September 3, 2002:
Drilled out the holes in the trunk floor so that the remote cut off switch cables can enter the trunk area. I also cut the hole for the battery. This will make it possible to remove the battery cables from the battery when I want to. It should also make it easier to replace the battery.
TOTAL TIME: 2 hours
September 4, 2002:
Tonight I installed the trunk floor. It was really difficult to get the grommets into the holes that I cut. It's a pretty tight fit. Once they were in, it looked really good. Trying to get that large piece of aluminum around the roll bar tubing is such a pain in the butt. I scratched the heck out of the frame trying to get it in. Since this was the third time I was putting the floor in, you can only imagine how badly I've scratched the frame! I don't feel like POR 15'ng it again so I'll just touch it up with black paint.
TOTAL TIME: 2 hours
September 7-8, 2002:
On Saturday I decided to do some touch up painting on the trunk frame. I was quite pleased to find out that my POR 15 topcoat paint was still good. On Sunday I ended mounted the aluminum on the sides of the trunk. The trunk looks pretty good now.
TOTAL TIME: 4 hours
September 13-15, 2002:
Friday evening when I got home from work, I tried to go for another go kart ride in the cul-de-sac. I hadn't thoroughly bled the cooling system yet so I didn't want to overheat the car. I pulled out of the driveway and did a few stop and go's. The timing still wasn't set properly yet either so the engine would sometimes run high. Anyway, after a while I noticed all of this steam coming out of the front. I thought I had burned something. Fortunately it was only overflowing radiator fluid because I hadn't tightened the radiator cap! I washed the coolant from the road the next morning.
On Saturday, my friend Derrick stopped by to give me a hand with the car. At this point, I still wasn't confident that everything was fine. The thermostat was getting up over 240F and the car didn't seem to be running that hot. With my limited automotive knowledge, I didn't realize that the bubbling over of the coolant the night before was because the thermostat finally opened. As I was explaining some of the problems to Derrick that I was having (high temp, radiator still cool to the touch, too much fluid in the overflow, etc.), he asked me about my water temperature sender. For some reason I never bothered to install the Autometer sender and was using the stock Mustang one. Doh! That's why the temperature was reading so high. That's also why the thermostat hadn't been opening in the past. The engine never got hot enough! I'm glad we made this realization because I was questioning whether I had installed the thermostat correctly, or got the right water pump etc, since the radiator was never getting hot at the right temperature.
We changed out the sender and that process also helped get some air out of the system. Hooked up everything and the temp gauge worked as advertised! We started up the car and let it get hot. The thermostat was opening at around the 190-200 range. I may try and install a low temp thermostat in the future. For now I'm stoked that I hadn't broken anything!
We also drilled the roll bar holes. Another revelation was that when you drill through metal, you don't want the drill speed to be that fast. After drilling a few holes I gave the drill to Derrick and he just went through the steel like butter. He said that for metal it's better to go at a slower speed. Learned something new today.
On Sunday, I spent most of the afternoon finishing the roll bar and installing a temperature controller switch for the cooling fan. I purchased this from Pep Boys. I got the non-adjustable one. Overall it was a very productive weekend.
TIME THIS WEEKEND: 10 hours
September 21,22
Started up the car a few times to try and bleed the radiator. I later noticed that the charging light wasn't turning off after the car was running. This is confusing because it worked before. I further
confirmed that the car wasn't charging because the voltmeter didn't read higher than the original battery voltage.
On Saturday I ended up going surfing in the morning. Conditions were real nice at Croatan. Also went mountain bike riding later that afternoon and ended up hugging a tree pretty good. I thought I broke something since I hit it so hard.
TOTAL TIME THIS WEEKEND: 1 Hour
September 28,29
Tried to do a little troubleshooting again to figure out why the car wasn't charging. Still haven't figured it out yet. I couldn't work too long on the car because I was expecting company from DC. The
Neptune Festival was going on at VA Beach so I took my friends down there to hang out. Had a great time this weekend and even got to go surf again later on Sunday.
TOTAL TIME THIS WEEKEND: 1 hour
