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Between the much needed rain and being busy with work, I have not been able to drive the car as much I wanted the past couple of weeks.
I was able to do a speedometer check with a gps app on my phone.
It turns out the speedometer is reading approximate 10 mph too high at freeway speeds.
I called Silver Sport Transmission and they immediately sent out a replacement speedometer cable gear for the TKX that had a different number of teeth.
They sent it FedX ground and I tracked it getting on the truck and out for delivery on the following Monday.
Fast forward to Friday and it still hadn't been delivered. FedX went looking for it, couldn't find it, and declared it lost.
Called Silver Sport and to their credit and why I am writing this is that they overnighted me another gear without my asking them to do that
Very impressive
I hope to install it tomorrow.
A good day.
I removed the 17 tooth speedometer cable gear.
And installed the 19 tooth gear shown in the previous post.
Then went out for a drive to compare what the speedometer said with what the GPS phone app said.
Viola! They were within a mph or two with each other.
Then it was time to compare the TKX RPM for being in 4th gear, which was similar to the Muncie it replaced
with the new 5th gear
What a big difference!
Plus the TKX is much quieter and the shifter significantly less rattly
So far so good. Looking for a longer drive soon.
The TKX is exceeding expectations. The lower RPM on the freeway is also lowering the coolant temp. I can't wait for a scorching hot day for more testing.
With the majority of mechanical work done, it is finally time to focus on the interior.
The first problem to be addressed is the vinyl trim around the split windows
To review, I first used 3M spray adhesive
That didn't work. The viny. strips looked good in the beginning but peeled off in time. So next I tried this
That didn't work either. In time the vinyl strips in time fell off leaving the back one looking like this
Even worse, the old adhesive stuck to the roof and did not want to come off.
So with the carpet needing to be installed I started looking around for an upholstery shop.
There have been several good shops that have been here in the past, but with ownership changes
and poor parking make me to look around
Fortunately a friend recommended that I look into Mark Luhr's Custom Upholstery. It turns out he also does aircraft interiors and he has a history of working on vintage corvettes. So in goes the 63.
Glen.. I feel your pain on that back piece. I too tried the 3m, rubber cement, etc with poor results.. Interested in seeing what your interior guy comes up with.
Regards
Greg
It always feels good to see another corvette being worked on in a shop
It would have been all too easy to leave the old adhesive on the car, but off it comes
A tedious process.
In addition, we decided to use different, but similar vinyl pieces, than the ones I got from a vendor. Marc said his sticks better and that is certainly what we want.
Looking good. The overlap edges will be glued down in the future
The upper hoop goes on
You can also see the extra insulation going on. In the past I have used Dynamat and Dynaliner on Corvettes. On this car I sprayed Lizard Skin Thermal everywhere, and in the driving I have done so far it has worked well. On the firewall, on top of the Lizard Skin, I again used Dynamat and Dynaliner. For the rest of the car I decided to try a Flatline pre cut insulation kit. It is fairly thin, and I probably wouldn't use it without the Lizard Skin, but for my application it looks like it will work well.
More progress
With the Vintage Air Unit, the side panels on the center console are changed out with ducts going to them
The fitment of the ducts looks impossible at first glance but with enough wiggling and pushing they fit
Final trim install around the rear windows and B pillar on the door came out nice
Front kick panels. With the Vintage Air, there is no fresh air vent on the passenger side
Last edited by gleninsandiego; 04-20-2023 at 01:13 AM.
MAN, you have built one beautiful car have been following your thread for years, really helps when you can find a vendor who knows & cares to work with the same perfection/craftsmanship you exhibited on your car..
I had a chance to take some more pictures of the interior today.
It came out great.
Here is the man who did the majority of the work
Still a few tweaks to do on the interior but what a huge relief to have this done
In the meantime, I was intermittently fighting blowing fuses on my electric radiator fan.
I was feeding power to it with two parallel wires, each with a 30 amp fuse
(The fan itself specs at 40 amp)
I then upped the fuses to two 40 amp fuses and it still did it.
As I pondered this, it turned out only one fuse was blowing, but the fan stopped even with the other parallel circuit working
After consulting with electrical minds better than mine, we started testing the two fan relays in these circuits.
