Project Vecna - the neglected 80SC

[jpnovak]

This this point the main tunnel harness had complete connections from front to back. But it was still not ready for install. Why? Because wiring that has been exposed to elements and rodent urine are not ready to flow electrons. So, I have to clean all the bare wires and connections. Now, This may sound daunting. But I am going to share my secret sauce. OK, not that secret, but I do let chemistry do all the work.

Copper wiring and brass connectors turn gray and green when they oxidize. And typically, if a metal oxidizes, it can be reduced. Let's see if we can put those missing surface electrons back in place and get rid of that discoloration. Here are a few examples of the wiring.

This connector has spade terminals that are green and fuzzy.



This wire end has many green strands.



This ring terminal ground has lots of brown discoloration. Chances are this would not be a good ground.



Now here is some chemistry for you. I need a reducing agent that can shine up metal. The best thing I have found is TarnX silver polish. This is a liquid reducing agent. the process is simple, pour some in a disposable cup, have a cotton swab and that's all.

The process is to wipe, immerse, and otherwise put the TarnX on the connectors. Let it sit for a few minutes and then rinse off with clean water. I also usually blow dry with an air gun attached to my compressor.

Here are the same connectors after cleaning. No more green on the spade terminals. No, I did not remove from the plastic housing.



Wire strands are all clean. This can be recrimped or clamped into service.




ring terminals gleam. no buffing. No wire brushing or dremel action. Just chemistry.




It also works really well on all the wire terminations that go in the fuse panel screw connection. The oxidation is gone.



If you have an early car, this also works on the soldered ends in a fuse block. And it works incredibly well on the actual fuse blocks themselves.

Now, the harness is almost ready to be installed.

[jpnovak]

After all the work on the interior I really want to get the car dryed in. Meaning, windows installed. of course, I have to make some changes to the windows.

The following project is entirely driven by the use of the NACA ducts in the rear quarter windows. In order to install said NACA duct, The windows have to be plastic. you can't really cut holes in safety glass. At least not ones large enough to suck air through.

Since I have to make 2 windows. Why not just make some extras. Like, 5 extras. That's right. New windows all around. I have done this before on track cars and it is simple and effective. And lexan is way lighter than glass. Like, 30% of total weight.

The process is relatively simple. I like to start with qualify scratch resistant Lexan. Acrylic will absolutely not do in this applcation. it splinters when it breaks. Should there every be an issue the nominally bulletproof lexan is what you want. Now, We don't want your HD style of Lexan. Spend the extra and get the scratch resistant. popular brand names for polycarbonate are Margard, markrolon, Tuffak, etc. They are all coated with an extra hard layer to prevent scratching. Well, let's use the words resist. It is plastic and still quite soft.

I start on a workbench and use a soft underlayment. In this case, My dogs donated their beds to support the Lexan sheet. Lay the lexan down, then put the glass on top. Push down on the curved glass and the polycarbonate sheet will take the shape of the window.




Extra curvy windows like the lower corners of the rear window may require you to pinch them together.




once the surfaces are touching, scribe a line tight around the perimeter.




Now that there is a line, remove the window and admire your work. Wait, that's later. Sometimes the line requires some touchup.



Now, cut to the outside of the line. I don't cut well with the jig saw so i cut wide and sand to shape. Actually, I could never color in the lines either as a kid.



The grinder is then used to sand the line away. I like the disc grinder for corners and belt sander (no pic) of the flat sides.




Now, Check your work. When curved the window and the polycarbonate sheet should match up. not bad if i say so myself.




I verified the seal fitment and laid on the car. yes, this will do nicely once I am ready to install.




Only 6 more to go.



Add lightness. That's always a good thing.



One last word of advice. leave the protective film in place while you are handling. This will help reduce unwanted scratches. Save those for detailing day.

Now, I am sure at least no one is paying attention to this post. that's fine. And that no one will ask about the board on top of Vecna. That board is the Official Falling Branch Ice Storm Protection Device (TM) I tried to give it an acroynm. However, OFBISPD just seemed to roll easily off the tongue. It stuck before I knew and became street lore in the Urban Dictionary. Ok, Maybe its more like we had a big ice storm. I had 8" branches coming out of the tree. I thought it would be easier to patch a fiberglass board than push the roof out. The octisserie just happened to be a great support. I admit my wife said I had to buy her a new SUP if this one broke. In the end, it worked and Vecna nor the board were damaged. They were only hit with smaller branches.

