Hi Everyone,
A quick update. It seems the planets havent aligned for me this year! I had set aside the Easter weekend to do a truck load of work on The Cat, only to have it rain like nobodies business and the shed flood - as I stated in the above post. So, I set aside the Anzac Day weekend to do the same, only to have it rain in biblical proportions and the shed flood again - there goes two days just in clean-up.
Well this weekend things kind of aligned. Mitch had a night game on Friday night under lights so that freed up Sunday, which is usually taken up with footy. I managed a couple of hours on the shed today and walked away with some jobs completed - any progress is good progress.
Previously, I had noticed the exhaust was hanging down a bit, lower than it had when I installed it in the first place. Upon inspection the centre cotton-reel rubber hanger had broken due to the excessive pressure that the exhaust had put it under - the brackets for the cannons on the back were too low, causing the whole system to sit too low and put stress on the centre hanger, which subsequently failed.
So, I measured to the underside of the exhaust as the car sat, which was pretty much ride height (less fuel etc). It was 90mm - way too low and not within the standards - minimum ground clearance needs to be 100mm or more, preferably more. So, an exhaust tuck was in order. To do this, I needed to trim the rear spoiler to be able to tuck the exhaust tips up higher.
After masking the affected areas, I marked out the exhaust centrelines and drew a radius that followed the curve of the cannon outlets, which wasnt easy as the profile of the rear spoiler flared out underneath the car. This is the affected area that I wanted to cut out:
Next, I dropped the exhaust and got out with the panel saw. Some cutting and sanding later, and the job was done. Next I redrilled the rear hanger brackets that wrap the cannons lower (to make the exhaust sit higher) by 25mm. After rehanging everything and tightening up the bands this was the end result:
Tucked up nice and high and a good 120mm off the ground. This has now relived the stress on the centre hanger which I will replace when I the new one arrives. This is a view of the underside from the rear - nice ground clearance now:
First job - done!
Next job, affix the slam panel and bolt up the radiator - done! (In hindsight maybe a bit premature as I still have to connect the hoses. We will see, as its not a big job unbolting either the rad or the slam panel).
Next job, the the front spoiler. Way back when I designed the spoiler, I made a mold for it to then make a part for it. I then gave the mold to a proper fibreglass pattern maker to refine the mold and take a part from the mold. In this way, if the from spoiler ever got damaged, all I had to do was pull another part from the mold. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out the way I planned. The mold have to be refined twice as it had 'grown' by 50mm during refining process and the original part we pulled had to be cut n shut to fit. This provided some other problems in that the driving light spacing from the centrline had now come in towards the centreline by some 25-30mm. Here is a previously posted photo that shows the end-tanks jutting into the driving light apertures.
To make the driving lights fit, I either had to source some new lights with shallower surrounds, or alter the FMIC to make them fit. Seeing as the driving lights and the main headlights are a matching set with their blue halo's, I decided to alter the FMIC end-tanks to make the driving lights come inboard the right amount. Since this dimension was a bit unknown, I decided to slot the FMIC light brackets almost their entire length so I could fine-tune the driving light position when the final fit-up happened.
Next job was to cut the FMIC end-tanks to allow the driving lights to creep in towards the centreline. With the lights remounted this is what we looked like:
I refitted the spoiler and found that the lights had to come inboard a further 30mm. Luckily for me the FMIC is over-sized for the turbs and I have got a lot of space to cut on the end-tanks. I remarked where I need to make the next cut and left it like that - time was up!!
Hopefully next week I will get the opportunity to finish the FMIC and then attack the front spoiler. If I can have it ready for paint by the next week I wil be happy. Of course the reinforcing of the mounting pionts need to be done but that is an easy job! Other than that the air inlet (3" hole on the lower passenger side needs to be shaved a bit to get the silcone hose on, but other than that, no more needs to be done to the front spoiler to finish it.
More next week (I hope, lots of work happening on clients customs, and our first container from the US arrived this week - yay!!
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Cheers,
Tricky.
P.S. Just a side note, I found out that the pattern maker I used to to do the front spoiler, Royce Kurchner, died in a car accident about 3 months ago. He leaves behind a wife and young baby girl. Royce, RIP buddy!
, it's been a while .
