Sourmug's Decklid Vent Build ** 56K Warning!!** (Page 60/69)
Sourmug SEP 05, 10:49 PM
Rich:

Thanks for the comments. I must admit that I enjoy posting my progress and it helps me see the progress that I have made. It's a big job and it would be easy to let it slide because of it's size. Seeing the progress I have made keeps me encouraged but not as much as the encouragement I receive from other members such as you.

Thanks again.
Nolan
Sourmug SEP 05, 11:05 PM
Time for an update:

One of the things I found in my car was that the speaker cloth had faded quite a bit. The front speakers are of course gone because of the dash swap but the rear speaker grilles need some work. The grilles are heat welded to the interior trim and if you try to remove them they will break the plastic pins that hold it in place. Here's my solution to the problem.

When you pull the grilles off this is what you will see, first the holes that are left in the trim piece:

The larger round hole is for the upper seat belt attachment. And the back of the grilles look like this once the existing fabric has been removed:

Here's how the plastic pins look:

There's no easy way to re-weld these back on so a different attachment is required. On the face of the grilles there are four small dimples that are over-top of the pin locations on the back. These are a result of the injection molding process and fortunately show the exact positing of each pin. The dimples can be hard to see but are visible in good light. I ground the pins off smooth on the back side and marked the dimples with a sharpie marker.

I the drilled out the dimples to suit #8 machine screws on the drill-press. I'm suing screws with a tapered head and need to flare the holes so that the screws sit flush with the grille surface. To do this I used a conical grinding stone in my dremel:


And carefully using the dremel on a low speed I matched the hole to the tapered screw:


The screw are then held in place with nuts on the back side:

[This message has been edited by Sourmug (edited 09-05-2007).]

Sourmug SEP 05, 11:18 PM
After a test fit the grilles were then sprayed with a black self-etching primer and were left to dry overnight:

I purchased some grille cloth from Rodney Dickman, it comes in two rectangles large enough for the front speaker grilles:

And to attach the cloth I coated the grille faces with 3M spray adhesive:

The fabric was laid onto the grille after the adhesive was applied and carefully positioned and stretched so that it lays flat and smooth at the corners. Heres the back side after the cloth was attached:

And after the trimming to size:

The spray adhesive is very tacky and the cloth sticks to it right away. Make sure your work area is clean.
I then used a heat gun to run a bead of glue along the back of the grille and folded the excess cloth over the back edge:

The grilles were then inserted onto the trim piece and attached with nuts.

And the extra screw length was cut off and the nuts secured using more heat glue:

And the final product:
Sourmug SEP 07, 01:24 AM
I have also started my LeBaron brakes. I will be using the 10* offset rear bracket for the swap. Here the brackets are all painted with high-temperature caliper paint:

And I also wanted to paint the rotors so that the exposed metal doesn't rust up right away. First the friction surfaces were masked off:

They were then painted silver with the same type of paint:

Since I am using the Camaro front calipers I removed the ridge around the hose fitting connection:



And then the metal surfaces of the calipers were cleaned with solvent and painted again with caliper paint:


The brackets were then attached to the rear knuckles:
Sourmug SEP 07, 01:27 AM
The knuckle needs to have some of the metal trimmed away due to the larger rotor size. Here you can see the interference:

I used a cutting wheel in the angle grinder to do the cut. First I cut the tab like so:

After some test fitting I determined that some more had to be removed as it interferes with the brake pad when the caliper is installed. The second cut was done here:

The removes a small "horn" shape where the bare metal is exposed in the picture above.
The brake pads that I'm using are the front pad for the Camaro all around. On the front caliper there is a pocket in the piston that accepts a clip on the back of the pad. The rear calipers don't have this pocket so the clip needs to be removed. This was done with the grinder:


Once the back was smooth it then clipped into the caliper nicely:

The Inner pads also need to be cut due to some additional interference with the knuckle. In the picture below the bottom edges of both inner pads has been trimmed. As I understand it this is only needed for the 5* and 10* offset brackets.

