1971 Speedipus Rex

[tallhair]

Great job. That's a cool custom breather and I'm glad it worked out so well.

 

[ct71rr]

That's pretty cool. And carbon fiber glass frames?

 

[satman72]

Nice work!

 

[dangina]

That's pretty cool. And carbon fiber glass frames?

u betcha!

Next on the list is my custom hub and steering wheel setup - I got sick and tired trying to find a aftermarket hub for our bbodies so I decided to get one made. I like the bigger grips of the aftermarket wheels available for my big mits. I bought this hub, its for an ebody (what a heavy beast) but it gave me enough matierial to shave off what I needed.

I had a machine shop shave it down to this:

got it powdercoated black

old height stock wheel 5 3/8" deep

new height with MOMO steering wheel 3 1/8" deep

New 350mm MOMO wheel compared to the stock OEM one

I bought a 1970 steering wheel decal and was hoping it would be big enough to fit the whole MOMO button and it did, what I didn't know is about the 1970 decal is that the sticky side is on the picture side not the back side, so I took it to a local decal shop and got some made:

sanded the MOMO button (it has raised lettering with wet sand paper until she was flat:

TA-DA! The end result!

I also should note that I had to bend the flasher more straight so it wouldn't interfere with the new wheel setup!

 

[monroegtx]

Excellent job. Ingenious and very cool.:headbang:

 

[Dennis H]

Nice. I've got a Momo wheel too. Love it. Perfect ergo. Don't have the cool center though, that looks factory. Nice job.

 

[dangina]

so I work 12hr days 4 on 4 off 4 nights 4 off. But the past month and for the next 2 months I have been working 2-3-even 4 of my days off trying to save up so we can build our dream house, and dad gets the shop he's always wanted. Needless to say I haven't been working on the car, but I have finally uploaded most of the pics I have, sadly I lost alot of good pics somewhere, I need to have this car finished by spring, correction, I HAVE to finish this car by spring or it'll never get done if were building a house. Im close but still oh so far...

bought blank aluminum valve covers and had my buddy tig weld the plates on he cut from his small home cnc machine:

painted the front of my rad support with plastidip, just in case if i didn't like it, i could always peel it off

Didn't like the look of a huge aluminum square in the front of my car so I painted it black, I've read alot of circle track guys do this anyways so I don't see the harm:

installed!

So AutoX cuda inspired me to do a similar setup for my breathers, like the old trams am racers, I bought aluminum 1 1/4" tubing (sorry not sure were the photos went) and 1 1/4" aluminum 90 degree bends, two 1 1/4" K&N breathers, and 2 goodyear 1 1/4" rad hoses Part #60083, had my buddy weld it up the lips on the valve covers to mount them, and weld up the pipes. Got it powder coated black, I think it looks really good! It also clears the airgrabber setup on my hood:

got tired of waiting for my MP viscous fan setup so I went to the yard and bought this fan from a 90 dodge truck with a 318

got it powdercoated, new clutch and fan shroud and installed

bought a new heatercore (it was bugging me that it was the only thing that hasn't been replaced) to my surprise (not really) it was no where near where I needed it mounted so I had to resolder the mounting plate

I didn't like the fact that the only option for a torque strap out there was a $100 option, So I made this for les than $10, grade 8 fine thread rod, 3/8" heim link and the washers/bushings from my prothane kit that were suppose to be for a stock sway bar, but seeing how I'm running the bigger Hellwig's, they were perfect!

my almost 2 year old son decided that he wanted to install it!

I installed the TTI exhaust with the dougs cuttouts, fit pretty good, the only thing I had to modify was the pipe from on the passenger side from header to cutout:

I bought some premium 2/0 cable for my battery relocation, I wanted 1/0 but this is what my buddy had, he's in the custom stereo business and even at his price it was $7.50 a foot, but as big as this stuff is, you can bend it around your wrist, its that flexible! And the amp draw you can pull on this stuff makes welding cable look like yesterdays knob and tube. This pic is the comparison of the two.

