asifnyc.com

wow!  what a trip!  I drove about 900 miles over the last 3 days.  had a great time at the Socal AMX club’s ALL AMC car show.  Just like last year it was in the parking lot at the NHRA museum.  Great show!  One particularly interesting car there was a 1969 AMX 600 that Craig Breedlove used to own.  Really interesting car.  Also got to hang out with Jon Feltis and his dad.  great people and they are building (rebuilding) their cool 1969 Javelin with a killer new front suspension will all corvette C6 components.  Wow!

Oh, and I won a FIRST PLACE trophy… crazy.  I was in “Javelin Modified” class and there were only 2 other cars in that class so I realized I was definitely going to win a trophy.  I was shocked  to get first place though.  My javelin was the least “nice” of the group, with all it’s paint chips and the bugs in the grille from the drive (I didn’t even wash it).  But, I can confidently say I had the MOST modified javelin, so if that was the criteria then I guess it makes sense.

I was really impressed and happy with how well the car performed.  with the tko 5 speed it just cruises on the highway.  it does wander now and then over certain surfaces.  don’t know if that’s because of the wheels or not.  it’s got a street alignment on it… dunno.

coming back over the grapevine was COLD!!!!  I have no heat or AC in this car and it was down right FRIGID for about 20 minutes…  some day I’d like to put a vintage air system in.

Here’s a time lapse of the show I shot with my go pro camera. enjoy.

I went to the Socal AMX club’s AMC car show last year and vowed to come back with my Javelin.  We’ll I leave in the morning and BOY it’s been an epic thrash.  Here are some of the highlights/lowlights…

The interior if fully dynamated and the carpeting, seats and dash is mostly all back together

The center parking brake is installed and working!

The new amp rack and new door speakers are installed and the stereo works!

As for the problelms…

I orderd a set of black, cragar d-window wheels from summit. actually I ordered a pair of 17×8 for the front and a pair of 17×9 for the rears.  and I bought nitto 555 tires.  Well, the 17x9s came quickly but the 17x8s have been backordered for over a month… I made a last ditch effort by ordered another pair of 17x9s so I’d have that size all around.  However, they’re not going to get hear in time for the show.  So, that means I’m driving the 410 miles (each way) on my Kumho victoracer dot legal track tires…  not my first choice but I have been running them on the street for a while.  Hopefully there won’t be any issues.

Another, bigger issue is that I ordered rebuilt door hinges because mine have always been shot.  I’ve tried replacing the pins/bushings and tried added the door springs (which were missing on my car) but I have been unable to get my old, worn out hinges to work.  So I sprung for the replacement hinges.  I decided to go ahead and try to replace them for the show.  big mistake.  there is no way, by myself, that I can get the door aligned…  I started on the passenger side so the drivers side still works.  But, on the passenger side I’ve basically given up and have to sit on my butt and push the door closed with my foot to get it to latch.  oh, and even though I can get the door latched, the window won’t roll up in the position I have it.  So, I’m driving 900 miles with a door hanging on and a window I can’t close.

I spent last weekend, ALL WEEKEND, working on the car and realized I would never get it done in time.  So I ended up taking the last 2 days off to complete it.  Leaving in the morning.  Wish me luck!

I had created a simple particle board, covered in cheap fuzzy “carpet” as an amp rack.  As lame as that was the real issue was the way I mounted it was a simple piece of sheet metal, bent into a wide L bracket, screwed into the back of the board and riveted to the trunk.  Super lame.  It flexed badly and I was sure it would eventually just tear the bracket.  So, I fabbed a proper mount from some flat bar stock.  this is MUCH better, really solid and you can’t even see it.  looks like the amp is just floating.  now, my welds aren’t the prettiest but no one will ever now.  done and done…

well, I mentioned in a previous post that I had a surprise for the nose and here it is.  It’s a custom aluminum grille I had cut on a water jet.  I also had a cool AMX badge cut as well.  Currently the grille is just spray painted black but ultimately I would like to powder coat it.  This grille eliminates the circular openings for the turn signals.  The stock turn signal lenses are domed and wouldn’t fit behind this grille.  the solution was to go to my local plastics place and get some amber colored clear plastic.  I think cut correctly sized circles out of it and drilled the screw holes and voila, flat lenses.  However, I was concerned that the flat lenses put the plastic to close to the normal filament bulbs so I swapped them for some LED bulbs.  Now, this turn signal setup is actually just temporary as my ultimate goal is to have an LED strip on each side of the grille sitting in between the two middle  slats.   I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

