95naSTA's Bonneville Progression

[95naSTA]

Thank you!

I snuck in a little work today and all wiring that got nicked when I was fabbing up that firewall plate is now fixed/soldered with epoxy lined shrink tubing.

[95naSTA]

Since I've been home most of this month I got a few things done.

I pulled the trans and took measurements for mocking up mounts.

I also drafted up some of the plates needed in CAD and test fitted them.

[Twenty]

I never had the patience for CAD. Then again, I tried it when I was really young.

[Ringo64]

Nice!

[95naSTA]

A member of a Bonnie forum was nice enough to make me a cup for the intermediate shaft bearing. This part will be used in conjunction with the metal version of the last pic in my past post.

V3.0 of the clutch pedal plate is drafted up and test fitted.

I wasn't happy with how ragged the clutch pedal master hole was. The plan was to fix it.. But, since I'm going to have so many parts water jetted, I figured I might was well draft it up. I'm going to drill the mounting holes myself with the old plate to endure those are perfect.






Vid of the paper part in action
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSfeo79j2X4

[Young gun]

Progress!!!

[Twenty]

That looks really nicely made!

[95naSTA]

It was her 1st part on a lathe too.

[95naSTA]

The trans got bolted up and everything was pulled into place to start the mock up.

A decent amount of material had to be removed from the unibody frame rail. It'll be notched in with thicker sheet metal for strength.



With everything in place I was able to get a better idea of what I need to do to the trans plates I CAD'd.

Why I'm not going to use the stock rear mount. (The stud is too mar IMO)
The paper is the original rear mount I made. I'm going to extend the rear plate to the lower self that the OEM rear and use a universal mount.
With it extended, it'll be easy to put a quick 90 down to a universal mount.

Edit- I figured out how to use the stock mount so I can make use of both of those shelves on the subframe.






The front plate ends up forward of the OEM mounting holes.. I'm going to get rid of the lower dog leg on the front trans plate, extend it to the driver's side, and weld in a piece perpendicular to wrap it around, and make a mounting point at the bottom of it.




Now I have to modify the plate drawings and figure out what universal mounts I'm going to use.

Bad part of this though.. I need to re-do 1 primary and flip the collector on the the front header since it hits here the HTOB line makes a bulge on the trans case.

[Sam]

Looking good man. Keep up the good work.

[Ringo64]

Awesome work!

[95naSTA]

Thanks guys.

The rear trans mount plate is finalized in CAD.

I printed it out and threw it in on last time to mark off where I want it to end. I just lined it up with the stock rear mount which I'll be moving inboard about 3/4".

[[ChaosweaveR]]

Dude, this is dedication. Keep at it, brotato.

[Young gun]

Dude, this is dedication. Keep at it, brotato.

Yeah holy crap this is alot more work then I thought it was going to be

[95naSTA]

Progress isn't as fast as I would like but I'm getting there. I wasn't going to be home for 2 weeks so I made sure all those CAD files were developed/tested before I left. I got the files sent over to S&W Race Cars right after I left a few days ago..

I love how cheap water jetting is..

For these plates in 1/4" mild steel:
Rear block for jack shaft mount
Rear trans
Front trans (trans side)
Front trans (subframe side)
This plate in 12 gauge mild steel:
Clutch master/pedal

... $45.xx

Granted it took a bit of time developing the CAD files and testing them, I'd much rater spend my time doing that vs. monster-trucking metal on a grinder. It'll still take some of that but maybe a quarter of what it would have been.

[95naSTA]

I got back from travel Friday night and got some more progress in yesterday.

The clutch pedal plate is a very tight fit with the master. This is good though.. it's very solid. I drilled all the necessary holes and bolted the pedal up.







The front trans mount is tacked together. It's going to be a puck style mount but with 80A polyurethane I picked up from McMaster. There's about 2" between the bottom of the trans side and the subframe plate. I might be getting a band saw. So, I'm waiting to cut the poly down. At that point I just have to drill a hole through it for the bolt. The corners will get grinded down too for aesthetics.







The washers are just there as a reference for where to drill the bolt hole trans side.

The rear trans mount is started. It still needs to be boxed in a bit more. Originally I wanted to move the stock mount inboard more but since I'm using 1/4" steel for the plate bolting to the trans, I'm not really worried about bending it.




The extension of metal that meets the bottom of the mount isn't straight due to me dropping it. It'll line up better with the mount when finished. The mount extension will be boxed in with right triangles coming off the top and bottom of the trans plate.

[95naSTA]

Today, well.. yesterday was a good day.

The rear trans mount is finished and the front is 90% complete.

Here's a different view of the rear mount to show it's function;


and complete:



The front mount is only missing a stand off spacer for the lower bolt hole on the trans side of the mount..

For the front, I got clever with my drill press and managed to create a polygon shape for a bolt head..






And a pic of where I spend my free time..


I am beyond pumped that I own a bandsaw now.

