Getting the ride height finalized and aligned - 4-9-2020 |
Getting the ride height finalized and aligned - 4-9-2020 |
You'll also notice how the rear decklid seems to be lifted a bit on the driver side. Since the ducktail is fiberglass over a gutted OEM decklid, it weighs less than stock, so only one decklid strut is hold it up to prevent it from shooting up when you open it. The downside of this is that it applies pressure on that side alone resulting in this weird flexing. If you know me, then you know that needed to be addressed so we're fixing this by installing Rennline mechanical decklid struts in lieu of the hydraulic struts. Not only does that eliminate the upward pressure on the driver side but it should also be more reliable in the long run.
Sitting pretty on her new ride height |
First Startup - 4-9-2020
Of course, that also means that the car needed to be taken out for a full test drive and to double check the tune. I've gone through enough builds and rebuilds of my cars to know that it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings and this was no exception. What should've been a nice long "installation" drive, resulted in a fairly short 2 minute drive. The tape you see on the driver side is for holding the wires going to the wideband o2 sensor in place so they could make sure the car wasn't running lean and sure enough it was, so the drive had to be aborted.
Shop test driving the car - 4-15-2020
Two of the six injectors were acting up causing the lean condition. Upon further inspection, it turned out one of the injectors was DOA and the other injector issue was attributed to a bad solder in the wiring harness provided in the EFI conversion kit. I had a second set of injectors shipped out to them and the replacement worked just fine. They also fixed the soldering and other less than ideal things with the wiring to make sure everything was no longer going to be an issue.
The car is now running strong and sounding pretty excellent. She's still getting the tune adjusted and most of what's really left are all electrical such as the replacement of the entire front fuse box to one from Classic Retrofit, fixing the broken light switch, putting in the custom tach and getting the new Blaupunkt head unit installed. We're a little less than 7 weeks away from the artificial deadline I set for myself to get this project completed and we still have a respray after I get the car back so it's going to be close. My seats from GTS Classic should be complete in the next 2 weeks so hopefully if I can get the car painted in May, the final pieces can be put in for a mid-June completion.