If it's worth doing, it's worth doing several times

Post date: Jan 16, 2019 7:36:07 PM

One thing I forgot from the last update was working on the steering wheel. I started on the cherry black one, but it was a mixed bag. I tried to mask off the old "chrome" trim, but that didn't go so great and made some cuts in the wheel. In the end it was painted pretty well, but the old trim was pretty ugly. One guy posted on Facebook that he used 1/8" trim on his. So I bought several different sizes and styles of chrome trim and yanked the old trim out of the wheel. Well, none of it fit. Tried trimming, hammering, begging, whatever. Didn't work. So then decided to get some epoxy and fill the channel so it's just a flat, single color wheel. That went OK, but I got overzealous on the sanding and scratched up parts of the wheel too much.

So I started over with the brown wheel.

Got through the first few phases (first color on plastic, epoxied channel, primed epoxy) before got sidetracked by the big work.......

Major good news is this:

However, they are soft lip so the z51 front's **barely** fit. Had to get some special low profile valve stems. It'll be next to impossible to even check the tire pressure with the wheels on the car, so I did a super sketchy TPMS setup:

I am not the first person to do this! But the tire guys were quite suspicious. Eventually got it all done though. These are polished aluminum so I have to learn proper wheel care. The things we do for beauty......

Keri got me a DA polisher for christmas, so I did my first pain correction on some long (light) scratches on the quarter panel. Came out great!

In other news, I managed to break the trans pan on a big bump. Caused quite the mess under the car but no other damage. Shaun and I pulled the drivetrain, I already replaced the engine oil pan, further hogged out the pushrod holes and got the engine back together. Could not find any smoking gun on the occasional trans leak.

The passenger header got pretty banged up on that same bump, so need to do some repairs there.

The primary reason for pulling everything was the very solid layer of white dust from the body shop all over the engine compartment and undercarriage. I used Shaun's baby pressure washer (well, he spent the time under the car!) and that all cleaned up pretty well. A few minor bits to still touch up.

I also picked up a set of C6 Z51 calipers and brackets. Also got a set of stock front springs to hopefully reduce the self-inflicted damage. Managed to find those springs for $30! That's cheaper than a set of spacers.

Oh! Seats! Also modified the one Rally XL seat that I have. Here's a half-done pic:

I find it much more comfortable and easier to get in/out. The cover even fits so it's good to go. We also modified the Scat mounting bracket to move the mounting bars *below* the cross braces and scooted back as far as they would go. This is working pretty well.

The annoying one-year-only reverse switch that I hacked together failed on me. Got a replacement from TPP and it came broken.... I'll probably make one good unit from my two bad units instead of hoping for a good replacement.

And here's a pic of the new gauge cluster.

Oh yeah, the dirty carpet. I tried to clean it, but quickly learned that any typical carpet brush just tears apart the loop pile. "Luckily" I had an uncut front carpet stashed away. So I put that it, but got in a rush cutting it so it doesn't fit great. Oh well.

I had a problem with the tach randomly showing twice the actual engine speed. I replaced all the tach wire in the dash harnesses and hasn't happened since. Not that I had much drive time though. I think the problem is the Molex connectors with 16ga wire - just couldn't get a good enough connection.Switched to 18ga wire. I also haven't done any shielding, but the coil wiring in the engine bay is fairly well separated, and the only other noisy wires are the speedo and A/C fan.