97 Eclipse GSX

[Motohead1]

Dang Kevin you still have this! Nice. Keep going. I miss a DSM every now and then. They are fun sleepers.

[Redline165]

Originally Posted by Motohead1

Dang Kevin you still have this! Nice. Keep going. I miss a DSM every now and then. They are fun sleepers.

Yes sir, same car. It sat for for a number of years when I lost interest while still turning wrenches for a living. Got out of that career and then all the sudden tinkering with it became enjoyable again.

[Tubbed440]

Nice job on the wiring!

[06MREvo]

Great updates from earlier in the year! Makes me really miss my '97 GSX, would like to come check this car out sometime. I'm jealous of how much you are getting done on the car, my project has been a garage ornament for a couple years now. Kinda loosing motivation & thinking about parting it out unfortunately.

[Redline165]

Originally Posted by 06MREvo

Great updates from earlier in the year! Makes me really miss my '97 GSX, would like to come check this car out sometime. I'm jealous of how much you are getting done on the car, my project has been a garage ornament for a couple years now. Kinda loosing motivation & thinking about parting it out unfortunately.

Thanks man! I live in Raeford (between Southern Pines and Fayetteville) but just let me know, you can stop by anytime!

[Redline165]

Its been a while but good progress has been made. My laptop died and making posts like this on my phone are a pain in the butt.

I finished up the last of the wiring and got the power distribution box mounted like I wanted too. I also got the bulkhead connectors and circuit breakers installed for the starter and alternator. (better safe than sorry)




[URL=http://s860.photobucket.com/user/redline165/media/Eclipse/Phase%202/FB_IMG_1494177790597_zpsmtnmgjfb.jpg.html]


I've still got to work on the mounting of the cable behind the clutch pedal. Its a little too close for comfort with the pedal all the way to the floor.

[Redline165]

The circuit breaker and fuse in the hatch area are a trial placement. I think I am going to have some clearance issues with interior panels and my electric cutoff switch mounting idea.



I wanted to temporarily fit the interior before doing the roll cage to make sure I had everything and so I could get the wiring harness where it needed to be. Finding all the pieces was the hard part. Good thing I have 2 parts cars. I wanted to go with an all black interior so I had to do some more painting. The door panels are out of the 1999 GS that I got.

[Redline165]

Next I wanted to get a motor and transmission in the car to do some measuring and what not. I have a spare empty block and head sitting around so I cleaned them up and found some head bolts. I don't currently have an assembled AWD transmission but I do have a FWD so I just bolted that up for the time being to fill the space.




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

[Redline165]

[Redline165]

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.

[Redline165]

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.




Now you see it...


Now you don't!


I also decided it was finally time to clean all the dust and pollen off the car.



Thanks for following!

[Crackerballer]

Fantastic work. Love the attention to detail and your documentation. Also looks like you keep your work area (garage) nice and clean. Love it.

[Mwilson]

wow a lot of work! looks good

[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.

[Redline165]

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.



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.

[Redline165]

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.

[Redline165]

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








Thanks for following!

[turd ferguson]

Looking good. Love that color.

[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.

-K

[chevymec]

Almost 9 years in the making!! Way to stay on course!!!