71 'Cuda restoration

[GCragtop]

A few measures more, from valve cover. 50mm at front, 60mm rear.

[Tunis]

@GCragtop Thank you!  That is just what I needed to know! I made some spacers 35 mm high as that was the difference between these FAST throttle bodies and the Edelbrock carbs. Tacked them in place and now I have 180 mm at the front and 190 mm at the rear.



I was afraid I needed to level it out, but it seems to be roughly 10 mm in difference from front to rear. Excellent! Now I only need to modify the front of the base plate to clear the fuel fittings.. (yes, I made a mistake when measuring where the base plate hit the fuel rails and made two unnecessary cuts).

Again, thank you so much!

[76orangewagon]

Even though I'm going the stock route on my 71 Cuda, I really enjoy and appreciate custom work...especially the stuff that once completed no one can tell all the hard work and fabrication that went into it. Nice job !!!

[YellowThumper]

Even though I'm going the stock route on my 71 Cuda, I really enjoy and appreciate custom work...especially the stuff that once completed no one can tell all the hard work and fabrication that went into it. Nice job !!!

Exactly! Deviate from factory and the floodgates open for all the brackets and details necessary. Most of which end up never being noticed.

[GCragtop]

Well done! 

[Tunis]

The updates are few and far in between.. But I haven't been idle, been doing as much as I can, when I can. Component restoration takes a lot of time (and money) 

We had our second child in March and work stopped for a while. I have been sneaking out into the garage every now and then, sometimes only for 5 minutes just to look at the car and feel that, 'hey, it's really not that much left to do'  (yes, I know, it's still an empty shell)

These first pictures are from the restoration of my heater box, still waiting on a new A/C evaporator from YO, so it's not completely rebuilt yet. I don't trust the old one and I would really prefer to not have to take the dash down once it's in the car again. This job was done last year and I had never used or worked with fiberglass before. I must have spent 30+ hours on this thing, but I think in the end it turned out OK.







This is the first picture that I found that shows the damage to the heater box 'box'. The damage was quite severe.







First crack repaired. Drilled a bunch of holes through the box to secure the aluminum sheet I used on the backside.



I can't find anymore photos of the box now. Will take some when I get home from work of the completed box (minus the A/C evaporator and heater core).

Next up is the blower motor. This was done this year. I'm jumping back and forth between the parts and doing a little here and there depending on the estimated time consumption on each part.













Had the cover zinc plated and replaced the wires. Will snap a photo of the completed unit today.



Shaker bubble time. This is an OEM bubble that I bought of eBay years ago.





Repaired some cracks in it, then turned it over to my painter, which I think did an amazing job on it.





more to come...

[Tunis]

I tried to buy some engine mounts with a sandwiched steel structure, still using rubber not polyurethane since I wanted some vibration damping. I never got those, so I decided to modify my standard mounts on the left side. I figured a 3/8" Grade 8 bolt should be strong enough to hold the two plates of the mount together. Two bolts should definitely do it, I hope...



Drilled a 3/8" hole and countersunk it.



Tapped the underside.



The bolt heads have about 1 mm space between the surface of the mount and the bottom of the 'conical hole'. Should allow for +- 1mm of travel. I don't know if this will hold, but it should at least be better than nothing at all.



Ground the bolts flat on the underside and secured them with thread locker.

[RUNCHARGER]

That's what I do on the mounts as well.

[soundcontrol]

@Tunis, what glue did you use for the AC box? I have one in pieces also.

[Tunis]

@soundcontrol I used 3M spray on adhesive. Can get you part number if you want.

[soundcontrol]

@soundcontrol I used 3M spray on adhesive. Can get you part number if you want.

That would be nice! Did it work good on the plastic?
I tried 5 different glues for my door panels, non worked great...

[Tunis]

@soundcontrol Here is the glue I used. It seem to stick to plastic so far. If you have problems you can always try to put some plastic adhesion primer on the surface first. PE and PP plastics are more difficult to get good adhesion to.



Here are a few photos of the finished blower motor.







And the heater box.







more to come...

[Tony 73]

Great work there.
Like your engine mount modification .

[Tunis]

Thank you Tony!

A few months ago I dialed in the scatter shield. This is in mm.



Had some difficulties when removing the pesky dowel pins in the block. Ordered 0.007" offset dowel pins from RobbMc. Got it dialed in to within 0.002" TIR, which is well within spec.

I got the flywheel, clutch and pressure plate installed last night. One thing that I didn't like was that, according to the instructions from McLeod, I should torque the pressure plate bolts to 25 ft lbs, then I should tighten them some more until the fingers start moving towards the flywheel. That should be at roughly 35 ft lbs, according to the instructions. On my pressure plate, the fingers moved before I had 25 ft lbs on the nuts? The fingers are maybe 3/8" below the edge of the pressure plate. Is this a problem? 





I torqued them to 35 ft lbs.

[Tunis]

Long time, no activity...

Finished the modifications to the baseplate.



Test mounted everything



Got the engine and transmission mated and onto my k-frame cart.




Decided early on to use the Borgeson steering. I hope its worth it as it has been nothing but problem coexisting with my TTI headers...
It took several hours before I started banging the headers with a small hammer.. I had to beat them almost to death before clearing the number one tube. 

Not much room left inside the tube.





Obviously I could not live with that. So I cut out the mangled piece and started fabricating a new bend.













Finally painted them with ceramic coating. They turned out great in terms of internal volume. But they look ugly and I'm not 100% sure they will clear the steering box.







More to come soon...