[jpnovak]

Those windows that i cut in the last post. I also had to check fitment in other places.

Let's start with the door frames. The front quarter (triangle) windows dropped right into the frame. Easy peasy. Even the side windows fit into the frames. And they slide easily up and down. I did put new felt channels into the frames. This helps them slide.



Since I had windows I might as well put them into the doors. This protects them and gets rid of a pile of parts. I think I mentioned that before, about how much space a car takes up when its in pieces.

Here is where it gets problematic. The car had electric windows. Those wires to said electric windows were non existent. They didn't even come out of the body. And, Almost serendipitously, the window motors were not working. I checked them both. There was also a broken spring pivot on one of the regulators. The decision was easy. Just buy some new window regulators. They were not expensive compared to the amount of time to repair the old ones. And, they were manual wind up. No need for pesky, vapoware wires.

now, the problem is that the new regulators were advertised as fitting a wide range of cars. This is in fact, not true. The horizontal slider is a totally different length to and will not bolt in the door. I honestly don't know if they come in different sizes. I just used the old factory power regulator horizontal slider guide (That should be an acronym) instead. Here is the difference in length. The shorter one is correct for the 1980SC door. Maybe someone can explain this.




Once the mystery of the factory power regulator horizontal slider guide (I told you that should be an acronym) was solved the frames and windows all assembled normally.

Horray, there is "glass" in the doors.

[jpnovak]

Wiring Day The tunnel.

Gephyrophobia is anxiety or fear of bridges or tunnels. I have this issue. I have done this before, persevered but it is never easy to pull wiring out of a 911 without cutting or damaging. its even worse trying to put it back in.

So, How does this go? I admit I don't have pictures of all the steps. So I will try to describe in a haiku.

Pull wire through tunnel
Wire is caught, what now
Curse loudly at wire

Ok, maybe it is not that bad.

Step 1. Route battery power cable from trunk into footwell.
Step 2. Use a push tape to pull string from back of car, through tunnel into shifter area. I like to use the coated, woven layout string. You can find in the masonary section of your big box hardware supply. This time I had orange.
Step 3. Pull about 12 feet of fish string through tunnel.
Step 4. Tie a loop in the middle of the string to the starter ring terminal of the starter cable wire.
Step 5. Route wire through front access of tunnel, then into cable chase in corner of tunnel.
Step 6, Use string to pull starter cable through the tunnel from front to rear. Make sure to exit the correct chassis hole. Note wire pull gel works really well to slide wires through. Second note, you can not pull wires or string with wire pull gel on your hands.
Step 7. There should still be a lead of string through the tunnel. This will be used to pull the main harness from back to front.
Step 8. Carefully use about a mile of electrical tape to secure all wires on the main harness. There are 3 primary sections. Under dash, upper dash and fuse panel. Tape as tight as you can making the bundle as small as possible.
Step 9. Re route string in tunnel rear through bulkhead. Wire harness enters the large lower hole, goes underneath the metal conduit, then goes up into the cable chase. This gets tough to navigate correctly.
Step 10. Route harness under seat pan, over torsion tube behind trailing arm pickkups and into bulkhead hole. Hopefully the wire still has some bend markers so you know how fare to pull.
step 11. pull harness into cabin. At this point it will look something like this.


Step 12. Use string to pull wiring through cable chase inside tunnel. From the driver's side of the car This is a pull with left hand, lube wire with right hand (pull gel, get your mind out of the gutter) and also feeding with your right hand. I found that if I pull back about an inch I could then feed 3-5 inches at time. Work it through. It will eventually fit .

In the end, the harness will pull out of the tunnel access all the way at the front.

Step 13. Declare victory!



Now there is more clean up to do. Back in the rear you have to reset the cable cover to the access hole. Not done here.




You also have to push the other end of the harness between the rear seat pan/fire wall and the rear shock tower. Then you can secure the harness in the factory cable captures. Good thing I welded those back on when I replaced the seat pans.




This is the first step in wiring the car. Next I will be working on the frunk.

[jpnovak]

Now, I have also been starting to prep the suspension components to install. here is some of the dirty work of the process. Stripping down front control arms and removing bushings. Removing rear trailing arm bushings.

All of these came out of their respective parts using the acetylene torch. Heat is your friend. A-arms usually take about 5 minutes each. They are quick. The trailing arms are more 10-15 because the steel collar that is pressed in never wants to move thanks to galvanic corrosion.



