Cockpit Rear Window Construct

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Major System Category: Body (Shell)
Task: Finalize rear cockpit window
Parts:
Prerequisite Tasks:
Additional Costs: Set Belt restraint bar  $200
Time Requirement: 2 hour
Date Started: November 1, 2014

Date Completed:  January 11, 2015
I needed a break from the wiring problems, so I started working on parts of the car that I could finish and put aside. The rear cockpit window is such a part. One design change I made was to go with a racing 4 point restraint system rather than the Corvette 3 point system salvaged from the donor vehicle. To make that work I needed a restraint bar.

The seatbelt restraint bar.

This is a hefty piece of gear with attachment points welded for easy bolt on to the chassis.

Painted black.

I purchased a restraint bar from one of the other GTM builders on the Factory Five Forum. The restraint bar bolts through the rear cockpit window frame and directly into the chassis. It is a great design. I started on this on my final 2014 trip down south to the new build site. The build manual calls for the application of a cloth covering. I decided to just paint the frame and the restraint bar black. I had a small paint booth already established and proceeded to the paint the parts

Rear cockpit frame. I would suggest mounting this in the car, before working with it so you understand the orientation.

Painted black.

On mt next trip down, I moved all the glass to the new build site. This included the cockpit rear glass. Some people have replaced this with clear Lexan, I decided to stick with the glass. The hardest part of the installing the gasket is in the half circles on either side of the frame. I started the gasket on the straight portion of the frame and worked my way around.

Gasket tool provided with the Factory Five kit. Use it. It makes the job easier.

Gasket installed.

Factory Five provides a gasket tool. It works to a point. The trick here is to get as much of the window into the gasket as possible. I tapped the edge of the cockpit frame on the floor to drive the window further into the gasket. This got it far enough into the gasket so it seats into the gasket. A friend suggested you could uses soap to ease it into place. The gasket tool comes in handy to pull the lip of the gasket over the edge of the window. 

Rear frame, window and restraint bar. Obviously, the blue tape is there for protection. It will be removed on final assembly.

Everything bolted together.

Nine Month Milestone

Chassis #402 arrived at the end of June, 2012. It was a good time and a good distraction as I had just said good bye to Ripley, my Black Lab, a few weeks earlier. Rips watched me curiously as we worked on both the Porsche and Corvette - never quite sure what was going to happen next (neither was I). Based on my schedule, budget and other obligations this represents nine months of progress on the build since delivery. I split my time between the Northern and Southern Man Caves. Obviously, when I'm down south, the GTM waits patiently for me to return so we can get working on things.

Except for a few things like mounting the running gear, removing and installing the body shell and getting the transaxle into the chassis, I've done everything myself. Oh, there has been grand kid or two that cut wires and play with lights, several neighbors who stopped by to see what was happening, and plenty of other interested folks who wandered in. All this is to say, you can build one of these incredible cars on one side of a double garage in a suburban neighborhood.

I plan to do the final assembly at Southern Man Cave, which is being augmented  with a number of bells and whistles to make jobs like moving engines and transaxles and body shells much easier. The nine months of work is basically weekends and evenings, a significant amount of mumbling to myself, deer in the head lights stares and wandering about the build looking for the tool I just had in my hand.

The major items completed or close to completion are:

• Suspension installed.
• Brake and clutch lines run.
• Fuel system.
• Most of the door internals.
• Non-ECU wiring
• Body work/modification up to primer.
• Transaxle inside the chassis.
• 50% of the sound proofing
• Most coolant lines run.
• Miscellaneous items installed (e.g. side marker, nozzles, vents, HomeLink, Lights)

Hazard Wiring - Circuit 4/6

<<  Windshield Wiper Harness - Circuit 3/5          Parking Lights - Circuit 4/8 >>
                                                                             Weather Pack Connectors
Major System Category: ISIS
Task: Hazard lights
Parts:
Prerequisite Tasks:
Additional Costs:
Time Requirement: 3 hours
Date Started: November 7, 2013

Date Completed:  November 7, 2013

The hazard lights are one of those circuits that runs the length of the car. This circuit was assigned to Power Cell #4, which did not get installed until Fall 2013. However, the planning and preliminary wiring for this circuit took place in Fall 2012. I had to think about how this was going to work out 14 months prior to getting this done.

Hazard circuit terminal block. This located on the center aluminum panel in the front bay. This photo was taken prior to mounting Power Cell #4.

I decided that once I had the hood installed and centered, it was never coming off the car again. I made this decision for a couple of reasons:

1. There are too many systems tied into the hood (e.g. head lights, fog lights, signals, sensors, grille).
2. The hood is not symmetrical. Prior to mounting the hood, I spent three days with the cross hatch laser level figuring out that it was off center. Once I had it mounted on the car, I decided I was not taking it off again.

