BUILD THREAD Janky- A Mexican Monte Clone

[UC645]

The baseplate screws looked and felt like they were never messed with, so I’m betting it came from the factory like that.
And with the sale price, I’d of been kicking myself up and down the racetrack at the fairgrounds 🤣



I think the holes I drilled are a touch too aggressive, as I have the secondaries completely shut and have the curb idle just barely off of completely shut to keep it idling at 650ish. It’ll stall out of I completely close them.

I’ll have to grab that bracket at some point if I find the bleed holes are a source of a problem. I’ve got an inch tall spacer for the brake booster, and combined with the RPM Air Gap intake, I can fit an allen wrench between the baseplate and intake, but it’s a pain to adjust.

My timing is set at 18 degrees initial, but I need to get a new balancer since the chincy Summit one had the numbers rust, then the whole thing rusted so I only have paint marks for 0 and 18 degrees to go by. Still running ported vacuum, I’ll look in to running straight manifold vacuum over the winter.

And is a single pattern cam with .480 (.512 with 1.6 rockers) lift, 282 degrees of duration 229 at .050 and a 108 degree LSA radical? It’s getting hard to tell with the ludicrous “street” grinds people are running nowadays.

I don’t believe I brought this up, but the following evening after this post I was working on the car, had it running and shut it off.

And it diesel’d. Bad. I honestly believe it ran backwards since I needed to crank the r fine over for about 10 seconds before pressure came back up on the gauge.

I don’t think it did any damage (at least it doesn’t sound like it currently) but I’m not confident.

Today I switched from ported to manifold vacuum on the carburetor and the dieseling problem disappeared. I think it’s about 4 degrees more advanced at idle, but I can’t tell due to a dirty timing tab and a balancer that has rust instead of timing numbers. At least that’s one problem fixed.

I’ve also got a vacuum leak, and I suspect it to be my heater control. Used a vacuum tester on it, and even with the selector set to off, I could hear air leaking every time I tried to pull vacuum on it. Even hooked it up to the vacuum connector under the dash, got the same result.
That being said, is there a way to rebuild these vacuum selectors? I’ve got a few spare lying around I can throw at it if they can be, but I don’t know if it’s a torn hose or the whole connector is leaking.

Hopefully I’ll have this thing home next week, I’ve got the temporary garage set up already, but I need to level it:

It ain’t perfect, but it’s better than sitting in the open.

 

[Starrjkd]

So little tip: 1/4 inch round 303 stainless is not strong enough to hold one of these doors up. I came out the following morning to find the rod on the rear part of the door had unbent itself on the rafter side, and almost dropped the door on the ground. I have some 3/8 stainless to use for the next one.

The driver’s door is installed, shuts great, has its weatherstrip installed and is wired. I’m tinting my windows because I figured I won’t draw enough attention from the cops with just the red and white paint scheme by itself.

And do these speakers make my quarter panels look big?
View attachment 203837

I was going to use the adapters for the package tray speakers but found that even with those, these speakers would be too tall and would hit the trunk rods, so this was the only other option left on the table.

These are DS18 shallow mount 6x9s, I don’t remember the exact model but they have ferrite magnets.


And speaking of wiring, I think I have an issue with my power door locks. I have it wired like factory, but I couldn’t get the actuators to get power, but the relay did, as I could hear it clicking. After a few tries and a couple inspections I heard the power accessory fuse blow and I’m out of ideas as to why, unless the body of the relay needs a direct ground. Either way I’m pulling the dash tomorrow to check my wiring.

When I first rebuilt my car I put speakers in the same spot. I cut a piece of sheet metal the shape of that panel and cut out a 6x9 hole. I attached the panel to the inner 1/4 . It worked great, had a lot of base

 

[UC645]

Been a while since I’ve updated this, so this might take a couple of posts.

Covering the vacuum leak, while my heater control is leaking, I found that my booster went bad from either sitting, being a reused junkyard unit, or it got blown out from backfiring issues I was having while trying to tune the 600cfm Holley I originally had.
I unknowingly tuned the QFT with it blown out, and that threw everything off, so it needed set back to stock. Got the car running again, but wasn’t able to tune it because of the cold weather.

I’ve been wanting a hydroboost setup since I built the car, but went with the booster since it was cheap. That’ll be changing by the end of this month.

The other reason why I haven’t been able to tune it, is I’m afraid my engine has developed a knock. It’s a strange one though, only does it when it’s warm and once oil pressure drops to 30psi or below with 10w30. Sounds like it’s up higher in the engine, like the middle of the cylinder area, so it’s possible my PS pump is on its way out but I couldn’t tell at the time.

But, before all of that, we moved the car from my uncle’s barn:

Always felt that color was a good choice, and sunlight affirmed that feeling. You can see my dad fiddling with the rather abused ratchets for the tire straps on the trailer, I should’ve brought a can of WD-40, it took us 15 minutes to just tighten both of them!

A few days after that, I put the car in its garage:

Yes, it is as sketchy as it looks. Added some more supports after I got it in there but those really should’ve been in place before I drove the car in.
But with this setup, I can crawl under the car if need be, which has already proved valuable.

