More progress.


First off, I have somewhat of a unique item to share with those of you who are using the 4th gen coolant reservoir on a 3rd gen Fbody. When you cut the hole in the battery tray to make room for the bottom end of the 4th gen bottle, you will notice that there is a brace for the passenger side fender that is in the way, and it will not let the coolant bottle rest correctly against the battery tray. Removing the brace will allow the fender to flab in the wind when you're going down the highway. So, it is important that you somehow utilize this brace, and my dad and I came up with an easy solution to do just that. There is a small hole in the passenger frame rail, just a little ways backwards from where this brace would normally mount. I decided to use that hole to mount the brace because it allowed just enough room for the coolant bottle to sit properly. To do this, I took a sharpie and marked how short I needed to make the brace, then put it in a vice and bent it at a 90* angle, drilled another hole in it and got a bolt and locking nut to fasten it in place in the new hole. You can see from these pictures exactly where I decided to mount it, and I took a picture from below the fender to show how much clearance it gave me with the coolant bottle. In the 3rd picture, my index finger points to where the brace mounted from the factory, so you can see how it poses a problem when using this coolant bottle.









The other big part of my progress from today was cutting the hole for the manual shifter. I cut it just within the stock holes for mounting the auto shifter (there are four holes). The carpet on the driver side hangs over a little bit so you can't see all four edges of the hole, but you get the idea.



Then here is something I was really excited to get out of the way. I went ahead and undercoated just the transmission tunnel, all the way back to about 6" behind where the shifter will be. I also undercoated up into the engine bay just a little bit. I wanted to get the tunnel done so I can get the motor and trans in next weekend. I'll undercoat the rest of the car once it is running and I can take it up to my friend's work and use their lift, because doing it all on your back with the car 2' off the ground kind of sucks.




More of the undercoating. I made a fine line between blue and black on the trans tunnel, I think I like it this way with it coming into the frame rail in the engine bay. What do you guys think?