The yellow wire in the lower left is the hazard circuit coming out of the left front turn signal and going through the conduit along the hood above the grille.

The hazard lights are located on the four corners of the car. Regardless of the power cell location, I was going to end up running wires a long way. I have gotten better at the concept that even though car is approximately 16 feet long, a wire run like this is probably closer to 20 feet due to path down into the tunnel and back up around the engine bay.

This is the other side of the hazard circuit coming out on the right front of the car. The yellow wires run to the other signal then through the conduit to the terminal block.

I mounted a terminal block where one side is daisy chained (i.e. all sockets are wired together on one side). This means a single power lead distributes power to all ports on the terminal block. Based on my design, I knew where Power Cell #4 was going to be mounted, so prior to purchase I built the hazard circuit terminal block next to the power cell location and wired the circuit into the front signals. I also ran wires to the rear of the car for the rear signal lights. This conduit comes out at the rear of the tunnel close to the cable box for the manual parking brakes. The rear power leads are split to go around the engine bay and up to the rear lights.

The yellow wires are the rear leads from the terminal block. They run under the Vintage Air unit through a large conduit to the rear end of the tunnel. The braided cable is the cross over pipe for the fuel tanks.

By law (as I understand it), the car is required to have a physical hazard switch. The switch is slated to be mounted on the center console below the touch screen and forward the gear shift. Since I am using ISIS, I just need to run the signal wire and a ground to this switch to complete circuit.

The hazard circuit (yellow wires) split to the left and right into conduits that work around the engine bay to the rear lights. The rectangular item in the lower left background is the cable box for the manual brakes. These run under the engine.

These are circuits enclosed in wire loom that run around the engine bay and next tot he splash guards.

Exhaust Vent

<< Rear Body Louvers                              Shaved Handles >>

Major System Category: Body (Shell)
Task: Cut the two openings for the exhaust.
Parts:
Prerequisite Tasks:
Additional Costs:
Time Requirement: 1 hour
Date Started: August 22, 2013

Date Completed:  August 22, 2013

I had not planned on cutting the exhaust vents at this point in time. However, I went through my collection of scrap fiber glass (basically, pieces that have been trimmed from the car already), and discovered I didn't have a piece large enough to cut plates for the shaved door handles. It didn't occur to me right away, but the exhaust vents offer a large enough piece for the door handle plates.

Even though I flubbed drawing the line, I did cut it straight.

This is a very straight forward task (that requires a modicum of ingenuity to get done). If you think that's a contradiction, then you haven't been building a GTM for the past year. The build manual instructs to measure 8.5 inches from either side of the center indentation where the license plate is mounted. Note: The indentation is slightly trapezoid  so measurements need to account for a slight difference top to bottom.

Here are the cut out pieces for the exhaust vents. Now I can form the plates for the shaved door handles.

I used a Dremel tool and a die grinder with cut off wheels to make the initial cuts. My preference is the Dremel tool, because it is easier to be precise. There some difficulty in getting the small Dremel cut off wheel inside the indentation to get all the way through the fiber glass. Once I had some initial cuts made, I was able to enlarge from the inside portion of the body shell. I had to be careful so I didn't get a cut going at an angle. Next, I took a reciprocating saw to finish the cuts, then a sanding block to smooth out the cut edges.

Old license plate just to see how it would look. 

Windshield Wiper Harness - Circuit 3/5

<< Wiper motor and Washer Fluid Tank                    Hazard Wiring - Circuit 4/6 >>

Major System Category: ISIS Wiring
Task: Connect steering column controls to wiper motor and washer pump
Parts:
Power Cell: 3
Circuit: 5 - WHITE
Master cell: TAN/BLACK
Prerequisite Tasks: Install the steering column
Additional Costs: N/A
Time Requirement: 2 hours (alone) / 4 hours if you have your 4 year old grand son help
Date Started: August 17, 2013

Date Completed: August 17, 2013

Zachary wanted to cut wire. He cut this piece into teensy-weensy pieces.

One of the things that has been bugging me for the past week or so is how does the washer motor in the windshield fluid reservoir get power and signal. It seems like a simple thing, but I hadn't really dug into the problem until today. Zachary, one of my grandsons, was here to help. He did a great job cutting up wire. In fact, he demolished two scrap pieces of yellow and green wire.

Circuit drawing of the wiper motor and control stalk.

The manual has a section on the windshield wiper harness. You can't really tackle this task until both the wiper motor and the steering column are attached. These two assemblies form the end points of the windshield wiper harness. The wiring on each end of the harness is slightly different.

