1987 Olds Pro-touring project build - Now with paint

[jae]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

Sometimes the small things are what pull together the clean look of the engine bay... perfect example!

Was thinking the same thing.

FE3X, this is one hell of a build!! I like the gauges you placed in, hell, I like damn near everything. There are so many compliments I could make, but then I'd run out. But as BrownCutty said, it's the details, sometimes the smallest ones, that make / break the work. I think your build is a great example to use for ideas for the rest of us and find out what worked, what didn't, what needed a BFH to work...

 

[FE3X CLONE]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

Thanks man.

I'm getting to that point where I have a TON of little stuff to do and its getting really annoying.

I did get most of my exhaust fitted and welded together with the X-pipe. Its not as perfect as I would have liked it but it's the best I could do laying on my back and test fitting everything. lol
I figure it will get me by and I can always replace it later when the car is mobile and I can get it somewhere to put it up on a lift.

Today I've been working trying to fix my hood mounting points. These things are pretty boogered up. On the passenger side they just had two nuts that were basically set into a HUGE amount of body filler, then fiberglassed over top. On the drivers side it looks like the front nut is this way but the rear nut they just had a metal plate with a U-clip inside that had popped loose.
They had also changed the bolt size from a metric (like a stock hood has) to a 3/8-16 thread. So that was part of my problem.

Luckily I had a spare steel hood laying around and I cut out its hinge mounting points and am working on cutting the fiberglass hood so that I can attach the steel hood's hinge mount. Luckily when this W-25 hood was made, it appears they used a stock steel hoods inner frame structure as the mold, so my steel hood hinges line up pretty decent.

I'll have to take some pictures of this process because its a bit daunting but should be completely invisible once I'm done.

 

[FE3X CLONE]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

Here's a few pictures of what I'm dealing with.

I've cut out a pair of hood hinge attachment points from a stock steel hood and plan to fiberglass them in place.

Passenger side:

Drivers side:

Three of the bolt holes were just 5/16-18 nuts that were embeded in bondo. But then one of the holes had this behind it:

That looks like it was some sort of "fix" considering the others didn't look like this.

 

[youngdeezy]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

good job on the hood mods bro. I wish these aftermarket companies would do some real research when the develop these fiberglass parts! i had similar troubles with my ws6 ram air hood on my firebird. anyway watching your build, i feel like any problem that occur you can solve and handle with no problem its just a setback in time for you.

 

[FE3X CLONE]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

Thanks man. I took a break from the hood for a while so that I could let things sink in and maybe come up with a game plan.

Spent some of today buttoning things back up on the engine. Managed to finally make a lower radiator hose fit and not leak. Also finished my exhaust system and installed it yesterday.
Working on making new shock mounts to extend the mounts lower so I have more shock travel at my lower ride height. Once that's done I just need to adjust the Watts link to be somewhat close and the rear will be ready to go.

Took forever to fire the engine though today. The last time I had it running was back in October when I was trying to tune the EFI system but I had to quit because I ended up having an intake coolant leak. Had that fixed since November but it got too cold to really mess with it any more.
I spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out why it wasn't firing until I finally glanced at the tach on the laptop and reviewed my datalogs to find out I didn't have any RPM reading.
Had a bad connection at the distributor and fixed that and she finally fired after clearing out all the gas.

Its running extremely rich so I need to figure out how to adjust the settings to lean it out. My wideband AF sensor was reading around 9.0-11.0 A/F ratios at idle. :shock: That's enough to make your eyes burn!

One of my main reasons for starting it up was to check that I wired my electric fans correctly and to see how the exhaust system sounds.

Fans are working perfectly now! I can adjust what temps I want them to turn out and off at in the laptop as well as keep them off while cranking.
The exhaust....well....it's not much of a sound reduction from open headers. :shock: :lol: 2" primary/3.5" collector headers, 3" exhaust system with X-pipe and Spintech Prostreet mufflers with dumps before the axle. I angled the dumps towards each other a little to try and help with the sound but this sucker is still loud! You definitely know there's something under the hood. :lol:

Hopefully things dry out enough in the next few weeks and if I get it tuned better I can drive it up to the house for a "small" burnout in the drive way. 😉

 

[papabearxl]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

Me likes!

 

[86CutlassUCF]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

what mods need to be done to get wheels that wide tucked in there like that?

 

[FE3X CLONE]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

what mods need to be done to get wheels that wide tucked in there like that?

Pretty much just a frame notch:

 

[khan0165]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

that is ONE HELL-OF-A frame notching!
did you do any additional bracing?

 

[FE3X CLONE]

Re: 1987 Olds Pro-touring project build *LONG*

I boxed the frame rails, welded in lower control arm reinforcement plates and also used a 2"x2"x.120" wall steel tube that I welded from frame rail to frame rail between the upper shock mounting points and spring seats.

It should help some but there shouldn't be too many issues with the notch. All of the critical suspension attachment points are forward of the notch on the frame. The only thing the rear frame rails are doing is providing an attachment point for the body.

I do know there are Turbo Regals with big notches and on sticky tires and low 11 second times, you can see the 1/4 panels buckle a little during launch.

The next car I do I'm going to reengineer the frame slightly. My plan is to actually cut the entire frame in the back loose and move everthing in and reweld it together. But that gets into control arm relocation, etc.

As it sits now, I can fit a 335/35ZR17 tire but its pretty tight. I only have about a 1/4" from the frame to the tire which isn't a big deal with the watts link controlling the side to side movement of the rear end.