Cricket

[turntune]

Short of finishing the ignition wiring, I'm just about finished with the front end wiring! this posting was spread over 2 days (yesterday and today) a bad ground made me walk away from it yesterday. Found said bad ground an hour into it today, after un-looming and re-checking every connection on the front of car....ground was in rear of car
anyway on to pics.....this is what was pulled and what was left over, just to give a lil scope of whats involved

and all this could not have been possible without the factory manuals on pdf and

drivers pocket showing re-routing of main loom, the relays arent bolted in(still need to paint engine bay), still need to loom main power wire (red), and route a/c harness (leaving out of the "tucked" harness should I choose to remove later on, and WASH the inner fender!

still have some various repair work to do, battery pocket is where leading ignition system will mount, but once cleaned and painted will be much cleaner looking than factory.

pic showing main harness routing and unfinished ignition harness

plugging EVERYTHING to do with lighting/flashers/windshield washer pump & level/ignition/charging in where they go

connected the battery and turned the key

now to check all the lights
parking rear check! ground in background was the one I missed!

parking and headlamps (had bulbs plugged in before I remembered to snap pic)

left front signal check! pic snapped just as it was dimming

left rear check!

right front check!

right rear check!

reverse check!

factory amps and harness




next week I'm going to work on this, blasters in the factory coil spots and trailing coil on an aftermarket mount!

[turntune]

worked on ignition, decided the best place for my pair of MSD 6AL boxes is where my battery used to be. So I started with the battery tray and some cardboard, used the carboard to make a template, trimmed said template until it fit in the area like I wanted it to, and after some creative thought came up with this

transferred to suitable metal and drew out bracing, sidewalls, and bends

using a bender with 90* dies I shaped the lower section, test fitted, then mounted a upper section. mocked everything up in the car, decided how it is to be wired. I wired the ignition using the white wire,only because if need be I can put the ignition back to stock.

[turntune]

Today I was motivated to tackle the last of my rust . So I went to Tractor Supply and bought a small sheet of steel, traced out 2 of the cardboard template I had made before removal of rust and treating with por15.
template

cut the traced metal with the plasma cutter, marked out the holes. didnt get pic of actual metal pieces I cut on account the boss needed the welder, but these were what was left

starting at the bottom and working my way around hammering and dolly every spot then stitch, then when I had it tacked completely around I stitched them in. results arent beautiful but works for me and beats leaving the rust in!




so while waiting my turn for the welder I used a scotch brite pad and went to work on the engine bay, removed what I could, and sprayed it with a high temp satin black





used the blasting cabinet to strip the radiator mounts top plate to bare metal and sray with the same satin black

mounted drier and condesor

whew! long day, but got alot accomplished.

[turntune]

start of the week I ordered fenders, used but will be rust free. Had hoped they would arrive Thursday , but no. So I decided to do some more final body work. Because of all the cowl repair I had to do I had decided limit the amount of water that can enter the cowl. I previously fiber glassed the under side of my cowl

but the top side is uneven

so with a coarse "puff" wheel on a dremel I cut each one down past a certain point, cleaned it all up, mixed up some resin and filled to be even (won't be, but closer than it was). While waiting for resin to set, I hung my doors, hood, front valance, and front bumper (expecting fenders at any time). Went around the car and finalized some alignments and body lines.
here I aligned the donor passenger door and got the body line straight

driver side headlight panel was off after replacing actuator arm bushings

couple spots in the rear i didnt like

then I started to think of how it would look with a roll pan

mocked up my LED side markers to see if it looks better with or without the bezel
without


with


will have complete LED lighting inside and out, and finally decided on a color-House of Kolor HRF 273

so once fenders get here I can fix/prep them, spray final seal. Have to make my mind up about rear roll pan and front air dam (I want a factory imsa one), and whether or not I'm going to continue on with the Z flares...

[turntune]

Still awaiting fenders.... But not wasted time. When I wired the engine harness I wired both the factory ICM plugs and 2 MSD extension cables (purple/green w/msd plug on each end) so as I could run either ignition systems..i.e. both MSD 6AL box's or stock system or combination of both just in case one should crap out I have a back-up system at all times. So since I had a spare Dizzy from parts car, I chose it to be the "MSD Dizzy"

but after some thought I couldn't bring myself to cut up a perfectly good dizzy so I used Mazspeed's way
http://www.mazspeed.com/msd.htm
but I'm running dual box's for leading and trailing (overkill I know, but other mods in the works) so I did both sides

going to clean them up a lil more by individually heat shrink up to where they plug in, then heat shrinking them together, then finally construct a weatherproof plug. So, with the weather here starting to get nice I've been prepping my motorcycle for spring, I got an idea that I went through all the manufacturer sites, sent emails to see if it would work. Imagine a super easy way to convert to leading direct fire, there are many ways...but I think this is the answer

but that is a discussion for another post.

[turntune]

after waiting 3weeks for the fenders I ordered to arrive, I called and found out they didnt have any in stock... .....I decided to sacrifice the parts cars fenders for some patch work, here is where I was test fitting


happy withe the seam, I spot welded it on

gave it a coat of fiberall

stepped back and snapped this....those are low spots from dings and dents all these years

ont to the factory sidemarker hole




then repeated for passenger side

[turntune]

and a taste

[MelloYello]

Nice progress there.
Looks like you have a monster carb planned?

[turntune]

I'll be using an older RB 450cfm 4160 Holley that I converted to a 4150 with Proform metering blocks so as I can tune it out. there will also be a 1" open spacer added to the adapter to promote a better vacuum signal. later on I will be swapping to a DCOE manifold adding a pair of tb's and going FI via micro/megasquirt.

[turntune]

that adapter plate looks bigger than it is, I got it from Trans-dapt. It's used to convert samll cfm carbs (200-300) to "mid" size cfm (400-600) carbs. wasnt really difficult to get it to line up, then I filled all un-needed passages and ports, then ported to match adapter, and finally ported adapter to have more of an airfoil look to it. then by adding 1" open spacer my vac signal should be alot more stable...something to play around with.
With the main body sealed i'll be working on getting the bumper covers hung/lined up/sealed, finish carb, exhaust,suspension,brakes,lug conversion,spray color, then start the process of putting it back together!