My '75 2002 Sleeper

[XW70]

Awesome project, perfect combination of car and engine!

[tinkwithanr]

Worked late tonight so not a lot of progress.

Was looking at the e30 HVAC unit and realized that the upper half of the steering column had another u-joint in it. It's also telescoping, so I should be able to adapt it to the upper part of the stock '02 column. The splines match up with the end of the '02 column and the input of the e21 rack, nice to see things didn't change in 20 years lol.



Since I was short on time tonight, I didn't want to start the new engine mounts. So I test fitted the rear seats to get an idea of the room i would have for the rear speakers. Luckily the e24 rear seats stick into the cab further than the stock seats, so this should give me plenty of room for the e30 speakers. I'll just have to make a new rear deck panel to fit around the shape of the seats.





And one just cause I love how they look lol



After figuring that out I worked on figuring out how much I could move the firewall back while still retaining the stock heater box. So first thing was to put the box back in the car. Here you can see that there is a decent amount of room at the top of the trans tunnel, but the top of the firewall does not have as much room.



Here is the other side of the heater box that is exposed to the open air. It's kind of hard to see where it is in relationship to the engine from just this picture, but the grommet in the middle of this picture:



Is the same grommet in the middle of this picture:



Referencing the picture above, it looks like I should be able to move back the 'green' section of the firewall, while the 'red' section could be slightly notched, but not moved back much due to the heater box fan. I'm going to mull it over more in the next couple of days before deciding. Cutting the firewall is going to be a lot of extra work, but it may be worth it in the end to gain better weight distribution, but mostly more clearance up in the nose of the car.

[dball4]

I am enjoying this thread. Please do proceed

[FredK]

That's a really nice shop that you've set up! You can do a TON of fabrication there! The project looks awesome.

[craiggroves91]

I can dig it!

[tinkwithanr]

Got a lot done over the weekend. First up was deciding on the final engine placement. In the end I decided that I would lower the engine down closer to the subframe, and move it back a half an inch. This way the firewall modifications would be minimal, and I would be able to still use the stock e30 driveshaft. So I removed the old engine and transmission mounts and positioned it where I wanted it to be, which told me what needed to be removed:

How the tunnel/firewall looked before the new cuts. Notice that even though I had enlarged the rear section for the G260, the front opening was the same size. This made removing the engine trans pretty difficult, the bottom of the transmission would hit the steering rack before it cleared the upper edge of the tunnel.



So keeping that in mind I cut out enough that would let the engine and trans move in and out much easier, as well as keep the stock sheet metal around the heater box.



With the tunnel and firewall clearanced it was time to make the new mounts. First up was the engine, put in place:



Clearance around the Tunnel:



Driver side plate mounts in place:



Passenger Side plate mounts in place:



To fabricate the rest of the mounts, I used cardboard to make a template, then cut them out of sheet steel and bend them to fit. Cardboard template and metal piece made from the template:



The new passenger mount next to the old one.



The new driver side mount next to the old one.



Next was the trans mount. Individual Parts cut out:



Tacked together, still needs to be fully welded and smoothed out:



And the final placement of the oil pan, it has ~0.5" clearance with the subframe. Since I'll be using poly mounts that should be plenty.



Overall I'm much happier with the new mounts. The old ones looked pretty crappy, and everytime I looked in the bay it bothered me a little. they still need to finish being boxed in and internally braced, but once they get powder coated they should look OEM. Sadly I didn't get to finish them because I started on another project this weekend, which I'll post up shortly.

[tinkwithanr]

So the next parts of the build will involve a lot of body work. I need to fix the rust spots around the trunk floor as well as strip the entire body down to bare metal. I was really not looking forward to laying on my back stripping the undercoat and cutting, grinding and welding the new metal. So I decided to spend a weekend to make my life for the next month much easier.

Two end pieces made up:



Front Subframe Mounting Brackets:



Rear Subframe Mounting Brackets:





Do a Barrel Roll!!

[irish44j]

I've lurked in this thread for a while, but I thought it was a good time to tell you have pathetic I feel about my automotive builds after reading through this, lol....

Nicely done!

[nickflic3]

Dude...




Can I come live with you??

This is some epic sht man, keep it up for sure!

[george graves]

Love this thread.

[Kevinxkrazy]

haha thats so sick. really digging it so far.

[E30_Pare]

Nice rottiserie A++ for effort

[OrangeFiero]

How old are you? If you say anything less than 27 the jealousy will throw me off a cliff. This is my dream...

[tinkwithanr]

I've lurked in this thread for a while, but I thought it was a good time to tell you have pathetic I feel about my automotive builds after reading through this, lol....

Nicely done!

Thanks for the compliment! And don't be to hard on yourself, I'm just incredibly lucky to have the resources to do this work.

Dude...




Can I come live with you??

This is some epic sht man, keep it up for sure!

Sorry man, I don't think the g/f would go for that. Your more than welcome to bring a sleeping bag to the shop and hang out there though lol. Hell, I pretty much live there as is...

Love this thread.

haha thats so sick. really digging it so far.

Thanks guys :up:

Nice rottiserie A++ for effort

Thanks man, I still need to raise it a bit more to find the true cg but I'm pretty happy with it. Hopefully it will be worth the extra effort in the long run.

How old are you? If you say anything less than 27 the jealousy will throw me off a cliff. This is my dream...

Haha, why 27? I'm actually 23, and I just finished up my mechanical engineering degree at The Ohio State University. But like I said above, I'm just very lucky to have the opportunity that I do. I know this could be the only chance I have to do this kind of thing so I figured I should run with it!

[evandael]

bravo. like lots of others here, i envy your talent and drive.