Cowboy Ray's 71 TRZ06 (Part 2)
Mounted the hand controls to the steering column Steering column installed with hand controls Don't pay any attention to that cheapo steering wheel Mounted the battery today. In this shot you can see the access panel I made so I can get the fuel pump out with out removing the tank and the tunnel I made for the filler neck fired up the motor today Started on the flares. I cut off the wheel opening lip and lower rearward part of the fender Reattached it with some temporary brackets Ca glued the fabric onto the fender, Followef my template I made before hand. Streched it out to the lip and Ca glued it Saturated the cloth with resin. This should give me a stiff enough surface to lay the glass onto Rear flairs are about 80% done. front flairs are taking shape. A lot more scratching to go Trans Am air extractor should be up to the task I made the molds for the air extractors that are going in the hood Here is a finished air extractor waiting to be glassed into the hood air extractor being glassed in the bulge on the bottom is a speaker enclosure. box on top is were the fuse box lives other side speaker enclosure and ECM aluminum covers Here's a shot of the front end. Bumper bulges were removed. A shroud was glassed in to seal the frontal openings to the radiator. Front air dam is done The major glass work on the fender are done. installed some gas struts to hold the hood open air extractors are all glassed in, I have to ruff up the bonnet and gel coat it Front end is nice and clean with all that busy crap removed. Turn signals will be in the head lights and fog lights will be in the 2 lower openings I needed the doors to open farther so I could get closer with my wheelchair. modified the upper hinge and made new door straps. The door opens almost 90 degrees and doesn't hit the front fender Made the dash support / stereo enclosure The head unit was a very tight fit. I had to raise the heater box about an inch and trim abit off the bottom to get the stereo in far enough so the front could open to load cds I made the right inner fender well. Still need to fit it to the fender and tweek it here and there The rear half is mounted to the chassis and the front half attaches to the tilt hood. these are all easily removable for easy access to the motor Inner fender wells are as done as their gonna get for now. Built a rotissery out of 2 cheap harbor freight engine stands and some spare steel. Put the body on it to finish up some welding underneith. It's ready to go to the bead blaster now. Finished up the headers / exhaust. I'm going to send the headers out to be ceramic coated. It's time to tear the whole thing apart for paint It's the chassis turn on the rotissery. Was just like christmas today. wanted axles that could handle 450 hp. The Driveshaft Shop didn't have anything that wimpy for my setup. had to go with the 800 hp axles. Well they should be bullit proof and I can go for more power later on if I feel the need. Treated the rear end to new posi clutches, bearings and seals. With a 3.55 gear 6500 rpm in 6th gear is 255 mph. I won't have enough power to go that fast but 165 should be doable. Cruise at 65 around 1500. These aluminum cases have alot of carrier bearing preload. The only way to get it back in is with a case spreader. I made this primative one. A few pics of the final assembly of the rear suspension. The intakes on these heads are very large. They only needed a bit of throat and bowl work. The exhausts got the full treatment. The chambers measured 69 cc's which will give me 11:1 compression ratio. Put in a ls hot cam. Nothing too radical because realiability is a priority. This motor should make atleast 450 HP Motor is done and in. Exhaust was coated by jet hot power steering is all plumbed up Had the tub blasted by Motorsports powder coating in Delevan, WI. They did an excellent job and reasonably priced. Now to get the sand out of it. body has been encased in epoxy This is the dash being veneered. You can't have too many clamps. first coat of varnish painted the underside silver hoping it will help reflect some heat away spray in truckbed liner on the floor and wheel wells and sprayed some color on top. It sure brightened up the garage Masked off the body and painted the roll cage. self adhesive heat shielding under the floor pans metal dash in temporarly Got some painting done. Hood and nose all done. Painting is going slower then anticipated. It takes About a week per panel. got a door painted and installed I wanted to cover up the corvette emblem on the hub caps so I had my girlfriend make me up a few decals. I know there just hub caps but I thought they looked neat Pulled out of the garage under it's own power today The body is basically done. just needs to be buffed and install some weather stripping I plan to start driving later this week or next week. I'm waiting on a 5 point harness. The interior is going to be worked on little by little and should be finished over the winter. First test drive didn't go so well. The trans wouldn't shift. Put a tech2 on it and found there was no input or output shaft speeds. Had to pull the valve body and replace the sensors. The next drive went very well. I put about 25 miles on it with no problems. Now I just have to work on my tune. At 1/4 throttle this car is quicker than most production cars. 1/2 throttle it hauls ass. I didn't go over 1/2 throttle because it's not tuned. Anything over that will be scary fast. It should get exciting when I have to tune wide open throttle. It corners awesome, I have to figure out away to keep my wheelchair from flying around the cockpit Made up some simple forms from scraps to shape my kick panels wrapped some glass half way around some 1.5" tubing and then bonded it to the kick panel Here's the rough result. The half round section snaps onto the roll cage and will be held on with 2 screws and the speakers. The reason I couldn't just use a flat piece like stock is because I ran the wire harnesses through the rocker panels so a flat panel wouldn't sit flat exhaust sound byte cut down the seat base so it fits the car better cut the foam so it fits my back, also removed some foam from the seat base which should lower my butt an inch sewed up some seat covers. Kick panels and speakers in door upholstery all the interior panels made out of Celtec rear panel all glued up ready to fold the edges Here's all the rear panels completed Trial fitting the panels interior is 90% done Here's one of the trunk Seemed to be a hit at the local cruise night Was at the Illinois state beach today. The project is pretty much done except for the top which is almost ready. The motor's all tuned and runs great. It gets 21 mpg city and 30 highway. It accelerates and stops like a mad dog. Handling is awesome. It's does everything I was hoping for Went to the British car festival last summer and this photographer took a bunch of pictures of my car [www.flaviuphotography.com] [www.flaviuphotography.com] Edited 51 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2020 11:48PM by cowboyra. |