That was brutal! But after 3 months of working 7 days a week I finally got my life back! Things started to ease up near the end of October. Time to get back in the shop. Now the first order of business if you really want to get your shop on is… TUNES. So I sat down and made my Ultimate Shop Rock playlist. Really sets the mood and gets me cranking out there. It’s a work in progress so if you think there’s a song that needs to make this list, let me know.
So here it is (in alphabetical order). Oh,and you’re welcome!
AC/DC – Long Way to the Top (if you wanna rock n’ roll), Walk All Over You, Beating Around The Bush, Shot Down In Flames, If You Want Blood
Bad Company – Bad Company, Ready for Love, Feel Like Makin’ Love
Billy Squire – In the Dark, The Stroke, Lonely is the Night
Black Oak Arkansas – Fancy Nancy, Rebel, Crying Shame
Black Sabbath – Paranoid, war pigs
Blue Oyster Cult – Don’t Fear the Reaper, Burning for You
Danzig – Mother
Deep Purple – Highway Star
Dio – Holy Diver, Rainbow in the Dark, The Last in Line
Foreigner – Long Long way from Home, Juke Box Hero, Double Vision
Golden Earring – Radar Love, Twilight Zone
Heart – Barracuda
Iron Maiden – The Trooper
Judas Priest – Breaking the Law, You’ve Got Another Thing Commin’
Kansas – Carry On Wayward Son
Kiss – Detroit Rock City, Love Gun
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Gimme Back My Bullets, That Smell
Mettalica – Battery, Master of Puppets, Damage, Inc.
Ministry – Jesus Built My Hotrod
Montrose – Rock the Nation, Bad Motor Scooter, Space Station #5, I Got the Fire, Paper Money, Jump On It
Motley Crue – Kickstart My Heart
Motorhead – Ace of Spades
Nazareth – Hair of the Dog
Ozzy Osbourne – Crazy Train
Red Rider – Lunatic Fringe
Rush – Working Man, Spirit of Radio, Freewill, Limelight, Tom Sawyer, Subdivisions
Scorpions – Rock You Like a Hurricane, No One Like You
Steppenwolf – Born to be Wild
Styx – Renegade
Thin Lizzy – Jail Break, Cold Sweat
Tom Petty – Runnin’ Down a Dream, Refugee
Van Halen – Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love
Ok, so back to cars… I started working through my list of items to get the Javelin track ready again. My goal is to get the car to where I can take it to a test day at Sears Point (Sonoma Raceway). if it checks out (goes straight when you want it to) I’ll then blow it apart again for final bodywork and paint. Here’s what I’ve gotten done so far:
1) welded new mounts and drilled holes in the trunk for the trunk pins
2) made a new battery mount (this time behind the drivers seat). this let me eliminate about 7 ft. of battery cable.
3) new wheels/tires. I was going to try to get the one bent rim repaired but ended up finding a great deal online for some black wheels (I had always wanted black wheels on the car). these wheels (Drag 31’s) have a 73mm bore (had to have Joe open up the bore on the old set to get them to fit). I got 4 wheels, with valve stems, delivered for under $400 bucks! now I can use the 2 old wheels as spares (that leaves the old wheel that’s bent and has a tire that was gouged by metal when I wrecked it and another wheels that’s fine but the tire has a blister in the sidewall). I took the one shaved, unmounted Toyo I had and bought 3 more from AIM Tire (at sears point) and had them all mounted/balanced on the new wheels.
4) did a bunch (but not all) of the body stuff. pulled the side trim, welded a bunch of holes closed. still more to do but the bulk of it is done.
5) re-installed the seat and belts
6) re-installed the Accusump. I also hooked up a remote cable so I can open/close it even while strapped in. this was on my to do list after racing in 2012.
7) front suspension – the front wheel studs had gotten lose and backed out a little. so I pulled the front apart and removed the studs so I could drill them for safety wire. this took a lot longer than I thought it would because none of the drill bits I had could make a dent in these hardened studs. Called Joe and he said I needed a cobalt bit (of course he has them). So I went to Joe’s and he hooked me up with the bit and a drill press. Now that I live up here it only took me 12 minutes to get to Joe’s shop; awesome! Once I had the studs drilled I screwed them back into the hubs and torqued them. My method for torquing wheel studs is to turn a wheel upside down and wedge against something (wall, other tires, etc). then place the hub (studs first) into the back of the wheel. now the hub will stay put (because the studs are sitting in the holes in the wheel) while you tighten them. works great. With the front end apart I also decided to take the time to change the front springs. I ran 500# springs all of 2012 and everyone said they were too soft. Al, from Control Freak sent me 850# springs and said that’s what I should be running. So I got the 850’s in. I didn’t have a spring compressor so I used some light duty ratchet straps threaded through the coils to compress them enough to get the top cap off and slide the springs out. worked great.
8) the taillight wiring harness had been cut when Evil Genius cut the car in half (I had run the wires inside of the rocker panel). no biggie, I just spliced the cut back together.
9) I replaced the rear gear oil. The rear has had a slow leak since day one. I think (but am not sure) that at least part of the fluid was coming from the drain plug. so I pulled the plug, drained the rear and then put a new plug (I had rounded the corners of the old one a bit) with some thread sealant from loctite. I’ve got it all cleaned off and a drip pan underneath so i’ll see if it still leaks after this.
10) bolted the fuel cell down and hooked up the fuel line and vent hose. Evil Genius are the best but my one gripe is they put metric hardware on my ‘murcan MUSCLE. ewwww…. 🙂
11) re-installed the front sway-bar. the drivers lower control arm sway bar mount had one of the tabs bent (probably happened when the car hopped the curb when I wrecked it). I got it bent back enough to bolt in the rod end but it needs more massaging. hopefully Joe can help me straighten it out.
12) got the rear bumper bolted in. took a couple of extra minutes because the brackets had 4 bolts each (just like the one that got destroyed in the wreck) but the new back half of the car only had two HOLES for each bracket. weird. I don’t know if they tried to save money at some point by mounting the rear bumper with 4 bolts total instead of 8? anyway, took a cut off wheel to the “extra” bolts and I was back in business. Another issue is that this bumper (which was thrown in by Don who sold me the rear clip) has been hit and has a bit of a bend in it. Hopefully when I get it painted they can also straighten out the bumper. otherwise I’ll have to scrounge up a straight one somewhere…
13) got the taillights “built” and installed. I had to clean them, paint the inside with “chrome” paint, mount extra brake lenses where the backup lenses usually go and paint the “buckets” trim black.
14) changed the oil filter and put in fresh Joe Gibbs XP6. 10 quarts to start. once I get the car running again I’ll get the accusump filled and then top it off with another 2 quarts.
so there’s really not much left for the car to be running again:
– fill with water
– have Joe scale/align the car
– nut and bolt the whole thing
– fix/remount the rear spoiler
that’s it (in theory)… So I’m going to finish up the last few things and then get it to Joe’s for scale/alignment. After that I’ll wait for a Friday test with good weather at Sears Pt. Pics below.
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