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The "what's left of my build thread!"

Ron

The bracket with the tubing is the mount for the switch. The arm is angled to get the switch back under the dash. This bracket design just happened to work in my car. A similar bracket probably wouldn't work everwhere, but the tubing mount for the switch would be the same.

The switch mounts to the tube with the worm gear clamp it comes with, just like when it's on the column. This gives some adjustablility to the installation.

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Hope this extra info helps, guys.

Mike
 
on one T i worked on during the billit craze, the owner wanted the dash as uncluttered as possible so i mounted the light switch, ignition and two toggles like you did only i broke a 1-1/2", 90 on the bottom. that put everything back under the dash. car was cool till he painted it titty pink and turq.

Ron
 
Youngster said:
car was cool till he painted it titty pink and turq.

Ron

Yuuukk!:eek: Fads come and go. Glad the "easter egg" fad is mostly gone!:lol: Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Mike
 
your not old fashioned Mike, you just know style and function. keep posting my friend!!

ron
 
Thanks Ron.

The windshield frame needed some attention too. After the slot was cut for the glass, the bottom section of tubing lost most of it's torsional stiffness. It twisted pretty bad and I knew that wasn't going to work. Without any support, the glass would eventually crack(probably sooner than later). I drilled the ends and welded a piece of 1/2" cold roll on the inside length of the frame. Problem solved! It's plenty stiff now. A local glass shop knocked out a windshield for me.

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There is a coating place about 2 hours from my house that does a ceramic coating similar to Jethot's Sterling. Looks a lot like nickel or polished aluminum to me. I haven't seen too many cars that use this finish extensively instead of chrome, but the coating place said they are doing a lot of it strictly for decoration. I decided to try it on a few pieces to brighten things up a little and add a some contrast. The parts turned out great. I had most of the suspension either powder coated or ceramic coated. The rear nerf ,windshield frame and intake manifold got ceramic.

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You can see in the last pic that I also drilled the axle. I guess sawed would be a better description since I used a 7/8" hole saw to do the job.

Here's a little teaser on the wheels.

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The parts all look awsome i really like the backing plates.something i would normally try to hide but not when they look like that.
also really like the turnsignal mount
thanks for the ideas
 
Thanks guys!

The engine is pretty much together now. When the chassis is complete, I plan to run the engine before bolting on the body to check for leaks or other problems. The brakes will be bled and functional, too.

The specs on the motor wound up a little different than I had originally planned. I never did come up with a usable pair of Vortec heads. Actually, I gave up because I got tired of driving 40 miles to the wrecking yard and then paying the machine shop to check them for cracks. I already had a set of "camel hump" heads that had a good bit of work on them. They have 7/16" screw in studs, big valve springs, one piece stainless valves(2.02 and 1.6) and the guides have been cut for better seals. In addition, they have had some port and bowl work done. These are the older style with no accessory holes, but that doesn't matter because I don't need them. They don't have the "fast burn" combustion chamber of the Vortecs, but they should do OK on this motor. If this was 1970, they would be a killer set of heads though!

The bottom end is stock Vortec. It's interesting that GM used a lot of "hot rod" tech in these late model small blocks. I had heard that the rotating assemblies are supposed to be lighter due to the "forged powdered metal" rods as well as lighter pistons. Out of curiosity, I wieghed an old style piston/rod assembly and one from the Vortec. The old stuff was 2.7 ounces heavier than the new. I was told the crank is about the same weight as an old style 305 unit. The rings are thinner than the old small blocks, too, which should reduce friction loses. It even has a small windage tray. I also went with a 6" light weight balancer instead of the 8" stock unit to eleminate clearance issues with the front crossmember. The lighter balancer should allow it to rev quicker, too. Since the stock Vortec heads and the ones I'm using both have 64cc chambers the CR should be unchanged at around 9.2 to 1. That's the only downside since I may have to run premium gas.