Steering column wiper harness. The lower yellow, green, gray and pink wires extend to the wiper motor. The second yellow splices into the door popper circuit.  The purple is not used.

The steering column harness can be traced from the control stalk on the right hand side under the column and over to a plug. It is zip tied together with other wires for a while. What you want to find is the following:

• Pink (washer pump)
• Gray
• Dark Green
• Purple (not used)
• Yellow (there are two wires) (power)

This is the bundle coming off the wiper motor.

The wiper motor has a wrapped bundle of wires coming out the front of the motor pointed towards the front left corner of the car. This has the following wires:

• Gray
• Dark Green
• Purple (not used)
• Yellow (power)
• Black (ground)

Terminal block at hte wiper motor. The yellow, green and gray are spliced together. The black is spliced into a master ground/ The red extends on to the washer pump.

The build manual indicates the purple wire should be cut because it is out of specification for the GTM's wipers. My solution was to not extend tthe purple wire at all. 

1. I wired up a terminal block that can be mounted under the steering column and ran wires to the wire motor, where I wired up a second terminal block. 
2. I extended the gray, dark green and yellow wires between both terminal blocks. 
3. I extended the pink wire only from the steering column terminal block to the washer pump. I had to attach a blade socket to end of this wire.
4. I ran the ground for the wiper motor in place of the pink wire on the second terminal block.
5. I extended a ground wire (with a blade terminal) to the washer motor.
6. The wiper motor ground and washer pump grounds are extended to the same terminal ground block used for the InReserve and Horn.

Washer pump with power and ground leads.

Hood Preparation

<< Fender Louvers                                                       next  >>

Major System Category: Body (Hood/Shell)
Task: Clean up all issues on hood through primer
Parts: Primer (6 - 8 cans), Primer Sealer ( 4 cans)
Prerequisite Tasks:
Additional Costs: 150 - $190
Time Requirement: 70 - 90 hours
Date Started: July  10, 2013

Date Completed:  July 27, 2013

There are no short cuts here. If you don't want to do this part of the build, then farm it out.

This is close to the final version of the hood. It is basically how I spent my summer vacation. I used steel wool as a final stage prior to sealing the primer. This smooths it down close to a glass like surface.  It has been a long journey to this point, but I found I kind of liked the body work and I'm glad I didn't panic and farm it out.

The body work is the area that most intimidates me (not that I'm not intimidated about dropping in an engine and hooking up a seven speed transaxle). The hood presents many challenges:

1. Seams
2. Fender Louvers
3. Headlight/foglights
4. Grille Area
5. Hood Latch area
6. DRLs

If you peruse the Factory Five Forums, you start hearing that the car vanishes for weeks and months before it come back finally painted and finished. There is a princely sum associated with the work, and if it comes in under $15,000, it probably is a bargain. There is a ton of work that needs to be performed to get the car ready for paint.

This is an early photo from 9/27/2012. I just brought the hood back from my neighbor's garage. This looks deceptively easy. The surface is smooth. At this point, I didn't know the grille opening is not centered or that the hood is off by 3/4" or that the Factory Five hood louvers are really sub standard and that I would end up purchasing the Vraptor hood louvers. Ignorance is bliss.

The seams and the fender louvers present the greatest challenge. You can't simply grind down the excess material on the seams and say good enough. There are the following issues:

I spent more time getting the fender louvers right than anything else on the hood.  This is the louver before I did anything to it. I expected the left and right louvers to be identical. They are not. I expected them to line up nicely. They did not.  I am happy I have them, but they are very labor intensive. I spent man weeks getting these right.

• The pieces connected by the seam are uneven, so grinding everything down to a even plane removes too much material.
• The seam needs to have a fiber glass strip to strengthen the area, and this just takes time.
• The hood has seams running from edges closest to the cockpit to forward the wheel wells, then down. There is another seam that runs across the front of the car over the grill.
• Fender louver add a further complication, because they need to be feathered into the rest of the hood, and there are cuts required to make them functional. 

 

This another early photo (9/29/2012) with the Factory Five hood louvers and fender louvers taped in place. I used a cross hatch laser level to figure things. It is sitting at the bottom center on a small tripod. The best way to describe mounting the hood is that there are 100 ways to put the hood on and I settled on the 101st way. Someone who came by to see the car, asked if I intended to take the hood off when I painted the car. I popped open the hood and showed them how it was mounted, then explained, "It is never coming off again."

If you add DRLs, then these need to be custom cut and smoothed out.

