Build thread - Resurrection of an old Contemporary

[767Jockey]

Well, I finally have one completed component on the car. I am close on many different areas, but the rear suspension is the first to be done and finished. The radius rods finally came in and after assembling the heim joints onto them, it was time to attach the sway bar to the suspension. At first look this would appear to be easy, but if you think so, then you have obviously forgotten that this is a British rear suspension. Hah! Not so fast!

The bolt that holds the lower heim joint to the lower control arm mounts from the lower control arm saddle inward toward the center of the car. What this means is that you must remove the aluminum hub carrier from the lower control arm saddle, insert the proprietary Jaguar bolt with the very shallow head into it's countersunk hole behind the hub carrier saddle, and at the same time hold in place all the spacers, heim joint etc. while you slide the bolt through everything and out through the inner bracket. Not the worst job in the world but nowhere as easy as it could be. Once you have this entire assembly in place, the bolt head needs to be checked that it is fully seated and flush with the face of the saddle that it passes through. The bolt has a very shallow head and is countersunk into the inner face of the saddle so that once the hub carrier is in place it can rotate freely in the saddle as the suspension rises and falls without interfering with the aluminum hub carrier. There are all types of shims and bearings in the hub carrier that must be kept in place while you do this, and clearances must be checked again when completed.

Personally, had I engineered it (yeah, like I know more than the guys from Jaguar, right?) I would have just threaded the hole in the saddle from the inner surface outward, and inserted the mounting bolt for the lower heim joint from the center of the car outward so that this simple assembly could be removed and installed without disassembly of the whole outer part of the rear suspension being required. Then again, that would be easier, but so much less "British", no?

Next, I had to re-install the rear shocks. Not much to say there, it really is as easy as it looks. Right now the lock nuts on the lower studs are too deep, the stud is too short to reach all the way out to the vinyl locking ring. I have them on there for now and I placed an order last night from McMaster-Carr for some metal center punched lock nuts - they should do the trick. I'll just spin them on when they come and that will take care of the minor problem. It turns out that this simple job was a welcome respite and opportunity for everything to go right, in preparation for what was to come next - the damned brake lines again. Guys, I have to say, I am enjoying building this car, and it is welcome therapy for me to distract me from what I am going through health wise now. However, to be honest, if I never saw another brake line again it would be too soon. I honestly hate this job, and being somewhat of a perfectionist, I go through lots of lines just to get one right. Now don't get me wrong, my brake lines aren't perfect, I just don't have the talent to reach perfection in this area. However, I think I got them pretty darned good. They look good and they're safe, so were done.
Here is my pile of rejected and misshapen lines, all for just the two little lines in the rear from the calipers to the brass T fitting.

It took all this aggravation:



To finally get to this point:







As I said, they're not the perfect works of art that I see from some, but they're not half bad.

Here is a few shots of the completed rear suspension:









That's it for tonight. Tomorrow it's on to front brake lines. I completed a pair of lines that go from the front stainless braided lines to the brass T fitting, but I put the wrong darned ends on them. I used the short fittings and the brass T fitting requires the longer ends. Boy, was I unhappy.....

Anyway, I'll get that completed tomorrow, and then once Nick gets the front radius rods welded up for me, I'll mount the front sway bar and the front suspension will be competed as well, and then it's off to the body and electrical.

By the way, speaking of electrical, what plugs can I use on the headlights, taillights and parking lights? I was thinking about the weatherpak plugs, I believe they're called. I have never used them before. In looking briefly at them, it would appear that I have to assemble the pins into the plugs myself and buy special tools and all - is that true? What is involved in this? Is it difficult, and are the tools expensive? Is there a better alternative for me? Thanks!

Oh, by the way, my Genesis block is on it's way. It should be here tomorrow.

[ccx1984]

Doug that rear sway bar looks nice, where did you find it . can you have a sway bar and a watts set at the same time. can that type of sway bar be used on the front. by the way your car is looking great, wish i could get back to work on mine.

[1985 CCX]

Looking good buddy!

I am starting to think I need to remove the body off mine. Na, but it would be nice to start fresh.

Looking forward to SAAC34 where I can see the result of your work.

[RedBarchetta]

Nice work!

-Dean

[767Jockey]

Originally Posted by ccx1984

Doug that rear sway bar looks nice, where did you find it . can you have a sway bar and a watts set at the same time. can that type of sway bar be used on the front. by the way your car is looking great, wish i could get back to work on mine.

