Build Thread 1978 Fairmont. I bet somebody back home’s thinkin’…I wonder why he don’t write..?

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Today Is….



Everything checks out. I found the fan output, and dumbed it down to a standard on/off circuit. Steve told me where to go to disable the PWM circuit. I’ll put it back on the fan control settings and that will be that.

I have to go to O’reillys to get a can of the brown interior vinyl dye to freshen up the kick panels, and other than that, i shouldn’t be losing half the day to freakin running around BS.

As long as the clutch/trans does what it’s supposed to do, The monster will be where he was two months ago, only with 6 speeds and 3.31’s instead of 4 speeds and 3.73’s

Now….what to do with a slightly shorter set of 28 spline Moser C clip axles, a fresh 28 spline T-loc diff, a set of used 3.73 gears, a pair of brand new Timken SN front spindles, two slightly used front 95 Cobra rotors, a used ford pattern aluminum radiator, and a slightly used 93 GT PS rack…. :chin

Anybody know anybody that may want some of this stuff?;)
 
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The Naval museum in Pensacola, FL has some great cutaway radial engines so you can see how they work. The number of moving parts in them is mind boggling. To think that Pratt and Whitney was manufacturing hundreds of the things a day at the height of the war is staggering. The R4360 only went in a few airplanes, and was referred to as the corn cob.

You might love the Merlin in a Mustang, but you didn't want to be flying it. The V12s were developed to reduce the forward cross sectional area of the airplane, but to do that, they had to have water cooling. Spitfires and Mustangs got shot down a lot more than their radial counterparts. One bullet pierces the cooling system on a Mustang, and it's going down. I've known people who flew Mustangs, and if the cooling system gets a leak, you just bail out immediately. The engine eventually seizes, and causes a torque roll so bad, you can't get out of the plane. Radial engines had jugs (a cylinder) blown off of them and flew back.

Kurt
Of all the aerospace museums, the one at Pensacola is a great attraction. It amazes me that they had such advanced engine tech on aircraft engines from the 30’s and 40’s ( multi valve cylinder heads, turbocharged/supercharged, fuel injection) that took another 40-50 years to make it into the main stream automotive market. When I was there, they had a formation of old (A4 ?) jets that the Blue Angels flew grouped at the distance they usually flew apart from each other hanging from the ceiling with a platform that you could walk up to at that height and stand at eye level with that, just to gauge how close it actually was.

Ive actually heard P51’s flying…A pair of them flew over our heads while we were driving to the beach at about treetop level….When they first crossed hwy 231, I pulled over and got out to watch, i got rewarded by another flyover at about 100 feet above our heads. That was freakin cool to hear/see.

Piston engine aircraft >jet engine aircraft.
 
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As usual, I start out thinking that I should be able to get done with this thing today.
I’ll need a can of vinyl dye to redo the badly scratched up kick panels..
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It’s 7:45 AM, off to oreillys I go.

They don’t have it.

I go to Advance.

They don’t have it.

I go to the automotive paint store where I originally got the stuff custom made, resigning myself to have to spray the stuff out of one of my spray guns.

He can do it but it’s gonna take a few hours.
( He’s got orders to fill)
But I ain’t waitin no 3 hours.

I go to the upholstery supplier where I got the carpet for the front of LJK’s seat.

They don’t have it.

it’s now 10am, I decide to get a yard of vinyl, and cover the damn things in vinyl..at least they’ll never scratch up again.

That takes two hours, but they turn out pretty decent.
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Putting the thing back together takes all day, but it’s done.
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Obviously, the dash top is black now. I’ve recessed the tweeters in the dash. I never was a fan of having the bug eyes hanging off the top of the dash anyway.
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I get in the thing and start it. I step on the clutch and put it in gear. It goes. I change gears, but they seem to hang a little. If this thing isn’t moving enough fluid to adequately disengage the clutch, I’m gonna have a stroke.
I’m just gonna have to drive it to know.

