Space City 1982 GP Build

Rktpwrd said:

Smokin’ right along!
Great progress Jared. Thanks for the update. Glad you were able to step back from it for a bit and regroup. It happens to us all at times. Keep it up brother, it’s looking great!

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Thanks Donovan. Yeah, I just had to get away from it at that point. Sometimes it's the best thing to do. I really don't have as much patience as I should and am a bit of a sissy when things aren't going my way. I just have to remind myself, this is how it is. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

O. D. Showtime said:

Awesome progress Jared! It's coming along nicely!

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Thanks Kevin!

Longroof79 said:

Everything is really coming together. It's great to see all the progress you've been accomplishing. Keep up the great work my friend.

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Thanks Jack!

michmalibuman said:

Its looking good.

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Thanks man! Good to have you aboard.

liquidh8 said:

Looking good Jared.

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Thanks Jim! Not anywhere near the caliber of build as your wagon but it should be nice cruiser.

clean8485 said:

Looks Good Jared. Can I hire your brother?-just kidding. The insulation installation looks great. Are you refurbishing part of the dash? Is that the reason for the disassembly?

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Thanks Jeff. No, I'm going to hoard Sean to myself. I need the horsepower! The X-mat installation is awesome. He does great work and I'm so lucky to have his help. I have the dash disassembled to get the trim pieces out that go on each side of the dash, and fill in between the A-pillar trim and the kick panels. I'm going to paint them black. While I'm at it, I'm going to put in a cluster with a tach, put in a new stereo, de-woodgrain the dash, etc. All things I had planned but didn't intend to do at this time. The project has snowballed since the T5 wouldn't play nice with the granny-bench.

Northernregal said:

Looking amazing! The matting job is top notch. Keep rolling the progress pics out for us to enjoy!

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Thanks Duke! I can't say enough nice things about Sean's X-mat installation. I'm glad you are enjoying the thread and am glad to have you along.

MrSony said:

I think your jack might be mounted backwards.

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I thought I might and so did Timo22. With his help and an old thread on here I got it stowed. It turns out it was not backwards. I just had to learn how to stow it. I don't have a picture of it stowed unfortunately but this thread has some good pictures towards the end of it....
https://gbodyforum.com/threads/jack-storage-in-trunk.37082/

Today was a good day on the GP. I had a mobile window tint guy come over this morning and tint the opera windows and the rear window while I have most of the interior out. He was great. He was professional and personable. He was very talented at his craft. He was thrilled that the interior was out. It made his life easy. I also had gone in there and trimmed the excess butyl around the opera windows and really cleaned that up. I didn't go super dark. I went with 35% which is the legal limit for the side windows here in Texas. I want all the windows to match in the end. Also, I want the 3rd brake light to show up through the tint well. I also just like the subdued level of tint. I didn't have him do the side windows since I plan to replace both of them (both are badly scratched) and right now the passenger side window is down and won't roll up (bad lift motor?). I'm really happy with how it turned out...





After the tint guy left, Sean and I got under the car and re-measured the driveline angle with a digital angle finder that I borrowed from a woodworking buddy. It measures to the tenth of a degree. It is normally used for leveling saws but it worked well for this purpose. With the analog angle finder, we had determined I had a half a degree operating angle at my front U-joint which is the minimum. After checking it with the digital angle finder, it was closer to 0.3 degrees. Not enough. We removed the transmission mount and set the transmission on a 3/4" block of wood and re-measured. Much better but probably too far. At this point I'm looking for a 1" thick transmission mount. If I can't find one, I'm going to have to modify the G-Force crossmember. I don't want to do that because of the nice powdercoat finish on it but I'm not afraid to do it. We'll see. More research needed there. Long story short, my transmission mount dilemma is not solved yet. The 1.6" "short" Energy Suspension mount is too tall.

The rest of the day was spent installing a trunk carpeting kit. I bought it on eBay. It was made by ACC here in the US. I love ACC carpet but this kit was not that great. The instructions sucked. The quality and the fit were not commensurate with the price I paid. In the end it looks pretty good. It took most of the day to get it to the point shown in the pictures below. It took some glue and some Velcro to get it to this point. I don't recommend it. If I was going to do it again, I would just buy material and make my own boards. Still the trunk looks so much nicer. Here is how the trunk looked when I bought the car...



And now...





I forgot to mention. I bought a spare tire this past week. I had bought a 15"x6" bare steel wheel a few years ago and had painted it. It has been in its box all this time. I bought a 195/65/15 tire this week and got it mounted and balanced. I was trying to get close to the 205/70/14 stock size. I think I got pretty close. It is in the well but the "J-Bolt" I bought along with the rest of the hardware for the jack is too short. I'm just going to make a new one like Sean and I did for the Camaro.

That's the day's progress. I can't believe what a fight that trunk kit was. Tomorrow we're hoping to have good enough weather to paint some interior trim. Fingers crossed. I'll post up when there is some progress to report. Thanks as always for following along.

Best,

--Jared