Another non-standard mod are my DRLs. I had to cut into the hood just below the grille. These took some time, but eventually I got them mounted properly. It was only later that I realized I had to make them pretty. I might have to do some more work here before everything is perfect.

I think it is easier to do this work with the hood connected to the car, and the car on a lift. This configuration provides a stable platform for the sanding process (and you will do beaucoup sanding).

This is several months later (6/27/2013). The seams are pretty rough at this point. Someone asked me on the Factory Five forum why I bothered fiber glassing the seams, because other builders just ground them down. Yes, you need to get rid of the extra bonding material, but remember we are talking about the strength of the body here on a high performance car. I applied Bondo, fiber glass, more Bondo and sanded and more Bondo and more sanding... Well you get the idea. I have to say that when the front seam blended into the rest of the body I was amazed. At that point, I knew the only standing between myself and a completed car was me.

I use the following products to get the hood prepped:

This product is phenomenal. The can has two chambers: 1 for primer, 1 for fixer. You shake it up for 2 minutes, then pop a button on the bottom of the car. This opens the barrier between the primer and the fixer. Then you shake it for 2 more minutes. Now you have the perfect mix (every time) withe professional fan spray nozzle.

• SprayMax 2K Rapid Primer Filler.
• Dupli-Color Primer Sealer
• Dura-Block autobody kit

A friend commented that there was a lot of nasty Bondo to sand down. He wasn't wrong. I bonded the fender louver to the body using 3M's 8115 panel bond. I then fiber glassed the edges of the louver to the hood. I then spent many evenings feathering the louver into the hood. My bride asked me if I had bitten off more than I could handle. I admitted that might be true. I certainly wondered if this would ever look right.

Once I was satisfied with the primed surface, I went over it with steel wool to eliminate any "pebbly" surface distortions, then I sealed the hood. This stuff is pretty caustic, so get a respirator and face shield.

This is the louver 1 month later.

Install InReserve battery monitoring kit - Circuit 1/10

<< Horn - Circuit 1/9                                    Lengthen Fan Wires >>

Major System Category: ISIS Wiring
Task: Interface ISIS inRESERVE module
Parts:

1. ISIS inRESERVE kit (solenoid, switch, fuses, wires).
2. Main battery cable

Prerequisite Tasks: N/A
Additional Costs: $205
Power Cell: 1
Circuit: 10 - TAN
Master cell: BLUE/GREEN
Time Requirement: 3 hours
Date Started: April 27, 2013
Date Completed: April 27, 2013

inRESERVE is a battery monitor and kill switch. It monitors battery charge when the car is turned off. Should the battery discharge below a certain point, a solenoid pops and all taps to the battery are killed. As an added level of protection, there is a kill switch that shuts down all power to the car. It seems to me this is also a security feature, because the car can be completely turned off.

This is everything you need for the kit. I found oput I could purchase the cables I needed at Napa Auto Parts, and this proved much easier than fabricating the cable myself.

I mounted the solenoid switch at the center of the front fire wall above the tunnel entrance. Surprisingly, there is plenty of space to work with right here. There are four terminals on the solenoid:

1. Ground
2. Kill Switch
3. Starter/battery
4. Power cells

This is a nice flat spot about dead on the car's center line to install the inRESERVE module. It allows me to service this from either side of the car.

I ran the ground to the passenger next to where I mounted the horn. I sanded down to bare metal and established a ground point between the horn and the wiper motor. I plan to use this ground point for the horn, wiper motor and inRESERVE solenoid.

This is the driver's side wall next tot he master cylinders and above the steering column. I drilled my hole for the kill switch here. I can access it by reaching over the front tire.

I ran the kill switch lead to the drivers side. I ran the wire around the corner next to the master cylinders and over to the fender wall. I drilled a hole, mounted the kill switch. I put it here, because it allows me to reach through the wheel well over the front tire and toggle the solenoid. The second lead off the switch goes to an inline fuse holder (supplied with the kit). I installed this fuse and ran thee other lead back to the battery terminal.

This is the momentary switch installed. This worked pretty well. You can tighten it down and she should stay put.

The starter/battery terminal handles the following:

1. Runs the main battery cable from the solenoid to the starter. This takes the battery cable and runs it through the tunnel. There are a lot of things in the tunnel, but I think I am getting to the end. 
2. Runs the battery cable to the battery via a mega fuse,

I remembered I had this piece in the Northern Man Cave. It is pictured here with out the top plate that encloses the  evaporator unit or the am from the wiper motor. It is just placed here so I could mount the mega fuse.

The final line sends power to the power and master cells. It does this by running a lead to the mega fuse block for all power cells. It also provides a convenient terminal for taps that go directly to the positive terminal on the battery (e.g. the fused Vintage Air power lead).