The trans cooler lines are still attached to the cooler. I’m not gonna remove the cooler, I’m just gonna cap off the thing after I remove the lines, and leave it full of fluid. But that requires -6 caps, and I don’t have any.

I’ll just get some from HD. The ones that they have are JIC, and the fittings are AN, but I’m not trying to hold back pressure of any kind, I’m just wanting it to seal up, and for my purposes that should work. Once that’s done, it’ll be on the ground for its test run.
 
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Piston engine aircraft >jet engine aircraft.
I did my time in piston aircraft. They are fun, and you have plenty of time to get things done. Jet's are a handful, but a lot more fun to fly. I don't think I ever want to fly something that doesn't have AC and a bathroom anymore.

The vinyl work looks really good. I think that was an Ace decision. The whole interior looks really good. Those clutches are a bare to bleed. If it's not disengaging, I would at least try a bottle bleed on it before concluding that one of the parts is inadequate. Of course, a power bleeder is going to do a better job, but I have gotten them with a bottle bleed.

Who is Scott exactly? I would be interested in getting him to wire me a soft start for my fan.

Kurt
 
I did my time in piston aircraft. They are fun, and you have plenty of time to get things done. Jet's are a handful, but a lot more fun to fly. I don't think I ever want to fly something that doesn't have AC and a bathroom anymore.

The vinyl work looks really good. I think that was an Ace decision. The whole interior looks really good. Those clutches are a bare to bleed. If it's not disengaging, I would at least try a bottle bleed on it before concluding that one of the parts is inadequate. Of course, a power bleeder is going to do a better job, but I have gotten them with a bottle bleed.

Who is Scott exactly? I would be interested in getting him to wire me a soft start for my fan.

Kurt
Steve….It’s Steve. He’s the guy that has programmed the stuff on my ecu. @a91what
 
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I knew there was some weird kinship somewhere out there. I love WWII aircraft. The room next to the monster is filled with a whole bunch of warbird artwork.

20 years ago 2 co-workers and I got to talking about warbirds and combat aircraft in general. We started doing a model build every couple of months...when done we would bring them in and compare. One of the guys ran into a guy in the model section of Hobby Lobby who said his dad had owned a hobby shop in the 80's and early 90's and closed it and put a lot of stuff in storage. He had a ton of plastic model kits. We went to the storage unit and boy he wasn't kidding. We didn't get any car models, boat models, pretty much just aircraft. There were over 150 models. We bought them, divided them up and what you see in the picture in my closet is my share, minus a few that are somewhere in big storage bins. When we got done, we still have over 50 models that were tons of duplicates...so we sold those off over a couple of years. Maybe one day when I retire I'll have time to build more. I also haven't bother with any of the big bombers, because of space.

I spent several hours a few years ago at the Naval Aviation museum in Pensacola. I agree the Blue Angel A4 display is pretty friggin awesome! Plus they have a Firestone Corsair!

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20 years ago 2 co-workers and I got to talking about warbirds and combat aircraft in general. We started doing a model build every couple of months...when done we would bring them in and compare. One of the guys ran into a guy in the model section of Hobby Lobby who said his dad had owned a hobby shop in the 80's and early 90's and closed it and put a lot of stuff in storage. He had a ton of plastic model kits. We went to the storage unit and boy he wasn't kidding. We didn't get any car models, boat models, pretty much just aircraft. There were over 150 models. We bought them, divided them up and what you see in the picture in my closet is my share, minus a few that are somewhere in big storage bins. When we got done, we still have over 50 models that were tons of duplicates...so we sold those off over a couple of years. Maybe one day when I retire I'll have time to build more. I also haven't bother with any of the big bombers, because of space.

I spent several hours a few years ago at the Naval Aviation museum in Pensacola. I agree the Blue Angel A4 display is pretty friggin awesome! Plus they have a Firestone Corsair!

20210714_203544.jpg 20210714_203604.jpg
My college room mate is still one of my best friends. He's currently doing a Coyote swap foxbody after multiple other Mustangs. He is crazy about his airplane models. He's been doing war bird models since I met him 22 years ago. He goes crazy with the air brush. He goes the extra mile to airbrush in the known hydraulic leaks and exhaust stains on his models.

