Projects The 48 hour coupe

Glad you’re still working on it as time allows.
A little done each time and you’ll be ready for spring cruising.

 

Man that things looking more like a car every day man, good job.

 

Slow and steady wins the race lol. Need to switch gears for a week or so though to get the house presentable for in-laws to visit including staying here lol. Needs to be surgercal suite clean lol.

 

Man don’t do that or they won’t ever leave!

 

They're homebodies. I've been genuinely surprised they've been coming for thanks giving since we moved to TX initially. It was always a big to do when ever we got together when we lived 15 minutes away. And that was always at their house. Not complaining though. Like I said they've been making the effort since we moved away from home. Just was surprising at first

 

Well it's been a while again. Things haven't really calmed down much around here but I have that itch again to cruise now that it's warmer so I've been messing with the coupe when I have a few spare minutes as much as I can.

So when i left off I had pretty much all but the last few wires to connect. I thought (thought is a key word here, we'll come back to that) it was just wiring in the splitter to allow me to use by brake/tail taillights as brake/turn/tail.

To scratch the itch my first step was hooking up a new battery and try pushing the button but when I did that nothing happened... at all. Like the battery wasn't even connected. Not a great start. Voltmeter confirmed I had 12v at the solenoid next thing back in line is the starter button, that was connected to the solenoid. Next up do I have power at the button. Nope turns out you need to actually connect that wire instead of it laying on the floor of the car... i'm an idiot lol. So I connected that via a jumper wire to confirm that was my problem. It was and now thag the car is back to cranking naturally the next thing to do was start trying to get the car to fire instead of properly making that connection. Adhd is a bitch sometimes. But at least I now have a definitive item on the list of shit to do.

So now it cranks but I noticed immediately that the fuel bowl filled up with nasty root beer brown "fuel".




Guess I'll ass stripping and sealing the fuel tank and running new lines for that to my growing list of shit to do. Go thing too because the rubber fuel line out of the tank disintegrated when I touched it.


Knowing that I immediately disconnected the tank from the system and set to cleaning the nasty fuel out of the bowl and getting a nurse tank set up. Then i hit another self inflicted snag. Whn I set up the nurse tank now the fuel pump wouldn't pull fuel for some reason. I coukd get it to run briefly by dumping fuel sown the carbs. Even took the carb tops off and manually filled the bowls and it ran for a but longer but would still only run for 30 seconds or so. By this point I was frustrated so I called it a day.

Went back out a few days later and was just playing around with it trying different things to see if anything made a difference. No change. I did finally take the time to add choke plates back into the carbs as I've always heard even if you don't need them 94s tend to run better with the coke plates installed. Whonknow if it's true just what I've heard. I had spare carbs on the shelf so I already had all the parts I needed, why not give it a try. Of course that had no affect on the car running either which isnt surprising. It would need to run on its own for it to start running better right? Couple more days and small stints trying to figure out what indid wrong.

Then I figured it out. I didn't want to take everything apart again and i knew just dumping fuel down the carbs wasn't making a difference i thought maybe I needed to fill the bowl to to take out any air for. Some reason. So inused the big syringe I use for reverse bleeding brakes and pumped some gas straight into the line going to the pump that filled the bowl and pushed it through to the carbs bowls too but in doing so had a big leak at the fuel pump bowl. Gas was going tight around the bowl gasket and out onto the floor. Apparently at something taking the bowl off to clean or fill it etc. I didn't realize I dropped the gasket whe I reinstalled it and so I didn't have a gasket there at all emhence fuel going right by it. Again I'm an idiot but once I addressed that what do you know now it runs and pulls it's own fuel and we're back in business. When. Still not running great as you can hear in the video below but it stays running and that's where I was trying to get to.



So that distraction sorted out. A couple more items added to my to-do list and now its time to get back to wiring officially. And this time get it finished and completly checked off the list.

 

Progress is progress man! You’re getting there!

 

Alright I'm getting really good at taking breaks from this thing. Took a detour to fix my hot rodded golf carts top speed so it's actually usable after my engine swap. With that sorted. I finally bit the bullet and got back to the unfinished wiring job.

Last I left off I got the starter button to work and then immediately got distracted with fuel and making it run. Ive said it before but ADD is a bitch sometimes lol. This time around I decided to try something new for me. Pick one thing and stick to it until it's fixed/done, what a concept right.

I started with the headlight switch cause it wasnt doing anything at all. Wasnt getting power. Found one of the male pins on one of my plugs behind the gauges missed the receiver on the female side. They're nice plugs but they are still Amazon items and each pin has a little flex to it. Just need to make sure I get them all lined up befire snapping the plug together.




With that connected. I pulled the switch out and the headlights flickered and then immediately blew the fuse. Ugh. Head in hands this car is fighting back. Dont have the right fuses in my stash. So I call it a night.

