2slo95fiveOhs 1994 GT rebuild...UPDATE 5-2! Forged shortblock, fuel upgrades!

2slo95fiveoh · Apr 5, 2012

the wiring for the gauges is about 90% done. I just have a few things to button up and it should be ready to go. As it sits (doesn't look like much):

My first mock up for the gauge plate. I am still deciding on how I want the plate to be secured in the bezel:

I put a little more time/effort into polishing the intake manifold. This is only 320 grit in the center section, but it is just about free of any major sanding lines, so soon I will begin the quicker process of moving up in sanding grits..

Also when I was working on the gauges wiring, I noticed the plug for the headlight knob looked like one of the wiring locations got pretty hot and melted and cracked the plastic around that wiring location.Also just about all of the wires are pretty loose in their respective locations, so now I am on the hunt for a pigtail for the headlight switch. Hopefully painless has it, if not I will have to settle for one out of a wrecked car..

2slo95fiveoh · Apr 14, 2012

UPDATE
I was pleasantly suprised when the local advanced auto parts had a headlight pigtail in stock. So I went to work soldering that in.
The old.. I hear it's a common problem but I have never heard why..

The new pigtail soldered, heat shrinked, and electrical taped into the dash harness:

Swapped in some bright white LEDs while the cluster was out:

I finally got all the wiring setup on the dash. I have a little bit of mock up left with the gauge bezel and HVAC controls, but here's the mock up:

I think it turned out pretty good. From left to right: (wideband, boost, fuel pressure, oil press, water temp)
I ran all the sending units to one location, then electrical taped them and wrapped them in wire loom. That loom will then exit though the middle of the firewall and to their respective locations.
The cobalt gauges should go pretty well with the cars blue exterior and black interior.. I may have to figure out how to power the dash when it's out of the car just so I can see everything all lit up.

In other news I spoke with the painter and he said that the RF fender and pass door have been painted at least 3 times, so there is a lot more body work to get those panels straight and free of as much filler as possible. I told him I wouldn't start to get impatient until after I am done with finals this semester (mid may) but I won't rush someone responsible for what my car looks like for a very long time...

cantbuytime · Apr 17, 2012

Now this is a build thread. Awesome work so far. Glad to see u decided to weld the 1/4 up..

Thanks to your pics I now know how to take miy sails apart to prep for paint..

2slo95fiveoh · Apr 22, 2012

thanks. I was starting to wonder if anyone else was reading it but me, but I figured it could be a point of reference for someone with their own car (since I took mine 90% apart)...
Well the paint job is delayed another week at least, but hopefully the car is in primer within the next week so I can check it out and post some pictures.. I need to start gathering up some of the little pieces (aftermarket CD player, supercharger inlet pipe, gaskets etc). The car has been gone at paint for 6 weeks now, originally quoted 3-4.. since it wasn't in my garage anymore, I started forgetting about it a little bit, but a buddy of mine showed me a 4 year old video of me doing a burnout in his 94 cobra, and thats all it took for me to get the impatient itch to drive my car again. Only this completion will be a highly upgraded version of my old car, so I will be getting used to this for some time.
Hopefully more updates and pictures coming soon.

2slo95fiveoh · Apr 30, 2012

Just a small update as of now. I trimmed the gauge plate a little more. I like this fitment a lot more:

viewed from the rear.. I am still in the design phase of securing the gauge plate. I think I will make another plate very similar, except with the gauge holes wider than the external version. Then drill holes in both plates, so essentially the screws will be pulling the plate in front of the bezel and the plate behind the bezel together, sandwiching the bezel between them.. But we will see.

2slo95fiveoh · May 18, 2012

progress (finally)...
school is done for the semester, so that same day I did a little work on tearing down the engine...

valve covers off... (trickflow rockers sure are purtty...)

and down to the shortblock (plus an oil pan)

The old cam is long gone, so it is fairly bare (pistons, rods, crank and block remain).. Today I may get the chance to take the oil pan off, start cleaning everything up very thoroughly, get out some block cleaning brushes for the oil/coolant passages, and get this thing looking nice again. Then probably some engine enamel black for the block color. I'm keeping things fairly simple with the colors of of the engine components (black, charcoal gray, polished, or plain clean aluminum)... updates soon to come (much more often than before.. haha).

2slo95fiveoh · May 27, 2012

Well I got some more work done.. Mostly just cleaning and starting the reassembly of the engine...
The block all stripped down (crank, pistons, and rods only remain)

Masked off and sprayed with semi-gloss black high temp engine paint:

After it dried, new melling oil pump and new oil pump driveshaft installed:

2slo95fiveoh · May 27, 2012

Installed my new Anderson Motorsports B31 blower grind cam and reused the timing chain I replaced 2 years ago.
Other than having to grind down a small amount of the camshaft dowel pin, everything went back together pretty smooth thusfar:

I chose to clean, prep, then repaint the engine oil pan the same gunmetal color I am going with for the accessory brackets, and the valve covers. So far I like the color..
A comparison of the gunmetal color (just one coat so far), vs the silver powdercoat the trickflow valve covers came with...

Thats about all I got accomplished today. i plan on cleaning up the timing cover and water pump, putting some new gaskets on both, and then move onto installing the head studs..
I talked to the painter earlier last week, he expects the car to be done later this week, but I will have to see... After all this time, if it isn't as good looking as I picture.. I can't even imagine the level of furious I will be.
More updates to come within the next few days.

