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This weekend was about making sure the car is ready for my track day at Thunderhill this coming Friday. I had a number of items I needed to do. I put the car up on jack stands, pulled off my street wheels/tires. Then I replaced the front brake pads, which were Wilwood Q compound, with more aggressive E compound. The change was really easy as the calipers have a cross bolt that you just remove and then pop out the old pads. push the pistons in a bit with a c-clamp and the new pads drop right in. I also had a set of rear drum brake shoes that I’ve be sitting on for years. I finally sucked it up and replaced them as well. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve changed drum shoes and it’s one of those things that takes an hour to do the first side and then 10 minutes to do the other side. While I had the car up on jack stands I also checked the u-joint strap bolts. Couple of other things I did were to screw my clutch pedal pad to the pedal backing plate with 2 screws. The pad kept coming loose. The other thing was to lengthen the clutch master rod that connects to the clutch pedal. I had noticed driving the Javelin on the street that it was getting hard to get into gear. Not so much when moving but when trying to get into 1st from a stop. Anyway, I remembered that when I first hooked up the clutch, after moving the master higher up on the firewall that I couldn’t get the car into gear. I then lengthened the clutch rod and voila, easy gear engagement. So, I assume as I’ve been wearing the clutch I probably have gotten to the point were I needed a little more stroke. Anyway, it definitely fixed the problem. However, I’m probably maxed out on length so when it wears some more I may need to figure out how to lengthen the rod on the slave cylinder a bit. Also switched to a 6500 RPM chip in the MSD. And lastly threw on the track wheels/tires and drop the car on the ground. I also have a Microtrak II digital audio recorder that I’m going to try to use to record the exhaust when I’m on track. Here’s hoping for a good track day!

ok, I’ve been slacking on the updating of the blog but I have been putting time in on the Javelin. The saga of the “clutch box” has come to an end. I’m reasonably happy with it. my welds are not the best looking but they’re solid and you can’t see the welds under the dynamat. oh yeah, the dynamating has begun. more on that later.

my clutch master cylinder relocation project continued today. last weekend I built the basic “box” that will allow me to bring the master in-board a couple of inches to clear the power brake booster. next I needed to fill the hole left when I removed the stock wiring harness firewall block. I’m installing a new, universal 18 circuit harness with modern blade fuses (no more glass fusses!). first I actually trimmed away MORE of the firewall to create an easier shape for the fill panel. then I used card stock to figure out what the panel should look like. I did several trial mockups before I was ready to commit the panel to metal. I cut the rough shape with my electric shears and the finished the piece on a bench grinder. the Clarke electric shears I have are great. I think I remember Fran from the amc forum raving about them a few years ago which is why I bought them. I’d love to have a band saw but these shears are proving to be a great tool for making various things from sheet stock. I also had to shorten the clutch push rod and cut thread further down the shaft to match up with the clutch pedal. oh, one other nice thing about doing this relocation is that I realized I no longer had to mount the reservoir remotely. this is a wilwood remote master and I previously had the reservoir mounted to the shock tower. but where the master will be now I can mount the reservoir right to the master… nice. I can even unscrew and remove the reservoir cap no problem. no entirely sure I can fill it without a funnel though, we’ll see. anyway, that’s it for now.