I bought 3/4" wheel spacer adapters for all for corners, premium quality all made with grade 10 bolts, the reason behind this was
1) To clear the long hub on the front of the car for my wheels
2) widen the track as much as possible

Since I'll be running the Enkei RPF1 18X9.5" +15mm on all 4 corners these will push those wheels out as far as I'd like to go. Now that I have the wheels I could have went with the 18X10.5" +15mm but I would have to extend the wheel studs and use a 10mm spacer. So for now I'm gonna use these rims and do the bigger rims down the road.
I am a little bit too close for comfort in the rear so I have shaved the inner lip as much as I possibly could to get more clearance, as you can see it was never a straight line to begin with, I gained as much as 3/8" in some areas and as little as 1/8." overall I have about 1/2" clearance from the tire to the inner lip, I'll get more pics on that later:

Last but not least I finally got my hands on a radio delete bezel!!!!! and a tach option dash as well!!!! (paid way to much for them) This is so cool I just wanna mount it on my wall! I restored the guages like I did with my other bezel, used my 150 mph speedo, cleaned it all up nice, I may do a layer of clearcoat on the bezel, haven't decided yet...

finished my custom slave cylinder, Had to put two clearance dents on the header but other than that I think this should work awsome! I could not for the life of me drill any holes in the clutch fork(must be made up of adamantium) So I had to weld on the extend plate for the clutch (i wanted to have it bolt on originally), tapped the push rod all the way, heres what I got so far:

So that's kinda where I'm at at the moment

 

[747mopar]

Looking great Dangina! I think your right about not getting it done if it's not done by Spring (I was building our home when I bought my car and it sat until the house was done). Don't look like that should be a problem though, Good luck

 

[tallhair]

Fantastic work and as always excellent pictures and updates Dan

Love the valve covers and that cluster looks amazing

 

[wvmarv]

Fabulous work. I'm very impressed. Metal worker extraordinaire.

 

[HYRDGOON]

Seriously one of the coolest builds on here! I keep going back to your pics for the e-brake and would love that in my car!

 

[Propwash]

Really can't wait to see this car flying down the road. I agree with the rest of the fella's, great build to follow.

Keep up the good work man!

 

[dangina]

thanks guys, its getting close, time is not my friend, i just don't have enough of it, I've only had 2 days off the past 2 months and I only have one day off till christmas, I need like a good week off to get what I need done. I'm no metal worker lol I do try to get whats in my head to those who can do..

 

[roadrunnerman]

With what you've been doing and the excellence you've shown, if you get a week off your car will be up and runnin' down the road.

 

[dangina]

so its been awhile since my last post, been working mostly on the new wiring for the car, its kinda hard to see what lies hidden, but all the wiring in the interior of the car is now done, just currently working on the engine bay harnesses. Finished my wiring guide, I have also got around to finishing up some loose ends:

wired my amp under the package tray out of sight

radio now in the glovebox

battery in the back complete with all my relays hidden and battery disconnect in the trunk (for now)

floor mat all done

cleaned up all of my seatbelts ready for install:

so I have two boys now, one in a baby seat, other in a child seat. We plan on maybe having one more down the road. You can buy child anchors for child seats, which I installed here in the package tray in front of the speakers and one in the middle:

The problem is this. No one, and I mean NO ONE sells a set of the lower metal latch systems used on baby seats that are in all of the modern cars today, I've tried aftermarket, dealerships ect. So realizing this I came to make up my own I made from used racing belt anchors, heck if it can hold back a 300lbs adult, a 20 lbs baby should be easy. I had to dremel the holes out about a 1/16" so the latches from the seat could hook onto them. The brackets are made from 1/4" flat bar and grade 8 hardware, (overkill I know) but they are holding my baby boys!

I had to cut two of them down to mount on the wheel well and angle the hooks with the top half of the rear seat in so they are about 1/4 -1/2" sunk in out of sight until you need them.

once the seats were installed, you can't see them until you push them back for use! So now I can have 3 babies in the rear seat, or 3 children, or a combination of the two!

with that out of the way I can finish the interior!