Pete,
Thanks, it's good to hear from you. I measured everything for the sway bar and ordered it from Speedway Engineering. including the arms, it was about $200 or so. I ordered the radius rods from Day Motorsports, and you can get the heim ends anywhere. You can run the Watts link and sway par together. Do you have the holes for the sway bar mount drilled on your frame? I didn't so I had to locate the mounts based on measurements provided by other Contemporary owners. It gets tricky for clearance, especially on the drivers side. The arms for the sway bar have to thread their way between the outer roll bar mount above and the Watts link bracket below. The later Contemporary's had both sway bar and Watts link, so it's easy, you just need to get everything located correctly. As with everything else with my car it was a challenge, because my car came with NO rollbar, NO sway bar, and NO Watts link. I have located the rollbar mount and sway bar as accurately as I can. There is absolutely no room for error on the Watts link mount, it has to be located with extreme precision or the geometry is off and it'll bind and snap bolts like crazy. As for the front sway bar, Speedway Engineering can fab you up whatever you need, just give them accurate measurements. Good luck, it's lots of work, but it should all be enjoyable in the end.
Doug

[767Jockey]

Originally Posted by 1985 CCX

Looking good buddy!

I am starting to think I need to remove the body off mine. Na, but it would be nice to start fresh.

Looking forward to SAAC34 where I can see the result of your work.

I hope I can make SAAC this year Jeff, that's been my goal but the engine snafu has really set me back in both time and money. The block now won't be delivered until Monday. Then it needs to be machined and assembled, etc.... I don't expect to even see this engine for at least another month, and I think that this is optimistic. The engine was supposed to be delivered 2 weeks ago. The whole engine situation was a body blow that I wasn't expecting. We'll see how SAAC goes. I'll do my best.

[767Jockey]

Originally Posted by RedBarchetta

Nice work!

-Dean

Thanks, Dean!

[kitcarbp]

767- Great work on the brake lines, you have more patience then I. What I did to get rid of inferior connectors on my harness was to purchase GM type Weatherpak pigtails from PEP-BOYS. They sell 1, 2,3, and 4 pin male and female connectors separately with about 4 inches of wire. This way you just solder and heat shrink tube each connection and dont have to buy all the tools. Depends how many you need. If you need a bunch, better get a kit it will be most cost effective.
The only caution I would add is I dont remember the pig-tail wire gauge sizes so it may not be sufficient with high-beam headlamp current load, need to check that. The alternative as you stated is to buy the weatherpack kits on line and attach your own connector ends, you will need the correct crimp tool, and pin tool and a little more of that patience you have and you avoid the solder joint of the pigtails. There are a ton of kit suppliers on-line, easy to find. Enjoy.

[767Jockey]

Originally Posted by kitcarbp

767- Great work on the brake lines, you have more patience then I. What I did to get rid of inferior connectors on my harness was to purchase GM type Weatherpak pigtails from PEP-BOYS. They sell 1, 2,3, and 4 pin male and female connectors separately with about 4 inches of wire. This way you just solder and heat shrink tube each connection and dont have to buy all the tools. Depends how many you need. If you need a bunch, better get a kit it will be most cost effective.
The only caution I would add is I dont remember the pig-tail wire gauge sizes so it may not be sufficient with high-beam headlamp current load, need to check that. The alternative as you stated is to buy the weatherpack kits on line and attach your own connector ends, you will need the correct crimp tool, and pin tool and a little more of that patience you have and you avoid the solder joint of the pigtails. There are a ton of kit suppliers on-line, easy to find. Enjoy.

I only need six of them. One three wire plug on each headlight and parking light, and a two wire plug on each tail light. I found the pin removal tool on Ebay for about $28.00, and the pin removal tool for about $7.00. The plugs themselves are cheap, they're about $5.00 each. I would like to use the plugs without pigtails but instead wired directly into the Weatherpack plugs because in the Contemporary the headlight and parking light leads are in the wheel wells with the tires spraying lots of water on them if I get caught out in the rain. I figure the seal will be better with the leads going directly to the plugs rather than with splices.

I was ale to get the darn brake lines done, at least for now. The front and rear lines are now all complete. Nick made me an absolutely beautiful dead nuts on to the original floor mounted pedal box. Once I mount the body and can mount the pedal box, I only have to run two lines from the front and rear master cylinders to the respective brass T fitting on the frame in the front and back. These should be very straight forward (famous last words, I know.......). On to the electrical! Hopefully the few of you who are reading this aren't bored silly by all this.......

[cobred]

Everything looks great so far, nice job. Just because Contemp. put the connectors inside the wheel wells do you have to? Maybe you can extend the wires and put connectors in the engine compartment. Just a thought.

[ccx1984]

Doug no room for a rear sway bar with a watts linkage installed, the roll bar is no problem since i mounted the same as the old EM, the rear of the ccx and the EM were almost the same chassie. there is a pilot about 20 miles from me that just finished his cobra with a genesis engine he in the Louisiana link on this site. p.s. where did you find those little decals for the koni shocks, can't bring myself to give cobra restorers $9.00 each for them.

