Progress Thread 67coupe’s 89 LX - Dyno Vid

Adjusted the alignment and filled the a/c during the week.

Tonight we put the door moldings on. That was actually pretty painless. I was stressed about having problems or screwing it up. But we thought our way through it and came up with a fail proof method.





And with that, the car is officially done. Complete!



Time to relax with my favorite beer!!!

Finally back on my car!

Made the following progress last weekend.

Interior is fully assembled, extended 3rd brake light harness and installed the light, and mocked up the cobra kit.









Since the carpet is new, I decided to buy some new floor mats. 03 cobra motor + 93 cobra kit = cobra floor mats. I really like these.



Now for today’s progress.

Last year before cruisin the coast, I decided to tackle a fuel heating issue that was giving me problems. Rough hot starts, really loud fuel pumps, and some power loss in hot weather.

The system was two 255 LPH pumps plumbed through the factory lines and fuel rails. The regulator was mounted at the end of the fuel rails, where the unused fuel was then returned to the tank.

That created a major problem. With two pumps that size, at light load conditions, all 15 gals of a hypothetically full tank would be cycled through the 190 degree fuels rails every 7 min!!! No wonder the pumps would get so loud I thought they were failing.

I had to put the regulator before the rails, that way the unused fuel would be returned before passing though fuel rails.

I did all that prior to cruisin the coast but managed to forget one item, the fuel filter. Had to add a high flow AN style one.







Then it was time to upgrade the exhaust. I’ve had flowmasters on this car for 15 years. Love tge sound on a 5.0, but they really dont work well with mod motors. After searching YouTube, I settled on Borla Stingers. Got it all mocked up. Need to remove and finish weld. That’ll have to wait until tomorrow.





After that I’ll install the new radiator and news fans, plus a nice mod to enhance the cooling system.

CarMichael Angelo said:

I really liked Cruisin the coast......I was there last year, I'll be there again. We've already got the rooms booked.
Craig may be there ( although I haven't seen him here in a while ( I hope so,..I have to give him back his ass) Maybe we can be the start of the Stangnet Nationals..????

Click to expand...

I did too. It’s an awesome experience. If you make every checkpoint, it’s alot of driving. We drove 400 miles last year, that was just for the checkpoints.

I’m going again this year. Just don’t know if The car will be ready.

Exhaust is fully welded. I then dropped the h pipe to add some wideband bungs.

Unfortunately, that was all the progress I made today. I went to a pull a part to get some random stuff. Then went to northern tool for a new welding helmet. I let overspray ruin my old old one. Oh well this one is much better. The screen size is almost double my old one and the visibility before striking the weld is much brighter.

Used a $20 off coupon and got this guy.


Have an issue and question concerning the front bumper for the body and paint guys. I drilled out the rivets holding the header panel to the LX bumper, then rivetted it to the LMR GT bumper. Overall fitment is okay. But the outer parking lights are way off. If I slot them into the pins in the header panel, they contact the bumper in multiple places. I can’t even force then to slide in all the way.

I rivetted the panel to the bumper on the shop floor. Should I have loosely bolted the header panel and bumper to the front end before riveting?

Happy 4th everyone!

A little background before the updates. This setup has always suffered from considerable powerloss in hot weather. Some of it is probably from the pulleyed heaton. But I think most of it was the marginal factory cooling system. After it ran so hot on me during traffic at cruisin the coast, I decided to tackle this while the car is down for paint.

First thought was to get a real radiator. The factory radiator was laughably thin. I was planning on using the factoy fan, but then stumbled across a contour fan at the junkyard. Here a side by side with the contour fans mounted.





The new radiator is 2 core with 1” thick cores.



Of course the thicker radiator didn’t just drop right in. Nothing on this car does. Had to fabup a new upper mount.

Since I’m trying to ensure this thing won’t over heat again. I thought, what if I could add air deflectors between the bumper and core support that the newer cars have.

A little more quality time at the local pick and pull...and sweet success!





I’ve barely trimmed these and they are damn near a perfect fit. They even kickout at the bottom to cover the heat exchanger.



Next step is to finish wiring the a pillar gauges. After that, the only thing left is the front bumper and headlights.

I knew I was gonna get that question and...I didnt take note of the car I pulled them off. I was too damn hot after walking through the yard for an hour.

I do know it was a Nissan. I can see if there’s a part number on them?

Just looked up the part number. 07 - 09 Nissan Altima.

Finished wiring and installing the new pillar gauges. Top one is wideband and the bottom one is a multi-gauge.



Plugs into the obd2 port and will display almost all of the ECU parameters. I’ve got it set to show fuel rail pressure, charge air temp, battery voltage, and I’ve run two analog inputs for oil pressure and water temp.

Finally got the front bumper to fit. Had to drill out all the rivets to the header panel. Then install and fit the bumper and then install the new rivets. The parking lights slide right in now.





For those of you interested, here’s the air dams once trimmed to fit the bumper.





Had to trim most of what stuck out above the inner bumper support. But I still think they’ll do a good job funnelling air to the radiator.

I’m almost done with the upgrades and body fitment! That should happen on Sunday. Unfortunately, painting will have to wait. I’ve got to finish a long overdue home improvement project. The wood paneling in the man cave is getting replaced with dry wall. I’ll document here if anyone is interested.