The cam is a GM "Ramjet 350" unit from their 350 HP EFI crate motor. It's a pretty tame cam by hot rod standards with 196/206 @ .050 duration, but it has decent lift at .450 intake and .487 exhaust with 1.6 rockers. Those duration figures are close to the old 300 HP 327 cam, but with it's much greater lift it should be a little more aggressive than the old 327 cam. It also has a tighter lobe seperation at 109 degrees. I went with 1.6 rockers because that is what GM uses in the Ramjet. I doubt I'll be getting 350 HP out of this engine with the old style heads, but my original goal was 300 and I'm pretty sure I'll be over that with room to spare. Low end and mid-range torque should be great and this cam should work well with the OD trans. Since my engine speed at 60 MPH should be in the 1800 RPM range, I'm expecting gas mileage to be excellent.

The intake setup is an Edelbrock 3X2 with Rochester 2 barrels. The carbs were redone by Hot Rod Carburetion with their linkage and fuel line. I modified the manifold for a semi-hidden PCV setup. I had a similar rig on my 46, but had to abandon it because it sucked oil. That old setup didn't have an oil baffel underneath. The new one does so it should work OK(I hope). The old style oil fill on the intake has a breather cap, but that may not be enough vent, if it's not I can add Moon style breathers to the valve covers. The Stellings and Helling(copies)"helmet" type air filters look good, but I may have to change them out as they appear to be pretty restrictive. The 4" filters are restrictive by themselves and the helmet cover fits very close to the filter element, probably choking it off even more. I may go with some finned aluminun open filters from Obrien Truckers or Vintage Speed.

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The ignition is MSD and I plan to trigger the box with a point type distributor. The 3X2 requires a small base distributor and I picked up an Accel Blueprint unit on Ebay, but I had to change the gear to a "melonized"(that's actually what they call it!) gear from GM. That's just a hardened steel gear that's compatible with the steel roller cams used by GM. By using points to fire the MSD unit, I have the option of swapping over to regular point ignition if the box fails. All I need is a resistor in the coil circuit and a quick "rewire" of the coil.

The plug wires are still unfinished. I want to run them under the headers, but they may interfere with the steering shaft. I hope not, since I really don't want to go over the top.

I must say that this engine build is a lot different than any other I've done. Since this one will be totaly uncovered, I have taken extra time to assemble and detail it. I can usually knock out an engine in a couple of days, but this time I tinkered around on little details off and on for several days till I was satisfied with the way it looked.

I tried to give the engine an old school look to go with the overall look of the car. I could probably pass it off as a 327 to most folks if I wanted to, but I won't since I don't have any problems with the "belly button 350" thing. :D
 
The frame, rearend and other small frame parts have been sandblasted and painted I did these in PPG single stage urethane. They turned out OK, but I'm not a painter. I may get a pro to paint the body. I still have to paint the trans and gas tank before the frame can be completed.

I need to replace a bearing in the rearend(and maybe install the posi). Hopefully, that'll get done next weekend.

That about catches me up for right now. The frame should go together in the next few weeks.

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Sweet plumbing job on the carbs! Looks sharp all the way around.
 
that;s impressive Mike. we'll all be waiting for your next posting.

Ron
 
I was working on the rearend, but had to stop and finish painting a few parts. Since Mother Nature controls the temperature in my "paint booth", it has been a little too cold to paint. I saw a window in the weather, so I figured I had better take advantage of it.

There were a few more parts left to paint than I had thought, but I think I have them all done now. Maybe I can make some headway on final assembly.

As for the rearend, it turns out that it was a carrier bearing and not a pinion bearing going bad. I went ahead and changed all the bearings since I had bought a Raytec kit that had them all in it. I did go with the posi and also swapped in the 3.42 gears out of the Camaro rearend. I may not like the posi after I start driving it, but I'll never know for sure if I don't try it. I do appreciate all those that gave their opinions on whether to use it or not.

The 3.42's will lower my cruise RPM's a little, but I don't think they'll hurt my performance too bad. With the 3.06 first gear in the 700R4, acceleration should still be plenty quick. Might even help my gas mileage a little.

The swap went pretty good and I only had to change the pinion shim 3 times to get it where I think it needs to be. The pattern looked good so maybe it won't howl like a banshee!:eek:

I did use a solid pinion spacer and shim kit instead of a regular crush sleeve. I really liked how easy it was to use and it's supposed to help keep the rearend together when you're beating on it. I don't know about that, but I'd use it again just for the ease of setup.

