That sucks to hear. I am curious about this 944 bumper however. I envision it in my head and it looks pretty sweet.

 

rotor #2 has a bad apex seal

 

I hate you (while fully appreciating that you couldn't resist a whiffleball like that setup...).

Our easiest and most expeditious option is to quickly throw in another NA L28 engine, so today I followed up on a CL ad for a "good running", "come hear it run!" 280 engine.

I'm sure it purrs like a kitten.
What it doesn't do is start.
So it actually purrs like a dead kitten.
Much like the engine we already have.

Move along, nothing to see here.

 

Something to see here, however...


Porsche 944 bumper blocks.
Sigfrid easily spent an hour on each one, subtly shaping them to fit with a beltsander.
The blocks (and the wing and the rocker trim) will be sprayed with dip when we do the final beauty coat on the body, we want the shapes but not necessarily the color contrast.

Both side window assemblies are final finished, mirrors, divider trim and window seals:




A sneak peek at the upcoming rocker trim (from a '91 Honda Accord):


Can't really do much till the fenders are painted and on but I wanted to see what it might look like anyway.
I'm lovin it, actually...the car is shaping up very much as I'd envisioned.

We performed another leak test and found only two, one of which we quickly found and remedied, the other (much smaller) needs some tracking down. Still, way better than I'd expected.
The cabin is very close to being weathertight.

Naturally, we also discussed the engine situation.

Obviously we were just boneheads to go this long without checking it out and had we known earlier, things may be different now...but we didn't and they aren't.
That said, our overall project plan was a good one and we'd like to preserve it as far as possible.

I think we've reached a consensus but we're mulling it over for a bit longer before committing, so y'all just have to wait and see.

 

Damn that is looking good.

 

swing and a miss! no i couldn't resist...

how hard is it to pull the oil pan and head? maybe rings and a valve job?

or if you like, new side seals, new bearings for the reciprocating to rotary motion converters, and then send the side housing out for a rebuild

 

We have the worst of the later engines, "smog" head and pistons.
Not worth sinking cash into.

Our original plan called for getting the car on the road, evaluating the performance and then going from there.
So many swap projects seem to get mired down by issues not directly related to the drivetrain, we wanted to refresh/upgrade the basic platform first, so we weren't surprised later.

Unlike the FC, the Z platform is very difficult and expensive to upgrade.
Beyond the refresh job we've already done, there really are no incremental steps forward...it's all or nothing.
And by "all" I mean in the neighborhood of $12-15k.

Which ain't happening.

Sigfrid has a line on a 280 turbo motor, supposedly only 29k miles (I'm skeptical).
I'm going to check it out tomorrow.
It's an automatic and comes without ECU or wiring.
We plan on offering @ $300 if it looks good, which is about 1/3 of what a quickie refresh of our motor would cost.

The L-series heads came with either square or round exhaust ports (I can't remember which we have), if we're lucky, our new headers will fit and we can just run the engine NA to begin with. Our intake, with new injectors, will bolt right on and our ECU will work.

This is the fastest/cheapest/easiest solution to this glitch in the plan.
Without great expense we are up and running and have the basis to go turbo later.

In my dreams- unfettered by technical info and practicality- the NA RX-8 engine has risen to the top of the swap list.
Smaller, lighter and more powerful, I think it would be a great swap...but we need to get her running to see what she thinks about it.
Sigfrid owned a RX-8 and loved everything about it except for the lack of torque (duh) but I don't think he appreciates the impact our chassis would have...we're easily 500lbs. lighter.

So, a lot depends on this motor tomorrow and we'll see what happens.

 

looking good. rear bumper pads fit that car surprisingly well.

like it was meant to be.

 

Sigfrid's beltsanding artistry is what made it work.
They were very close out of the box (and I'll sheepishly admit I would have called them good) but his effort really made them right.
Same with the Honda window divider trim and mirrors...lots of carving and heat made them fit almost perfectly.

Stuff like this is subject to the same "uncanny valley" phenomenon that video images are. They can be very close to "right" but they're off just enough to be weird.
The wing in fact, is currently stuck at this stage...it needs something but we're not sure what.

It's a scary place to be.
We have ideas but the potential for disaster is great.
We have a complete.intact second wing, so we could always start over but removing the installed (and waterproofed) part that's there would almost certainly destroy the dip and the whole hatch would have to stripped and redone.
That fact makes it dangerously easy to keep saying "Well, it's not that bad...", even though we both know it could be made better...somehow.

I suspect that one day soon, after sufficient beers and bowls, I'll convince Sigfrid to sculpt the cut ends with the sander, which is what I think it needs.
Or alternatively, Sigfrid will figure a way to make the cutoff ends fit the flanks and still align with the center section properly, his preferred option.

 

Are you talking about angling the wing in towards itself at both sides? I agree with you, on the scary part. now that its painted, mistakes can result in lots of extra work. At least with that color Dip, and how fresh it is, you are not worried about having to "blend panels" to get it to match.

