hookup on the passenger throttle shaft, and will trim the now extra part of the bracket that was going to hold the throttle cable.
I also got to install my father's day presents, a new gas door and the Corvette script for the rear (the only emblems on the car).
And finally the last of the carbon fiber interior panels, the close-out panel for the rear deck area. The floor panel is removable so I can get to the rear area where the wiring and fuel lines/filter will go. The brown spots are actually reflections from the halogen lights in the garage.