Sure enough, the relay on the circuit that was not blowing the fuse had failed, thus causing the fan to draw from only one
of the circuits. I apparently was blowing it upon start up
New relay ordered and installed
Fan is now working properly
Glenn, thanks again for sharing your build interior came out Great… you/wife got some talent:-)…. But sometimes to quote Clint Eastwood “a man has to know his limitations” must of been hard to drop your car off at the interior shop & trust someone else to work on the car, came out really nice..
Question - The Eaton relay/fuse box your running did that come with your a/c kit or did you purchase that separately? I saw some suppliers like del-city has that box & mounting bracket that’s a sweet little deal could you share some insight on where you acquired it/replacement relays etc?
That leads into the next question I saw the amps your running just off that circuit alone so I assume your running a much higher alternator (this may have come up during the earlier stages of your engine build??), but curious what your doing for an alternator again??..
As far as your questions, I would have gotten the Eaton relay/fuse box from Del-City when I was shopping for one, but it was back during the pandemic
with supply chain issues and they were out of stock. I ended up buying one from my EFI Tuner, who graciously sold me an extra one he had.
I got the replacement relays off of Amazon
As far as the alternator goes, I had to go through a couple with increasing output to find one that would support all the electric systems I am running, such as an electric fuel pump, Sniper EFI,
Vintage Air, electric radiator cooling fan and a number of electronic instruments, not to mention the stock stuff like lights.
I ultimately ended up with a Powermaster 47293, which is rated at 150 amps
It's time to start cleaning up some of the loose ends, and the PCV hose and the carb, now Sniper EFI, return springs
I have been running a clear fuel filter in the PCV line from the valve cover to the carb base. When I first installed the PCV and hose some time ago,
it was sucking oil. It turned out I needed to improve the baffle inside the valve cover. With that done I have not had any more oil passing through that hose
However, the hose location was interfering with my return spring.
This is what it probably should look like without the PCV hose there
I had gotten an assortment of return springs
I like the idea of having dual springs but it didn't look like a good place to mount
After getting suggestions from another thread here on the forum I did this
The "to do list" on the clipboard in the garage is getting smaller, dropping down from 32 to 22 items in the past few weeks.
I wanted to get the wheels and tires rebalanced and the suspension aligned after having had the rear suspension apart to remove the differential
since the last alignment.
I needed to wash the wheels for the first time, as there was some brake dust accumulating
First a hose off and then using mild soap and water. The manufacturer said not to use wheel cleaner in a spray bottle,
at even the aluminum version will etch the metal.
From there I took all four tires to be balanced, and it was different than where the weights were before
The tech did say the tires were flat spotted, so I needed to drive them to see if they would get round again, which I did after
I took the car to get aligned.
This is good place to go to get old corvettes aligned in east San Diego county. Old school and knows what they are doing with the rear spacers
Next up was a final dial in of the exhaust, which was removed when I had the TKX installed. The exhaust tubes were not perfectly centered in the rear valence and were at times rubbing on the trim ring there.
This is the place to go for such work
Ryan does some amazing work and I am thrilled how it turned out
So with all this done my wife and headed out to the low mountains of east San Diego county and put on a hundred highway miles going out and then 100 backroad miles on the return.
Everything worked well. It also didn't get hot going up the long highway grade up to the 4500 foot pass. I am looking forward to repeating this when it gets scorching hot later in the summer.
One thing about this time of year is the bugs were out so the front got its first taste of bug splatter. They washed off after we got home.
The next day I took the car into SoCal paint, that did my paint repair a year or so earlier. Now with all the mechanical heavy lifting done, especially in the engine bay,
there were some very slight scuffs here and there. So they polished it back to how it looked when first painted
Dwayne is the Man to see there.
While I had it there I also had them do a final headlight alignment.
Glenn, been following this thread for almost 4 years! My compliments, my friend. You have done an awesome job and should be proud. Your knowledge and. Abilities are also to be complemented! Here’s looking at ya!! 🥃🥃
After long last the cookie sheets got mounted today
Checking the initial fitment.
I needed to open up some of the holes as the new paint filled up the holes a wee bit
Now they fit much better
These are the original cookie sheets and have not been on the car for over 30 years when the original owner took them off to paint the car himself in the garage. It turned out so bad he never put the car back together.
They look good from this angle, but the chrome parts are faded in a few areas
03-25-2023, 11:40 PM