[767Jockey]

Pete,
That's odd that you can't fit a sway bar with the Watts link, all the later Contemporary's came with both installed. As for the Koni stickers I got them from Koni off their website. I can't remember what I paid but I think it was in the area of $1.00 each or so.
Doug

[767Jockey]

Originally Posted by cobred

Everything looks great so far, nice job. Just because Contemp. put the connectors inside the wheel wells do you have to? Maybe you can extend the wires and put connectors in the engine compartment. Just a thought.

Hmmmm, that's an interesting idea. Believe it or not, I never thought of that. Sometimes you can't see the forest through the trees! Thanks, Ed, I'll give that some thought, I kind of like that idea!

[FatBoy]

Originally Posted by 767Jockey

Pete,
That's odd that you can't fit a sway bar with the Watts link, all the later Contemporary's came with both installed.

Mine had both fitted.



Paul

[767Jockey]

Well, I haven't posted on the thread in a bit, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I've been doing many little things, getting prepped for the wiring harness installation. One problem I was having was trying to figure out where to buy large firewall grommets that had wide enough mounting grooves to accommodate a fiberglass firewall. Thanks to Bob Perry (who by the way has one of the most beautiful CCX's that I have ever seen!), the answer to my problem was easy following his common sense advice. What I am doing is measuring the diameter of the groove in the grommet to determine the size of the hole it needs to be mounted in. Then I am measuring the outside diameter of the entire grommet. I add 1/4" to that outside diameter, and cut that size hole in the fiberglass firewall. Then I cut the smaller grommet mounting hole size in the aluminum firewall overlay. This way the grommet is mounted in the aluminum, and then the whole grommet is nestled into the fiberglass hole that is large enough to surround it while it is installed in the aluminum. Since the aluminum isn't mounted yet to the firewall, this is all very easy to do. Here's a picture of the large hole in the fiberglass, one of two that I have to drill:



Speaking of aluminum firewalls, last week I had a visit at home from Rich Carlisle, and I gave him the header pipes from my old 351C Contemporary to use on his car. He was kind enough to mail me a template for a CCX firewall that he had in his possession. I mailed it to Nick Acton (Mickmate) of Acton Custom, who cut and bent up for me a beautiful aluminum firewall:



I'm trying to keep the firewall fairly clean and uncluttered. I like an original style look, but going for the full Lucas type harness is just beyond my talent and it's somewhat primitive too. Electrical is my weakest area and I just don't want any problems, so I went with a modern Ron Francis harness. I turned my chassis into the world best harness installation center:



I am mounting the MSD 6AL box inside the firewall behind the dash, out of sight, away from the heat and vibration of the engine compartment. I am drilling and countersinking holes on the engine side of the firewall for the stainless countersunk screws that will be used to mount the aluminum mounting plate for the MSD box, then putting nuts on the inside of the firewall to lock the crews in place. Same with the fuse box. Once this is done and all the grommet holes are drilled in both the aluminum and fiberglass firewalls, I will mount the aluminum firewall over the fiberglass one, and this will hide all the mounting screws for the MSD box and the fuse box behind the aluminum. Meanwhile the screws will be locked in place due to the nuts on the inside of the firewall, so I can easily remove and replace the aluminum mounting brackets if the need arises.. Here is the MSD box mounted to the aluminum mounting bracket fabricated for me by Nick Acton (Mickmate) of Acton Custom:



I'm using the anti-vibration mounts as supplied by MSD. Between them and the standoff of the aluminum bracket, the MSD box has plenty of space behind it for cooling the MSD unit.

I also had Nick make me a aluminum mounting bracket for the monster fuel pump that I need to feed this engine. I used anti-vibration mounts to try to keep the racket down from the electric pump, although I doubt I'll hear it above the 3" core Classic Chambered pipes!



Another thing I did was to completely recondition the Lucas headlight buckets. They each had a set of sloppy multi-spliced leads in them, they were a mess. I stripped the buckets down, sanded and painted them and replaced all the hardware in them that I could with stainless. I obtained two original sets of Lucas headlight leads from British Wiring, and I will be replacing the bullet type connectors with Weatherpack connectors. Now the headlight buckets are better than new:





I was able to find a reproduction of a Autolite voltage regulator some time ago on Ebay fairly cheaply. I have a upgrade in my alternator that was done by an old Mom and Pop shop around here that has been around forever. For about $100 they rebuilt my original alternator and upgraded it to 90 amps. Because of this increased output I am reluctant to use a mechanical regulator so I bought a state of the art electronic regulator from Ron Francis, and mounted the Autolite cover on it. Original? No. Proper part number? Unlikely. Look pretty good? I think so! SHhhhhhh, don't tell anyone!