Kurt
 
Putting the thing on the ground changes things. While in the air, you could get it to go in gear albeit a little clunky, once on the ground, it wont.

Additionally you can see flex in the firewall..I can watch the gas pedal move while pressing on the clutch pedal.
So,…after shutting off the car, the first thing I did was this :nonono:.
Then I shut the door, turned out the lights, and went upstairs.

After allowing myself time to absorb the possibility of having to redo the clutch pedal assembly, which will require that I remove the front of the dash so that I can get the steering column back out, so that I can drop the pedal assembly and the EPS motor that is bolted onto that, I thought about my options.

I can bleed the system and see if it’s truly got some trapped air.
I will put a bar between the firewall or the strut tower, and tie it to the frame rail to stop that flex.

I thought maybe I can just put a larger bore MC in place of the existing .750” unit that is there. It will obviously increase the effort required to depress the pedal, but it will move more fluid in the same amount of travel.

So I call Wilwood to discuss that. I tell him what I have going on, and that I was able to get the car in gear while it was up in the air, but could not make that happen on the ground. I asked him what he thought about increasing the master cylinder bore size.

“ The MC you’re using is the correct one for that slave cylinder, but I think you got air in your system.”

A glimmer of hope pops into my head.

He tells me I gotta fix the flex ( I know), and after that to try and get the car in gear while pumping the clutch pedal..”if you can get it into gear after multiple pumps of the clutch pedal, you got air trapped in the system.” I tell him that if I’m putting the car back up in the air to build a firewall reinforcement, I’m just going to go ahead and bleed that MC while I’m at it.

At least I still have a workaround that doesn’t require a total redo of this clutch pedal..
 
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Putting the thing on the ground changes things. While in the air, you could get it to go in gear albeit a little clunky, once on the ground, it wont.

Additionally you can see flex in the firewall..I can watch the gas pedal move while pressing on the clutch pedal.
So,…after shutting off the car, the first thing I did was this :nonono:.
Then I shut the door, turned out the lights, and went upstairs.

After allowing myself time to absorb the possibility of having to redo the clutch pedal assembly, which will require that I remove the front of the dash so that I can get the steering column back out, so that I can drop the pedal assembly and the EPS motor that is bolted onto that, I thought about my options.

I can bleed the system and see if it’s truly got some trapped air.
I will put a bar between the firewall or the strut tower, and tie it to the frame rail to stop that flex.

I thought maybe I can just put a larger bore MC in place of the existing .750” unit that is there. It will obviously increase the effort required to depress the pedal, but it will move more fluid in the same amount of travel.

So I call Wilwood to discuss that. I tell him that I what I have going on, and that I was able to get the car in gear while it was up in the air, but could not make that happen on the ground. I asked him what he thought about increasing the master cylinder bore size.

“ The MC you’re using is the correct one for that slave cylinder, but I think you got air in your system.”

A glimmer of hope pops into my head.

He tells me I gotta fix the flex ( I know), and after that to try and get the car in gear while pumping the clutch pedal..”if you can get it into gear after multiple pumps of the clutch pedal, you got air trapped in the system.” I tell him that if I’m putting the car back up in the air to build a firewall reinforcement, I’m just going to go ahead and bleed that MC while I’m at it.

At least I still have a workaround that doesn’t require a total redo of this clutch pedal..
Damn Mike you just cant catch a break can you? This is the reason why building everything yourself can be so darn frustrating if it does not work you have no one to point at... on the other hand the car was never meant to have a clutch pedal installed in it, I wonder if the firewall is weaker in that area because of that or if its from all the modifications you made to the transmission tunnel.
If anyone can get it figured out its you, do you have the assembly through bolted? or are you going to have to weld the support plate into place? In my mind I imagine a 10g plate with a gusset to the frame rail or even a bar, it would be nice to make it removeable.
 
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