97 GSX "Restoration"

[turbosax2]

Looking good!

 

[92AWDHX40]

Ten years yes that's a long time I started a project back in the late nineties. Never got done . Just picked up a few more since then.. down to one now.

 

[jamel16]

I got my diff mounts in so I pulled the rear subframe back out to install the diff mounts, billet mains and install the diff cover. I did see a few people with a gusset to help support the 4th mount on the subframe so I decided it wouldn't hurt to add one here as well. My welding is getting better but could still use some work. haha
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Now more fab work. I want to be able to use the hatch floor area as the firewall for the fuel cell so I had to do alot of measuring before ordering the fuel cell... and I was still off a little. I want a little more ground clearance in the back than I got with the 16 gallon fuel cell. To counter this I made a little skid plate the goes under the sump. This is more to save the plastic from driveway scrapes than to be structural. I also wanted to be sure that if it did catch something that it would dig into the fuel cell so that took some more measuring. I also got the battery box beefed up a little and installed.
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Next onto my grand idea of the switch panel on the back of the car. I wanted it to go where the license plate is but be able to keep it hidden for street driving without a whole bunch of effort going into it. I still have some kinks to work out but here is what i have so far.
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Now you see it...
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Now you don't!
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I also decided it was finally time to clean all the dust and pollen off the car.
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Thanks for following!

Very dope build, I love the attention to detail

 

[Redline165]

Thanks guys!

More coming soon!

 

[95eclipser]

cant wait!

 

[Redline165]

Things have gotten kind of busy but I have managed to get some work done on the car. The next step is getting the roll cage, parachute mount, and (if I fall and hit my head) tubing the front from the strut towers forward installed so I have been trying to do as much of the leg work as possible so that the fab shop basically just has to bend pipe and weld.

Starting out was pulling the interior and dash back out of the car. This was actually kind of nice because it allowed me to tidy up some of the under dash parts of the wiring harness.





Next was getting the factory rear strut tower brace (at least thats what I'm calling it) out of the way. I thought I was going to be able to spend about 10 minutes with a spotweld cutter and have it out of there... I was very wrong. I initially was going to just remove the entire thing from the top of the strut towers but quickly realized that it was going to be dang near impossible to get to some of those spot welds with out cutting some pretty big holes in the car so I decided to leave those where they were.






After some clean up work.





I added a little bracing on both sides seeing that that the hatch struts attach right above the strut towers and for the time being I still have a factory metal hatch.




I had to remove these little guys to get the factory brace out of the way but because I plan on having full interior I had to modify them a little and then reinstall.

 

[Redline165]

Surface rust is a very large pet peeve of mine so its time to put a light coat of primer on all the bare metal areas.




Another thing I was really hoping I would be able to do was keep all the lock cylinders the same. (OCD) After literally 6 hours of searching through every single box of random junk I had even remotely related to a car and emptying every bolt bucket in my possession I gave up for the day. Later that night I was telling the wife about it and she laughed and said "you put it in the safe 6 years ago so you wouldn't have that problem stupid." Oops



More OCD, Pin holes from the new spot welds where I reinstalled that side brace for the rear seats.



Also I wanted to fill in the holes I made from attempting to remove the top part of the factory brace. It was somewhat tedious seeing I was so close to new paint on the quarter panel with a welder and then a grinder to make make the welds flat again. Either way... I think it came out pretty good.



Glazed a few of the pin holes so I can sleep at night.


I ended up needing to switch things up a little bit after getting a little burned out of the tedious BS stuff that only I will see so I decided to try my hand at wet sanding. If you have never done any wet sanding before I will tell you it was the single scariest thing I have done to this car. To see what was decent looking paint go turn into a flat dull gray is hard to stomach but in the end the orange peel is gone and it looks 10 times better.



For some reason I didn't take a close up picture.


Now on to the fun part. Making it sort of look like a car again. I needed to install the rear hatch for the roll cage clearance over the back seats, the rear bumper for the parachute mount, and the front fenders and hood in case I go crazy and decide to tube the front from the strut towers forward. Starting off both of the rear bumper plastic nut plate things that hold the corner for the bumper closest to the wheel are gone. I have never been a big fan of using a nut and bolt in place of a threaded hole that is either missing or stripped out too far. In my opinion it looks like a shade tree fix and shows laziness.