This is a top down view of the mega fuse. This sits right behind the master cylinders. For build purposes, i can disconnect the cables form the mega fuse and remove this part.

The lead from the solenoid to the battery is fuses with a mega fuse block. The biggest problem I had was finding some place to put this that could actually be reached in the event it needed maintenance. The main issue is I am running out of flat surfaces to mount stuff like this. It occurred to me that there is  a piece that sits above the master cylinder that has a nice flat surface, I mounted the mega fuse here, and I can easily disconnect the cable leads from the mega fuse to remove this piece to get access.

This is the inline fuse that leads to the positive battery terminal. This is a 10 amp fuse between the  momentary switch and the battery.

I mounted the inRESERVE module on the center of the panel that is common to the Vintage Air  Evaporator unit.

Intellitronix Terminal Block

<< Intellitronix Create-A-Dash                         Horn - Circuit 1/9 >>

Major System Category: Electronics
Task: Wire terminal blocks
Parts: Terminal Blocks
Prerequisite Tasks: N/A
Additional Costs: $12
Time Requirement: 3 hours
Date Started: May 19, 2013
Date Completed: May 19, 2013

There are close to 30 wires coming out of the back of the instrument cluster. I had focused exclusively on getting the cluster built that I did not consider what came next. Obviously there is some order to all these wires, I just need to read the instructions that come with the kit to figure where everything goes.

Lots of wires in a bunch of different colors, but they all mean something. Once you understand the meanings, then the  pattern becomes clear and the solution is obvious.

Fortunately for me, this is not Intellitronix first shot at wiring instrument clusters together. There are basically five groups of wires:

1. Ground (black)
2. Power (red)
3. Dimmer circuit (purple)
4. Indicators (various colors)
5. Sending units (various colors)

The solution is something called daisy chaining (at least that's what it was called 30 years ago). I purchased this terminal block from Radio Shack. I then wired each terminal to the next terminal. This means that a single lead can be run to a grounding point for all wires running in the bottom side of this terminal block. Since these are grounds, i wasn't worried about something arcing over.

There are 9 ground wires, 9 power wires (these can segregated into two groups) and 6 dimmer wires. The ground wires are obvious. They need to be ground to the chassis, but ganging 9 ground wires to a single grounding point is unmanageable. Similarly  there are 9 power wires. The six attached to the gauge cluster need to be run to the ignition. There is not enough room on the ignition terminal to run another 6 wires. Finally, the dimmer wires need to be spliced into the head light switch (oops).

This is an insulated terminal block. I used this type of block for everything except the grounds. I daisy chained this block and the one for the dimmer circuit. That way I only had to run 1 lead to each source. This is a much more manageable arrangement.

I purchased three terminal blocks from Radio Shack. For the grounds I could go with an open terminal block. For anything related to positive current, I opted for an insulated terminal block. I discovered I could cut apart the insulated terminal blocks. So I fabricated 2 six wire, 1 five wire and 1 three wire blocks.

From left to right, the dimmer, ground and power terminal blocks. The leads coming in from the top come from each gauge. Plus the ground terminal block also received leads from the signal and high beam indicators. Before I mounted these for real, I clamped everything to my test battery. As long as the gauges lit up, it means my terminal blocks are working properly.

The Factory Five carbon fiber back board curves in. this provides a shelf where the terminal blocks can be mounted. I mounted the terminal blocks using 3M double side tape. I had wire for the power and ground leads, but nothing for the dimmer block. I know I have some wire at the Northern Man Cave, so I'll take care of that when I get back.

The top three wires are leads from the GTM kit supplied indicator lights. The bottom wires are leads from the speedo gauge. Since I have a terminal block, it should be fairly easy to run these leads into the steering column circuit. I probably am going to need another terminal block to handle signals coming from the front and rear of the car.

The speedo gauge has two white wires and a brown wire. The instructions says that the white wires are labeled on the gauge printed circuit board as left and right. In agate-agate you can barely make out something that looks like right. The left and right white wires are connected to the respective turn signals. The brown wire is connected to the high beam indicator. Somewhere along the line these have to be wired into the switch on the steering column. 

Sending unit terminal block.

The final terminal block is for sending units. These connect as follows:

1. Green - Connects to the ignition coil or the direct tach output lead.
2. Blue - Connects to the water temperature sending unit.
3. Gray - Connects to the mechanical speedometer cable.
4. Yellow - Connects to the fuel sending unit.
5. Orange - Connects to the oil pressure sending unit.

Terminal block set up on the back side of the instrumentation cluster. This certainly makes  a lot more sense.