Before the next time out there i picked up fuses and a blade fuse style circut breaker so I could test the circut without wasting a bunch of fuses. Turns out it wasnt necessary and the car the was fighting back helped me back up. I put the circut breaker in and pulled on the headlights. It didn't trip. I did hear a little pop from up by the headlights but that was it. After that the headlight switched worked every time with out tripping the circut breaker or the new fuse when I put that back in. No idea what that was all about but I've tried it about a hundred times now and never a peep, smell, popped fuse or anything. It just works now.
The only think I can think of is that there was something with the bulb itself because the low beam on the drivers side didn't work. Poked around at a couple other things after that. Pulled the bad bulb so I could pick one up the next day. And called it a night after that.

2 nights in the garage 2 small items checked off the list of issues. Small victories are still wins.

Went back out a couple nights later installed a new bulb and moved onto the next issue.
Parking lights come on and stay on with headlights every old Ford I've ever had the parking lights turned back off when the headlights came on. And secondly the gauges lights turned off when the heads came on. You can probably see where this is going. Per the wiring instructions i had the switch wired correctly but that was a generic gm switch wiring. And I was using a ford style switch. Was a super simply fix. Cut a couple zip ties swap 2 wires and replace zip ties.
Super simple. Boom 3 issues solved l. Im killing it. I now have working headlights parking lights turned signals (those just worked first try lol) and also had turns and tails at the rear (those also worked first try)

And now I was down to the one i was really dreading. Ended up taking a couple days off again because I was dreading it that much.



I talked about it in an earlier post I think but because the turn signal switch i had found and decided to use was a 5 wire switch instead of a 7 wire. It turns out the reason for those other 2 wires is that there is no provision for brake lights at the switch meaning you would typically need separate turn signal lights at the rear and your main lights would strictly be tails and brakes. But I'm running a single '50 pontiac light for each side and really didn't want to add a separate light for turns. I had done some research previously and found that some guys were using a trailer brake light controller as a work around, however, the threads I'd seen didn’t really give a solid yes or no about whether this would actually work for my situation. When I left off in March I had acquired a controller and even mounted it under the dash next to the fuse panel but then I psyched myself out about actually wiring it in and stopped.

Here is the controller I got. It was another Amazon find and was only $20



Last night i went out there with the intent to stop being a wuss and just wire it up and if it doesn't work I'll cross that bridge if it comes.
Wiring was actually.very simple and straight forward.

Input Side: Ground, Brake signal, Tail, L Turn, R Turn
Output Side: Ground, Tail, L Turn, R Turn

Grounds were self explanatory, the universal harnesses usually have a brake signal as part of the turn signal switch bundle, the tails and turns I spliced in between the fuse panel and the rear lights.

And I can say officially. It worked and here's the video to prove it lol. I now have working brakes, turns, and tails that work correctly both with the headlights on and off.

https://youtube.com/shorts/THxlE7aJDOg?si=vzxGrEzxu9eN7HaE

Now I'm down to a couple wires under the dash i need to land and wiring should be complete. I know I've said it a few times now but next up is completing the brakes.

I'll wrap this up with a couple random shots from these last few nights in the garage.

 

Fuck yeah dude!

When you’re sitting there psyching yourself out you need to think “well, it already doesn’t work. Worse case senario it still doesn’t work”

That seems to be a good trigger for my “fuck it let’s go try”

proud of ya man! You’re getting there

 

So good to see

 

Dont remember if I showed yall this or not.

AC power outlet for charging the phone. Wired in and done.

Our soda fountain machines at work come with these little ss pieces that block some of the flow of the ice dispenser so it doesn't all drop out at once. We'll we use a different type of ice that doesnt need this piece and they get pulled off and usually tossed. Well they're pretty nice pieces to make things out of.

So I've been collecting a few and gave one a couple 90* bends drilled a couple holes and it bolts to the flange on the bottom of the dash so the only thing you see when nothing is plugged in is the bolt heads.












Another item checked off the wiring list.

Also ran and landed the power feed for the starter button I had just been using a jumper wire before. Thats done now too. 2 more things off the list.

 

I know i said no more distractions until i get wiring done but this came up while attempting to run wires to the roof area for dome light and a fan. Started pulling windshield trim off and remembered that I had never done anything about the windshield being held in by 2 self drilling roofing screws. So I pulled them and the windshield out and am adding nutters i to the header flange to bolt the windshield in better and with 6 bolts now instead of 2 roofing screws. There were already more holes im wondering if some came out somewhere along the way or if this was another just get the windshield back in before selling type sutuations. Either way im taking care of it. Then ill finish running the couple wires I need to and put it all back together




Edit windshield is back in. All I for 5/16 - 18 bolts were these weird tapered head ones I used to mount the dash so ill get some better ones after the holiday.



Alright back to wiring