The metal was too thin and way too hard to get to weld a nut in place so seeing my aviation background I went to the maintenance guys where I used to work and rummaged through some parts bins and came back with a nut plate that fills the hole perfect. A blind nut would have been alot easier to install but the only size I could get my hands on was a -8 and I don't think that I'm willing to trust that little guy to hold the bumper on at 150mph+ (hopefully) passes at the track.


And... all panels installed minus the side skirts and spoiler.








Thanks for following!

 

[jrmccrary]

Niceeeeee

 

[Redline165]

Still here but things have been slow.

I had alot of trouble trying to get a shop to put an 8.50 certified cage in the car. By "trouble" I mean that over a period of 4 months I sent emails to at least 15 different fab shops about a 10 point cage, parachute mount, and potentially have tubing the front end. Out of the 15 or so emails I received responses from 4. Two of the shops priced themselves out of it at $5000+ for just the roll cage. Another shop came in at $1500 for the cage and parachute mount, had no pictures of their work, and when I asked about getting it certified my a NHRA official before it left they told me it wasn't necessary and that the tech guy at the track is the only person that has to approve. Needless to say im a pretty firm believer in the saying "you get what you pay for" (first paint job) so I passed on them. My first choice and best option as far as distance from the house just never came together. We exchanged text/emails trying to get a time to chat on the phone about the cage and the entire project and after about 10 exchanges and no phone call I just stopped trying. I was pretty bummed because I have seen this particular shops work first hand. They have a great reputation and have the ability to take care of other pretty much every other aspect of the project that I'm not going to do myself.

After a month of just tinkering (that means making no progress at all) and still searching for a shop to do the job I was chatting with one of my old car buddies from Raleigh and he gave me the name of a guy that was the fab guy at one of the well known domestic shops in town and had left to start his own shop. I ended up talking with him for a few days and we had a plan. His price was reasonable, his work was spectacular, and above all else he seemed genuinely excited to have my business. We set a date for me to drop off and I started getting the car ready for the trip. Unfortunately a few weeks before I was to take the car to his shop he had family conflict that pretty much left him no choice but to close up shop and relocate of state. He felt terrible about it and apologized around 3,432 times. He explained the situation (which he didn't have to) to me and I told him that I completely understand and no hard feelings.

After this I found one more shop that I figured could do the work. It was 4 hours away but the price was in the middle and it seemed like they did decent work so we set a date I sent a deposit for materials. Then as my luck goes I got a call that said the lead fabricator had left the company and they were trying to get another guy hired but it was going to add a fair amount of time on my build. I wasn't thrilled with this and told him thanks for being honest but I would like to just get my deposit money back and if he got someone else hired to give me a call. Needless to say getting my money back was a pain but after 2 weeks of excuses and a pretty heated phone call it was back in my Paypal account.

Side note: I get it, most shops don't like dealing with DSM's anymore because it seems like 98% of them left out there are POS cars and/or have POS owners that complain when they have to pay more than 78 dollars for something that they couldn't get on Ebay or watch a YouTube video to get it installed. I guess doing 99% of my own work has left me in the dark about this but I never imagined that it would be so hard to spend several thousand dollars for something custom. I even went as far as to send pictures with my initial emails to give some sort of proof that my car isn't something I pulled out of some craigslist guys field.

So at this point I was frustrated to no end trying to get the work done so I just said screw it and ordered a pre-bent Chromoly kit from Rhodes. It got here pretty quick and I have been tinkering with that for the last few months. My biggest issue so far has been the stupid seat. I went with a Corbeau Forza sport. The seat is great but me being 6'1 is not. It sits way to high. I had to remove the factory seat bracket and build my own to lower it down. This part wasn't that bad but in order for me to lower the seat and have it centered on the steering wheel you have to cut out part of the "extended" driveshaft tunnel. That is done now and im just waiting on Rhodes to send me a new Halo. Somehow they forgot the last bends to bring it back to the main hoop. They were great on the phone about making it right and super easy to deal with.

I'll post more pictures once i finish moving everything away from f$%ing photobucket.

Thanks!

Oh yea, I've also been a little busy with this

 

[EC17PSE]

Great build so far! Amazing thebtime and effort you put into this, keep it up.

Also i know where your at with the seats! I also visited here recently myself with my bhcket seats and cut some of the tunnel away to go lower, interested to see your result pics, im also 6'1 with a helmet is was cinking my neck. Not good

 

[chrysler kid]

It's all over. The red parts car is already moved out, and you still had tons of stuff left on it.

Not long now and the eclipse gets pushed into the yard next to the parts car to make room for the minivan

 

[Redline165]

It's all over. The red parts car is already moved out, and you still had tons of stuff left on it.

