Another Holset TIII..

[turboshad]

That looks great Carroll. With my 12+ years of vehilcle wiring exprience it still took me close to a week and a half to finish mine. You're right when you say the best thing to do is take your time and take lots of notes. Fuse box looks like it tucks in there just nice. If you look close at my pictures you'll notice a mod I did to my fuse box that you will have to do to yours too.

[rx2mazda]

already said it on the other site but very nice work!

Thanks, it should look really good when i'm done!

Nice work, damn,

What are you going to use for engine management? What goal are you aiming for?

Thanks Simon, now send my paypal! What time did Pat run his last time out? yeah, faster than that for the "Grudge Match"!

That looks great Carroll. With my 12+ years of vehilcle wiring exprience it still took me close to a week and a half to finish mine. You're right when you say the best thing to do is take your time and take lots of notes. Fuse box looks like it tucks in there just nice. If you look close at my pictures you'll notice a mod I did to my fuse box that you will have to do to yours too.

Thanks DJ! I'll get that FORD logo off there soon enough

[omni_840]

Looking good!

This car deserves it's own project log

[Shadow]

Been making progress and hording parts. I got the wiring harness done and I will say that that was the most un-fun thing I have ever done to a car but, I'm so glad I did it. I owe a big thanks to DJ for answering some questions and his excel sheet, Jeremy aka iturbo for the L-body wiring diagram and Brian for answering some more questions and helping me trace some down circuits. I ended up using the same power distribution box that DJ did from a crown vic. I search the junk yard for about an hour and in the end it was the perfect solution. Getting rid of the fusible link garbage really felt good. I took every wire I didn't need out the harness and in the end that was a lot. Here is what I started with......


Taking off all the old tape and loom is probably the worst/messiest part. After I had everything removed and triple checked, I test fitted it to the car - gave it power and crossed my fingers. EVERYTHING worked, light, heater, turn signals, wipers, gauges, etc so I was very relieved. To anyone doing something like this just take your time and take good notes, don't rush! Only thing left is to cut the starter wire, reverse switch and fan to length and add the connectors. Here is the test fitting and semi-finished harness.......











Car is in the Body Shop now getting some work on the A-pillars, all the holes i'm not using under hood welded shut and filled, and base + clear paint under hood and pillars. I had to go there today and remove the windshield. Windshield shop wanted to charge me $125 to take out and reinstall the windshield so, I went to Harbor Freight and got a trim removal tool and windshield removal tool for about $15 and took it out myself. I got a bunch of misc under hood parts being powder coated by Rob right now also. I will be picking up a new manual rack and coupler and tranny mount from a buddy in VA this week too. I hope to have the engine in the car this month. Hopefully things start moving really fast. more to come

So what electronics are you using? The harness looks like it's still L-body logic module/power module.

[rx2mazda]

The harness looks like it's still L-body logic module/power module.

how's that?! There are no wire for the PM or the LM that goes through the passenger side firewall as seen in the first pic. Did we talk about this through PM when we did the injector buy?

[Pat]

What time did Pat run his last time out? yeah, faster than that for the "Grudge Match"!

*Yawn*

[turbo2point2]

Looking good How long will it be out at the body shop?

[Shadow]

how's that?! There are no wire for the PM or the LM that goes through the passenger side firewall as seen in the first pic. Did we talk about this through PM when we did the injector buy?

Ya ya I was obviously looking at the wrong pic!

[rx2mazda]

*Yawn*

Looking good How long will it be out at the body shop?

That's the $64K question! There doing the work on the side for me, when I went there yesterday they were pretty busy. It looks like they are gonna be the ones holding me up. If they take too long i'll just take the car elsewhere and pay full price. Feel free to start working on that cam thingy for me

[rx2mazda]

The R/T is done.......R.I.P. On to smaller and lighter things......