2slo95fiveoh · Jun 2, 2012

UPDATE!!
A little more work to the engine... It's starting to come together now.
Headstuds installed, heads on, pushrods installed, valve lash set, valve covers on (I'm really liking the color)

Just a quick mock up with the intake manifold (I still have a LOT of polishing left on it...)

2slo95fiveoh · Jun 2, 2012

MAJOR PROGRESS UPDATE!!

I'm excited to be able to say.... the car FINALLY has some paint on it... it's been 13 weeks, but I can't complain about how it looks so far...

The roof, already wet sanded and buffed.. Its a little dusty, but it felt as smooth as glass, and I looked for a solid 5-10 minutes and I couldn't find an imperfection yet... There will of course be a more thorough final inspection though:

The passenger side, this has not been wetsanded or buffed yet, but other than a slight and I emphasize slight bit of orange peel (which I'm sure will polish out), it looks really good too... I'm anxious at this point!

The painter estimated another week or so (I plan on 3 weeks the rate he is going).. but so far all I have seen is great work, so the timeline will have to not be such a big issue with me... More progress coming soon!

whty98 · Jun 2, 2012

The car is looking great Matt!

2slo95fiveoh · Jun 7, 2012

^ Thanks man

So a little progress (with no pictures YET to report, but I ordered quite a bit of stuff today:
-Pair of Corbeau GTS 2 seats (black cloth)
-Pair of seat tracks
-New carpet (black of course)
-Running horse logo'd black floor mats
-Door Weatherstripping (both door-to-body and door rail seal)
-Short antenna (saw it at the last second on sale for $17 so I bought one...)
-Wazee pullies:
(2) tensioner pullies (1 for regular tensioner, other for vortech tensioner)
(1) idler pulley (for regular belt)
(1) p/s pump pulley (obviously for regular belt)

I was hesitating on all of these parts for a long time now, but just said "now is as good a time as ever" so I placed the order for everything. According to Late Model Resto the floormats, weatherstripping, and antenna should be here roughly next tuesday, the seats and seat tracks late next week, and I just placed the order from Wazee for all the pullies, so I havent recieved the tracking info/confirmation from them, but I would assume middle of next week considering their website said they have all the pullies in stock currently.. I'm excited to get this engine assembled a little more with these new pullies. I think the chrome/polished aluminum will contrast nicely with the charcoal of the valve covers/accessory brackets/oil pan.. Questions/Comments welcome.

2slo95fiveoh · Jun 12, 2012

UPDATE:
some of my ordered parts came in (unfortunately the more boring of the bunch, but important nonetheless..
New black carpet, floormats, door-to-body seals and roof rail seals, door-to-window rails and a shorty antenna:

I found a pair of used Mickey Thompson ET streets on craigslist.. 275/40/17. The guy was asking $150 for the pair, when I went to look at them one of the tires has a small cut in the shoulder of the tire (that he "didn't notice") that I'm not sure if I can repair, so I paid $60 for the pair.. If the one is trashed, oh well I will look for another used one or sell the one good one.. I plan on putting these on the set of 17s I have as spares for track use, as the 18" chrome saleens will be the primary wheels on the car.

-My Corbeau seats should be getting drop shipped sometime this week, but since they are coming directly from corbeau, LRS couldn't give me a tracking number on them, so I will have to wait and see.
-The Wazee pullies shipped out late last night, but no tracking number on those either, so I estimate within the next few days, which will be nice so I can assemble the rest of my engine.
-I talked to the painter, and he expects to have the body done by late this week, so I will more than likely pick the body up either sunday or tuesday, and begin the reassembly process while he finishes up on the plastic pieces/hood/trunk/bumpers... After having an empty garage for 3 months, it will sure be nice to have something in there that I can work on. I will probably start with the interior and wiring, then suspension, then drivetrain, then assembling the body.
Questions/comments welcome.

2slo95fiveoh · Jun 18, 2012

UPDATE!

My bigger, more exciting order of parts finally came in..

I love it when you know whats in the box, before you open it:

Assembled with seat tracks (The plastic bags went on over them right after this pic was taken):

And all the Wazee pullies.. I got the tensioner, idler and p/s pulley for the main drive belt, and an extra pulley for the supercharger tensioner pulley... Hopefully I will be assembling the front of the engine within the next few days:

I am supposed to pick the body up from paint tomorrow evening... Starting to get excited... Then I can finally remove some of the clutter in my storage unit and garage by beginning the assembly of the car (first with interior, which is taking up a lot of room).. Will post pictures of the car if all goes as planned..

Dalamar · Jun 18, 2012

Nice progress man!!!

BruhBrahBrad · Jun 18, 2012

Just read through this whole thread, and im impressed....great work.

TaborRacing9 · Jun 18, 2012

this is a badass project car... kudos bro

2slo95fiveoh · Jun 21, 2012

thanks fellas. Nice to know someone other than myself reads this thread. haha

2slo95fiveoh · Jun 21, 2012

Super sweet update!

Got the car back from paint. overall I am pretty happy with how the body turned out. There are a few very minor imperfections, all smaller than a quarter, and all very low on the body panels, but the painter said once it's all put back together, he would fix them for me all at once. So, onto the pics (I apologize, they're all with my phone and don't do the car justice):

Loaded up:

Reflection in the door:

Underhood. (The kmember/rack look white from all the paint/sanding dust, but they'll be getting replaced so I'm not too worried about it)

Passenger side of underhood with phones flash on (shows off the purty paint):

Drivers side:

I will be working on the car more today, hopefully getting some good progress on the fatmat sound deadener, possibly the dash back in. I may roll it outside and take a picture of the paint in the bright sunlight, I always thought that's when sonic blue looks the best. Questions/comments welcome..