Not long now and the eclipse gets pushed into the yard next to the parts car to make room for the minivan

Haha

Both parts cars are still here. I moved them to the back yard behind the fence to get rid of the eye sores in the driveway.

 

[95eclipser]

I know your in NC but have you given Piper Motorsports a call here in Northern VA?
They are the main shop around town that does cages.

 

[b00stedtalon2]

http://www.diamondracecars.com/

This place did my 10pt cage, parachute mount (including parachute), window net and custom seat brackets for $3500. The NHRA safety inspector certified my cage a couple months ago and said he was impressed with the work. It's a far drive for you but sounds like it could be worth it.

 

[chrysler kid]

Haha

Both parts cars are still here. I moved them to the back yard behind the fence to get rid of the eye sores in the driveway.

Oh so those are eye sores now. Dsm's are known to cause yard herpes like that

 

[Redline165]

Oh so those are eye sores now. Dsm's are known to cause yard herpes like that

haha. Yes, especially when they are missing body panels and have mis-matched hoods.

 

[eclipse gsx]

Any more updates? Ive read through this thread and it stops here!! Noo!!! Did the dsm get sold? Lol i know stuff seems to slow down when a baby comes. Trust me. Less time for the dsm. Till the baby grows a bit more. I escape nights to be with the dsm in the garage .

 

[Redline165]

Sorry for the late reply. The car is still here safe and sound in the garage.

Everyone was right. The kid takes up ALOT of time and energy but she is completely worth it. Watching her grow is the most fun thing I have ever done!

However, that has not been the sole reason for the lack of progress. I mentioned a pre-bent roll cage manufacture in earlier posts and despite their good reputation I spent a large amount of time playing phone tag trying to get the "correct" roof halo. I ended up having to measure and send the specs to them myself based off the original pieces they sent me the first go around. Needless to say the 2nd batch wasn't even close to being correct despite confirming how to measure on the phone with their tech guy. To the shops credit once I finally got in touch with someone that could do something I had the new parts 3 days later (at zero cost to me) to include new dash bars due to confusion on the initial order about whether they were supposed to be around or through the dash but it was still all wrong.

Obviously I was pretty frustrated at the entire process after this and decided to just take a step back and think about what the next step should be. One option was to buy a bender and the raw materials to bend the main halo myself. But knowing me I decided that if I did that I would have redone the entire thing to fit a little tighter. I have a rock crawling buddy that lives on the wrong side of the country that swears by the JB squared model 32 but the initial investment for the bender, dies, and raw materials would have gotten me into the realm of just paying a professional to do the job especially considering the "first time screw up factor" because chromoly isn't cheap so I nixed that idea.

I honestly was really considering just leaving it as a street car with a 6 point (which is all but done) and then Devin @ Boostin had to go and run a %$#@ing 7.04 and it got me all motivated again. After much thought and consideration I made a few phone calls to friends and decided that I'm just going to have the cage done by a professional despite if it takes me dragging the car on a 6+ hour road trip each way. Its a small price to pay for something that I will have to look at every day. Its unfortunate that I spent the money on the pre-bent kit but that's how it goes. I decided that the professional option was the best bet a few months ago and have finally found 2 shops that are willing/capable to do the job but there is a pretty big waiting period and of course right when the time got close to a slot opening up I got a big promotion at work that has required me to be away from home for about 8 weeks straight for training.

The project is still going but a few speed bumps got in the way. More updates will come soon!

Thanks for the interest!

 

[mikEclipse99]

If doing one yourself is still an option at all.. I recently purchased the Kens Custom Chassis front bars and they fit like a glove! I like them because they are one continuous tube from main hoop across the roof down the A pillar to the floor. Just throwing this out there!

 

[bettfootball]

Need. more. updates!

 

[Redline165]

Still here.

The baby sure takes a tremendous amount of your free time away but she is totally worth it.

Another thing the addition to our family has made very obvious is the fact that we need a bigger house. With that said, All of my free time has been dedicated to fixing up our current house to sell. When I'm not doing that the rest of my free time is spent on the ever so painful task of finding land to build on (read: Room for an actual shop) and talking with contractors/negotiating with the wife on what we want.

I still push the car outside from time to time and wash it off but nothing really noteworthy has been accomplished. Rest assured its not going anywhere, but sometimes life gets in the way.

Thanks for checking in!
-K

 

[bettfootball]

Don't mind me, just reading this thread again.