The AClockworkGarage.com Race car build thread.

[Marik_bathory]

Thanks for the love guys. I'm actually not too sure how it's going to look once it's all together. I have a confession to make. I hate red. Not a fan at all, but it does complement the green of the body so well. I did my green van with blue trimmings and it just looked off. It could easily be painted any colour you like and really only took about a day start to finish.

I'll admit it was pretty hard to avoid the temptation of putting a milling bit on my drill press and shaving down that centre shaft.

[Marik_bathory]

I am afraid i must carry the counter side of this argument, but yield final judgement for seeing one in black.

I might have a '93 T/B rolling around here somewhere. I can paint it up and see how it looks.

[Marik_bathory]

No huge updates today. got a lot of tedious little jobs done, but nothing worth photographing.

Attached small brackets to the motor, pressure washed the engine bay and spent many hours cleaning and re-wrapping the wiring harness... a task that still is not finished...

Stay tuned. Every week is bringing us closer to getting this pretty motor back into that very patient and well deserving car.

[Evilcowboy420]

Just went from the first page to the last. I gotta say that is a great looking motor. I especially like the look of the TB with it's new paint job. I hope you are planning a start up video cause I am dying to hear the thing run.

[Marik_bathory]

I am dying to hear the thing run.

You and me both. We figure we're still a few weeks away from firing her up. The motor itself is actually read to go into the car, but there are still a few jobs we'd like to do before it goes back in. The front transmission mount needs to be replaced, and the diff will be swapped. the new transmission lines need to be run and the radiator and all of that will be easier with the engine out.

the big debate for me now is the shifter cables. I intend on swapping to a floor shifter, so I'll be stealing the cables from the SSE parts car. The cables will be easier to swap when I don't have to work around the motor but that parts car runs and drives, and once I steal the cables out of it it becomes immobile.

Today's 'spiraling out of control' job was the wire harness.


I was just going to clean up the grease and replace some of the nasty sections of wire loom, next thing you know I'd stripped all of the old brittle plastic off and was looking at the naked wire. Ended up re-wrapping the entire harness. That's a good 5 hours worth of work. Now I'm trying to decide of I should re loom it in black or drop the $30 on the red loom kit from Rice-boys. It'll look better but despite ork physics, it won't make it any faster... So it'll probably remain black.

[Marik_bathory]

Here it is, all done and ready to be reinstalled. ended up sticking with black.

[MattStrike]

The thing I hate the most about cleaning up a wire harness is that the tape used by the factory is the absolute worst and gets sticky everywhere. Looks good.

[mrwildroot]

IMO, the best electrical tape you can buy is "SCOTCH 88+".

Try it....You'll like it!

[Marik_bathory]

With Saturday so far away, yet looming quickly I sat down to do the last bit of wire harness. The smaller harness that feeds into the ICM. I started with this oily dry rotted crappy mess:


A few minutes of peeling and wiping and cursing later I had stripped it to it's bare innards.


Carefully I inspected each wire for wear or possible shorts, then wrapped them tightly.


finally I installed the protective loom and another (probably unnessesary) wrapping to give the whole thing a watertight and uniform appearance.


That's it for underhood wiring. Weather permitting the transmission will come next. with a 60% chance of rain... might not happen.

[Marik_bathory]

Wasn't able to make it out last weekend because I had a big project in my personal shop. Money is never wasted on shop infrastructure. a few new benches and I've got both of my machines in one place. Nice.



With that project wrapped up I turned my attention back to the ACG car. First things first we took a power washer to the underhood area, blasting away as much crap as possible. Came out very nice actually.


Now were were able to safely remove the Diff cover without any crap getting in it. But first we needed to swipe some parts off of this:



No wait, your head was in the way. Lemme take another.



There we go. A heavy duty Diff cover and a 3.29 HD diff. Little beast slid into place without too much trouble.



From here we fished around in the bolt bucket to find the proper bolt that the P.O. had left out and discovered why they had left it out. 1. they're lazy and 2. they gacked the hell out of the threads. Fark. Fortunatly it's one of the tabs so we can just smooth it out and use a longer nut and bolt combo.

At this point the mercury hit 93 and I started to melt into a puddle. The tools were put up a few minor jobs got done on the motor itself and we went inside and ate Ice cream. Life is good. Or at least life is OK.

[Marik_bathory]

Moar busy work this week.

got the tranny bolted up and got the wiring harness routed. we're at that stage where adding things to the motor no longer makes it look better...


But it is ready to be lifted into the bay. So...
(mind you this isn't the finished placement of the harness, just where it happened to be when i snapped the photo.)



Lined the heater box with alumatape where the plastic was cracking. Don't know how well that will hold up but at least it doesn't look like garbage anymore.

at this point we were able to get the car down on all four wheels again and take a few exterior shots, something i really haven't had a chance to do over the past many months.



All in all the weekend went well, and with any luck and some good weather next week will see the engine IN THE CAR.

here's hoping.

[RJolly87]

Please, please leave the LeSabre rims on there. That would be epic, although admittedly the 15" would be a lose.

But dewet anyway

[Marik_bathory]

The 'Sabre wheels are just rollers. It's got a set of five spokes I'm refinishing in bronze, unless I find a set of the twisted mesh Grand Prix wheels, or 17 inch Buick wheels.

[Marik_bathory]

Might put rally tyres on them for the Rally-x events.

[00Beast]

Looks good guys!

[Marik_bathory]

A little late on the update but yesterday was a big day. got started early, before the sun began to cook us and got some of the last minute things knocked out. installed the EGR tube to the manifold, rand some wires, pulled the headers off, installed the TA mount, all that nonsense. and withing the first hour we were ready for the pick.















All in all she settled right in on the first try, brief hangup on the oil filter adapter and in she went. A couple of bolts from Jinx to replace the missing trans and motor mount bolts and The motor is in the car. this is really the first time I've really seen what the motor will look like "fully dressed" in the bay. Just the right amount of red.



What a big milestone! Next week, or possibly the week after we'll tackle the exhaust. and then it's on to the tedious boring crap. We'll take pictures and keep you updated anyway.

[00Beast]

Great to see progress guys!

[95naSTA]

^^x2

Good to see the engine back in.

[1oldman]

I'm really enjoying "watching" the progress and really nice work. - BC

[Marik_bathory]

Well guys... It's been a long time with no updates. That's the problem with shoestring budget cars... sometimes the shoestring breaks. The Le Sabre has been giving me fits with a phantom brake issue I just can't pin down and until that's fixed the ACG car will have to wait.

That being said the project is by no means abandoned. in fact there is a new goal in mind. And a deadline.

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/events/2186/

Mind you, I don't expect to win. But it's right in my back yard and very within my budget. Stay tuned. Between the holiday's income from the shop and tax time right around the corner, this project should be back on it's wheels soon.