New horn bracket I made today out of 1/8” aluminum:

Painted with Duplicolor bedliner. Old flimsy bracket at the bottom:

And on the bike:

I made this one so that it anchors in two spots instead of one to eliminate the pendulum effect the stock bracket has. I just had to drill a small hole at the bottom there. Also, the little wing in the middle adds stiffness. I shouldn’t have a problem with this breaking again.

Yesterday was a fun day. I attended British Car Day at Larz Anderson early in the day, and it was a very popular show this year. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the lawn packed quite as much as it was, and there was a very good variety of cars this time around.

Later on in the day I set out to make the cargo cover for Scruffers that I had been planning to make for a couple of weeks now. Scruffers came without the stock cargo cover when I bought it, and cargo covers are about $100 used (new ones are no longer available). After taking some measurements and brainstorming, I decided to make the cargo cover out of some scrap black foamcore from work and a yard of gray felt I purchased at a fabric store. I also used a 3/8” dowel I had on hand and a spare black shoelace for the cargo cover-to-hatch tethers. No sewing was involved; it’s put together with hot glue. Altogether, the cover cost me about $5 in materials and an hour of my time. I don’t know how durable this will be, but for $5, I’m not going to complain. Photos below.

Here’s the cover flat. The horizontal line about 3/4 of the way up is the hinge. The extra felt hanging off of the back mates up with the hatch nicely so there’s no gap between the cover and the hatch, and the raw edge is hidden from view.

Here’s the cover open. You can see how I braced the underside and how I have the hinge set up. I might have enough felt left to cover the underside as well, but I don’t know if I will or not.

And here’s a shot from inside the car. The color of the felt actually matches very closely to the color of the interior; it just reflects a lot of my camera’s flash.

Tonight I took apart Scruffers’ stereo and looked all over the pcb with a magnifier, but couldn’t find anything burnt out. I put it back together and attached it to the harness and it still doesn’t work at all. Both power supplies from the harness (+ and ACC +) check out ok, so it looks like this stereo is toast. I didn’t want to have to buy a new stereo for this car, but now it looks like I don’t have a choice. Luckily, a decent aftermarket stereo is less expensive than replacing it with an OEM stereo (unless I get really lucky on ebay), so Crutchfield here I come.

Last night I finally liberated Sunshine’s wiring harness. In order to get it out, I had to take out a lot of the dash and pretty much all of the heating system. It was definitely more work than I had anticipated, but at least now I can properly clean and repair it. While I’m doing that, I will also clean out the engine compartment, make a few minor repairs in there, get rid of some small areas of surface rust and finally repaint it before the new motor gets put in.

The old motor is out of Sushine! With my dad’s help, last night we got it out. It was a bit tricky with the crank pulley and the water pump still on (I knew I should have pulled those), but we managed.

The easy part of the project is over. The priorities now are to get the wiring harness out of the car, clean, repair it and reinstall it, clean, repair and paint the engine compartment, and get the car ready to receive the new motor.

I’m still working on clearing out Sunshine’s engine compartment, and it’s coming along pretty well. I’m removing the wiring harness so I can make repairs to it and clean it. It really needs it, since some of the connectors are messed up or broken and previous owners did some pretty awful repairs to it. I’m surprised the car ran as well as it did…or even at all, to be honest.

The harness is all freed up from the engine compartment except for where it goes through the firewall on the passenger side. I wasn’t sure what I should do there until I asked the guys on the turbo-mopar forum. Apparently the connector is inside the car, so all I have to do is get in there, remove the kick panel and disconnect it. Too bad I didn’t know that before I stopped for the day. Oh well. I got a lot done anyway.

Sorry, no progress photos this time. I don’t really have anything exciting to show right now.

Last night I pulled the fan, radiator and intercooler, alternator and power steering pump, then stopped for the night because my back was killing me from being hunched over for so long. Anyway, there’s not much left that I need to do in order to get the motor out:

It looks like more of a mess than it really is, trust me. Although, speaking of messes, I did drench myself in antifreeze after accidentally bumping into the bin full of it with my creeper. That was fun.

Also, out of curiosity I checked the S/N on the block. Unsurprisingly, it’s not even close to the car’s VIN:

It’s also been painted heavily with brush, like some other things on this car.

I bought a shop crane and engine stand last night. My friend Paul helped me get them home and assisted me in assembling the shop crane since it’s too heavy for me to do myself. I wish I didn’t have to buy one, but I don’t have any beams in this garage to hang a chain hoist from, so this is what I have to do. Also, I used to have an engine stand, but I think it’s in NJ with the MGs. That was relatively cheap anyway.

It’s going to be a tight squeeze with the shop crane in my little garage, but I think it’ll be ok. Also, I think I’m going to have to move the Shelby as far as I can to one side of the garage in order to take delivery of the new motor. I have a bit of time before I have to do that, though.

Once I get the old motor out, I plan on pushing the Shelby outside and giving the engine compartment a good cleaning. It definitely needs it. Hopefully I’ll get a warm day to do that.

Last night I cleaned the carbon from the tops of the pistons, using aerosol Sea Foam, a scotchbrite pad and a rag, so I could examine the pistons. They came out pretty clean, but piston #1 has a small ding on it (hard to see in this photo…sorry I forgot to take a picture of it after I cleaned it):

…and piston #3 is damaged as well:

Piston #3 also had the heaviest coating of carbon on it. I wouldn’t have seen the damage (except for the obvious part by the “C”) if I hadn’t removed the carbon. So, what started out as a simple turbo rebuild has turned into something much bigger (and much more expensive). =(

I finally had time to disassemble the head-intake-exhaust manifold-turbo assembly last night after having it on the bench for a few days. Everything came apart without much fuss, though I couldn’t imagine doing any of it with the whole assembly still on the car. It was definitely easier to pull the head with everything still attached.

The good: The turbo assembly seems to be in good shape. There is a fairly large amount of radial play in the compressor-turbine shaft, but no noticeable axial play, and no oil in the compressor housing. I also didn’t see any cracks or damage of any sort on the whole assembly. So, it should be fine with a rebuild.

The bad: There’s more cracks in the head. There’s cracks in the small water passages and more alarmingly, cracks leading from one of the valves to the outside of the combustion chamber, on all cylinders. See below:

Also, the intake manifold has been sloppily ported between the mating halves. Luckily, the rest of the intake manifold has not been ported, nor has anything else. Also note the lovely homemade gasket. I should be able to smooth these out:

So, the long and short of it is that I’m looking at replacing the head now as well as having the turbo rebuilt. I kind of had a feeling this was going to happen. Stay tuned, things should start to get interesting from here on out!