Blogs

Walk through of cold start circuit (+ status of new boards)

<TL:DR - the new board has been built and appears to work as designed! New post coming soon!> I've learned a lot during this project. While the goal has always been to build a reproduction board, I also wanted to better understand the cold start circuit itself. Questions I wanted answered include: How do the components work together? What is the sequence of events? And eventually - is there room for modification? I've found that the system behavior is different than

Andrew Wilson's Vern Restoration & Adventures

December 2

Veronika: Final Cocomats

The final Black/Red Dot Cocomats arrived today and fit perfectly from the templates I made.

adawil2002

November 29

Ernie's resto-mod

The car is now in primer

Stopped by the paint shop to check in on my car. Ernie is now in primer. The shop has made a ton of progress. They've finished all the body work, including all the work in the trunk, which is still in POR15 and waiting for the shmutz coating on the wheel wells and the primer coat. On the exterior, they're on their 3rd coat of block and sanded primer. Gallery images below. A couple of details... They've pre-installed the @Forrest_KoogleWerks air dam and you ca

Teelinger

November 28

The Roundie - '73 2002

Brake Booster Delete

Finally got back to it with the 2002. Life is not allowing for frequent garage time, so dialing in expectations with this car has been a priority for me. Right now, I'm just focusing on what I know I can get done. Long term plans remain the same, but short term accomplishments will keep me motivated on this project. Before sending the car off to fabrication I purchased the Chase Bays booster delete kit. I know there are a lot of strong opinions on this, but this is the direction I'm going. For a

benzintinte

November 25

KoogleWerks prototype and production shop blog

KoogleWerks Video series

Forrest_KoogleWerks

November 25

Holley Sniper EFI Conversion

So what is the Diff?

So In the category of doing stuff that I have the parts for, I decided that this week was a good one to get the differential done. It has been complaining a lot, especially as I take my foot off the gas and coast. About a year ago I got the rebuild kit from I.E and shortly after that I got a phantom clutch. Now for those not familiar with phantom clutches, I want to tell you everything I know about them... which is absolutely nothing. They are supposed to be a "LSD like" devic

Dudeland

November 25

Building the test harness (woot! - it's built!)

Progress on the test harness has moved faster than my blogging. 🙂 I'm excited - harness complete and used to test three OEM cold start timers. One works. The other two have peeling solder traces. Fixable but I won't spend time right now repairing them - once one spot is fixed its only time before another bit pops up. Super interesting to see the behavior of the system. I'll document it so that folks know exactly what is happening when you turn the key. Have to say it's di

November 24

Examining the OEM Tii cold start circuit board

Prior to building a reproduction Tii cold start timer box I examined the two boards I have. Both are out of '73's and are identical in general appearance. By that I mean they appear to be the same circuit board schematic and all passive components are present. Here is the front and back of one of them: However, the values of some resistors and transistors vary between the two boards. Could be several reasons for this - the system is much more forgiving than I realiz

November 23

Ground Control struts

Welded on the Ground Control bits, installed the rebound adjustable Koni inserts, Eibach springs, GC camber plates. These are the e30m3 struts but it's the same for the 2002 guys. The rear is interesting, between the 02 chassis and the e30m3 subframe I need springs in the 11 to 13 inch long range... All of this is temporary until I get around to another set of MCS dampers. Loved them in the tii, they're just super ultra mega.

irdave

November 21

Spare Tire Well

We replaced the spare tire well, as it was rusting. We bought the replacement from Wolf. They sprayed the color and shutz in the way the factory did. Thanks for the tip from Andrew Wilson on that.

November 19

Rusty Bob

Steering wheel cover

I've been able to tackle some projects I've been wanting to do since the car got hit including wrapping the e21 steering wheel in new leather. I love the look leather steering wheels that have a bit of age to them so thats what I was going for. This turned into quite the task but im happy with the outcome. I found the leather scrap at local upholstery shop, dyed it a dark brown, and hand stitched it. Let me know what you think.

doslucero

November 19

Final Product

Reggie's wife Stephanie took some nice pics of the car after it was all cleaned up. So photo credit goes to Stephanie Stewart. Car came out great. Nice to know it is solid underneath, once again. Hope it lasts another 50 years!

November 19

Painting, Body Shutz

Reggie's used the same DuPont paint that was used in the early '90s. They used the door to create the match, since they could see it from all angles, and get good light on it. The paint match turned out pretty nice, I have to say. They did a great job. And I didn't have to spring for a full repaint. Here's the various coatings, etc, that were used, from an email from Reggie: Behind and in-between metal that will no longer be accessible, we use a weld-through primer, w

November 19

Passenger Side Part 2

It seemed worse in the front vs. the rear on the passenger side.

November 19

Passenger Side Part 1

And we're on to the other side!

November 19

Driver's Side Part 2

More pics of the work on the Driver's side of the car. We thought this would be the worst side, but that wasn't entirely accurate. The rockers were pinched-welded as you can see, like the factory. Real goal was preserve the car, not restore it.

November 19

Driver's Side Part 1

The plan was to replace both rocker panels, and the spare tire well. And anything else that the excavations turned up. We knew we would find more. Thanks to Reggie Stewart - his shop Reggie's Motorworks did the work. Also thanks to Paul Wegweiser, who supplied a lot of the parts via Maximillian's. Special thanks to my wife for supporting me on my expensive hobbies! Here's what was found on the driver's side. Work was needed on the lower pa

November 19

Before...

It all started with a two rust bubbles. One on the bottom of the passenger door, and a more serious one on the bottom of the driver's side rocker. That one was the outer rocker beginning to rust through. While I have owned the car since 1987, it was a daily driver before that. So probably a good 17 years as a well-cared for daily driver. So when I bought it in '87 I knew it was fairly solid, but not perfect, in terms of the condition of the body. And over the years

November 19

Initial thoughts on the Tii cold start timer box

We've had two '73 Tiis for about 20 years. Neither car has working cold start timer boxes. Both have the manual cold start injector bypass button under the dashboard. Both cars run well and always start. They have been without a timer box for so long I stopped thinking about it. But I started to think about it a few years ago as my interest in low voltage electronics increased. I originally considered about modernizing the timer circuit. Build it out of a micro-controlle