I also swapped out the pinion yoke. The old unit had a rubber mounted balancer on it. It was probably on there to dampen some unwanted harmonic vibration in the S-10 driveline. I doubt my 12" driveshaft has anything close to the harmonics of the original driveshaft. Not only that, but that thing weighed right at 10 pounds! The one on the Camaro weighed just a little over 2 pounds. That was an easy way to shed 8 pounds of rotating weight and drop a little unsprung weight to boot. All good in my book! Besides, from a safety standpoint, I have no idea what kind of RPM's that thing was rated for. It has the potential to spin at crankshaft speed(or higher in OD) and if it let go, there would be big hunks of cast iron flying around right under my butt!:eek: Probably not very likely to happen, but you never know.

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The trans was one of the things I had left to paint.

I also changed out the lockup pressure switch on the valve body. It is now wired to lock in 4th gear or I will be able to select lockup in 2nd, 3rd and 4th.

I had a chrome pan for it, but it turned out to be a piece of Chinese junk! :mad:The bolt holes were off just enough to prevent it from going on. I could have slotted them, but I didn't want to take a chance with leaks. I cleaned the old pan up and painted it silver. I also welded in a bung for a temp sensor. I don't know if I'm going to use it, but it'll make a good drain plug if nothing else.

I installed the dip stick too. It's a Lokar unit, but I had to fab a new mount. The original mount was going angle it up toward the headers. The new mount puts it vertical near the firewall.

I hope to get the shifter on next week.

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Thanks guys. I hope the paint on the body turns out as shiny as the transmission did!

Keeper – I didn’t use a kit. 700R4’s already have most of the parts you need to lock the torque converter. Some don’t need any rewiring at all. You just need to wire the plug correctly and it works OK as is.

I think the reason for the kits is that not all 700’s are wired the same. The vendors would rather just sell you a kit of parts that they know work together, instead of trying to figure out every factory combo. You make more money selling kits too!

In my case, it appears that mine was wired to send a signal to the computer when the trans was in 4th gear and the computer handled all the converter lockup functions. If I had just wanted to lockup in 4th only, I could have used the components I had and just rewired the circuit. I thought that having the option of locking up in the other gears might come in handy.

As it was, I had to change the 4th gear switch from a single connection self grounding switch to a 2 connection normally open switch. I robbed the switch from a junk 700R4 I had.

Don’t think that I figured all this out on my own. I wandered around on the net for most of it. This website was a big help.

http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner/techinfo/700R4p1.html

Mine is now wired internally exactly as the diagram on that page.

As for external wiring, you need a fused 12 volt source and a means of breaking the circuit (unlocking the converter) when you hit the brakes. Some say this isn’t necessary, but you run the risk of stalling the engine or damaging the trans or converter without it. You can use a SPDT automotive relay in your brake circuit for this. That’s how I’m going to wire mine. This way the converter circuit shares the same fuse as the brake lights and you don’t need to add another. GM did it this way (shared circuits) back in the 80’s when the 700 and 200R4 first came out. A separate switch on the brake pedal works too.

I haven’t had much luck with the vacuum switches. The ones I’ve tried in other projects didn’t have the right settings for the engines I was using. They would “hunt” when under light load such as going up small hills, causing the converter to lock and unlock rapidly. I have read that some GM switches are adjustable, but I haven’t located one. That would cure the problem. I probably won’t use one on my car.
 
I use a 700r4 in my tub and I used a stop light switch from a 75 GM with cruise. The converter only locks in OD if the manual switch on the dash is on. Step on the brakes at 50 or more and the stop light, cruise switch turns on the brake lights and turns of the lock up. Works fine.
 
Now it time to talk about a little technical problem I created for myself.

Warning: This is very long post!!!(for me at least)

Anytime you make changes to a build after you're well along in the construction, you're subject to create problems and that's just what happened here. I do want to add that I'm not an engineer and this is just a long story about what I did to my car. I'm not going to tell you this is what you should do (only you can decide that).

I started this build with GM metric disc brakes on the front and S-10 drum brakes on the rear. Since these components were designed to work together by GM, they would have been a pretty good setup. The problem cropped up when I swapped the repro 39 Lincoln drum brakes on the front.

