I hope you are buying different rims for this thing h:

 

Yes, or sort-of... but that portion of the video isn't there. I've welded for 4 days since then without any sort of sickness. Just falsh-burn on one arm, and the gritty-eyes sensation... but nothing like what happened before. I should post an update in that thread because I did go to the doc like everyone suggested. Something didn't make sense to me about being told the car was made from galvanized materials. It's not. All that stuff was painted, and paint doesn't stick to Zinc.

I thought about adding gussets to the rear crossbar, but it really isn't necessary. There actually isn't room for torsional stress to occur. The rear diff and front K-member are bolted firmly together and are completely inflexible. All 4 of the mounts have rubber bushings. I did weld a 3" x 3.5" baseplate on the ends of that 2" cross member and then welded it to the frame rails so that it spread the load out and increase the surface area of the welds. IHRA requirements are only 3" x 3", and the front mounts were reinforced with 4" x 6" 1/4" angle irons before they were attached and it wraps under the frame rails. Those are the ones that take all the abuse.

Thanks mang!

 

Yeah those '92 AWD alloys are pretty tacky. A hell of a lot better than the 13" steelies that used to hide the drums... but they're good for test-fitting things. I'm either getting a set of 16" steelies and hubcaps from a AWD Talon, or I'm going to use these...

 

Either way man I can't wait to see/hear this thing!

Do you have a possible finish date?

 

Yes. 2009.

Hahaha. If you only knew all the background on this and why it's taken so long. I've had this thing in the works for 3.5 years. I bought a house, $3000 worth of tools, blew up the GSX's tranny, lost a job, got a job, said peace to the ex and I'm single-incoming a house + car habit, and $4000 worth of dental work. So after a year and a half of owning the Colt, I decided not to go FWD with it when someone gave me an AWD car. The motor is rebuilt and ready to go. The car is mostly wired. The rear is in... but some expensive things will have to occur because I changed directions half-way through.

It needs new seats, a main loop, a harness bar, and a crossbar. I removed the powered seatbelts, so the racing seats and harnesses have to be done to fix that problem. I need a 10gal fuel cell, external pump (-6AN), battery, battery box, cut-off switch, an exhaust, an intercooler, custom IC pipes and new wheels & tires for the GSX so I can house the ones on it for the Colt. I hope that between my tax return and consulting income that I can pull off something mid-spring. I'll be finishing the brakes and mounting the motor next. Once that's in I can get the driveshaft shortened. Nobody makes bolt-on parts for this car, so everything has to be custom made. Just like you, I can't wait to see/hear it run.

 

if you ever need a state inspection call me. same with emissions. BTW honda use "jack shafts" but we call them half shafts. I had to go through this when i was finding mine. What happen to the one you had from Japan? Wrong one?

 

i heart it

 

I love seeing updates on this! Keep it up.

 

No I've got it. It's the right part. I need to send it to Raxles to get it assembled with the outer shaft. I have the cup and all the other parts for cores. Jamie brought this to me the day someone side-swiped his Mirage. The part came with a Japanese newspaper in the box. Think it's JDM? I don't know why I rambled about the jackshaft earlier, because I've seen them on tons of cars and haven't paid attention. Lots of FWD cars just have a long and a short axle, but plenty of Hondas have them, too. When I get this back from Raxles, I will have equal-length half-shafts on the outer joints.



YouTube resolution is crap so I thought I'd post a couple shots of the finished mounts.



The reason there are no gussets on the rear mounts are numerous. The 2" box steel crossbar is 4x as thick as what was there before, the rear is mounted on a flexible "boomerang" that absorbs lateral shock, the 2" piece is welded to a larger plate on the end before the frame rails, and any twisting of the rear is absorbed by the rubber bushings in the mounts. Anyway, you can see where the frame rail was welded back together where I cut out the trunk area (the long welds). I'm getting a lot better with the MIG and learning some new techniques. After I had that tacked back together, I added a continuous bead for filler and strength and ran that into the top of the plates on the crossbar. It was just spot-welded sheetmetal before.




The welds on these look terrible, but these things aren't coming off. I globbed the final welds on there. There are multiple layers on all sides, and where the box steel was welded to the frame rails, endplates were added. And where they meet the frame rail, I filled the endplates over the previous welds and double welded the endplates to the frame rails. The 5/8" bolt head is welded to the inside of the box steel.

 

K... Ima keep it short cause people like pictures better than my psychobabble.

I picked up an engine hoist and a few parts today. I have "new" (un-stained anyway) capret now, a remote hatch release, and the greatest find of all... a factory-tachometer from a manual Dodge Colt GT (turbo DOHC 1.6L 4g61). Yay! Years ago I posted a DIY for swapping spedometers into a ex/vx/si cluster to keep the mileage right when doing a factory-tach upgrade. Well, it turns out the process is the same for other imports as well.






Now I have a 9000 RPM tach, and the KM210 (FWD Turbo) gear ratio as it is for a F5M33 transmission (AWD Turbo) that I'm using... and interestingly enough, the rev's per minute are actually printed at the bottom of the spedometer face where the bezel covers it, and they all match! So when it's finally driveable, the speedometer will be correct. Win for teh Jafro.



Of course now I'm debating swapping odometers in the faces if possible because the Colt tops out at 125, and the GT tops out at 145 mph. The GSX is already trapping 118's, and the Colt weighs a thousand pounds less so I know it will peg this thing. I can't change just the faces or the previous paragraph would be completely wrong.