I should mention that all the seats are original

- - - Updated - - -

I had also got to finishing mounting my rear 69 Camaro spoiler, Here it is from start to finish:

First mask off the area your with green painters tape, saves the paint for underneath and allows you to mark on it. Position where you want the spoiler to sit, and with a measuring tape mark where the tips of your spoiler will sit, I measured from the trunk edge, then from the sides, the tips sit about an 1/4" from the edge:

When you figured out where she' gonna sit, you wanna mark out the stud locations for the spoiler and drill small holes and see if that's where they need to be before making them bigger (I bought two spoilers 69 and a 68, the 68 is 2" shorter so I sold it) they have the same stud location and both of them came with a template, but I noticed that the studs weren't mounted in the same place, even though they were both made by the same company, they could get up to almost a 1/2" out. ouch. After you have the size of the holes you want I drilled in the center from the outside going in so I know where to drill them underneath:

Underneath I would mask the area off around the hole and drill out to the size you want:

I went a little bigger than I thought, I was thinking maybe down the road if I had to buy another rear spoiler for whatever reason(carbon fiber perhaps?), I would have plenty of room for the studs if they end up being off like the ones I had. you can use a hole saw, I used a stepper bit for the weird corner ones and cleaned up with a dremel, and don't forget to file off your sharp edges!

Now that we have all the holes done were gonna have to mount this somehow. The 4 studs on the back of the trunk can be held down with your standard washers and locknuts, but the front studs being more accessible I have a better Idea, I bought these flat washers and these allthread connectors that fit inside the washers:

With the spoiler in place, thread the connector all the way till it bottoms out, the back it off a couple turns and weld the washer in place:

I put a spot weld just to hold it in place:

Then you can weld them up!

Now you have a custom nut that you can tighten all the way down and not worry about it bottoming out on the stud!

I painted them, but you could powder coat them:

Before your put your spoiler on be sure to use some sort of gasket material, I'll be using gasket maker, doesn't harm the paint underneath and not bad to clean up.

And it finishes off like this! I used 3/4" body plugs to hide the inner access holes for the rear studs, I did the outter access rear holes the same size as the trunk body plugs at 1 1/4" (Please excuse the flaking paint, something I have to have a talking to about with my painter in the very near future)

Hopefully you have something similar to this when your finished! (without the painters tape and the spoiler painted lol)

 

[69 GTX]

Looking sharp!

 

[dangina]

wow I'm in serious need of an update!!! Here's what I got in photos on here so far, I gotta upload more her in the next few days....

so I plastidipped the front marker lights so I don't ruin the originals (I love this stuff!)

Re-did the rear taillamp wiring harnesses:

tried lining up the fiberglass hood more so the fitment is better (I give it a 7 outta 10, but what can you do) and drilling my new hotchkis hood pins:

Been working on it so much this past year my boys have gotten in on it!

found a good spot for my exterior emblems

So making a functional fiberglass airgrabber hood is a PITA, I had to chop out where the arms mount, fill them with fiberglass (lots of time and layering) and cut out where the arms go again:

I wanted to convert this to a manual pull lever setup like the old air grabbers, so this is what I had gotten(bought at same place as the airgrabber setup ( I wouldn't recommend this, get oem)

I cut the rod and flipped and welded the plate on the drivers side:

found a rod normally used inside the doors, I'm now using this as my extension rod for my airgrabber setup:

bought this cable and its what I will be using for this airgrabber:

Put them together and this is what I came up with:

I mounted the the handle in the exact same spot as if you had a 71 runner with a hemi and a choke! works good too!!! wish the cable was longer but its the best I could have done for now

stay tuned! got more to come very soon as I'm ready to drive this bird!!!

 

[plymouthman72]

I just read through your whole thread and this is one awesome build. Amazing looking car!

 

[72Fourspeed]

Me, too. Very informative. Great work & some cool ideas. Helpful for all of us who own 71 or 72 birds.

 

[dangina]

She Runs!!!! Getting ahead of myself but feast your eyes on this!