Winter projects

I've never had any luck with those damn chrome water pumps. 2 different brands and the chrome came off both of them. Going polished aluminum electric for the new engine this time.


Which pumps did you have?

I really need to step up to a variable voltage gun. But then again, i love my single stage boring powders.

Last time i ordered powder from caswell it took 11 days.

This order took 3 days. I chose the priority mail option instead of UPS - it always goes more quickly and is basically the same price.
 
One was a Summit pump and the other was a Tuff Stuff pump, it looked a bit different than the picture you posted though.

I'll be taking the Summit one off my car too. The Tuff Stuff one you had, was it ribbed like the OEM piece? I feel those hard edges are the reason they're so prone to chipping. Tough to get a good plating job on angles like that.
 
Yes. I'm pretty sure it had the gussets unlike the picture of the one you posted. I knew the summit one was going to go to hell right out of the box. It was easy to tell that it was a cheap plating job.
 
Wow, it's been about a month since my last update. Progress is still slowly coming. It still hasn't left for paint touchup, and at this rate by the time they're ready for me I won't want to take it out of the garage. I can see myself just bringing it over in the spring and disassembling everything all over again. Not the worst thing in the world but not much fun either.

I got a bit lazy because work was driving me insane, the last thing I wanted to do was go wrench and stuff. Then once I was ready to get back to it, I was quickly halted again because I decided in the midst of putting the dash back together that I wanted to sleeve the harnesses in similar braided nylon as the TFI harness has. So that held me up a week. It just came in 2 days ago and, finally, this week the dash will be back in place.

One more new thing on the car is a chrome plated OEM water pump pulley which replaced a powder coated one. I just swapped it out to get it on and out of my way, it'll be coming off of course when the new water pump goes on.

I also ended up buying a new Optima battery because the one I've had the past 9 years keeps dying on me as the car sits. I know some people say that happens normally, but it never has in the past except once last year, and it's happened 3 times this year already and I've barely touched the damn car. Better safe than sorry.
 
I also ended up buying a new Optima battery because the one I've had the past 9 years keeps dying on me as the car sits. I know some people say that happens normally, but it never has in the past except once last year, and it's happened 3 times this year already and I've barely touched the damn car. Better safe than sorry.

Why not put the car on a trickle while it sits? I have my car on a trickle charger when it sits for an extended period. Saves the battery, and keeps it warm in the winter.
 
I've never used one in 9 years w/this battery and it's never given me any trouble. I figure it's on borrowed time, and if it's started acting out of ordinary now who knows when it might act up while I'm out somewhere with it.
 
I don't mind too much when things go wrong, but when I skip an opportunity to fix something that might be a problem down the road then I just want to kick myself!

Look what just showed up. After 2 months of waiting for Summit, I canceled the order and went elsewhere. The next day, ta-dah:

tsmastercylinder.jpg
 
Sweet - this MC is so wide that I'll have to massage the strut tower a considerable amount in order to get proper clearance. I picked up some body spoons and hope to handle that tomorrow. I've got the car running and everything seems good as far as the idle goes. The vacuum lines and electronics are so far/so good.

The quick trip to the body shop for paint won't happen after all, so I'll have to go in Spring and take a bunch of parts off again to get at it. Not my preferred choice but saves me from finding a trailer to haul it in January when he'd have room in the shop to take me. Oh well.
 
Welp, spent the day with a body spoon making room for this damn master cylinder to fit in properly. I'm 99% there but would like to get a little more clearance between it and the strut tower. I did a number on some of the paint so if it didn't need to go for some touchup before, it sure does now.

I better get some compliments on this thing when it's all said and done!
 
Been a while again but slowly making progress. Had to move the main harness a bit in order to get the dash back into place, then wasted a ton of time trying to find metric-to-SAE adapters so I wouldn't have to re-flare my chromed brake lines and risk cracking the plating. Not to mention having to get new fittings and chrome them. I was able to find chrome fittings and I just got them onto the lines, so this weekend the new MC will be, finally, all hooked up.

Then I'll finally have another picture to throw up in here :)



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It's starting to annoy me. I knew I'd have some work to do to fit this stupid thing onto my car, but if I knew it'd be this much hassle I would've just spent the extra $$ and had the SN95 booster disassembled, plated, and rebuilt. At least then everything would've been more or less a direct fit. But hey, at least I'll have something a bit more unique. I do love the look of that master cylinder.
 
Whew - a month since an update? Man... I have the interior almost all back together. Just have to bolt the steering shaft back into place, put the kick panels in, and then the console and the new media player head unit. The console will wait until I'm done messing around in the car so I don't risk scratching it, but depending how everything else goes I hope to get the head unit wired up and ready to go.

I'll aim to get a picture of the brake booster, master cylinder, and brakelines this weekend! The car is filthy but those parts themselves look gooooooooooooooood!

If anyone missed or hasn't seen it yet, my car is the cover car on the latest Auto Enthusiast. I put a thread up here with pics.