1987 Olds Pro-touring project build - Now with paint

[79loserbluebu]

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

335 that's one big tire! I wonder if you could take the frame from the lower control arm perch and move it over an inch or two, and then extend the LCA perch, and then bolt the LCA in place and put a level on it, and slide the bracket over until it is level. It is considered a triangulated four-link, but I assume the LCA's are parallel to eachother. All that would be left is to move the coil brackets on the rear end over. But it's probably ALOT easier said than done. Any new updates with the hood?

 

[FE3X CLONE]

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

335 that's one big tire!

Yeah, I had test fit one on one of my rims and checked it on the car. The problem is that an 11" rim is the narrowest width you can run with that tire. The sidewall on the tire looked very square compared to the 315's. Wasn't sure I really liked it.

These are a few old pictures from when I was testing them. You see that without the fender flares, they'd be sticking out a little.

Inside the trunk:

It is considered a triangulated four-link, but I assume the LCA's are parallel to eachother.

The lower arms are still at an angle to one another. Not as severe as the upper arms but there's still an angle there.

All that would be left is to move the coil brackets on the rear end over. But it's probably ALOT easier said than done.

Yeah, honestly if I was going to start moving things around that much I'd just get rid of the T4L completely and build a 3-link with a panhard bar or watts link.

Any new updates with the hood?

Not much. Since my laptop decided to take a dump today, I couldn't work on tuning my engine so I messed around with the hood a little.
I'm just rebuilding the mounting points out of wood that I'm going to epoxy in place and fiberglass over. I installed tee nuts in the wood to bolt the hood to.

 

[FE3X CLONE]

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

WooHoo! Today was a good day!

Went out to try tuning the EFI again and to figure out my fuel pressure problems. But before I decided to mess with anything I decided to load a new program into the ECU and just see if it would start.

Sure enough I got it to fire. Messed around with the idle stop on the throttle body a little and then started datalogging.

Noticed that even though my electric fans were kicking on, my temps kept rising. It got to 210 according to my computer screen and I shut the car off. I was worried my fans weren't going to be enough to keep up with the engine but then forgot that I had lost a bunch of coolant a while back from the heater hose fitting. Never put the coolant back in. Sure enough the radiator was only about half full. :super: :super: :super:

So now that I know my ECU is controlling my electric fans properly I was finally able to add water to the system and "burb" it without fear of the engine overheating while I was doing it.

Got the radiator full and now she works perfectly. Fans kick on exactly at 190* and if your standing in front of the car, they'll try to pull your sweat pants in. LOL
They run for maybe 30 seconds before they drop the coolant temps 10* and shut off.

Now that the cooling is working properly I can spend time tuning the EFI while I let the engine idle. Finally managed to lean it out and have a 14.8-14.9:1 AFR at idle. It seems to rev REALLY nicely too. It'll shoot to 6000rpm in the blink of an eye. I always liked my brothers 403 because of how well it reved compared to my old 455 but this engine makes his 403 sound like a slug.

I also couldn't help myself, I set the parking brake and decided to put the trans in 1st gear just to test and see if my hydraulic clutch was actuating or not.
I'm proud to say that my car, for the first time in 7 YEARS, lurched forward 1" under its own power!

Noticed my brakes were a little iffy though. I think I need to bleed more air from the hydroboost system as I could hear the power steering pump groaning when I applied the brakes and could also feel a pulsation in the peddle.

Also managed to move forward on fixing the W-25 hood I have and should have it all fixed soon. I'll have to post a few pics of the in progress on it.

Oh and ummm...I'll probably be lucky if I don't get pulled over in the car from the exhaust note. I was hoping the 3" exhaust, X-pipe and mufflers would quiet it down compared to open headers but its not all that quiet. LOL
But it has such a sweat and smooth exhaust note its like music.

 

[FE3X CLONE]

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

Okay, here's a few pictures of the in process of fixing my hood mounting points.

I took a piece of 3/4" cabinet grade plywood and cut them to fit the hood. Installed threaded Tee nuts for the bolt locations. Then I drilled all the holes you see to give more surface area for the adhesive to grab onto.
I took my die grinder with a cut off wheel and made a bunch of small grooves in the fiberglass hood to give it some "tooth" for the adhesive.
I looked at a ton of different adhesives out there on the market and was told which were the best to use. Of course those all come with a heft price. I then found a new tube of Liquid nails contruction adhesive and did a small test. Turns out that stuff works perfectly! I put down a decent amount on the hood and then press the wood pieces into it and clamped everything down. My holes in the wood worked great as the adhesive oozed up through them.
Let that set up for roughly a week and then today came out to work on it a bit more.

Since the rear most Tee nuts were going to sit a little far down into the fiberglass I came up with something else for them. I went to Ace Hardware and bought some threaded hex spacers. Then took a 5/16-18 bolt and welded it to the end of the spacer. Threaded them down into the Tee nuts and then tacked everything together.

You can see the spacer in the picture above. And a close up here:

And one of it installed:

The Tee nuts though aren't the greatest as they like to back out of the wood easily. So the next step was to mix up some Evercoat Kitty Hair. It's essentially body filler with fiberglass mixed in. Looks like a cat threw up a hairball when your mixing it together.
I spread it around the nuts to help lock them into place. Seemed to work perfectly because once it was dry I couldn't move them at all.

After the Kitty Hair set up I sanded it down real quick and began laying down some fiberglass mat with Epoxy resin.

I'll probably do a few more layers after this one and then finish filling in the larger voids with the Kitty Hair, sanding it down and then a few layers of body filler to get everything smooth and it should be ready for paint then. 🙂

 

[Blake442]

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

Sweet!

 

[Larryg]

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

Liquid Nails bonds like a ****. Good call on that stuff.

 

[youngdeezy]

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

the repair mods are sick

 

[FE3X CLONE]

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

Okay, so it was really tiny and all I really did was pop the clutch and give it a little gas but still, this is more than its done in seven years! WHOOHOO!
Tomorrow its supposed to be nice out so the plan is to actually drive it out of the barn and up the house as a preliminary test.

.

Shaved my hood ornament on the header panel:

I'm kind of doing a few things at once right now. Working on both getting the engine running better on the EFI and starting on body work. Hope to get the car in primer, and most of all, one color by summer.
Called my brother up today and he mentioned he wasn't going to go to the track any this year until the fall. That way if he breaks something on his Mustang, it won't be down all summer. So my goal is to have the car to a point where I can race him at the track later in the fall. Fingers crossed!

 

[papabearxl]

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

8)

 

[FE3X CLONE]

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

Alright, here we go. Few videos of it out of the barn. Still looks like I have a darn coolant leak from somewhere. 😡 Need to figure that out at some point.

Upside is that it seems the power steering and brakes are working pretty decently.

We had some new neighbors move in across the road so I'm sure they loved this. LOL

I'm also sure it looks like a total piece of junk to everyone else but me. But man this is a milestone!