Once done the calipers and pads were placed into position:




Now I'm just waiting for the metric bolts for the front brackets.

Nolan

[This message has been edited by Sourmug (edited 09-07-2007).]

Tha Driver SEP 07, 07:14 AM
Just a little side note (or two) on the Dodge motor mounts:
1) The little bump on the mounts are to locate them & keep from turning when tightening. Instead of grinding them off, you should drill a hole for them.
2) There is another version of the same mount that has metal flanges, to grab if the mount fails (or maybe even before). Sorry I don't know the part # for them.
~ Paul
aka "Tha Driver"

Pardon my driving; I'm reloading.
Sourmug SEP 07, 11:02 AM
Tha Driver:

Thanks for the comments. The mounts are now in place and tight and there didn't seem to be any real problems with rotation. However, I see what you mean about the bumps and how that could make a difference.

Thanks
Nolan
Sourmug SEP 09, 03:27 PM
Just tinkering around so I thought I might as well have a look at the trunk. With the 3.4 DOHC going in I wont be keeping the fan in the trunk so this is as good a time as any to have a look at what's involved with removing it. I have never had a real good look at the trunk sheet-metal so I wasn't sure what exactly I would find. After pulling the trunk seal and the carpet here's how it looks, first the bottom:

The passenger side with the fan:

And the driver side:

A little bit of rust but not too bad at all. There is no evidence of the rust spots on the exterior surfaces. I brushed on the Rust Mort that I have been using after the spots were wire brushed. After it sits the rust starts to turn black:


The fan and the ductwork were removed and this leaves some penetrations that need to be capped. Here's the fan inlet:

and the two penetrations into the engine compartment (from the trunk side):


To cover these three areas I decided to make some sheet-metal blanks. The ductwork had two metal flanges that have rubber seals on both sides of the flange. These hold the duct in place and make the mounting points for the engine bay air tubes:

I used these as templates for the blanks:

[This message has been edited by Sourmug (edited 09-09-2007).]

Sourmug SEP 09, 03:47 PM
Using the back of the fan housing as a template and with some test fitting and cutting I made the blank for the fan intake:

The blanks were primed and painted. And then installed into the car. The fan intake:

The two duct fans were reinstalled and sealant applied to the back of the blanks and they were then bolted in place.



And the two trunk ends after the rust clean-up:


Nolan
Sourmug SEP 16, 03:42 PM
I thought that I would tackle adapting my after-market steering wheel this weekend. If you recall, I purchased this wheel some time ago:


But I did not purchase an adapter. One of my concerns is that the majority of adapters that I have seen end up moving the wheel closer to the driver. This is something that I don't want as I want it to end up in the stock position. So I thought that I would try to adapt the stock wheel mount to the after-market wheel. Here is the stock GT wheel:


As you can see there is a metal hub/mount behind a plastic shroud on the back of the wheel. There are four small rivets that hold the plastic shroud and the plastic front plate in place. These rivets are relatively loose fitting and will spin if you try to drill them out. I just used a small punch which drove the rivets through the plastic clips. Note: this will probably crack your plastic tips. Once the plastic pieces were removed there are six screws that hold the wheel to the hub and they are now accessible:

Once the screws are removed the hub is now free from the wheel:

The new after-market wheel has a large aluminum center cap that houses the horn button. This cap is held onto the wheel by six machine screw with nuts on the back of the wheel. Naturally the circumference of the circle that these screws are on is smaller than the circumference of the stock screws so they won't line up. Fortunately the two sets of screw holes are all spaced at the same angle and I was able to draw lines between the holes to help line up the stock hub. Here's a picture of the hub placed onto the new wheel to show the difference you can also see that I have marked the required hole locations with a transfer punch.

And the wheel with the hub removed showing the marks and the punch locations:

The new holes were then drilled through the wheel and counter-sunk for the hub screws:

The aluminum frame of the wheel required some grinding due to a raised burr being formed during the drilling. This won't be visible on the end product.

[This message has been edited by Sourmug (edited 09-16-2007).]