Very nice, coming along great man!! I was thinking about doing this and doing a tubular rear. Not 100% on pulling the trigger on that one yet.

 

LOL to start this update with a grin, I don't think I have enuph room for the radiator (P.S. we are not going to reuse the OEM core support)





We had to start filling in the gaping hole(s) for the fuel cell, and a huge thanx to Andy @ CIN today for all of his help and hard work. HE did all of the welding you see here, including TIG welding Aluminum, on his back, upside-down, like a baws!

Starting off with a few pieces I fabbed to box in the unibody





Andy welded win all of the patches to the sub-frame and uni-body









Then the rediculousness of the fuel cell cage, this is how close it is to the diffuser





The top of the fuel cell is ~2" above the hatch floor.





And MOAR Andy welding, even recycled the OEM mustache bar





And moar sheet metal work for me tonight, making a new 1/4 windows, these will accept NACA ducts later, to cool something off, probably the driver

 

Looking good!

 

It can flow right down to the brakes, with a little ducting!

I love this build, beside a the LS thing!

More

 

Well it was a good and bad day. lets start with the good. We finally got that Fuel Cell in, and it is removable in case we ever need to work on the diff. It sits level with the top of the crash bar and just under 2" above the hatch floor. I still need to finish the trim work around it and build a removable rear hatch skin.







While we were at it, since I have had the master grade diffuser I've always worried about needing to be pulled out of a tire wall and the EV not being able or willing to crawl under the car to find the toe points I made, so I had Andy Tig this on the rear crash bar. I'll do another on the other side as well and drill through the bumper cover and mount a couple of tow points. Thinking about doing the same on the front and deleting the front center toe point, since thats the general area I'm thinking about bringing the intake through. Kind of like this:





I spent a couple of hours forming and bolting this little Debbie into place. Hindsight and all, I probably wouldn't have used .125" Aluminum for htis, .080 would have been plenty. With the Arch in it and all of the bolts an Elephant could tal dance on it, when you hit it with a hammer, it sounds more solid than the crash bar







And this is why I didn't get more done today. Public service announcement, it you are going to use a cut off wheel, put your welding jacket on! My hoodie saved part of my arm and I'm very very lucky that I missed al lof the important stuff and everything still works, sadly my days of a hand model are over

 

Yeah 'm not a huge believer in brake ducts unless you are running serious enduros. Anything 10 hours or more (or speeds well over 160) but todays race compounds are fairly tolerant and like the heat. I've also seen what happened when you get a small pebble in your brake ducts, I've seen where that little pebble either throws the brake pad or turns your pads into a lathe and cuts your rotor. I'll probably do brake ducts, but I'll run a sump fan and some decently fine screens to filter that garbage out. I think I'll have plenty of room

I already have the brake ducts made for the front knuckles



ANd I have my trusty Carbotechs, a small shout out to the Puskar Family, if you want race pads or ever great street pads, give them a call.

 

Thank you sir. I appreciate that.

 

Sadly I'm going to probably have to take a short break from the car for a week or so, I have foot surgery scheduled for 12/31 and they are putting a few screws into my Navicular bone. Not sure how much that will affect me or my mobility. IF it is really bad I'll just send i to the cage shop, even though there is a ton I'd like to do before that.

I still need to make floor pans and transmission tunnel as well as I few dozen other small things I want to do before the cage goes in.

Also if anyone has a source for pre-preg Kevlar I need a small sheet for the rear fire wall. I'd like to have some ballistic protection with all of the pressurized volatile things back there. Say 12" x 30" sheet of 1/8" Kevlar?

 

Looking good Bryan! Very well done. So are you not going to run ABS at all anymore? I was wondering if it were possible to remove all the Z wiring, but somehow retain the ABS. I am not sure what it is all tied in to.

 

When I was at Momemtum Performance and we had that 'race car' running MOTEC I spoke with the MOTEC guys at SEMA and PRI and they suggested a Porsche ABS unit, as that is what many of the series that allow ABS run, apparently it is close to a stand alone solution and might even be tuneable. IDK.

IMO I think you could get the ABS to work without the BCM, it should run with a 'default' pulse rate verses a variable pulse rate, since it would not get the VSS input from the CANBus, or any other input.

Looking at the service manual on Page BRC-9 the ABS controller receives:

• Engine speed signal
• Accelerator pedal position signal

On page BRC-51 the ABS/TCS modules receives:

• Engine speed signal
• Accelerator pedal position signal
• A/T position indicator signal

In page BRC-99 the VDC module receives:

• Engine speed signal
• Accelerator pedal position signal
• Steering angle sensor signal

Ironically none of the ABS/TCS/VDC modules receive the VSS signal, but I guess since it has all 4 wheel speed sensors wired directly to it, it doesn't matter.



You could try to disconnect the CANBus lines (red and blue) from pins 20 & 23 and see if the wheels lock up under hard braking.

I will not be using ABS on this vehicle.

 

Speedy/healthy recovery kind sir...

 

Thanx, I needed to work on zdayz.com any way...

 

Shooting for a Zdayz completion date Looks like a fun build. Nice work. Following it now!

Good luck.

Chris

 

I'd like to have it at ZDayZ, but time will tell... I'm more worried about getting it done the first time and getting it right

Thanx

 

Your making some great progress! I am really liking your attention to detail on this

As for the cutting wheel, glad to see it was not a worse injury! I had a friend of mine that had a cutting wheel kick back and literally cut his entire bicep in half, it was really bad. Ever since then i have been really careful using my die grinder or any sort of cutting wheel, he had physical therapy forever, had to deal with a couple bad infections throughout a period longer than a year!

I never knew how common it was for people to injure themselves with those things, this just goes to show, be safe in the garage! lol, anyways glad your ok

 

Hope you have a speedy recovery with the hand and foot Bryan. I've been debating taking the ABS out of my Z as well. Just need to figure the right way to do it. Your project is coming along nicely though. Hoping like you to have mine done for ZdayZ, it will be my first time to attend. Would be nice to come in with my build complete.

 

Awesome info. Thanks!

 

to do it proper, you would need dual master cylinders properly sized to your calipers. pedal box is the easiest way to do this, but I guess you could fab up a linkage setup off of the OEM pedal

 

You are welcome

 

last update for a while foot surgery int he morning

We made a frame around all of the opening we made for the fuel cell, we have too much welder for this sheet metal work, had to run and get another welder.











Then i made a frame around the floor in the hatch well





Then just a few pics showing off the master grade diffuser and how close things really landed









Sorry for the fuzzy pics, these are all iphone pics. Time for a little bourbon before bedtime and fasting before surgery! See ya next year!