In this case, the ball joints were a special type of hell. I had to make multiple pie cuts in the nuts and still use a 5 lb sledge hammer with a big drift to drive them off. No, impact socket was no help at all.



Oh yeah, you might also recognize the sway bar mounts. Those are from the late style sway bar. No need for those when converting to through-body. So, they were cut off. the updated brackets will be welded in place.

I am hoping I can start hanging suspension in a few weeks.

[almostordinary]

Originally Posted by jpnovak

Now, some may ask if this coating works. Here is a quick video of me rapping on the roof and floor. Can you tell a difference in sound? The first few frames have a distinct metallic ring to them. The second frames do not. The sound is definitely muted. Now, think about how much road noise this reduces. yes. It makes a difference.

Wow never heard of the stuff, may do that to mine before adding sound deadening material. Awesome!

[chrisbalich]

You're making me feel lazy for not yet replacing all my windows with Makrolon.
The Tarn-X is brilliant.

Vecna is moving along at considerable pace!

[icarp]

My guess is that it takes as much effort to do the project as it does to keep the thread up to date.
Jamie , well done , you do inspire us all.
Lizzard skin is something I have heard of but not used , It is nice to see you give a thumbs up.

Keep on truckin

Ian

[Porkshop]

Learning a lot here.....

[rswannabe]

Originally Posted by jpnovak

now, the problem is that the new regulators were advertised as fitting a wide range of cars. This is in fact, not true. The horizontal slider is a totally different length too and will not bolt in the door. I honestly don't know if they come in different sizes. I just used the old factory power regulator horizontal slider guide (That should be an acronym) instead. Here is the difference in length. The shorter one is correct for the 1980SC door. Maybe someone can explain this.

Jamie, the factory moved from the 195mm long horizontal track to the 215mm long track sometime in the 80’s. You can reuse the rearmost mounting hole and drill a new forward mounting hole in the door per Tech Bulliten 7.

[jpnovak]

Brooke,

Thanks for the most excellent updated information. I had not seen that TSB. I am used to the early parallel arm system that do not have the extra rail.

[rswannabe]

Jamie, you are welcome! I just went through this on my ‘74 updating from parallel arm to cross arm. My new regulators had the longer 215mm horizontal track, so I had this info at my fingertips.

[jpnovak]

This was good timing.

[LukasM]

I'm liking the OFBISPD!

My bare chassis that is parked outside has a cut off no-sunroof roof section on that will get grafted on eventually, it already has a couple of small dents in it that could have been avoided this way, I just didn't want to put on a blanket that retains moisture.

[jpnovak]

In a previous post I made comments to wanting to get glass in the car. This helps keep the interior dry. But, before glass can be installed I have to put the headliner in.

The headliner is one of those jobs that is not difficult and not fun. I have completed several of them. This one actually gave me some fits. Why? Bows. No, I am not talking about Bose an audio company. I am talking about the tension rod bows that hold up the middle of the headliner. Since the sunroof was cutout I have to add all the parts for a headliner. I am not a fan of a bare roof. Now, the biggest challenge here is the headliner bows that you buy, even with Factory PNs on them, do not fit the car. they are physically too long by more than 1cm. It actually varies but 12mm is about average extra length I found.

The solution, Cut and weld. It didn't take too long to cut them, fit them and weld back together. Here is a quick weld bead that was finished .



You can see that they now fit in the slots relatively easily. The are not quite straight but clean up once the fabric is installed and tensioned.




The headliner process is simple once the 4 bows fit. In my case, I put the headliner fabric in the dryer for about 20 min on high. This will soften the material. Then its a race against time to slip the bows in the fabric, insert the bows in the roofline slots and pull tight while also, clamping into place along the perimeter. It looks like this when finished. You can see the extra fabric around the perimeter. There is always a generous cut of material on these patterns.



Next I trim the fabric back until there is approximately 1" margin around all the seams and perimeter. This allows you to pull even tighter for a second round of tension. I then leave in this position overnight.

gluing is done with contact cement. I use a paintbrush to paste the car pinch weld seams and the fabric all the way around. Then I start pulling tight, tensioning and gluing. I start in the middle of the doors on each side, then middle of the front and rear glass sections. Then work carefully toward each corner.

In the end, the fabric is glued and clamped. I then leave overnight before carefully trimming off the edges. Don't forget to use a roller to make sure all the glue is well stuck to the car.




Toight like a Tiger!



