My Black Bitza

[Scott]

Last week, I started removing the interior. I figured it would make installing an extra pedal easier. As it turns out, removing the interiov is extremely easy.





On the weekend, I decided I should pull all the carpets out too, so now I have a very bare interior.  The reasoning behind this was 1) to help remove some of the extra wiring in my car and 2) to fix my floor where it's broken.

Whoever installed the 80's front end and dash into my car, also installed the wiring harness fro the donor car.  The problem is that they left the original wiring harness in the car as well. :hammer: I was always wondering why I had so many plugs that didn't connect to anything :)

Also at some stage (possibly when the car was shipped over) both the footwells have been pushed up.  The joints between the panels have separated, and some of the panels are cracked so there will be some fibreglassing and bonding in the future.

After marking all the wires I need to keep, I have removed a decent amount of spares, but the ones that run over the steering column are a problem.  So tonights job will be to remove the steering column.  Apparently not a hard task.  

While everything is apart, if anyone wants/needs pics of anything behind the dash, let me know.  (the wiper thread made me thing of this)

[Scott]

It's been a while and I haven't got as much done on the vette as I'd like to have.  I was interupted by sickness, marriage, setting up a house and importing and complying a mustang.  Finally I  have had some quality time with the vette.  

A while back I stripped the whole interior.  I cleaned the surface rust off what I could see of the birdcage and gave it all aa nice coat of satin black.


I have also been stripping all the body deadening crud out of the interior.  Fun job.  I usually use a wire brush in the angle grinder, but I thought I'd try one of those strip-it discs that are like a tough scourer.  They work well, but wear down really quick and are rather expensive.  One disk did about 80% of the metal panel behind the seats. I bought a brass wire brush to finish it up. Not as effective, but lasts much longer.

Once again a nice coat of satin black to keep the corrosion away.


Then set out with the inch wide paint scraper getting all the crud off the floor.  Since it's glass, I have to do it by hand.  The plan is to get most of it with the scraper, then clean up the remainder with a plastic scourer and some thinners.



That icecream bucket filled up real quick and I'm barely started.


Keeps me off the couch anyway

[Scott]

Long time, no update.  I've been busy, but have managed some time to scrape more crud off my car.

After much cleaning time, it became glueing time.  I bought a 2 part epoxy glue and set about glueing the seams in the floor back together.  They had popped, I assume when the forklift gave it a nudge at some stage during shipping.  I'll have to do some glass patches where the fibreglass has been broken, but that will be at a later date.


All snotted up.


My elaborate wood prop arrangement holding everything in place.



I also started cleaning up the floot on the other side.

I had to do this anyway, but it's not a fun job, so it gets put off.

Here you can see a few cracks in teh glass panel as well as a nother popped seam.  Once it's all clean (inside and outside) I can glue this side up.

[Scott]

I moved house back in April.  Ever since then, the vette has still been in my fathers shed and I haven't had a chance to touch the thing.  I've been waiting until I got teh garage floor done before I moved it over, as once the car was in there it'd be hard to move the car and leave it outside for a week or so while the floor was done.

Finally over the last week or so, stuff has been happening.  I had a mate of mine who does concrete grinding and polishing come around and sort the floor out for me.  It's an epoxy floor with a metallic pearlescence additive.  It's not finished yet as it needs a final coat of polyurethane stuff over the top to protect the colour coat.

I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with how it came up.  The only problem is that now I'll have to put a lot more effort into the rest of the shed now and paint the walls and shelves when they go up.

Plus now I'll finally be able to bring the vette.






























I'm really excited about how it came out.

[craigh]

Wow thats an amazing floor Scott.

Would almost be worried your cars are going to sink when you drive on it :-)

Craig

[69 DIRTY RAT]

WOW what a floor!!! Now I want one!

[Scott]

Just had a chat to my mate, and he's keen to pump out a few of these floors at $80/sqm +GST. The floor is useable after a week or so but the top protective coat takes around 2 months to get to full strength. He's working on a way to speed that up a little. This price is if you can wait until he can fit it in as a side job. He's on the Gold coast, but will cover Brissy as well.

I've had the mustang and the defender parked in there since a week after the floor was done and with no issues.  Still haven't organised to get the vette moved over yet :tear:

Here are some pics of the final product, complete with cars and dust.

[69 DIRTY RAT]

I wish he was around a few years back when I had my garage built, now i got way to much crap in there to move it all!

[Scott]

After a lot of things happening, including becoming a father, I've finally managed to spend some time on this thing.  First step was hiring a trailer and relocating it from my fathers shed to my shed.  Luckily I have a heavy duty tow vehicle.


Now the vette is in it's new home with it's buddy, and I can just pop out and work on it whenever.


I've been cleaning the crud from the inside of the car in preparation for fixing the popped seam and cracked glass panels.  I also decided that the interior wasn't stripped enough, so I removed what was left of the heater/aircon system which ended in me lying in a pool of coolant on the floor of the shed.  Great way to spend a night.