One other detail I got done was to install faux tubes coming down behind the dashboard. I drilled and tapped the tops into the cowl hoop, and the bottoms slide through grommets and they end cut off even with the lower surface of the transmission tunnel. They're real solid and weather tight. I thought they came out pretty good. Here's a shot of them with the harness that I just laid on top the transmission tunnel to start wiring. Here I go with the part of the project that scares me most, electrical. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Here's a shot of step one......



Keep your fingers crossed and think happy thoughts. I have the electrical system well thought out, and this car will have an awesome grounding system. I can promise you that once the bugs are sorted out, this car will have NO electrical bugs. The duplex grounding kit that Ron Francis sells is great, every electrical component on this car will have a dedicated grounding wire going back to a central ground point. There will be no chassis grounds at all, everything will have a dedicated lead going to a grounding post that the negative battery terminal is attached to. In addition there will be a ground strap from this terminal to the cylinder head, and another from this terminal to a starter bolt. It should all work pretty good. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, but this picture reminded me. I completely disassembled, cleaned, re-lubed and made pretty the wiper motor. I know that no one will see it but I know it's there. You can just see the bottom of it hanging down on the right side of the cowl area. I'll probably never use it, but it hums really smoothly now, and it looks like new. I hope you guys aren't bored silly by this stuff, I have lots of time on my hands now and this build thread gives me something to do.

[767Jockey]

I'm just about ready to route the wires now. I mounted everything under the dash, MSD box included. I wanted everything under there neat and easily serviceable. I hate to look under a dash and see a rats nest of wires. I'm going to do everything I can to make this all neat and organized. To that end I had Nick Acton fabricate a mount for the MSD box. Once I mounted that I realized that I had a large number of auxiliary boxes, relays, etc... to mount. I figured the easiest and neatest way to do it was to fabricate for myself (Ugh, I'm a TERRIBLE fabricator, but it came out functionally fine, cosmetically OK) a mount similar to what Nick made for the MSD box. I had a few scraps of aluminum laying around, and what you see is the result. Like the MSD mount, it is mounted on stainless studs that will be hidden behind the aluminum firewall on the engine side. The screws come in from the engine side of the firewall inward. They're flat head stainless screws with the beveled backside of the head, I drilled and countersunk them into the fiberglass on the engine side of the firewall, and then added flat and lock washers before nutting them tightly against the firewall to hole everything in place. Then I mounted the aluminum plates over the tops of the nuts, and then tightened everything down with lock nuts. It all looks nice and neat and organized, and everything is easily removable for servicing if the need arises in the future.








From left to right on the relay/flasher/converter box panel are: Hazard flasher, horn relay, turn signal flasher, pusher fan relay, pusher fan relay, main puller fan relay, and the converter box for using a three wire VW turn signal switch in a six wire system. Next to that is the Ron Francis Retro Series fuse block, and of course the MSD ignition control box. You can see the large holes cut into the fiberglass firewall. The aluminum on the engine side of the firewall, once installed, will cover these holes and the grommets will be set into the aluminum panel, and the grommets will then sit centered within the larger holes in the fiberglass. That's it for now, more to come in the next few days.

[aks801]

Been a while, man. Any updates? Doing ok?

[Bob Perry]

Doug ,Looks very good you should be very proud.Im on my way to wash mine due to a 777 that lost an engine yesterday and decided to start dumping fuel before my house also got a new camera hope to down load pics finally.

[767Jockey]

Originally Posted by aks801

Been a while, man. Any updates? Doing ok?

HI, Alan - Doing OK, thanks. Had to take a break for a couple of weeks to go travel to get treatment options. I just got back, I'll be back wrenching on the car this weekend. Right now I have all the wires essentially run to where they need to be, I have to tie everything up nice and neat to keep it all in place and then add the lights, etc. to the end of the proper wires. It'll be Weatherpack connectors to each parking light, headlight and tail light. Once that's all done it's just a matter of a few brackets for trunk and hood props, installing the dash with the switches, etc, and then the wait for the engine to be done. I dump that in, install the custom S/C style fuel tank and 1/2" fuel line, add the Acton Custom/Classic Chambered 3" core white ceramic coated sidepipes and headers, and drop the body on top, and we're done! Sounds easy, huh?

[767Jockey]

Originally Posted by Bob Perry

Doug ,Looks very good you should be very proud.Im on my way to wash mine due to a 777 that lost an engine yesterday and decided to start dumping fuel before my house also got a new camera hope to down load pics finally.

It seems like what is left is easy Bob, but I know better. It'll be an uphill battle to get this thing done, especially with upcoming surgery and the funding issues that arise with being out of work. It'll get done, I just have to be patient. Sorry to hear about the fuel dumped on your car - I hate those damned pilots - what a mess they make! Get soe pictures of your car up on the net, show everyone just how beautiful a CCX can be. My goal is to make my car half as nice as yours, that'll make it nicer than most!