Now I had huge relatively low pressure 12" brakes designed to stop 2+ tons of Lincoln (with no booster) on the front and 9 1/2" brakes on the rear designed to work in a high pressure boosted disc brake system. The front wheel cylinders were 1 1/8" bore, the rears were 3/4" bore and the master cylinder was 1" bore. Throw in a pretty good difference in rubber size and it was obvious that I had a bad mismatch. I figured that with the boosted master cylinder and self-energizing drums front and rear, the brakes were going to be overly sensitive and the fronts were going to be locked up before the rears ever got enough line pressure to do anything meaningful.

My first thought was to swap to bigger drums on the rear. That would have easily solved the brake mismatch issue, but would have added a lot of unsprung weight to an already heavy rearend. T's don't have a good sprung/unsprung weight ratio anyhow and I didn't want to make it worse by adding more weight. Besides, the S-10 drums and other parts I had were in perfect shape. All I really needed were new wheel cylinders. So, I looked at other options.

I decided to do a little research on drum brake systems from back when they were pretty much the only game in town to see how they were setup from the factory. The NAPA website lists the bore sizes of brake parts, so I spent some time checking out brake specs for several cars and trucks from the 50's and 60's. I did notice a pattern (sort of) in the sizes of parts. I say "sort of" because there are always exceptions. The front wheel cylinders and master cylinders were generally the same or nearly the same bore. Manual brakes had slightly larger wheel cylinders on the front, while power brakes got pretty much the same size as the master. The rear cylinders were about 20% smaller (by area) on trucks and 10-15% smaller on cars.

Using my research as a guide, I looked for a better combination of parts. Since my master cylinder is 1" bore and has a booster, I looked for some 1" bore wheel cylinders for the front. A late 60's Buick 225 has 12" brakes (turns out that didn't really matter) and 1" wheel cylinders on the rear that matched the castings and port locations of the Lincoln brakes I was using. They were a direct bolt-in replacement and brought me in line with my research.

The rear wasn't quite as easy, though. The rear cylinders are of a much later design than the fronts and had a unique setup. The pistons and the extensions that push on the shoes are one piece. The only wheel cylinders I could find that were larger and had those pistons were from a 90's model Astro van. They were 7/8" bore. That's still almost 30% smaller than the fronts. It was time to go to plan B.

I found that an early 80's Caprice had 15/16" bores, the same port layout and bolt spacing, but of course the pistons were wrong and the machined locating boss was 1/8" too big. Hey, that's no problem since I have a lathe and I'm not afraid to use it!

I fabbed up some new steel pistons with the correct shape and size. I also turned the wheel cylinder boss down and pushed the shoulder back to get the center line of the bore back where it needed to be.

These new cylinders are 19% smaller than the fronts and that's a lot closer to my research. Not as good as I had hoped, but in the ballpark. The next size up would be 1", but I don't want to worry about locking up the rear wheels first on slick roads (or dry roads for that matter).

I could have left the 1 1/8" cylinders in the front and went with 1" cylinders in the rear (modified 85 Chevy truck), but I would have had to change the master cylinder to a 1 1/8" unit. That would have given me a 14% difference, but the master cylinder costs more than the wheel cylinders.

I'm going to leave it as it is for now and see how it works. I can always make changes later. Since the new rear cylinders have an area that is 36% larger than the old units, there's no doubt that these mods will improve the effectiveness of the rear brakes. The smaller front cylinders should make the front brakes less sensitive. The only problem will be if I created a premature lockup problem in the rear (that won't be good!). I'm not overly concerned about that because the difference in drum and tire sizes still has the rear brakes at a disadvantage. Time and testing will tell, but I'm moving on to other parts of this project for now.

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Top cylinder is the stock Caprice unit, bottom is the stock S-10 and the middle one is my new hybrid.

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Just a little action shot of the lathe work.:)
 
Nice thread! I think an adjustable brake proportioning valve will also help you if you find the bias between the front and back still needs a little tweaking. You can pick them up on ebay for about 20 bucks, so definitely worth a try.

David
 

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