In the end I now have the interior completely dismantled.  The trans tunnel has been badly repaired at some stage, so I'll probably do something about that too, prior to installing my shiny new TKO, and then re-installing the interior.  I also have a big box of dynamat that will be stuck to everything at some stage.

I'll also have to block up all the spare holes in the firewall.  Vettes are notorious for getting hot in the footwell.  Everyone claims it's because the exhaust runs so close, but the main cause is hot air running straight in from the engine bay.





The aircon set-up doesn't look too bad, but I think I'll replace the heater core while it's all apart.

[sirfixalot]

In the last pic make sure a good seal is achieved between the 2 heater pipes & the internal duct. The factory put a small strip of foam there which will have long gone this is main cause of heat coming into car. The heat comes in from void in engine bay where pipes enter into car then leaks into AC duct warming the cool air. Also hot wire fan & check for leaks around AC box in engine bay side, seal with butyl mastic

[Scott]

Suprisingly enough, the strip of foam is still there. I'll make sure I reseal that when it all goes back in. It appears that the sound deadening stuff was supposed to seal the housing to the firewall from the factory.

I'm not sure what I'll do to seal it up when I put it back together, but thanks for the tip about the heat entering in through the air-con box.  I want to keep as much heat out as I can.

[Scott]

I've managed to get a bit done on this lately.
A few months ago I tried to align the bellhousing so that it was within the specs Tremec give.



The dowels didn't line up with the holes in the bellhousing by a little, so I had to give it a little persuasion with the rubber mallet. I then had to use offset dowels to centre it.





It was different every time, possible since the bellhousing would deform a little to fit the dowels.  After climbing under the car 30+ times in one night to check the dial gauge, then spin the engine over a little, inbetween pulling the bellhousing, swapping ans spinning the dowels, I had enough and made a new purchase.





I was able to use the engine lift to help build the car lift.  I got most of it up myself, which is no mean feat considering the weight of the parts and not wanting to stratch the floor.


Much easier working under it now.


With the car up high, I sorted the bellhousing alignment pretty quick, using one factory dowel and one 0.014' offset dowel.  IT also made it heaps easier to sort out all the mounts for the trans x-member, which were a little out of place from a forklift bending the cross member during shipping...





It also made it way easier to finish the fibreglass work required to patch up the floor, which had also been damaged by a forklift prong.  There was also the trans tunnel patch that consisted of poorly mixed kitty hair and cardboard...

[Scott]

After a lot of sanding, grinding, dust and cleaning, I was able to spray the interior just to make it one colour and tidy it up a little.  It also meant all the random steel panels and the birdcage were coated.











Once it all dries, I'll start bolting bits back in I guess.

[Scott]

Still slowly chipping away at it.  I figured I needed to put the aircon box back in first.  Only issue was it looked like it had been partially buried in a bog hole for a while.  There was a definite scum line on the inside.



So I pulled it apart to clean it up.



This pic shows the high tide mark fairly well.



The rubber seal that keeps the hot air out when you don't want it was also borked.  Of course these aren't available for purchase.



A bit of quality time with the spinning wire brushes on the bench grinder and drill and it was looking OK.  I bought some adhesive backed foam to 'create' a new seal.



The new foam seal turned out pretty good in the end.  It should keep most the hot air in it's place.  I'll probably add a tap to the heater line so I can switch it off for 9 months of the year.





Next was the task of adding an extra pedal in to the left of the brake.  That one was easier than I thought it would be.  Undo a clip, slip out the main pin, slip in the new pin, which haw a clutch pedal welded to it and I also got a new brake pedal as part of the kit.  Cleaned every thing up with the wire brush and doused it in satin black.  Done.



After bolting the aircon back into place, I started with the sound deadening.  I'd hears installing dynamat was time consuming.  It's true.  The footwells in a vette are like an abstract art piece, with angles everywhere.  Plenty of cutting, bending, heating, shaping etc to get each bit in.  So far after more than a week of lazy attempts, I have done one footwell.  The first sheet I installed simply did not stick.  I was wondering if the dynamat had gone off or something as it's been sitting on the shelf for a few years, but it turns out I just needed to add a liberal dose of heat to make the action happen.







It looks like the dynamat will keep me busy for a while longer.

[Scott]

I have decided I need to get the gearbox back in this thing soon, so I can use the hoist for oil changes and other useful things, rather than just 'car goes up, car goes down'.

Easy bits first.  I threw the clutch on and bolted the new gearbox mount to the cross member.




I bought some hydraulic oil and topped up the trans hoist I bought cheap on gumtree, then manhandled the box up.  Then threw on the hydraulic throwout bearing, and the stud that locates it.



Bolted the bellhousing onto the block to do some measuring.


According to the instructions for the hydraulic throwout bearing, I need 150-200 thou clearance between the bearing face and the clutch fingers. It also stated that chev bellhousings are shallow, so you may not have that much.  Sure enough I measure it all up and I have around 20 thou clearance.