Fast forward to Christmas, with a major winter storm….

This thing stood up to 40 mph winds, but the 70 mph bursts we got were too much to handle.

 

[UC645]

After taking off the sides and stringing up more rope to hold this thing in place:

If you look close you can see the middle pole is now loose, that’s because the winds were so strong these poles- with 3/8s bolts sunk through them- tore through 6x6 chunks of 2x6s. I’m shocked it was still standing then, let alone now.

My only option at this point was a 50x100 foot tarp from Tractor Supply, and a 12x15(iirc) tarp for the front door.

Left a little door so to speak on the side, and weighed down the front and the right side with block. The left side facing the yard has 2 2x4x10s in it that are screwed into two railroad ties that leveled out the frame.

In that time, I remade the exhaust, but I’m not satisfied with it because I rushed myself due to cold weather and wanting to free up space. So I’m probably going to set money aside to make a kit from scratch, and keep the old set lying around, or just chop it up.

In the meantime, I started working on cleaning up the wiring I added, along with making the engine compartment as clean as I could with the mess I made myself.

This is what I started with:

First order of business was cleaning up the bundle of power and ground wires just for the bussman panel, and moving the busbars to the panel to cut down or wire count while giving me a single place to route additional grounds or power wires on the front of the car.

I removed the relays that were on the filler panel and ran those in the bussman, those were for my fans, and turned on both of the fan coils for high speed only. This required reducing the headlight relays down to 2, but that shouldn’t be an issue.
After this I changed out the single studs to power distribution studs on the heater box.

There’s also a maxi fuse holder in this shot, and that’s for the main power on the car’s factory harness. I’m running a 50 amp fuse in it currently, although I’m worried that’s a little on the high side with the factory harness no longer supplying power to the ignition or headlight circuits, just signals for relays.
Here’s a close up if you want to buy one:

If you’ve got a junkyard with large school buses in them, you could also look there, that’s where I found this and a couple other weatherproof fuse holders.

Then to tie the harness down, I picked these up:

These are MagDaddy magnetic clips I got from WireCare. This type is designed for zip ties and have a 10 pound pull force, and they’re very solid for what I’m holding down here.

Then it was time for the headlight harness’ turn.

It’s still a mess, but far better than what it was. I’ve still got the factory harness in place so it for some reason I lose the relays or my lights get damaged, I can plug in an adapter harness to go back to sealed beams.
I also made a bracket for my ballasts

Not very pretty but they serve their purpose.
There’s a lot more zip ties in those photos than I’d like because I couldn’t find my box of convoluted tubing retainers.

Then I finished up the heater box/firewall area:

I don’t have a more recent photo, but there’s just a lot of materials lying around in this one and I’ve since tied more of the harness together so everything’s less spread out.

Making that heater box was honestly a mistake, while it certainly works and shouldn’t leak, I’m eyeing a Vintage Air kit for the future, so I’ll have something clean to build off of. However I’m not sure how easy those units are to maintain, or how expensive they will be if they are even able to be maintained.

And in the last couple of weeks, I’ve moved to the trunk to make close out panels for the quarters, for the battery and all the power and ground accessories I’ll need as well as a mega fuse or two, and one on the driver’s side for tools and a disassembled jack at some point.

I didn’t take a picture, but the template does go to the rear tail panel, and will use the stock jack mount brace and the retainer studs for the jack and spare tire as well as a stud from the quarter extension to hold it in place.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to use one panel for both sides, but that remains to be seen.

I don’t have any braces on the driver’s side, just the pinch weld and quarter extension studs, so I’ll need to get creative.
Plans are to run a couple of bussbars for amplifiers and I’m replacing that summit battery box with an aluminum one from Taylor Cable because I like the look of it better. I can’t remember where I saw it, but a member here has made a bracket that suspended a box about 3-4 inches above the floor of the trunk above the spare tire well, and I’m going to do the same thing to give me tool storage space. Or space for whatever will fit there.

 

[Tony1968]

I like where you are going. Magnets are cool 😎. I mounted battery box above spare tire well but I want to redo it and make it stronger.

 

[joesregalproject]

Paint came out nice. You have more patience than I do with wiring.

 

[UC645]

Paint came out nice. You have more patience than I do with wiring.

It feels less like patience and more like I’m a glutton for punishment.

 

[pagrunt]

It feels less like patience and more like I’m a glutton for punishment.

Could be worse, you could gone all anal & do a total factory spec redo cause one wants to make every conector & terminal a factory one.

 

[UC645]

Could be worse, you could gone all anal & do a total factory spec redo cause one wants to make every conector & terminal a factory one.

The thing is, I do want to wire a factory bulkhead connector from scratch using the junk harnesses I have here.
I’d probably spend far too much money at WireCare but I’d have the engine and light harness ran the way I want. That will happen after the Vintage Air or whatever custom system I come up with.

 

[mclellan83]

I don't think those garages are meant to last in PA, quite a few years ago my dad put 2 up in his backyard. One for my GTO and one for his 69 Grand Prix, we eneded up with a pretty decent store and it collapsed the one he had his car in. I felt really bad but was lucky that mine didn't go down