chelle

Thanx guys It's coming along well Chelle

well the engine is in it's final position .. Next comes bodywork, paint, and then wiring/interior There's a ton of room in there in front of the engine Chelle

well the engine is in it's final position .. Next comes paint and then wiring/interior There's a ton of room in there in front of the engine Chelle

Chewie, the frame stretch was not too hard. biggest issue to me was properly reinforcing the whole area after the stretch. It's all just sheetmetal, there is amazingly little to the whole thing. We pulled everything off the front about 2" forward of the firewall, then took the plasma cutter (though a sawzall will do if you go easy) then cut off the front, and fabricated a bunch of pieces of 16 gauge sheetmetal and welded them in a piece at a time. That's the summary of it - but just stretching the unibody was only part of it. All brake lines had to be redone, the steering shaft from column to the rack had to be lengthened. Tonight when I get home I'll post some pics of the welded in sections, and maybe make a sorta blueprint of how the pieces went together. Granted your ZX is going to be somewhat different, but maybe this will show ya enough to get started. Our car is home form the shop now. I'm not allowed to do body filler and fiberglass there so it had to come home for that phase. The engine is back in it for good though So this week I'm going to be doing fiberglass at home, then in another week or two it will get painted.. then it's back home for all the wiring and to fabricate the interior Chelle

thanx John, i wasn't RHD.. but we switched it to be different than all the other 250GTO's out there.. there are a couple of them in the chicago area ... white one in this pic is a girlfriend of mine's who lives close by....what does your car need? We have a ton of parts.. we're getting rid of - we were gonna ebay them but if people close by wanted to look throught the stuff first that would work. We have a 77 engine, a 4 speed, complete 5-speed changeover, Fairlady gauges (a 240kph speedo that is a direct swap for the USA speedo), the undamaged Alpha1 nose.. etc.. Chelle

Urraco... it's the little Lambo they made them in the early to late 70's... small wedge shaped 2+2 see? Chelle and

Well thanx, but wasn't trying to hi-jack your thread... you did a nice job on yours.... ours is all in pieces at the moment.. but it's getting better Chelle

um, I'm doing it all except the paint - gonna pay a pro for that. I painted the Lambo - but I never want to do paint again.. eyelashes were blue for like 2 weeks an thanx Maichor.. I have some stuff posted about the engine swap over in the "other engines" section http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=97350 Chelle

Very kewl! beautiful work! I love the color but that's prolly cause it's close to the color of our Lambo Chelle

Hiya, THought I'd post over here to share some of the stuff we're doing to our old Alpha1 GTO.. We added a few inches to the wheelbase to make it more correct.. and changed a ton of stuff.. oh, and added a BMW v12 also if anyone is looking for odds and ends in Chicago area for these cars we are getting rid of a lot of used stuff we replaced .. engine, interior, dash, undamaged alpha1 nose etc.. Chelle Here's last year before we took it apart: Here's some pics showing our progress so far

Wow John, you're way ahead of me on the tech side of the EFI stuff. I defer to my friend Kim on most of the electronics. Will have to get her in on this thread.. Will talk soon Chelle

Well I have to admit my skills are a little behing with regard to the engine computers.. my friend Kim set up a megasquirt for the engine but I've been looking at a unit made by http://www.efitechnology.com/ problem is their system is hyper expensive Chelle

These guys are a good place to start for custom FI system. http://www.redlineweber.com/html/throttle_bodies/Throttle%20bodies_side_mount.htm There are some great people here who can offer you lots of good advise on doing this stuff. I'll be happy to answer whar I can as well Chelle

Here's a couple pics of the Dry Sump oil pan Chelle Here's the engine with no pan,and stock pump removed. Here's the windage tray attached to the pan Pan sitting on bench Pan sitting on the engine, in some of these you will see the custom engine mounts we made.

Thanx Glenn... T56 gated shifter ?!?! who makes it?? I want!! Chelle

Heya guys, as promised here's more pics including the interior shots of the firewall With the Dash in place it should look pretty good This shot shows the recess in the firewall that the engine sits back into slightly.It didn't really need to be this deep but I did it for easy access, and because this depth made it double as a great dead pedal. I'm going to cut an access hole and make a removable cover to be able to access the back of the motor, heater hoses, etc... The other pics I put in just because Chelle

Thanx Glenn there is a bunch of room still - when you remove the dash and stock heater there is an amazing amount of room in there, tomorrow night I'll get pics of the inside. Chelle

Still using the stock pedals, I made a 19" wide recess that goes 8" towards the back of the car. REally it only eliminates the area where the factory heaterbox was. We're using a vintageair setup that is lots more compact so it's not a concern. essentially the inside of the firewall without the dash in place now looks like this. The engine is 25" wide at it's widest point Chelle

Thought I'd post some more pics of the fitting of the V12 in our GTO... I made some changes and recessed the firewall to set the engine back further and lower.. Chelle

I should clarify - I was simply defending the position of the replica manufacturers and dealers. I am not representing them - I just build the cars and drive them. Tom, John and the rest of the great people out there providing the parts to us all have to dance a very fine line to keep the lawyers from ruining their livelihood and our hobby. "scorpionzcars" had to cover his behind and make it clear that he did not put original trademarked badges on the car. Imagine what the letter from FNA would have been looking like had he been casually chatting in here among friends had he said he did everything and some anonymous poster asked about the emblems. If he said - "yeah they make it look nice, we took the time to place them as accurately as possible" FNA's lawyer would submit a brief to the court showing that the "defendant knowingly violated Ferrari's IP rights and even admitted as such in an internet messageboard among other known intellectual property thieves." They might at that point even cite the DMCA as a reason to have the court shut down this site. Civil courts favor whoever has the most expensive lawyers. It's not fair but if you post pics of your replica on Ebay they will cave in to FNA's lawyers super fast. They'll delete your auction without even listening to your interpretation of the law. Chelle