Rekindled Love

I encountered some interesting steering rack bushings for the truck recently. They are advertised as polyurethane with billet aluminum sleeves. The factory units consist of a steel sleeve wrapped in very soft rubber. The ones on my truck are looking a little worse for wear and these new pieces were only fifty bucks, so I gave them a shot. They arrived today and I was kind of surprised to see that the bushings themselves are actually translucent. I've never seen clear poly bushings before. 

They look cool and the billet sleeves are very lightweight. I hope they function as well as they look!

I also spent some more time on my lower control arms. For those of you who haven't been following along, the tubular lower control arms that I installed, had bump stops that were mounted way too high off the arm, thus limiting my front suspension travel down to maybe two inches (and this picture was taken after I added shorter bump stops). 

A few months back, I got sick of bottoming out the suspension around corners and on uneven surfaces and cut the mounts off entirely.

Without the bump stops in place, the front suspension was using the tires and inner fender lips as bump stops, which was definitely not ideal. Last night, I made an attempt to remedy the situation. I cut and ground off the last of the welds that can be seen the the picture above, so the entire area was smooth. Then I marked and drilled a hole, centered under the part of the frame where the bump stops are supposed to make contact and inserted some new conical bump stops from Energy Suspension.

It turned out really nice, but I won't know if they're tall enough until I can drive it again. If they're too short, I can always try the taller, cylindrical ones that have grooves for trimming them down shorter if needed. This picture shows the suspension drooping with no weight on it, so while it looks like a lot of travel, everything rests a whole lot closer when it's on the ground. 

I'm hoping to resume my brake system overhaul this weekend, but the weather is going to be super wet for a while. So even if I get it buttoned up, I may not be able to drive it for another week or more. 

Well that escalated quickly...

Impulse buys are so real. This is a wet kit, specific to early two-thousands Chrysler products. It should work just fine on the truck and can be easily carried over to the next motor. In order to run this even remotely safely on that tired old 4.7 I'm going to downgrade from the performance tune in my Superchips programmer, to the 87 octane base tune, but keep filling the tank with 92 octane fuel. The performance tune adds too much timing (so I'm told) and probably won't play nice with the nitrous. The 87 tune is still a ten horse improvement over stock and maintains the secondary features like speedo calibration and raised limits. I'm also going to install a pair of wideband gauges to monitor things when spraying. Innovate makes some nice ones that will work perfectly for my application.

Ideally, I'd install some sort of timing retard window switch, but MSD is the only company I know that does that without a full standalone, and they don't make a single box that will work on my truck. As far as I can tell, I'd have to run two DIS-4 boxes simultaneously. Those things retail for $900 each, so that's a hard pass for me. The Terminator-X system that I'm going to purchase for the Hemi swap will control all of those things, so there's really no need to add all the extra junk under the hood at this point. 

I'm planning to start out with a 50 shot and monitor everything to see how it looks and sounds. If it behaves, I'll bump it up incrementally to a 100 shot, which was my original goal for this motor. If this one pops, it'll only motivate me to get started on the Hemi swap sooner. 

If this one pops, it'll only motivate me to get started on the Hemi swap sooner. 

This is my nomination for today's Spirit of GRM Award, if there is such a thing.

I need to be able to monitor my air/fuel ratios to run the spray. Having a nitrous pressure gauge inside would be handy as well. This lead me down a very, very deep rabbit hole. I am super picky about my gauges and dash lights matching during the day and at night. I also don't like gauge pods hanging off of A-pillars or stuck on the dash in ways that couldn't pass for OEM. This really narrows my options for gauges and mounting locations. In typical form for this build, I've decided to make my own solution. I'm going to mount the gauges where the stereo normally sits. There's a great product called a "Ghost Box" that plugs into the factory stereo wiring harness and hides in the dash. It's basically just a Bluetooth receiver that plays music directly from your phone like a standard Bluetooth stereo would, but it stays completely out of sight. It weighs less than a pound. 

For the gauges, I've arrived at the one matching set to satisfy the majority of my extreme visual requirements, and that's the Sport Comp series from Autometer. They need a black face, white numbers, red/orange needles, and they absolutely must glow green. I also like the silver rings on this series and that's something I was planning to add to the factory cluster eventually. The GS series has green through-dial lighting which is the one thing I like better than the Sport Comp's edge lighting, but the GS gauges also have chrome rings. I hate chrome and do not have the patience to either meticulously sand and/or paint them a satin silver. The Sport Comps also provide me the option to change the color of these down the road if I ever tire of the green lighting. 

