all these things

I thought, again, that maybe I should revive this stupid blog, and I found that I'd already written most of an entry and left it as a draft.  I didn't publish it, because I had a list of other stuff I thought I should talk about and I was only halfway through the list.  Well, looking at the list now, most of what was left looks boring, or unimportant, or I've forgotten the details now.  All of which fits the theme of this blog pretty well, but I think I'm just going to punt on all of those things, except for one, which will possibly go into a future entry.

Anyway, my last entry was a first effort at getting caught up on all the stuff that happened after I got the car home from the body shop for the second/final time.  I got maybe halfway through all that stuff, and then just decided to punt and publish, so now I need to get through the other half.  As the character Jeff Jordan says to the character Pete Aron in my favorite racing movie (Grand Prix), "Go another halfway!!!"

I talked in a previous post about how I had problems with the clutch pedal stop latching onto a bolt on the firewall when the clutch pedal was depressed, which made the car very awkward to drive.  I tried to fix that by modifying the clutch pedal stop, but I still had issues with the clutch.  Sometimes it just felt kind of "creaky," like there was some excess friction in the master cylinder.  It didn't seem right, and I eventually happened to hear about a clutch arrangement from another company that I thought might work better.  I had originally gotten a master cylinder from McLeod, because that was the company that I got all my other clutch stuff from.  But, they didn't have a master cylinder that was meant for my car, so I'd tried to make something else work.  Eventually I heard about a "universal" master cylinder from American Powertrain, and I saw some video of how it worked, and I thought it looked like it would be an improvement.

I think the big problem with the other master cylinder I tried to use was that when it was bolted to the firewall, it was not parallel with the pushrod that connected it to the clutch pedal.  I got it pretty close, but apparently "pretty close" was not close enough.  This resulted in side-forces on the master cylinder piston, which resulted in the "creaky" operation.

With the American Powertrain universal master cylinder, it uses a mounting bracket that is hinged so that the angle can be adjusted in order to make it parallel to the pushrod.  The photo below shows the American Powertrain master cylinder mounted in the Impala, and you can see the hinged mounting bracket.  After the position has been adjusted, the bracket is locked down so that it won't move out of the correct position.

So that sorted out the clutch pretty well.

Another thing that needed finishing was installing the oxygen sensors.  I talked in an earlier entry about the work I did to install the display in the dashboard, but now that everything was together and the exhaust pipes were under the car, I still needed to install the actual sensors, and finish the wiring between the sensors and the display.

There's three wires for each oxygen sensor, plus a ground for each, so with two oxygen sensors that makes eight wires to run through the firewall.  I didn't want to just put another hole in the wall and run wires through it, so I got a twelve-pin bulkhead connector from McMaster-Carr.  The photo below shows the connector, on the engine side of the firewall.

One nice thing about this connector is that the terminals install from the back side of the plugs, which makes it relatively easy to install new wires if you want to add more later.  If something else needs to be wired through the firewall, just unscrew the nut that clamps the gland down on the wires, crimp a terminal on the new wire, stick it through and push it in until it clicks, then clamp the gland back down on all the wires.

The last thing I'm going to talk about in this entry is a relatively minor feature that most people will never even notice, but it's one of my absolute favorite things I did on the car.

I have struggled to find good joyriding roads in the San Antonio area.  Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, there were lots of nice forest preserves around, with roads that wind past ponds, through densely wooded areas.  They were relatively short runs, but it also didn't take long to get to them, and it was satisfying to just go out and drive around a little bit.  Texas, on the other hand, is a barren wasteland where nothing will grow.  San Antonio is, however, on the edge of what's reverentially known as "The Texas Hill Country." The Texas Hill Country has a lot of nice winding roads through hills, even if there are no ponds or forests to be found.  It takes a drive up the interstate just to get out away from the city first, though, so it's not really as convenient as being surrounded by forest preserves within the suburban area.  Oh, well.

Anyway ... one night I decided to go out for a joyride through The Texas Hill Country.  I just took I-10 up to 46, and then followed 46 back to 16, and took 16 back to 410, and then 410 home.  Out on 46 after dark, though, I had the headlights on, of course, and I was flipping the high beams on and off, depending on whether or not there was oncoming traffic in sight.  As I detailed in an earlier entry, I put in a row of toggle switches on the left side of the dash, and I put all of the headlight switch functions on those toggle switches.  Well, driving around in the dark in The Texas Hill Country, I suddenly realized that I could not see any of those switches in the dark.  So there was a lot of fumbling around for the high beam switch every time I needed to cut them on or off.

I thought about it a little bit, and developed a vague idea for a way to light the switches, although I wasn't really feeling confident that I'd be able to make it a reality.  But I started lining up parts to try something.  I started by ordering a strip of LEDs off of the internet.  The photo below shows the strip of 15 LEDs.  The strip can be cut to length, but the LEDs are wired in groups of three, so if you cut off one LED, the other two from that group of three would no longer work.  It was a little longer than I needed, so I cut off the last group of three and made it a strip of 12 LEDs.  When I tested the LEDs, they seemed really bright, so I also got some resistors and wired them into the 12V wire to drop the voltage and dim the LEDs.  You can see the resistors in the photo below, too.

The next photo below shows a piece of aluminum angle.  I cut off a length of it, which is the bottom piece in the photo below.  I think each side of the angle was about an inch wide, and I cut one side of it down to half an inch.  Then I cut and bent one end to box off that end.

The next photo shows the same two pieces, but now they are flipped over.  You can see the top of the boxed end is shiny where I filed it smooth.

Next, I drilled a couple of mounting holes, and a hole for the wires for the LEDs to come through.  I put a rubber grommet in the hole that the wires would run through.  The part is shown with the mounting holes and the grommet in place in the next two photos.

The next thing was to paint it gloss black, to try to make it blend in with the rest of the dashboard.  The photos below shows it after paint.

The photo below shows a close-up of the boxed end, after paint.  I just cut the half-inch side short, and then bent the one-inch side down around it.  I think I had originally planned on a sharp angle there, but it ended up curving more than I intended it to, and I ended up liking the rounded look, so I left it that way.  I used some JB Weld just to fill any gap where sides met up, then I sanded and filed it smooth, and painted it black.  I am really happy with out it came out.

The next photo shows the underside, after the LEDs were in place.  The strip of LEDs had an adhesive backing, so you could just peel off some paper and stick it to whatever.  I wanted some added piece of mind that it would stay put, though, so I also added some super glue along its length.

At that point, the light was pretty much ready to go, I just needed to mount it to the dash.  The photo below shows the row of switches I wanted to light, and you can see a strip of blue masking tape which I put in place to try to protect the paint when I drilled mounting holes for the LED arrangement.

The next photo shows another view, looking up to better show the mounting holes, and the hole for the wires.  I actually screwed up and scratched up the paint on the toggle switch panel when I drilled the hole for the wires, and I added that Pure Oil Company sticker to cover the scratches.

So now, the photo below shows the LED arrangement mounted in place.  If you don't know you're looking for it, you would never notice it.

But now when the dashboard lights are on, there is a nice amber glow to illuminate the toggle switches and their labels.  No more fumbling around in the dark.

I really couldn't be happier with how this came out.  Usually, I have a mental image of how I want a project to turn out, but I just can't bring all the details into reality.  I usually screw something up and end up with a compromised result.  In this case, it came out pretty much exactly how I imagined it, and it's one of my favorite things in the car now.

Anyway ... good enough for now ... more to come ... maybe ... sometime....