Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
Yesterday the focus returned to the radiator core support. It had only been tacked onto the car so we cut the welds and moved it to a welding table to finish welding it. Afterwards we ground the welds and sanded the assembly.
Everything looked good until we went to fit it back on the Charger. I should have attached a brace across the top because it pulled together about a half inch during the welding process. It wasn't a disaster but it meant we needed to spread the top wider with a jack to get it to fit correctly.
Once we had re-fit the core support we inspected it to see if there were any further modifications we wanted before we'll weld it back onto the car.
We still have to make provisions for the bottom radiator mounts and Spencer wants me to shave 1/8" off the top of one of the side walls. The overflow tank mounts still need to be welded too.
With the core support coming along nicely we decided to work on mounting the Wilwood pedal assembly. The spooky step was chopping the hole in the firewall. One of our main concerns was whether or not we'd clear the valve covers (that we don't have yet).
After scoping everything out we realized that that section of firewall was going to have to be heavily modified regardless of where the pedals were going to mount. For one thing, the Painless wiring harness does not use a bulkhead connector. - Secondly, the original brake master cylinder/booster holes were going to need to be filled. The left side of the firewall has all sorts of indentations in it with very little flat areas. No matter what we were going to have to create an section that was flat enough to accommodate the pedals and fill a bunch of holes.
We decided to approximate the new pedal location as best we could and then go ahead and cut our hole. If we were wrong we knew that the entire area we were cutting was going to eventually be replaced anyway.
Yesterday the focus returned to the radiator core support. It had only been tacked onto the car so we cut the welds and moved it to a welding table to finish welding it. Afterwards we ground the welds and sanded the assembly.
Everything looked good until we went to fit it back on the Charger. I should have attached a brace across the top because it pulled together about a half inch during the welding process. It wasn't a disaster but it meant we needed to spread the top wider with a jack to get it to fit correctly.
Once we had re-fit the core support we inspected it to see if there were any further modifications we wanted before we'll weld it back onto the car.
We still have to make provisions for the bottom radiator mounts and Spencer wants me to shave 1/8" off the top of one of the side walls. The overflow tank mounts still need to be welded too.
With the core support coming along nicely we decided to work on mounting the Wilwood pedal assembly. The spooky step was chopping the hole in the firewall. One of our main concerns was whether or not we'd clear the valve covers (that we don't have yet).
After scoping everything out we realized that that section of firewall was going to have to be heavily modified regardless of where the pedals were going to mount. For one thing, the Painless wiring harness does not use a bulkhead connector. - Secondly, the original brake master cylinder/booster holes were going to need to be filled. The left side of the firewall has all sorts of indentations in it with very little flat areas. No matter what we were going to have to create an section that was flat enough to accommodate the pedals and fill a bunch of holes.
We decided to approximate the new pedal location as best we could and then go ahead and cut our hole. If we were wrong we knew that the entire area we were cutting was going to eventually be replaced anyway.