So anyway, here's a quick, digital mockup I made for the triple Autometer gauge mounting solution:

As a second option, I could use an Innovate dual AFR gauge and a nitrous pressure gauge next to each other, which would free up space to add the arm and purge buttons. Having those next to the gauges eliminates the need to drill holes into my perfectly good dash trim to mount random rocker switches. Innovate makes some nice stuff and the gauges come with alternate faces and rings to switch out for different looks. These come with white OLED displays, which can be changed any color I choose by trimming a light gel and placing it behind the removable face panel. I've obviously opted for green here. 

The second option doesn't look nearly as good as the first IMO, but it's also about $100 cheaper. I've already created the design files for both mounting plates that I can upload to SendCutSend when I'm ready. I'm planning to have it cut out of 2mm carbon sheet, which is plenty stiff for this application. I'll either use some super strong adhesive to attach it to the aftermarket head unit mount, or I'll throw in some tiny black screws around the perimeter. Those are things I'll figure out later. Right now I just need to focus on recovering from the sticker shock after seeing how much these various gauges are going to set me back. Regardless of which option I choose, they're going to cost more than I paid for the berkeleying nitrous kit. For gauges. It's insane. 

While I was working on the truck today, a very large package showed up. Many years ago, I learned about a company called Stillen from a friend of mine who drove a 300ZX. He showed me a catalog that was full of super fun looking parts for his Z. A little while later, I learned that they actually made a front bumper cover for the second gen dakotas. I remember seeing it and thinking that it was the only aftermarket front bumper cover that I'd ever even consider putting on a truck, if I had one. It looked mean, but not gaudy. I liked it immediately. 

Fast forward a couple of decades and I now have a second gen Dakota, but those Stillen bumper covers are long since out of production. Bummer. So I install an OEM style bumper cover and call it good. Except it didn't look as aggressive as I was hoping it would so I started searching for a way to make it look meaner. Then I found it. Some random seller on eBay must've purchased the remaining stock from Stillen and was selling them for a not-so-great price, but there it was. Begging me to buy one. So I did. And here it is. 

Not sold on it? Let me help you out:

Personally, I love it. And that kind of odd, lower middle section in the picture above won't be nearly as noticeable in black. I'm stoked about it and I can't wait to get it painted so I can mount it up. It's actually designed to slip over the factory cover, but I don't intend to do that because that seems silly to me. I'm going to remove the cover that's on it and mount this directly to the steel supports. The only downside to this is that I'm going to lose the mounting provisions for the factory fog lights. I do have a plan to make lemonade out of that situation, but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

More progress was made tonight. The Wilwood master was finally put into place for what is hopefully the last time. I bent and reused the factory stainless hardline to the front brakes, but the short line from the ABS module to the proportioning valve had to be made from scratch. I purchased some bulk copper nickle brake line and bent it up appropriately. It was during this process that I realized that I kind of hate cutting and flaring hard lines. But I digress... 

On to the brake hoses. I ordered some custom braided stainless hoses a while back. I made sure all the fittings and lengths were the same as the factory hoses. The one thing that I had put off until now was figuring out how to replicate the bracket that was built into the front brake hoses. There's actually a section of hard line that's permanently attached to them and keeps the rather long hoses from contacting any of the suspension or brakes. I could have just put some p-clamps directly onto the control arm, but I didn't like any of the angles or the fact that I'd have to drill at least one hole into the arm itself. 

I took some thick aluminum flat stock and cut it to the same length as the steel factory brackets, added a matching bend, drilled three holes, then inserted a rivnut into the outermost hole, like this:

I then reused the factory bolts for the rear holes and added a fresh bolt to the front hole, added two p-clips, and ended up with this (ignore the brake fluid mess; I didn't clean it up before snapping pictures):

You'll notice that I pointed the rear clip upward instead of down, like the factory mount. That was for two reasons. First, there was a clearance issue when pointed down, that caused the hose to rub on the control arm and two, pointing it upward helped to reduce a little bit of slack in the line behind the rotor, as it dips around the bottom of the caliper. I have a plan to maybe add another tab to the back of the knuckle, under one of the mounting bolts, where I can add a third p-clip to ensure the hose never steps out of line and rubs on anything. Not sure if it's needed, but it might make me feel better.  Overall, I think it turned out quite nice.  

I also spent a few days messing with a tiny interior detail that I'm pretty sure no one else will ever notice unless I point it out to them. Back when I painted the pillars black to match the new headliner, I removed the little sliding pieces of plastic behind the B pillars that move up and down when adjusting the seat belt height. I did this because the paint would never survive the friction of sliding up and down constantly, and having those bright colored strips would have been an eyesore. This is what I've been staring at for about a year:

I decided to cut some strips of carbon fiber that I had laying around, into the same exact size and shape of the original plastic inserts, then drilled a big hole for the bolt. I also touched up the paint in a couple of high wear spots. 

