Yes, following in the tradition started yesterday, not such an exciting title. I found another four hours or so of time to work on the car today, and managed to get a good bit of stuff done. Rear brakes, the passenger cockpit floor and various tidbits were all on the menu today.

I started the day off drilling the 150 or so holes in the steel framework under the passenger cockpit floor. Yes, I know I said 6000 yesterday. Thats what we call hyperbole. Its actually just around 150 in each floor. (The two floors are mirror images of each other — I marked and drilled the drivers, then layed them bottom-to-bottom and marked the holes through onto the passenger side.)

After laying down the silicone beads, I started riveting the floor. I’d bought a 100 pack of slightly longer rivets yesterday, and was surprised to run out while doing the floor. Thankfully Lowes was open today and I picked up a bunch more.

Finishing the floor took another half hour or so, but it looks good and is nicely symmetrical to the drivers side.

With the floor done, I spend time working on the rear suspension. Unlike the front, the rear is not torqued down. I found some better 5/8″ spacers for the rear, however, and I think I’ve got it in a shape that its ready to be torqued down, although I haven’t yet. I’m only about 75% certain I’m not going to swap the driver and passenger side spindles to move the calipers to the front of the wheel instead of the rear. I think they look better in the rear and I don’t think I’ll have routing problems with the emergency brake cables and the flex lines, but I want to be able to easily swap them if I do.

With that work done, I started working on the rear brake lines. I’ll hopefully have the sheet metal back from the powdercoaters early this week so I’ll be able to finish the lines to the front. For now I figured I could plumb the rear end.

Starting at the passenger side caliper, the flex line runs up to the hardline mounting bracket. (This was installed yesterday, and there are photos on the previous post as well.)

The hard line comes straight out, goes through a single loop and shoots back under the 2×3 steel frame at the top of the rear of the cockpit. This is one of the only spots in the rear with a straight shot across the back of the car and was an obvious place to run the brake line.

The brake line runs in front of the 1″ steel square stock that makes up the rear of the transmission tunnel. If I ever have to remove this brake line, I’m going to thoroughly regret running it here once the rear of the cockpit is installed, but there’s a nice gap there I could sneak the line through.

On the other side of the car, the line hits a T-fitting. The straight side coming out opposite it goes to the front of the car, the perpendicular line goes to the drivers side.

The drivers side line was a little long at 30″ but was turning out to be too short with a 24″, so it does a bit of a funky hairpin turn before the loop going into the bracket riveted to the car. This is tucked up well out of the way, though, so I’m okay with it.

Much like the passenger side, the drivers side flex line runs to the caliper. This looks like the line is too short, but the suspension is at its full droop so I’m assuming for now that these lines will be okay. I’ve fit the wheels on and there is no interference with them run this way.

The other exit from the T-fitting runs along the same structural member, and then shoots down along the rear of the cockpit and wraps around the 4″ tube frame member. From here it will run up along the tube just outside the transmission tunnel, then up the rear of the engine bay to the -3AN bulkhead fitting coming through the underside of the firewall. (There’s photos in some of the earlier posts of this…)

I also decided to drop the gas tank and get the ABS cover I’d bought under it. The thing had been getting in my way repeatedly and the best place to store it was… well… where it belonged anyway.

It was easy enough to drop the tank and get the cover on it.

Unfortunately, the passsenger side strap barely fit originally and really doesnt fit at all now. I spent a lot of time trying to force it to fit…

The bolt provided just isn’t long enough. Unfortunately the snake bit me…

Yeah, it looks like a murder scene on top of the gas tank now. Whoops. After I’d sliced the end of my finger open, I decided I’d just make another run to Home Depot or Lowes tomorrow and get a longer bolt. Mental note: do that first next time.

Ripping my hand open and sacrificing blood to the Cobra gods seemed like a good ending point for the day. I’ll get that bolted up tomorrow, but probably won’t do much else before I get the sheet metal back from the powdercoater.