[95naSTA]

I got a couple more things in over the weekend and today.

Boring stuff:
Checked that the new clutch pedal plate mounts up good and welded 1 out of 2 spacers on it for the pedal bracket
Wrapped up the birds nest of wiring that comes through the firewall and added one large wire for the starter signal since it comes off the auto trans selector switch that;ll be in the car.
Ordered 20mm x 1' rod so I can made two stand off spacers with the band saw. One for the clutch pedal plate, the other for the front trans mount. The lower bolt hole on that mount is set back from the top two.
Ordered seam sealer epoxy for the firewall plate.
Ordered 1 '07 Cobalt SS axle (they're the same D/P) to see if I'll need one or both custom length axles.

Since the trans has to stay in the car till I check axle length I couldn't work on notching the unibody or mock up the jack shaft mount to the block.

Not so boring:
So, I worked on the from header.
Chopped the Cyl 1 primary and collector off, clocked the collector, and figured out the new routing for a 33" long primary.
The section after the collector still needs to be chopped off and re-routed but it looks like I'll have no problem leaving the crossover alone.







I also hooked up the shift linkage and rowed through the gears for S&G. Pretty cool feeling.

[Ghost]

more work! so uh, about that Ecotec you have been wanting to work on...(hint hint)

[95naSTA]

Haha. I remember. My Bonnie needs me though!

[Ghost]

well ok, maybe next time.

[95naSTA]

Here's the drivers side, G6 drivers axle, and Malibu hub assembly with the suspension loaded:


At first glance, it's good to go.. but, the axle is completely compressed:



So, custom axle no. 1 needs to be 1.25" shorter.

Here's the passenger side, Cobalt SS jack shaft, G6 drivers axle, and Malibu hub assembly with the suspension loaded:





Custom axle no. 2 needs to be 2.5" longer.

I found out the the Reatta 3.8 oil filter adapter won't work since it would interfere with the mounting of the p/s pump.


And I finalized the clutch pedal mount and the front trans mount by adding stand off spacers cut from 20mm bar stock.

[95naSTA]

I potentially have one axle on it's way to the Driveshaft shop.. this would be try no. 3 due to sites saying they have availability but not. And I'll have the axle I bought to test in the mail on Monday.

I pulled the subframe and trans back out so I can get the jack shaft mount mocked up on my spare block. I used a dial indicator with a snake plus vise grip extension on my VQ35/HR i30 swap project to measure cam centerline and loved thehell out of it. When it came time to measure the play in the jack shaft (from bearings in the diff) I knew I needed one of these.. I found one for $50 IIRC. The goal here is to find the neutral position of the play at the end of the jack shaft so that it doesn't load the bearings or seals. I bottomed out the play the end of the shaft by pressing down, set the dial indicator to zero, raised the end of the shaft with a scissor jack to isolate to only vertical motion, find the bottomed out vertical play, lower to the midpoint, and measured to design the bearing cup side of the mount.

Indicator set:

Set to midpoint and measured: (horizontal distance also taken)

Basic part mock up:


The other function of this part will be to serve as a bracket for trans mount no. 3. This mount only limits torsion and the poly dogbone mount I was using before is adjustable.. which is convenient. After some measurements I found that I can run the dogbone mount in more or less it's stock location just by adding a couple ears to the bottom of the jack shaft mount. Below is a pic of how the final water-jetted part will look.



Here is the somewhat stock function..


Here's that space without the auto trans tunnel in the way but from the other direction:


And a reference from the spare block:


So those ears will bolt to another simple bracket that will be the engine side of the dogbone mount and the subframe side will be left alone. I'm just going to cut the stock trans side dogbone mount and add my own ears to it. It's more work than it's worth to try and awkwardly use the stock trans side dogbone bracket as a whole.

[Young gun]

your car is so clean. I can't wait to start from the ground up with mine

[95naSTA]

^^Thanks.

I almost got the front header complete today.

There was a lot of prep work getting the old coating and pipes unstuck from inside the collector.

I had this welded before, and the guy did a good job.. But the inside of where the 3 pipes go into the collector was not welded. I don't think it's even really possible without going the route I did, described below. I had an audible exhaust tick in the engine bay and I'm betting that was it. Now.. my welding is still mediocre but I decided to go ahead with this so that center portion would be sealed. I welded the inside of 2 primaries, then cut a window out of the 3rd, grinded in a slot so that I can weld the inner part of the 3rd primary from inside that primary, then welded the window back on. This gives a full 360* of weld on the last primary.

2 original primaries tacked to collector and checked for trans clearance



2 original primaries welded to inner collector


Modified primary welded up, window and slot cut, slot lined up with inner top of remaining primary



Inner slot welded and smoothed


Window back on and everything welded



Attempt to get the crossover tacked


And it hits the shifter counter weight.. Looks down at the clock.. 8:30.. time to call it a day.


I might be able to still get it to work without modifying the crossover. We'll see next time.