Oh, don't forget the headliner seam "clips". I install 5 per front and rear distributed across the roofline.

[jpnovak]

Since the headliner was in, it was time to complete some of the windows.

I had already described the rear deck mounted ICs for the turbo setup. It was time to make this a reality. I had purchased some NACA ducts with a flat flange around the perimeter. This was to bond the lexan duct to the polycarbonate window panel. FWIW, Lexan is a brand name of a polymer polycarbonate. They are the same thing and I use the terms interchangeably.

Now, there are some special adhesives for gluing PC material. I ordered a small bottle that came with a syringe needle applicator. The process is normally straightforward. Place 2 pcs of PC together, add some drops of adhesive and let it wick into the joint using some capillary action. The adhesive will then chemically melt the PC faces on each part together.

But... I used a scratch resistant coating. It is also apparently adhesive resistant and the NACA duct did not stick at first. So, I had to scuff the coating to get it to stick. This caused some visual opaque-ness to the joint. Oh well.





Once the duct was glued I was able to cut the middle of the duct for access. I then smoothed the edge with a dremel tool. When the duct modified window panel was complete, I put on the seal and the trim.




Of course, Now I had these windows and the safest place for them was on the car. First up was the rear window. What fun that is solo. A new seal is soft but stiff. The trim doesn't want to stay in place and to really make things worse, the "glass" PC sheet is quite a bit larger when you unroll a curved shape flat. The advantage was that I didn't have to worry about breaking it when it was manhandled into place. Eventually the rear was roped in.




And then, the sides were installed. these two went in quite easily.






Oh, did I mention that the look of the NACA duct in the window is 1005 Bad-Ass! I can't wait to see this in action.

I will also say that pulling and pushing and gripping rubber seals, trim, glass and pull strings takes a toll on our hands. After all this, my hands looked like a war had gone through. They were blistered and all my callouses were coming off.



At least its just a flesh wound. Consistent with the Black Knight I will continue my fight to make this car a reality.

[jpnovak]

Concurrent with the glass installation I have been prepping to get the car back to rolling status. This means some effort has been going on for suspension.

First, I am converting to a through-body sway bar. That means early style drop link tabs must be welded on. Easy Peasy. I bought some tabs off Ebay and they had holes for plug welds. A Quick clamp into position and some zzzzztttttt noices and they were attached.



The welding was followed up by some wire brushing, cleaning and 2 coats of satin black VHT epoxy. I know its rattle can but I have fond that it holds up extremely well under the car.



We all know the control arms need something to connect. In this case, Some bilsten RSR coil overs should do the trick. These were another ebay find and needed paint and cleanup to be quite functional.

The yellow paint was as close as I could match. its a little light but that won't matter after the first few drives.



I also epoxied the control arm races for the Rebel RSR front bushings. I have found these to run quiet and are easy to install.




Of course, once the struts are painted the best protected place is to hang them on the car. It is such a nice feeling putting clean parts back on the car.



I hope to have the car rolling in the next 2 weeks. Then I can go back to the wiring install as well as staring to build the drivetrain.

[LukasM]

Nice work Jamie, always satisfying to see it go back together and have a roller soon!

What kind of inserts will you be running in the Bilstein struts, or how are they valved? I have some Bilstein sports inserts and even with factory rubber bushings on the control arms they are rather jarring over cobble stone roads (quite a few of those over here), tram tracks etc.

I hear KW V3s are supposed to be very compliant yet work well at faster speeds, but they run around $3.5-4k for the entire set now...

I'd love to get a more modern and better insert (diggressively valved?) but I am not aware if anybody makes one for the Bilstein struts and shocks, or can the stockers be revalved to work nearly as well?

[jpnovak]

Currently, I have no idea what inserts are in the struts. the car will be built with what is on them. I am pretty sure this is currently way over-sprung in terms of spring rates as well.

Once the car is assembled I can weigh and calculate spring rates. Then get dampers that match. Elephant can supply digressive valve inserts. The Bilsteins can also be revalved to match.

Ideally, I would want lower compression (jounce) damping and higher rebound damping. This is also a reason I have preferred and used Koni on my other cars. I think Bilstein are very well matched to stock spring rates (torsion bars) but valving is wrong once the rate is increased.

And KW were out of the budget for the build. Especially the coil over version.

[Flojo]

Love it!!

Personally I have always dreamt of a neglected 911 shell to go nuts with it and do mischivous modifications to it, for the purpose, not for the concour.

Keep it up!