[turbovanman²]

RIP,

[rx2mazda]

Unfortunately, my friends with the body shop have gotten really busy with "real" work so my car has been just sitting. I really want to get my car together so I will be doing the engine bay prep/paint myself. I will be filling small holes with fiberglass, sanding, scuffing and getting it ready for paint. Once I get it all prepped my painter may be able to come in on the weekend and shoot it base & clear for me...if not, I will do it. Not really worried about it, it WILL turn out nice and once the TIII is in there most of it will be hidden. My friends gave me everything I needed to get the prep done which was really nice so. I plan to get a lot done tomorrow.

I have just about everything I need to get the car running now so I can't wait to make some progress. I cleaned and painted the tranny this week. A case of brake clean, some wire brushes, paint stripper, and a bunch of time gave me good results....

start......



after cleaning......



all done....




Not much of an update but, once the engine bay is painted things should go really fast.

[turboshad]

Not much of an update but, once the engine bay is painted things should go really fast.

LOL, I said that once........a year later I got done.


Looking good Carroll.

[rx2mazda]

Started sanding and filling holes and this beauty jumped out at me...........







....I was so PISSED, more at myself because I never caught it but, also because it was going to slow me down more. Murphy's Law! I read that this can be a "common" problem with the L'bodys since the sheet metal work is so poor. The shock tower is only held in place by spot welds so a big pot hole or torque from launches, etc could cause this to happen. Good news is I stopped by the Body shop on my way home yesterday to show my buddy the pics and they had cleared out most of the cars! He told me to bring it up today and he would come in on Saturday and fix everything up. He's going to go ahead and do the passenger side too while he's in there. Another good thing is that this happened before I put the motor in, that would have really sent me over the top.

Anyway, I went ahead and filled up all holes that I need and sanded everything good. Took all day and my arms are sore but it is going to be well worth it in the end. There is still some of that undercoating crap on the inner fenders in the hood channel but, I'm going to let the professionals handle that. I don't want to mess up the fenders on the outside trying to get it off. The fenders need to come off anyways to fix the A-pillars so they may just get repainted. Also, the paint came in yesterday too, it's purty and PPG. Here are some progress pics......













Hopefully, I will have some pics of it all painted soon.

[turboshad]

If there is one thing I wish I would have done it would have been welding all the seams in the engine bay and stich welding the interior. It's always good to catch that stuff in the early stages. Like you said, there would have been way more sweargin if you saw it after you had painted.

[rx2mazda]

If there is one thing I wish I would have done it would have been welding all the seams in the engine bay and stich welding the interior. It's always good to catch that stuff in the early stages. Like you said, there would have been way more sweargin if you saw it after you had painted.

Yes but, there still was a lot of swearing! lol. We are going to double the amount of welds. Tomorrow should be a productive day.

[turboshad]

I forgot to ask what color you were going with? Or are you doing the same lime green/gray gangsta style like you did to your spirit?

[rx2mazda]

I forgot to ask what color you were going with? Or are you doing the same lime green/gray gangsta style like you did to your spirit?

:LOL:

Keepin it nice and simple with the Santa Fe Blue I may airbrush my face on the door though...........

[Shadow]

Lucky you caught it now. I'm going to be starting a log myself on a TIII L-body we're building for a buddy of mine. I'll post up what we do to all of the seems up front before putting any real HP through them. You should also weld the sheetmetal to frame seam on both sides, they can be worse than the towers!

[rx2mazda]

Lucky you caught it now. I'm going to be starting a log myself on a TIII L-body we're building for a buddy of mine. I'll post up what we do to all of the seems up front before putting any real HP through them. You should also weld the sheetmetal to frame seam on both sides, they can be worse than the towers!

Cool, i'm sure that's gonna be a nice project with your help. I'm not gonna weld the sheetmetal to the frame, just not enough time/money to do more extensive welding. Hopefully what we did today will suffice. If I had my own garage and a welder I would do more. I think once I add a cage and tie the strut towers to that everything will be nice and sturdy.