'73 Vega GT All Aluminum Wildcat 355 Project

Contents:
Page 1: Engine Block prep
Page 2: Head mods
Page 3: Induction/Exhaust
Page 4: Engine Assembly
Page 5: Front Suspension Mods
Page 6: Rear Suspension/Weight Transfer Mods
Page 7: Rust Repair and Undercarriage prep
Page 8: Frame Rail fabrication/Unibody support
Page 9: Body Mods
Page 10: Transmission Mods
Page 11: T5 Rebuild
Page 12: BMW Radiator Swap

Rust Repair!

OH NO! Since I didn't have much money 10 years ago this car started out as my daily driver. WOW that was dumb. It went through 2 MN winters while I was in art school and here's what I got for it.

The right front fender and the unibody frame support in the left rear wheel well. The left rear lower trailing arm bracket is buckled because the 215 had more torque than the weak unibody could handle. SO this is my next challenge. Fabricate some sheet metal parts and weld in new frame rail supports.

I'm planning on welding in full 2x4 rails from the trailing arm bracket to the front frame rail unibody support. I'll post as I go...

Thanks for viewing my site so far. I'll try to update it as often as I can. I hope it helps another motorhead out there...

So I'm back on the Project. I've been working pretty steady this year since it got warm. Here's a pic of how the car looks at this point...

And the shop is packed to the gills with parts. Just storing parts off of a car is space eating. That coupled with work-when-I-can mentality has cluttered my shop a bit.

In my continuing quest to get at the couple spots of rust and treat anywhere that might get it; I'm stripping the undercoating and preparing the engine/fenders/undercarriage for sand blasting. Here's a couple shots of the product I'm using to loosen up the old undercoating and scrapping:

Here's me covered in undercoating and dirt under the car. It's really working out well actually. I think I'm about 1/2 done. I've got both front fender wells done and one whole side back to the trailing arm mounts complete.

There you can see a pile of undercoating from the front fender well. I'm using a pneumatic scrapper. Really invaluable. I've really been helped by the products available from Eastwood. Thanks Eastwood, I'll be spending more money there soon...

After I removed as much undercoating as I could stomach I started working on the sprayed sound diffuser. There was a LOT of it sprayed in the floor. I will be using some more advanced diffuser material that has been developed more recently and a bit less heavy. I can also use it where I need it most and keep the weight down. Here's a few pix of the removal process:

I was glad I did because I discovered some surface rust under the sound diffuser. Most of the minor rust was isolated to the driver side floor. Now I can get at it and remove/seal the sheetmetal from future rust.

I thought I'd weigh the undercoating and sound diffuser material I removed to see if I saved any weight. Also to get a quantifiable number I could share with my H-body community. It turned out to be a significant amount. What you are looking at is bout 17 lbs! of material removed! That is a lot of weight to save for racing applications...

I started work on rust repair! Heres the first pic. I found some pin holes on the inside edge of one of the unibody frame rails. I decided to cut a window through the wheelwell. I found a THIRD mouse nest! It had drug a t-shirt in there with leaves, acorns, carpet parts, and a bunch of shit! JEEZ! Next up is the left rear wheelwell support... BTW look how clean the shop is now that I removed the beach! LOL.

I'll be fabricating a new floor that's about 3 inches higher. That will give me room and ground clearance for the exhaust. I'm getting closer. Soon I'll have pix of the new floors and the patches in the front frame rails fixing the mouse nest rust... That still torches me a bit. DAMN MICE!

SO I finally found a nice replacement for the rusted right fender. Then I got the balls to just fix the one I had. What a pussy! It turned out pretty nice though.

From the edge its a little off. About <1/8 deviation from one side to the other. It shouldn't be noticeable. I did this in my back yard. It was a really hot day so I was wearing my t-shirt. I got welding sunburn on my upper arms. LOL!

I finally got to the last major rust repair. It's actually the first pictures on this page. It is in a support connector inside the rear wheel well. I decided to cut off the rusted support channel and replace it with a larger gauge of sheet metal. I cut it a bit bigger and filled in the gap between the support and the top of the rear axle hump. Here's what it looked like and below is what it looks like now. I also gained about 1/2" for tire clearance too.