Apparently It's OK to space the bellhousing out a little from the block using washers.... No thanks.  Or I can buy a 250 thou spacer from the supplier and then shim the throwout bearing up to the correct clearance.  It's from a US company, so wouldn't be a fast turnaround time, of cheap.  I figured I'd have to make my own up instead. 

Of course no decent aluminium place is open on a saturday arvo, so I went to masters/bunnings for a look.  Sure enough, masters sell sheets of 3mm plate aluminium. 
3mm is around 120 thou, which gets me pretty close.  The instructions say 100 thou is still OK, so 140 though should be fine.  Plus there's more spiggot engagement that if I used a thicker spacer, which I like the idea of.

I've gotten as far as marking the plate up with a scribe and hopefully I get some time tonight to cut something out.

[wabco40]

According to the instructions for the hydraulic throwout bearing, I need 150-200 thou clearance between the bearing face and the clutch fingers. It also stated that chev bellhousings are shallow, so you may not have that much.  Sure enough I measure it all up and I have around 20 thou clearance.

Apparently It's OK to space the bellhousing out a little from the block using washers.... No thanks.  Or I can buy a 250 thou spacer from the supplier and then shim the throwout bearing up to the correct clearance.  It's from a US company, so wouldn't be a fast turnaround time, of cheap.  I figured I'd have to make my own up instead. 

Of course no decent aluminium place is open on a saturday arvo, so I went to masters/bunnings for a look.  Sure enough, masters sell sheets of 3mm plate aluminium. 
3mm is around 120 thou, which gets me pretty close.  The instructions say 100 thou is still OK, so 140 though should be fine.  Plus there's more spiggot engagement that if I used a thicker spacer, which I like the idea of.

I've gotten as far as marking the plate up with a scribe and hopefully I get some time tonight to cut something out.

Hi Scott,

The clearance you need is not between the bearing face and clutch fingers. The bearing on a Concentric Slave Cylinder runs on the pressure plate fingers and is designed to be compressed by more then 0.5" when at rest.
Its the compressed clearance of the CSC that you need to measure, to make sure it does not bottom out.

Measure from the clutch fingers to the gearbox mounting face on the bellhousing. Then measure from the front of the gearbox case the surface of the fully collapsed bearing.
Subtract the first measurement from the second to give you how much clearance or cushion you have. Anywhere between 1/8" (0.125") to 3/8" (0.375") is ok. Anywhere in this range is ok and there is no advantage/disadvantage being in the upper or lower end of the range.

If the clearance is more then 3/8" then a CSC spacer will need to go between the bearing and gearbox to move the CSC closer to the engine.
If its less the 1/8" then you will need a bellhousing to gearbox spacer to move the gearbox and CSC further away from the engine/bellhouing.

[Scott]

Yep, that's exactly what I have measured.
Clutch fingers to outside bellhousing face was 64.7mm
Gearbox mounting face to collapsed bearing face was 64.2mm.
Difference is 0.5mm, or 20 thou clearance when compressed.
As the clutch wears, the fingers will stick out more.  I figure the clearance is to allow for that, so that the bearing isn't fully collapsed and under load when the clutch is towards the end of it's life.

I guess I was assuming the CSC returns to fully compressed once you take your foot off the pedal, hence referring to the gap as the clearance between the two.  Either way, a 3mm spacer between the gearbox and engine will sort it out.

[wabco40]

Hi Scott,
I read your post as clearance between the clutch fingers and bearing face and spacing the bellhousing away from the block, where its cushion clearance and spacing the gearbox away from the bellhousing. Anyway glad you have got it sorted

I am going to be setting up my clutch and CSC this weekend. Looking at your post it looks like I might be in for a 1/8" gearbox to bellhousing spacer as well

[Scott]

I just re-read my instructions and they refer to the clearance as an air-gap between the bearing and fingers.  Sounds like your instructions explain it differently.  I was going to make a spacer for between the bellhousing and engine, but between the bell and gearbox is probably a better idea. I skimmed over reading that part obviously    I'll have a look at the box when I get home.

Hopefully your clutch package is slightly shorter than mine and it all works out, or you only need to throw a shim under the CSC.

IMPORTANT for GM Customers: Your GM bell housing is very shallow. Due to the variances in flywheel and clutch stack-up height you may find that you do not have enough room for the release bearing. If you cannot achieve a minimum of .080” of air gap between the bearing at rest and the clutch fingers, use a small washer or spacer at each of the bolts between the bell housing and the transmission to move the transmission back as much as .200”. A turnkey .250” CNC machined aluminum spacer is available for $49 if you prefer.
NOTE: Do not pry pull the HRB apart when removing for shimming. Your HRB is sealed and prefilled with fluid. Use a small prybar to gently push the assembly away from the front of the gearbox if needed.
If this is not sufficient American Powertrain stocks several low profile clutch pressure plates that will reduce stack-up height on the clutch by as much as ½”. This should be considered as a final option and is not generally necessary.

[Scott]

On a side note, I also considered removing the bearing retainer from the front of the box to see if I could machine the front face down slightly.  I could have gained around 40 thou quite easily doing that by the look of it, but I doubt I would have gotten all I needed.