75 mintgrun MSII M20 conversion

[mikekoch]

Marty

I wish I had started with an auto! The manual tunnel is just too small. Is it worth the work? Yeah, because I can fit a 265 in there later if I turbo the M20 and won't have to mod anything. Clearance between tunnel and gas pedal will be very tight, in fact I may need to make some slight mods to the clutch and brake pedals to make it all line up and still have enough for a size 13 shoe.

I'll be in your area in a week or so visiting friends. If you make it down here give me a call at 503-329-4073 and I'll tell you how to get here.

Thanks

Mike

Nice work Mike I'm doing the same thing M20 and 265 into a mintgrun 75 former automatic shell, one thing to watch when you fad up the tranny tunnel to firewall section is the clearance for your foot on the gas petal it's real tight. I'm up in Bellevue and would like to take a look if i'm down south someday.

[mikekoch]

Marty

I wish I had started with an auto! The manual tunnel is just too small. Is it worth the work? Yeah, because I can fit a 265 in there later if I turbo the M20 and won't have to mod anything. Clearance between tunnel and gas pedal will be very tight, in fact I may need to make some slight mods to the clutch and brake pedals to make it all line up and still have enough for a size 13 shoe.

I'll be in your area in a week or so visiting friends. If you make it down here give me a call at 503-329-4073 and I'll tell you how to get here.

Thanks

Mike

Nice work Mike I'm doing the same thing M20 and 265 into a mintgrun 75 former automatic shell, one thing to watch when you fad up the tranny tunnel to firewall section is the clearance for your foot on the gas petal it's real tight. I'm up in Bellevue and would like to take a look if i'm down south someday.

[mikekoch]

Just a quick update, to include pictures when I can get them up.

Engine compartment is completely stripped of wires, brake lines etc, getting ready to clean it up and respray it. I can't see putting a nice clean engine in such a rusty, filthy hole of a place.

Dropped the subframe and have now decided to take the opportunity to rebuild the whole assembly with all new poly bushings, ball joints and tie and track rods. New seals for the steering box too. It's all apart as of a few minutes ago. The stock rubber is fair in some spots, but bad in others. Somebody replaced a couple of the bushings but they all need to go.

Since I have tomorrow off, I'll be finishing the tunnel. I'll be doing the front section in 16ga to give strength back to the firewall, then joining that to the rear section with three panels (to make all of the right contours) of 20ga. Then is all gets trimmed, wire-wheeled and primed. It will be great to have that done.

I now have the brake Ts I need to plumb the Alpina-style brake master cylinder. Picked up a spare pedal box to use for the project. Thanks Gordon and Steve (Blunt).

Mike

[mikekoch]

Driver floor is no longer made of swiss cheese, just ugly welds and lots of hammering and vented anger. Just primed to keep the rust off, still needs grinding.

New bushings etc up front. Lots of blasting and repainting. Well worth the effort.

Cleaning up the crusty engine compartment...

The new tunnel, just needs cleanup and some brackets welded on. This was tons of work. Not pretty but very strong and functional. I'll be able to yank the 260 tranny without pulling the engine.

[-=Charley]

awesome metal work Mike! I seriously need to take note on that tranny tunnel. it's not fun trying to get the tranny out with the stock tunnel. looks like your almost ready to roast the tires!

[mikekoch]

Thanks Charlie I appreciate. Not far to go now until I can get the engine back in, just some repainting, the fab work on the Alpina-esque pedal box (yikes) and running brake lines. Oh, and finish grinding, reworking the throttle linkage, seam sealing, undercoating, blah blah blah. Lots of work but it does feel a lot closer now.

One drawback to the tunnel is that there is no way in hell the throttle will fit in the stock location, I pedal box fab include moving the pedals as far to the left as I can so I can either weld the stock pivot back on, or fab something new...

Fun fun

Mike

awesome metal work Mike! I seriously need to take note on that tranny tunnel. it's not fun trying to get the tranny out with the stock tunnel. looks like your almost ready to roast the tires!

[deutchfiend]

fresh sub frame looks sooo pretty

[mikekoch]

Thanks, I'm glad I stopped dragging my feet on it (too much to do already) and just got it done. Doing the same to the rear as well.

Now I have to clean the wheel wells and repaint the engine bay just to make everything look right!

It never ends...

fresh sub frame looks sooo pretty

[mikekoch]

It's incredible how much little time I have these days. Oh well, kids are fun.

I managed to complete my coilovers so I wanted to post a pic. It's from my phone so sorry about the poor quality:

Ever onward...

Mike

[70roundtail02]

coils look really nice what setup/route did you go for them?

[mikekoch]

Thanks!

They're rabbit sport inserts in shortened strut housings, 275lb Eibach springs and coilover kits from speedwaymotors.com. Coilover kits required shortening and some back-cutting on the inside (lathe required) to accommodate the perches and glan nuts. The spacers are about 3" and are made of 1.5" OD .25" wall aluminum tube.

edit: I should also add that the kits, while designed for bilsteins, are not for *these* bilsteins. The hole in the upper perch was too small (or too big depending on how you look at it) for the strut to go through. I could grind off the lip the gaitors lock into, or increase the diameter of the hole in the upper perch. I opted to grind the strut, felt that the other way would weaken the perch.

Lots of work, but a good-looking result.

Mike

coils look really nice what setup/route did you go for them?

[cjreents]

Hey Mike -

I saw that your selling a Magnaflow muffler... what's your new plan for the exhaust?

Thanks,

Chris

[mikekoch]

A different Magnaflow actually (#11236) I'll have to modify the spare well for it to fit, but in the end I'll be able to use a wider range of mufflers. I heard this on a car and I really like the sound. It's not quiet, but has a really nice, well, growl I guess. Can't wait to hear the M20 through this thing.

Mike

Hey Mike -

I saw that your selling a Magnaflow muffler... what's your new plan for the exhaust?

Thanks,

Chris

[mikekoch]

I realized that I could be programming my MS-II on the crappy days so ordered a stim, then changed that order to a JimStim kit. Put it together last night and am testing it tonight. It's much more complicated than the original stim but much, much more flexible.

It's supposed to be freezing ass cold this weekend, otherwise I'd be painting the engine compartment!!!

Mike

[mikekoch]

We've finally had some warmer weather lately so I took advantage of it and painted my engine compartment. I did a lot of painting several years ago and even got paid for some of it. Here's what I learned yesterday:

- Whatever painting skills I once had are gone. Worst paint I've ever done.

- Remove all wiring if you can. I have a ton of MS-related wiring that would be very difficult to remove so I bagged it and suspended it from the ceiling. Having that crap in my way made it very difficult to get good angles in the various seams and creases.

-That cheapo Harbor Freight paint gun they entice you with on the aisle end caps is probably the worst paint gun ever manufactured. I have a very expensive HVLP that I should have taken the time to fix.

- Lighting is critical. Don't shoot unless you can see what you're doing.

The upside is that I never intended this to be any sort of concourse car, and regardless of how crappy I think it looks now, the end result looks a hell of a lot better than 3 decades of filth and rust.

Will post a picture this evening.

edit: phone pics are unusable, will need to use the real camera. Coming back to it after 24 hours, it's not as bad as I might make it sounds. Did find a couple of nasty drips that will need to be sanded off though.