The wing really is not That bad. It works I think.

 

Yeah, pretty much...I think just rounding off the pointy tips would do it.

As for paint...
When we finish dip the front end panels, we also plan on shooting a finish coat on the main body.
It's suffered a few insults as we work on it ( completely expected) and it will also cover the wing, bumper blocks and rocker trim, hopefully blending them into the body shape.

 

Going to do the mechanicals and engine work before you do your final spray? Might consider it as engine work etc is the time when body work gets the most scuffed.

 

We haven't any body panels in front of the windshield and won't until she's running, so they'll be fine.

 

Well, my worldview will need adjusting, it appears there is a Supreme Being after all.

As we've searched for a replacement engine, Sigfrid figured we had nothing to lose with a Hail Mary
"douche the ****** with MMO" attempt and results are very encouraging.
Apparently we just had stuck rings, three cylinders are now at the high end of spec (178psi @400 rpm...we're at 170, 175, 170 )), two are just below minimum (164 psi spec...we're at 160) and #5 cylinder is at 125psi.
As the MMO continues to work, we hope #5 will loosen up and get with the program.

No matter what though, it looks like she should run at least well enough to get us going and continue on towards the road without the detour of a swap.

We should have done this last Easter when miraculous resurrections were being celebrated.

 

Maybe you have a stuck corner seal?

I have been douching my Tii keg with MMO for awhile now, got 2 out of 3 back puffing that were stuck. Just 1 refuses to loosen up.

 

Phil, we encourage humor and irreverence here but the "corner seal" reference is just cribbing off j9's previous joke, and that's not cool.

Why don't you take a little time out to think about what you did, then come back and apologize to him and the group.

We all appreciate you and value you and want to help you become the best you you can be and hope you can see that cribbing jokes is really only slowing down your personal progress.

I hope we can get this all smoothed over before snack time because I know you love tacos and would hate to see you miss them.

 

truthfully, it was in poor taste. so.... "nice work champ?" *pats bottom*

 

Really?
The Randy Marsh Defense?
Only Fox News buys into that these days, young man.

Next I suppose you'll go full Cartman and force me to bring in the authorities.
You won't like that.

 

i might humbly suggest that the cam being out of round is funnier...

 

Holy **** dude. I don't log on here for a few years and the car looks totally different. You are doing an amazing thing man, keep going with it.

 

A silver tongued ****, I am.

It made sense and Sigfrid was gung-ho, so why not.
We both think it looks done now.

Most of today was spent helping S.'s father-in-law move, our car time was severely truncated.
Oh well, brownie points with the wife and all.

We decided to catch up on some small stuff- the (hopefully) last round of window sealing, fitting body plugs to all the holes in the chassis (still have about 10 to go) and beginning the layout of the power cables.



The basic power skeleton is all laid out (I need to get a bunch of 3/8" Adel clamps to tie everything up pretty...) and the GM power block and battery are installed.
From left to right on the distribution block are:
-Power to the front relay cluster (horn, headlights, driving lights)
-Alternator
-Starter
-Power to the cabin

We are now fully engaged in the electrical project, it's Job #1.

 

insert "ParisHiltonThat'sHot.gif". WOW. That completed the wing. I had a vision in my mind how it would look that way, but it turned out much better. Nice work.

 

EDIT: stupid whiskey.

 

See that last pics with the junction block and cables?
Yeah, it's gone already.

Pursuant to some gentle criticism from our elfin Canadian overlord, Aaron Cake, I reevaluated the execution and found it lacking.
I've since spent hours and hours at the junkyard (I'm sweating myself into summer sveltness...) searching for a replacement that satisfies the new requirements.

And VW/Audi comes through with an almost ideal part.
"Almost" being a very important modifier here.

Rarely is junkyard stuff absolutely "bolt in"...sometimes but not often.
This VW part is close, and has some really nice features that I didn't even know I wanted till I saw this, but it's still needing quite a lot of work to make right.

Not wanting to ruin the magic, I usually gloss over the boring dross of this kind of work, but you should know that this one silly piece will represent about 10 hours of work by the time it's photographed Saturday.

*pats self on back...*

I also snagged a metric shitton of body plugs/grommets, a new gas cap and two totally bitchin Saab fuseboxes. They are actually so perfect that they are a direct bolt on.

Our headlamps have been ordered.
We use 7" round lights and I ran across some that have LED turnsignal/running lights incorporated in the housing.
Seems like a really neat idea and certainly solves some future issues (like, we didn't have any running lights/TS to begin with) but they were suspiciously cheap and I'm somewhat dubious.
Maybe we'll luck out again like we did with the mirrors (they were only $21 shipped and exactly as described/expected).

Should have some fun stuff to show (if you're into electrical nerdery) after we work Saturday.

Or not, you know how that goes.

 

Having been a VW guy, I am giddy to see what you grabbed!