Got a few things done the past couple days. Ordered a distributor and heater core which will be here tomorrow morning, and you know what that means.....I get to pull my dash. Woohoo. But I also have another reason for pulling the dash. Reading thru some other threads I found where someone had cut a hole in the firewall just behind the bellhousing and fed the wiring for the injector harness, trans harness, and sending units through that hole.
In the picture you can see the hole just below the dash vent box. So last night I went ahead and got started getting all the bolts out of the dash, only need to drop the steering column and it'll come out.
I also brought my accessory brackets and wiper cowl trim back to the house for some cleanup and paint. Repainted the cowl with SEM Landau black (forgot to take pics).
Since I already got rid of the smog junk and I'm ditching the AC, I decided to cut the excess mounting portion off the brackets for them. (I have another set of brackets if I ever decide to use the AC again). All together I spent about 3.5 hours on getting them smoothed back out. After they get painted you'll never be able to tell anything is missing.
Smog pump mounting tab removal:
After filing down what was left of the two tabs:
Then started working on this part, 'twas a *****:
A lot of elbow grease turned it into this:
Next was the power steering/AC bracket. Before:
Material removed:
After a lot of filing:
Was it worth it? I think so, not for the weight savings lol but for a cleaner look and more room to work on things. Will I ever do it again? I fvcking hope not.
And finally a few issues with the valve covers. I'm determined to make these old fox valve covers work for the time being...they were free. I'm using a twist in cap on the driver side cover as an oil fill, but then had to figure out what to do on the passenger side for PCV back to the intake tube. I don't really plan on using a catch can, maybe a small oil separator down the road if it becomes obvious I need one, but for now just wanted to replicate the factory style PCV system. I tried opening the hole up and using a push in grommet, well that didn't work. On to plan #2, took the cover to a friend at a machine shop and had him weld in a plug in the cover.
Not the best looking job but the labor was free. And as you can see it got a little hot during the welding. So now it's stripped back down and waiting on me to figure out how I want to repaint them both.
It'll be one of three options:
1: The same as before, grey and polished fins with a clear coat just like the upper intake.
2: Wrinkle or flat black with polished fins.
3: Grey around the sides, black in the background behind the fins, polished fins.
I've got plenty time to decide on a paint scheme. What y'all think?
