[davids2toys]

Originally Posted by RICK LAKE

davids2toys Dave In 15 years my oil temp gauge has bearly worked in the oil pan. I think there needs to be another location. Some of the off readings has to due with the 13 quarts of oil in the system and even after 15 minutes of abuse, I am lucky to see 140F temp instead of 180-200.
Gauges, DON'T tighten them again. If you have an AMP gauge, check the plastic sleeves for burnt out cracking. You also may want to look into a Volt Gauge instead. It's an easy swap and no more fear of burning up the wiring harness. This repair applies if you have a 70 amp alt or higher output. I think a 60 will not burn out the sleeves ( insolators).
If you are just normal driving with a little fun, stay with the stock Jag brake pads. Just rough up the surface with 80 grit sand paper. Do this is a circle motion. When done bleed the brakes to remove any air.
MSD box, If your battery cable goes from the battery directly to starter soleniod on fire wall, Mounting there for power is fine. Ground goes directly to frame. Clean of a small area of paint and mount there. Add Dye electric grease to cover connection. This stops rust.
battery POS cable, I mounted an insolator clamp every 12" to keep and movement of the cable and rubbing of cable cover. Both ends should be clean for good connections.
Shimming the seats, If you are moving the seats and changing locations from the original mount holes, either buy small steel plates or large fender washers and double them when remounting the seat frame bolts to the floor of the car. Bigger is better for handling the load of the seat and spreads out the weight to not rip out the bolts if an accident happens.
Crotch belt, The jury is still out on this. If the 4 main belts are setup right with the correct angle and are tight, normal driving I see no reason to use this one, IMO. Yes I use this one on the track.
I don't know what trans you have in the car but some of them have multi locations for the shifter in the car or use a different shifting handle to move it forward in the car without cutting up the tunnel or carpet.
If you really want to get crazy, add some insolation to the under side of the tunnel to help keep down temp in the car. Need the silver glue back and I added thin aluminum strips and rivets to keep them in place on the top and bottom.
That's about it, good luck with the fun. Total job time 3 days with a day for the RTV to dry completely. Rick L.

Rick
Thanks for detailed reply. I will try and hit all your points
I know this oil gage is not working because the previous owner had the water temp gage into the oil pan and the oil temp gage into the int manifold. Unfortunately he did not know this,. I found it because I thought my car was overheating every time I went over 3000 rpm, the temp would climb. Under 3000 rpm, right back to 185 deg. As I said, the oil gage was in the water and it never read anything.
I don't know what you have for a pan, but you should be reading temps way above 140 deg. if you are submerged in the oil at the pan location.
Here is my suspicion. My old Unique Cobra had an electric sender at the pan. That gage was not working. When I bought a new Canton RR pan for the car I filled it up with 7 qts of water, the sender was not in the water, so it was reading nothing but air. I bought the pan up to Canton and had an additional bung welded in so I would now be in the oil for sure (see attached pic). So in the ERA car, the reason the water gage worked while in the oil pan was because the mechanical senders are much longer and was actually in the oil.
I have sold the Unique, but I did keep the Canton custom pan. I will be installing it in my ERA after this present project is complete.
I already have the new replacement oil gage. It is the exact same gage and sender as the water temp, the only difference is one says water temp and one says oil temp. They are both Autometer (Smith lookalikes), readings are in Centigrade.

-Car already has a volt gage.

-So why not re-tighten a gage if it has loosened up and is moving around?

-I'm a little confused, you think I should stay with the pads that are on the car now and use 80 grit on them, or are you saying to purchase new pads, but the same type band use 80 grit on them?
Are the pads easy to remove and replace?

-MSD box is wired exactly how you are saying to have it. My race car buddy told me it needs to be direct. I thought that was ridiculous, so I call MSD last year and they said the same as my buddy. It is even in there instructions. The tech rep gave me good reasons, but I have forgotten them now...LOL, old age!

-I like your idea for the clamps on the POS wire. I will also check it for any chafe points along its length.

- Seats...I meant shimming the front 2 bolts to make the seating more comfortable. I am not relocating them at all. Both seats have seat tracks. When I took the seats out he had different shims all over the place or no shims at all. I do not understand what the thinking was here unless he was attempting to level the seats? He also had cut the length on some of the studs. I understand the frame interference on one or two of them, but there should have been no reason to cut the front studs. He did cut one of the front studs down to 1". I would like to replace it if possible so I can shim it to bring the seat up in the front and to install the anti submarine mounting bar per (ERA)Doug's instruction. The crotch belt is for looks only, I doubt I will actually ever use them.
BIG washers to spread the load are already there.

- Tranny, I have a Toploader. The mount seems to be in the correct location all the way at the rear of the tranny (see pic). I believe this is where ERA states that it is to be located. I would love to be able bring it forward rather than relocating all the pedals and all the BS that would go along with that job.

- Temps in the car are fine. However the insulation at the rear section of the tunnel is all falling apart due to the oil soaking from the pinion seal leaking(see pic). Also note in the pic the second grease/oil strip near the shifter hole. I'm thinking it is either from excess grease in the U joints, or the tranny seal is leaking.

Dave