'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

New Page! Body mods

OK this page is not going to be very long because I don't do much body work. I do need to repair some body panels though and make some modifications I thought Chevrolet should have done to the styling.

I've always thought the marker lights and taillights they were incongruous to the overall design. I thought the styling initially implemented by the round headlights and the round front signal lights was lost in the kinda cheap rectangular marker lights. Here's a picture of a car I'm planning emulating.

As you can see the modifications were the change from the rectangular markers to the Mopar style small round markers. Pretty cool. The other major change is the use of second gen Camaro round taillights.

The first metal/welding based modification I have ever made is the marker lights. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out:

I'm not going to build this but here's a sketch I whipped up of what I think GM should do to bring the Vega GT back in 2011 for the anniversary addition. They could use the Lotus chassis they are using for the solstice and Sky. I think it would be a hardtop version.

I bought a rear panel for a '72 Cuda and some similar vintage tail lights. They are a lot bigger than the Camaro lights at 5 1/2" but I think they are going to look pretty good.

Here's a pic of a rear panel with Camaro lights I modified to and enlarged to show what the final Mopar lights will look like. You can see by the pic of the 'Cuda rear panel that it has a similar concavity to the Vega rear panel.

I cut out the tail light bezels from the 'Cuda rear panel and mocked them up yesterday. I was really tentative because I've never cut out perfectly good sheetmetal before. It took all day to finish, well almost finish, welding in the right tail light bezel.

Here's a pic after I grinded down the initial welds. And a couple pix after I smoothed it a little and put weld-thru primer on them for the last bit of welding. There are a lot of pin holes from pitting int the bezels I'm filling with welds. It's tedious.

This side went a crap load better. I was still pretty nervous but the problems that came up last time I was able to head off. I'm glad to be done with this part.

Peep this cool Matchbox I found this weekend! SWEET!

Sandblasting

SO I started sandblasting today. OMG it takes forever! I worked all day and finally got most of it done. I went through about 250 lbs. of sand. Here's what I looked like after a few hours:

Here's what the car looks like now. It's not perfect but good enough for me! I look like I should be drinking at the Mos Eisley cantina. LOL. My body aches like a MF. All the contortions I've had to do over the past 4 days... It's going to take a while to recover.

Chassis Black

I started sealing the bare metal with Chassis Black. I bought it from Eastwood. It's pretty toxic stuff but it works like magic! It really bonds with the bare metal. It's an epoxy based bonding paint. It goes on thin but builds quickly. It's really nice and super black!

Here's a couple close ups:

I finished up the paint on the undercarriage I've just got a few places to cover in the cracks. I also got some silicon sealer I'll be installing this week. The engine compartment got Rust encapsulator and a couple coats of satin Engine Enamel.

You can see in the back I left the rear foot wells. I'll be cutting those out to make clearance for mufflers.

A couple pix of our CarNight club:

That's Joel (HotHotWeezly) pretending to drive from his engine bay. We are also working on a Rabbit for the 2008 Challenge. Here's our hogged out engine bay!

This is the neighbor girl Cat. She's part of our CarNight. She's chopping out the rear footwells to make room for the dual exhaust.

Here's how the floor turned out. I'm pretty happy with the results. Now I have plenty of room for mufflers after the X-pipe. The X-pipe will go right where the floor is the lowest just at the front edge of these floors I fabricated: THANKS MUSCLE CAR! (SpikeTV)

A long time passes… I've finished all the under car and chassis work! I assembled the suspension parts and have started hanging panels. I'm having a body guy do the rest of the work on the exterior. I did my best at lining up body panels. I'm pretty excited. It's been a couple years since I've seen the car with the body panels back on. I had to pat myself on the back a little because the organization of the little parts was really great. I put every little part I took off into a baggie and marked what it was. That really paid off. Here's some pix of the car:

So now the body guy, Bob Fulmer from The Works in Fridley MN, will come over to inspect the gaps. They are way off. I'm just not good at moving them around. I'm really not sure how it works. We'll see what he says.

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Bob has finished the bulk of the body work. It only needs some finish work and blocking for color now. SO I'm going to take it home and put the engine and trans in and the brakes and fuel stuff. Then Install a seat and drive it around. Sounds simple. I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the summer. Then a couple years of refining after the final paint.

The lip looks GREAT! Really seemless. I'm trilled. Another detail that's not obvious to a non-hbody owner is I've had Bob remove the notches for the bumper mounts. COOL! Below you can see how the rear panel worked out. Man it looks great.

Bob also filled in some random seems that were part of the stock body work. It's most obvious around the rear panel but also where the quarter meets the roof pillers. The last major body work needing addressing is I have to drill out the hatch hinges and move it up about 1/4". Here's a pic of quarter seem filled.

Here's a pic of the bumper gap filled. and being filled on the chin. The dam has already been bonded. These pix show how the gap was filled in the chin. It looks like it's never going to work but it really turned out great!

I mounted the gas tank. Its from a '68 Nova and near double the capacity of the stock Vega tank. That will help me get between E85 staitions on my way to distant tracks. Well we'll see if it works out. First I cut off the old front mounts (Axle side of the tank) and mounted them in the proper location for the new tank. Then I fabricated new rear mounts out of pipe stock and welded them into place.

Then I put the tank in to see how it worked out. It turned out to be one of the easiest mods I've worked on in this car. Here's one more pic of the right mount up close:

It fits right in! Almost like a stock fuel tank.