Rapom's Rocket - just another Duster build thread

-
As mentioned before the clutch slave cylinder hit the floor in one little spot which bound it up enough to be a problem. Options: "relieve" the floor pan, move the bracket on the trans cross member down or what I decided to do, flip the slave around and hook it to the clutch arm instead of the trans X member . This moved the slave up and farther away from the header's heat, hose hook ups and the bleed port were in much better positions and the floor rub issue was solved, but, I had to tap the treads in the heim joint for the all thread rod I was using.
20180728_145400.jpg
 
Last edited:
Always planned on a heat shield for the slave cylinder so effort was directed to that issue. I used an empty spray can and made a prototype heat shield but it needed to be much more robust and smaller around. After looking in every nook and cranny of my shop for some right sized tubing my gaze fell upon my old steering column tube from many pages ago. The middle third of the tube was just the right diameter and length. Another sacrifice to the Fab Gods offered and wa la... instant heat shield.

20180804_161042.jpg


20180804_161103.jpg


20180804_163252.jpg
 
Last edited:
Just above the rod end in the above picture you can see the wires from the electronic speedometer sensor installed where the old speedo cable used to hook up. I extended them up to the back of the dash and put two disconnects in the loom, one at the back of the dash cluster and the other down by the frame rail for ease of maintenance.

The O2 sensor wires were similarly routed down along the trans tunnel to the bung I installed in the header adapter. A wire clip was put in by the fire wall flange to keep the wire connector from flopping around and possibly getting damaged.

Mancini bolt style trans mount with poly bushings.

Trans cross member bolt in the way but you can just start to see where I relieved the top to clear the 1-2 shift rod.

20180804_162912.jpg
 
"Wonder if he got anything done this week?" you may be asking yourself. Well I'll tell ya what I got done.

I spent my time in electrical Purgatory. It took me two full days to check all my dash wiring mods against the factory wiring diagram, incorporate the speedo sender hookups, splice my gauge harness into the factory dash harness and perform a continuity check on every circuit. I can't believe it myself but it checked out 100%. Next is to hook it up to a battery and see what smokes.

That long strip of paper is the factory wiring diagram blown up and printed out. I was tempted to redo some of it to make it prettier but I got over that pretty quickly (the wiring not the diagram).

20180901_120508.jpg


20180901_120541.jpg
 
Last edited:
I wanted to keep the factory rally dash "idiot lights" for the turn signals, high beam and brake warning. Too bad for me those are mounted in and powered by circuit boards screwed to the back of the gauge frame. Spent some time examining the boards and determined that those circuits could be separated and mounting them in their factory positions shouldn't cause any interference with the newly installed gauges. I took the chance and whittled away at them with a cutting disk on a Dremel. With some creative soldering I got all the wires connected and it seems like it's going to work.

To take a break from the electric spaghetti I worked on solving another problem. My new shifter boot was getting in the way of the adapter plate I made and the pistol grip handle. The problem was it was 1/2" too short. Since the first one was so fun to make I decided to do it again. Pic 1 Getting cut out of a piece of plate and pic 2 new vs old.

20180903_174444.jpg


20180903_191305.jpg
 
Last edited:
The last bit of magic was routing the FITech ECU harness and hooking up all the wires. Because the ECU needs constant 12v to maintain it's self learning files I had to run the power lead all the way back to the starter relay's battery connection. You are up to date
 
Not much happening lately. Cleaned, neutralized and primed the rust damage on the trunk floor extensions. Started making cardboard templates to close up the gapping hole around the fuel cell cage. Looks like four separate panels will be needed at this point. Got to get some sheet metal and get buisy. Also trying to figure out best method of filling the gap between the rear bumper corners and the quarter panels. Made repairs on both interior sail panels which had crack damage cause by past overtightening of the mount screws. Told you not much happening....
 
When I made my custom pistol grip handle, it was flat like the E-Body one, but lengthened and angled differently. Probably very similar to how yours ended up, but a plate like yours would have been sooooo much easier. :lol:

The issue ended up being that with it flat, it was right up against my leg. That was why it sat unused for like 13 years. In the end, mine needed about a 3/4” offset to make it comfortable. I did that last summer and installed it last winter and absolutely love it now. Part of the motivation was the Brewers boot.

Glad yours worked out well.
 
Great progress, looks close to making noise and smoke (tire, not electrical :rofl:).

Any pictures with the wheels and tires on it yet?
 