So I rented the skid pad at Thunder Hill today.  The plan was to beat on the car a bit and see if it held together.  A shake down prior to doing some track days with it this year…  The car performed pretty well.  The brakes and clutch feel great,  the transmission shifts nice.  all in all I was really pretty happy with everything.  There are a couple of issues however.  The steering wheel is not straight.  annoying but should be an easy fix.  the big issue is that I am leaking gear fluid out of the passenger side axle seal.  I’ve done almost everything to this car but I’ve never pulled an axle.  so, I guess there’s something new for me to learn.  also, if you watch this video, I’m not convinced my posi is working.  the couple of times I got the wheels spinning it seems like maybe only the pass. side was spinning???  finally, this adventure has taught me that I’m really going to have to spring for a separate set of track wheels/tires.  The Kumho’s I have on now suck on the street because they pick up every little pebble and throw them up into the wheel wells.  makes a racket.  so my plan is to buy some cheap steel wheels for the track and get some street tires for the wheels I have now.

so I put together a little video blog entry on the dash/gauge cluster I modified for the Javelin.  I’m planning to do a few track days this year and bought a GoPro HD camera to do some in-car video with.  I also got a new point and shoot camera that does HD video so I thought I’d start getting familiar with using it and doing a little video editing.  I was also inspired by Kevin, Kelle and the rest of the crew at V8TVshow.com.  I enjoy watching their project update videos and thought I’d try to make a few of my own.  hopefully it’s not too painful to watch…

I’ve decided to do a bit of cosmetic work on the nose.   When the car was painted yellow years ago, EVERYTHING was painted yellow.  That includes everything on the front side of the radiator support.  I’ve since learned that even if you want your engine compartment to be body color you should paint the forward side of the rad support and headlight buckets, etc. black.  If you paint them body color then you’ll see that color through the grille.  It just looks better to have all that blacked out.  So I’m blacking out the nose (including the horns which were painted yellow also).  While I have everything apart I’ve decided to finally paint and install the fiberglass bumper I bought.  I haven’t painted it yet but I test fit it to see how it looked.  I’d like to try to get it tighter to the fender “pocket” (see pic).  The final piece of this nose job is a surprise.  I’ll post pics once it’s done.

well, it’s been almost two years but the car is back on the ground.  I sent the hub with the sheared wheel stud back to Ken McIntire and he was able to get the old stud out and put in a new one.  So I put the corner back together and slapped the wheels back on and got it off the jack stands.  I took it down the block and back and the clutch pedal feels great.  The brakes however really need to be bled more.  I hate bleeding these brakes.  There are TWO bleed screws per front caliper so that’s six bleeders to deal with and I never have any help.  I’ve tried a vacuum gun but never had much luck with it…  so, next items are, get the brakes bled, get the dash assembled, finish dynamating the interior and some other odds and ends.  the big deal though is that the car is driveable again except for the low brake pedal…

ok, I was already to bleed the brakes and start driving the car and then wham… so much for that idea.  I moved the car from the wheel ramps it’s been on for a year to jack stands so I could remove the wheels.  it’s way easier to bleed the brakes with the wheels off.  anyway, ONE lug nut out of 20 would not come off.  I must have cross threaded it the last time I put them on.  anyway, I ended up shearing it off with a breaker bar.  this was on the front drivers side.  to remove the sheared wheel stud meant removing the caliper and rotor/hub assembly.  then I had to separate the rotor/hat from the hub.  finally I put the hub in my vice and try to  back out the sheared stud.  no dice.  I know they were put in with loc-tite so I heated the bolt up to 150 degrees and hit it with an impact gun.  nothing.  next I bolted the hub back onto a wheel and held the wheel against the wall.  then I tried to back it out with a breaker bar.  when I realized I was starting to twist my allen head socket but the bolt was not budging I gave up.  I’m sending it back to Ken McIntire who designed/built the hub.  he said he’d fix it for me.

sheared wheel stud... bummer.

doh… ok that was lame.  for some reason when I was wiring up the dash I only put power to the speedo and tach?!  once I realized my mistake it was a simple matter of  getting the rest of the gauges switched 12v.  now the oil pressure and gas gauges work.  I’m sure the temp gauge will work too but I haven’t run the car long enough for the temp to come up.