Another week.

Still have the engine/trans boxed up waiting to ship out.  Supposed to be getting payment this week so hopefully that means it will be getting out of my hair.  For the time being it's taken become a temporary work table.

Couple new tools / things.  Our old Milwaukee corded drill finally stopped working after 20 years of service - thinking the brushes might be bad in the motor.  So I decided to head up to Lowe's and pick up a new one.  I've had tremendous luck with Dewalt power tools so I bought a boss-hoss 10 amp 1/2" chuck model.  Enough torque to rip the cape off of Superman and enough left over to break all the drill bits I own.  Also got a grease gun, some 3/8" drive standard and deep well 16mm sockets (since they seem to be missing for some reason from "complete" metric socket sets), and some 6/3 direct burial cable for running 220v power to the garage for my TIG welder.

Figured I'd post up a better picture of the steering shaft from last week

Test fit all of my ABS pump adapter fittings.  M10X1.0 - 3AN and M12X1.0 -3AN adapters.

Made my steering shaft from a Borgeson 27" telescoping DD shaft, and 2 chromoly u-joints from Flaming River.  I had to cut the shaft to length, drill spotfaces for the setscrews and drill/tap a hole for the grease fitting.  Came together nice.  This steering shaft gives me more header clearance on the driver's side, and also eliminates a rag joint that was present on the OEM shaft that would have been extremely close in proximity to header heat.

On Friday, I picked up a bare LS1 mockup block for use with setting my driveline angles / building my mounts.  It only weighs ~90 lbs so it's easy to move by hand.  It's going to make one badass coffe table after this project.  Hauled it around back and couldn't resist throwing it in the bay.  Not everything is on it yet obviously but there's tons of room - much more than the iron heap I pulled out of there.

I continued work on the engine bay - shaving all unnecessary brackets and I also started removing the seam sealer in order to stitch weld all the seams.  A lot of work - but I'm doing it once and I'm going to do it right.  With all the extra power and a stiff coilover suspension going into the car, I figured it'd be a good idea to stiffen the chassis up in critical areas to prevent deflection and reduce fatigue.

Once I finish welding, my plan it to coat all bare metal in etching primer, followed with epoxy primer.  From there I'll do all the filling work, lay down some seam sealer to cover all the seams, then shoot paint on it.

The shitty part is that to get into anything near the trans tunnel, I need to pull the entire interior out to prevent carpet fires and from pulling paint through the backside of the weld.  Carpet needs to come out anyway because it's being converted to black (along with the dash and the rest of my interior!).

The only other thing I did on the chassis side this weekend was rip out the OEM fuel lines / filter / regulator from the tank forward.  All of that is getting replaced.  No pics of that though.

__

Other work - as I mentioned earlier I'm converting my shitty-as-fuck-kill-me-now Dove Grey interior to black.  Instead of buying all the plastic pieces I decided to try converting it with SEM products.  This will also be used on the top of my intake manifold shell, as the paint on it did not survive the torque sequence.

I'm working with a variety of materials so needed to get a bunch of surface prep products - a good bond and ultimately durable finish is all in the prep!  (Also pictured are my accessory drive belts).

This center console piece was the first part I did.  Scrubbed it with SEM Soap and a scotch brite pad, wiped off with a clean rag, then wiped with IPA and allowed to dry prior to painting.  I did a bunch of light coats and it turned out really nice I think.  Pretty much a spot on mach to the OEM black vinyl in hue - maybe a tiny bit of difference in gloss but you have to really be trying to see it.  The portion of the console below is two parts - see if you can guess which one I painted.

(Answer:  I painted the lower/outer "surround" piece).

Durability wise, it seems to be extremely good.  After a couple hours it was standing up to me hitting it / picking at it with a screwdriver.  Should handle light abrasion just fine - just have to keep it clean.

This is the piece that holds the arm-rest, coin tray, etc, in its original Dove Grey.  Looks like shit, right?

I sprayed that and the kick panel tonight as well, no pics of that though.

While I was working it felt like I was getting nothing done - in retrospect I guess it was a pretty busy weekend.  Looking forward to more progress this week!