Good picture of the oil filter set up in post #341 for reference. I think it is a "TransDap" model, but, there's a gazillion manufacturers making a copy of this particular adapter so just about any would work. And yes, if anybody was wondering, I'm still alive and kick'n. Car got put on the back burner for quite awhile due to a myriad of sh-t but I'm still working on it. Looks like my weekends and evenings are going to start freeing up in the near future so I'm hoping that will equate to much more car time. Doing research now on a forced air propane heater for the shop so winter won't be an issue anymore. Then I will have a BUNCH of free time to devote to my "baby".
 
Been doing a bit of amateur upholstery work the last couple of days. The factory paint on my package tray panel was extremely sun baked and deteriorated. I sanded it down and tried three different black paints (gloss, satin and a fine textured semi flat) all of which looked like crap. The wife suggested we visit some local fabric stores to look for something to cover it with. I found a roll of headliner material in the clearance rack at one store which looked very promising. I went home to verify the 56" width of the roll would be wide enough (actually perfect) and went back the next day and bought a yard. I should have gotten the whole roll as it was marked down from the clearance price which came to roughly $9 a yard. I'm a total newb when it comes to working with upholstery so I reviewed some Youtube videos on how to repair headliners for some tips. The biggest takeaway I got from this was to take extreme care to protect the fabric side of the material from the spray adhesive. Boy were they right. It is so easy to get one little glob of that stuff on the fabric and it's ruined. I spent half of yesterday just doing this one panel. Nothing is difficult about the process but you have to slow yourself waaaayyyy down and ensure every step is checked and checked again before continuing. So this is what $9 worth of foam and a half can of spray adhesive I had laying around resulted in.
Pic 1 Start point: repainted panel
Pic 2 Cut out pattern, I bought enough material to be able to do it twice in case of a screw up.
Pic 3 Cleaned up bottom side of panel with factory felt. I used a razor blade to scrape down the old fiber board along the edges so the contact cement would have a clean surface to adhere to. I left the pattern about 1.25" wide on all sides so there would be plenty to wrap around the edges.
Pic 4 Done and looking fantastic. The metal trim pieces were repainted with Rustoleum fine textured black. It looks like factory and I think this is what I'm going to use as a finish around the wheel tubs and former back seat areas
20190704_154734.jpg
20190704_154500.jpg
20190704_154819.jpg
20190704_172937.jpg
.
 
This week the amateur upholstery work continued by refurbishing the interior vinyl and plastic. If you go back to page 1 of this thread you will find pictures of the interior, or lack there of, when I brought the car home. Other than some of the dash and a very nice dash pad there wasn't any interior, none... At least all the hardware was tossed in a rusty coffee can. Over the years I managed to piece together an entire interior, taken from many different A Bodies, and the resultant patina was quite inconsistent across the black finishes. After researching professional auto detailer's recommendations for a plastic and vinyl treatment I settled on a product named "Solution Finish Black". Kind of pricey at $29 for 12 FL oz thru Amazon but it works wonders on old plastic drying to a consistent, non oily, satin finish on everything. So far I'm extremely happy with the results, the only question being, how long will it last?
 
This thread is not dead!!! Sorry I've been radio silent the last, what, almost 10 months? Took a little subatical from the car projects since retiring comletely last October in order to rearrange my life. Though not posting any updates I have been working on the Duster. Most of that time has been spent pecking away at building floor pans in the trunk and finishing the interior block off panel I started last year. Seems like I've crawled under the car and into the trunk and back seat area at least a thousand times in the last month making templates, cuting out and bending panels, checking fitment, trimimg edges and laying out and drilling holes to rivet everything together. I will try to get some decent shots of the work to post up tonight but right now I need to get out to the shop and make some more progress!
 
Glad to see you are still moving forward. I wondered what had happened with this.
 
Way back in the opening pages of this saga this is what lay ahead of me. I've been head down & *** up in my trunk for more than a week now. Major progress made on one of the remaining top "to do list" items: fab a trunk floor. Initially thought this would take 4 sheet metal panels to accomplish but turned into 7 so far. Rather than weld it all in I decided to go the rivet route instead.
IMG_53.JPG
 
First 2 panels turned into 4 just to close up the front of this hole. A friend gave me a basic little sheet metal brake missing some key parts. I almost spent more time getting it operational again as I did making all the panels. To bad it only helped on a few bends. Most of the fab work was done by hand with an assortment of implements, a vice and some colorful language at times. Sorry only have photos of the first three panels. The fourth is the grey one in the center (last pic). Some were welded in and some riveted. After having some fun trying to get a grinder on some of the welds I rethunk my plan and decided rivets were the answer.

20190824_172454.jpg


20190824_172533.jpg


20190827_180101.jpg
 
Wasn't all that great with the arts & crafts thing back in kindergarten but I managed to make up some poster board templates for the main hole fillers.

20200409_180511.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top