New guy? Back to race in Lemons. Now a build thread! (Page 3 of 5)

This is July 2023. At this point I've had the car apart for about 2-2.5 months. And my brother flew out to help for a week. Super thankful for the extra set hands at this point in the build.

Main structure is tacked and/or welded in these pics. Also fitting and tacking the roof X, windshield support and temple bars.

Here we have the down bars and rear X mocked up, along with the door bars.

After the cage was all welded up, I cut up some scrap steel. Pulled out the dimple dies and made gussets and tie in points. Also, welded in the taco gussets from the kit.

At this point I needed to figure out a steering column. I was going to use aftermarket but decided the stock shaft would be easier. And the factory shaft is collapsible and I thought that would be safer as well. So I unlisted the column and dash bar from Fakebook and got to measuring. I removed the column mount from the dash bar, found center of seating position and welded it in. I also welded in a bracket on the left side of the dash bar for trackside emergency personnel.(Fire & Kill Switch) Then I put the cage in primer.

While I had the Blue spray paint out and the roof off. I decided now's as good a time as any to cut up the roof a little bit. I bought a RV vent, scuffed it up and hit it with some blue paint. I figured since we're mismatching Blue spray paint we might as well mismatch it all.

50 shades of Blue

Along with roof vent and the scoop that came with the car.

Next on the agenda is wiring.

So I'm using the factory harness and removing the following:
SRS, ABS, Integration module, A/C, Audio, Combination meter, Cruise, Door control system, DRL, Fog lights, Interior lights, Keyless entry, Power windows, Power steering, HVAC, Rear defrost, Seatbelt warning system, Security system, etc

This is eased by the car being OBD2 but pre 2008/Canbus. The main thing here is to make some decent notes, used your OEM and Colorwire diagrams, any and all electrical devices you are going to install before cutting. Then start cutting, tracing and tracking wire. write down in the notes or on diagrams where you want to merge wires, harnesses and integrate into.

Here are a few pics of that process. I did this with all the harnesses. Front, Engine, Trans, Bulkhead, Instrument, Doors cords(removed), Rear, Roof, Fuel, Trunk. That way I knew what I wanted where, what to depin and repin, junction blocks, connectors, fuses and relays. It was all laid out in advanced with my sketchy notes on the factory wiring diagrams. And i now have these for future reference that will go to the track with me.
 
This is the bulkhead harness. You will see multiple different colors of electrical tape throughout my wiring pics. Green means keep, Red is remove, orange is IDK, etc. I use colored tape for merges, bulkhead passes, and cut to length. I also wrote the connector numbers from the diagrams on all the connectors for ease of finding when going back and forth. Speeds things up.

Going through labeling all connectors with their number per the diagram

Discarding

While all the wiring is going on I am also doing the instrument cluster. I completely gutted the stock cluster and using some left over plastic, redid it. I grabbed a tach and idiot lights and put together the cluster using the stock surround and lens.

The wiring passed the fire and smoke test!
And everything works.

After that was complete I got the harness tidied up. Wrapped and final routed.

Now that the cage and wiring are done. And the car didn't burn itself to the ground. Time to move on and do some interior stuff. So I wanted to make a rear divider between the trunk and cabin. And also make door cards for the gutted doors. I picked up 2 sheets of ABS plastic from a local plastic company.

So back to the cardboard development.
Template for the divider. You can also see fire suppression mockup as well. I'll touch base on that here shortly.

Tape template for the door cards.

Rivnut and handle location

A little heat and a straightedge to fold over the top and get it to tuck into the top of the door frame.

Installed. Used some webbing for the door pull and door check. And borrowed my oldest daughters Cricut and made some exit stickers.

Back doors just got cut up.

So remember when I bought those 2 sheets of plastic. I needed 2 because I couldn't fit both door cards and the divider on 1 sheet. But now I have 3/4 of a sheet and a bunch of scrap pieces left over. So this is where I'm going to get a bit crafty.

First. since I sold the HVAC unit and controls and welded up the A/C and Heater holes in the firewall. I still have a gapping fresh air hole in the cowl. So lets deal with that. Time for some math and an oscillating mutli-tool. Cuts plastic like butter.

Came up with a design and temple to sandwich a piece of ABS inside 2 other pieces and make a slider for the cowl vent. That, along with some foam, allows me to open and/or close the vent for fresh air into the cabin.

Open:

Closed:

For fresh air vents I attached 2 hoses, with 2 plastic floor drains and some magnets.

Now in order to keep this car street legal for a little while. It requires me to maintain the hazards, turn signals, horn, etc. The reason for streetability is, of my 3 girls, only one is proficient at driving stick. The others where taught long ago but have never actually put the skills to use. So I need the car to be drivable for a while longer to get them up to speed. Pun intended.

So with some more scrap plastic I blocked off the original vents in the dash and added a horn. This center vent piece also retains the factory hazard switch. Unfortunately, I removed the cup holder. I added a phone mount for GPS phone speedometer and I maintained the OBD2 port for future diag/trouble codes.

I did end up adding a center gauge cluster to monitor critical info. Although the cluster lights work, I needed a way to actually see what is going on. Instead of a light coming on indicating "Hey it's too late"

And yes I did pull the gauges apart and paint the needles to match the tach. It's the little things!