Lots of Mav projects coming up...

Still a ways to go with the list but good to see it back on it's wheels for the first time in months.

 

Back to the exhaust shop tomorrow for the necessary changes to the exhaust system. Couldn't resist a little sound clip beforehand though.

 

The console project is finally done. Also of note is the new to me factory A/C dash tray that my buddy wrapped in the same material and we modded to accept the Billet Specialties vents so they all match.

 

And finally the interior back together.

 

A purely OCD addition over the winter was swapping to crossdrilled and slotted rotors on both ends. Simple enough on the rear even though Wilwood wants a stupid amount for their rotors. The front has the RRS stage 2 brakes. Had to contact them to find out what the rotors were. Turns out they are 2004 GTO with C5 Corvette calipers. Beats m why but that's what they are so had to get the fronts drilled for the Ford pattern.

 

Another goofy idea. lol... Under hood led's. Blue strips meant for motorcycles around the base of the air cleaner.

 

But why? Even NASCAR doesn't use drilled rotors (just slotted).
Everything looks excellent...

 

But why not?

 

And another thing... lol... Finally got these sequential LED tail lights from Digitails. Ordered in November. Received them in April. Anyway, we color matched the bezels which I like a lot. Overall these lights are very cool and will be seen way better than the original incandescent bulbs.

 

I like the tail lights, but that license plates the best.

 

Thanks! Honestly it was way down the list. Crazy how many people have some derivative of the word "blue" on their plates in Arkansas.

 

Well, the last couple months have been interesting. After getting the TKX lined out everything seemed fine at first but the farther we went the worse and worse the clutch got. It refuses to disengage completely. We had to pull the TKX...again. It was pretty ugly. The RST was smoked.



Anyway, while all this was apart I decided to deal with the rear end. Earlier on the thread I documented the wrong bearing retainers were on the rear end when we got the car and we solved that but unknown to me the damage was done. Once we quieted the TKX it became obvious that the rear end had issues. Turns out that the axle bearing issue had left behind a big issue.

This is not water. It's a ton of bearing material in dust form. Yes I know that I should have pulled the third member when I found the axle bearing issue but alas, I didn't. Really sad because the car has a nice PEM nodular 3rd member with their Trac Loc. Oh well. It's only money.



Had a local shop rebuild it and it's quiet as a church mouse now.

Back to the clutch. Installed the new RST and got everything back together. The car had a Wilwood clutch/master assy under the dash. Once we started to bleed the system we quickly saw that it was attached with a cobbled up bracket and much of what I thought was pedal travel turned out to be the garbage mount flexing. It once upon a time worked but obviously fatigued over time. We fabbed up a new and beefy 1/4" plate bracket. Had a heck of a time trying to get the system bled out completely but thought we had it solved. We put the car in the trailer and headed to the Good Guys show in Des Moines for the 4th of July weekend. It was way better but still not disengaging the clutch completely.
Enter the Malwood under dash clutch pedal setup we saw in the Tremec booth at the show.



This is a pretty trick piece. Took a little back and forth with Ross at Malwood but we got everything working with the RST. It worked great but had the exact opposite issue we had with the Wilwood setup. Too much pedal travel and more throwout movement than we needed. I added a pedal stop I found on Ebay an finally the clutch works right in this thing!





The Malwood has a remote reservoir. No place to put that under the dash. No room on the firewall so ended up with it on the back side of the strut tower. I don't love it there but it works.



Really nice to be able to finally rive this car and have it be quiet and have a clutch that operates properly. Feels kinda weird that for the first time since we bought it I can't really see anything that needs fixing. I'm sure something new will shoot craps soon though. lol...

Speaking of the Good Guys show, we didn't win anything but did get some love from them with a nice cruising pic in their weekend review pics.

 

And another thing...lol... We've fought some prior poor paint prep issues with this car and had to deal with that once again. We're slowly but surely repainting the whole car one panel at a time. This time it's some ugly bubbles on both ends of the rear body panel. On the Monday before we need to put it in the trailer on Wednesday to go to Good Guys we decided to dive into it because we are just plain ignorant.



Turned out to be a really weird deal. Once we ground it out there was no smoking gun. Obviously it was some sort of contamination that caused it to turn loose.







All better now and actually made it in the trailer when we needed to.

 

Sorry to hear about the cascade of issues there. I like how you were able to keep after it and methodically knock them out.
Your car is an inspiration, especially the RRS suspension stuff. I would love for the next stage with my Comet to involve track days.

 

Thanks! It's been a frustrating experience but we continued working thru the garbage one issue at a time. It actually feels wrong to not have an active "I gotta fix this" list.