All reassembled and they now look like this:

Ultimately, this is probably wasted effort, but it makes me happier knowing they exist. ADHD can be quite challenging at times, but it also provides the drive to put insane amounts of effort into tiny details that not many others would even notice. For better or worse. 

If you've read a few of my posts, you know that I've been using SendCutSend for custom bracketry and even some aesthetic pieces. I've been wanting to have them make me some carbon fiber pieces, but their pricing on carbon is downright unreasonable. Plus they only offer matte finish and I've been told their cuts aren't very clean. This is fine for structural parts, but I want interior parts to look a lot nicer. I found a company in Vancouver BC called CNC Madness, that cuts carbon fiber, so I sent them my design files and asked for a quote. They quoted me 1/6th the price of SendCutSend for the exact same part, so I ordered two of them and some extra pieces. It all came out to less than one of the parts from SCS and I received them in less than a week. This brings me back to my new center gauge setup.

A few posts back, I shared some mockup images of various custom gauges that would go into the area where my stereo mounts. I wanted these before I could install my nitrous setup. I loved the aesthetic of the triple gauge setup, but I didn't love the cost of the three Autometer gauges. I really liked the functionality of the Innovate gauges; I could get a double wideband readout on one gauge and then a matching nitrous pressure gauge that could go with it. They were more than $100 cheaper than the Autometer gauges and they offered custom warning light options as well as data-logging capabilities. Leaving the third gauge spot open meant that I have a clean spot to mount the nitrous arming and purge buttons. Here was my final mockup before I ordered everything:

The gauge panel(s) showed up today and it's perfect. Twill weave, gloss finish, and smooth cuts all around. 

The Innovate gauges also showed up today. I swapped the black rings for silver, flipped the black faces over so they're plain (instead of having white and yellow-orange writing all over them), and added a piece of green lighting gel under the faces so that they will light up green instead of white (because OCD). I bought a third silver ring to mount over the far left hole so it maintains the triple-gauge appearance. The buttons and LED "armed" light will mount to another piece of carbon fiber, behind the third ring. 

For the buttons, I found some really clean looking ones on Amazon, of all places, that are billet aluminum, anodized black, and they glow green when powered up. The power button is a latch style for arming the system and the plain button is a momentary switch for the purge. The little red LED will be wired so that it's on when the system is armed. I tried to hold them up to the ring and backing plate to make sure my mockup measurements were good, but I accidentally held the LED on top, instead of under the buttons like I intended. I didn't want to take another picture, but in person I was able to see pretty clearly that everything will fit as intended. The photo is misleading because the buttons are standing closer to the camera than the trim ring, making it look like they're wider than they are. 

Once I finally wrap up this brake system redo, I'm going to hop onto the nitrous kit installation. I'm really excited to play with it. 

I didn't feel comfortable with a nitrous bottle sitting in my bed, uncovered for the world to see, so I started looking for options to hide it. Ideally, I'd mount it under the bed somewhere, but I don't have the time or materials to fab up a completely custom solution for that. I toyed with the idea of adding a low-profile, locking toolbox in the bed, but that added a considerable amount of cost and weight. My third option was a tonneau cover.

I have a love-hate relationship with tonneau covers. I prefer hard covers, but I hate the tupperware lid look of the ones that cover the entire bed and fold down around the top. They also tend to be incredibly expensive and a major pain in the ass to remove if you ever need to do so. And heavy! On my last truck, I had a nearly perfect, flush-fit, hard tonneau cover that was made by a company called Checkmate, but that company no longer exists. I don't love soft covers in general, but unfortunately, the only cover I could find that was as close to flush as possible, lightweight, and relatively affordable, was a soft one. 

It's called the "Vanish" and it's made by ACI. I gave it a shot. I installed it myself in not much time and it fit well. I had to use some spacers to raise the rear latch in order to clear the front lip of the tailgate spoiler, but other than that... it fits nicely. 

It has adjustable tensioners at the front that I can use to pull it tighter if I want. I'm going to let it sit and stretch a little more and then give them another spin or two. It has two hollow aluminum cross-bars that keep the whole thing from flapping or losing its shape at speed. It only sticks up about half an inch over the edges of the bed, which is acceptable for now.

It locks in the closed position, which is mostly wishful thinking when it comes to a single layer of vinyl with velcro along the edges. Thus my dislike for soft covers. But whatever...