Project No-Flight Update

September 2002

 It’s been a while since the last project update.  Work has been continuing over the summer whenever I could get Julie’s cars out of the garage long enough to make some working room.

The first task was to complete the front wheel relocation by closing up the now extra room at the end of the wheel openings.  This was done by using a donor panel and scabbing in a new copy of the original aft wheel opening, but located 3 ˝ inches further forward.  As seen in the “in-work” photos, you can never have too many clamps (“Norm” was right on that one).

Another task while I was doing body work anyway was to frame in and cut open the headlight locations.  The car was fitted with a one-piece front end from above the front wheelwells forward, so all provisions for the headlight openings had to be added.  I purchased a repro header bar and both used and repro headlight opening end plates.  When installing the header bar and trying to locate it I discovered that the forward edge of the hood opening was cut wrong by the prior owners, requiring extending the upper body surface and straightening the hood cutout, which was done after these photos were taken.

Working on the required systems installations (so I can get all the required brackets welded in place before starting on painting of the frame) I had a custom aluminum fuel tank fabricated that was designed to fit in the space available between the rear frame rails.  By using a custom tank I was able to fit a 20+ gallon capacity into the car.

Work was also begun on the interior panels.  The floor, firewall, and rear inner fenders are all going to be fabricated using composite panels made using Carbon fiber with a wood core.  Here are some initial photos showing the wood cores being fitted. The tans tunnel is much larger than normal to accomdate the raised/set-back transmission. There isn't much room left in the interior.

I also had a custom hood fabricated with a "large" stinger style hood scoop. The hood has been rough trimmed to the opening, and the opening edges relocated and straightened a bit. Here are a couple of views showing what should be the final profiles of the car.

The original steering rack was replaced and relocated, as the original installer had put the rack off-center to the right side to make it easier to “fit”.  Unfortunately that would do some pretty weird things to the bump-steer characteristics, not to mention causing the car to have different turning radii going left and right.  To allow fitting the steering shaft I also installed a new “I-didit” tilt steering column.  I originally fit a two-section steering shaft, but later decided I didn’t like the way it fit so revamped it all to allow a one piece straight shaft from the steering column to the rack. The view below shows the original "two piece" steering shaft with the mid support bearing.

I had decided a while ago to replace the existing Dana-60 rear end with a Ford 9” derived unit to save weight and because I find the Ford unit much easier to work with and get disk brakes for.  The housing is a Fab-9 from Chris Alston’s Chassis Works, while the axles and center section are from Strange Engineering. I especially like the way the person who setup the gears signed and dated his work. Nice touch.

That wraps it up for another update.  Once the kitchen cabinets get out of the garage I should be able to install the new rear end and get back to more work on the interior panels.