As tomorrow will be thrashing to disassemble the Texas Thug

After cleaning off all of the stuff that had been sitting on my transmission table, I washed it, sanded, washed again and hit with a couple coats of self etching primer – before a couple coats of paint.

Did some cleaning up of the Shop.

And got ready for Dallas to come help yank the drivetrain out of the Thug Tomorrow.

I’ve ordered the fiberglass fenders and bumper from Stinger and a radiator from Afco.

I’m still trying to gather the parts in the photo above.

To this point, I have:

• Pulled all of the wiring out from under the hood, except the Starter Relay
• Pulled all of the wiring under the car (fuel pump, taillight, a #4 mystery ground running the length of the car, an old Neutral Safety wire that wasn’t connected on either end)
• Pulled the 8-switch painless switchbox.
• Made a plate to mount the circuit board to the cage and welded in some all-thread to the cage so 3 wingnuts secure it.
• Bench wired the circuit board, bundled wires going in various directions and mounted the board to the car
• Routed the wires going to the back or car and wired the fuel pump and taillights.
• Drilled a hole in the firewall to run bundles or wires wrapped in convoluted tubing for headlights, water pump, coil, fan, crank trigger, remote starter, temp gauge; and connected all of those except the remote starter.

Today, I started by removing the starter relay, as all of the relays are on the circuit board.

That was time consuming as all of those wires going down under the car were zip-tied every inch – before the engine was put in the car. The engine and 2.25″ headers are a very tight fit to the firewall. Clipping the zip ties off to pull those wires out was frustrating. The red wire in my fingers wasn’t connected at either end.

Moving inside the car didn’t get easier. The wiring I found was ugly. There was a mixture 63-year-old wires spliced into 16-year-old wires. There were 14-gauge wires of one color spliced to a 10-gauge of another color spliced to a 16-gauge of yet another color. The electrical tape adhesive immediately jumped off the tape and onto my fingers – requiring a pumice stone to get off. All of that looked like a colorful tumbleweed. It took a good while identifying what wire went to what and slowly cutting out and untangling the unnecessary wires (or the wires that will be replaced) without screwing up my gauges. There were all kinds of 12v wires coming into the car from the starter relay, multiple crusty ground wires, plus the mystery strategy of wiring up the line-lock and Neutral Safety Switch. It really took a lot more time than I’d expected to unravel that mess.

I got it mostly cleaned up.

Next was the Line-lock and Neutral Safety Switch. I have a PPP Shifter with the button for the line-lock and the Neutral Safety Switch was going through the starter relay – that has been eliminated. After studying the schematic (Chevy Door Car) and comparing to what I had, I was totally confused as I had more wires than their drawing. I talked to Kevin at K&R and he said the PPP Shifter has a different way of doing the line-lock and Neutral Safety from all other brands of shifters. Sadly, to make it happen I have to add a relay for the NSS and find a different power source for the line-lock. The below is how to make a PPP Shifter work with the K&R wiring. It’s a very rough sketch, but hopefully it will help someone be spared of grief.

This is taking three times longer than I thought. I have 25 hours into it so far. Part of it is I had Covid that put me in bed for 5 days, and I’m still not near 100% 14 days later. I’ve been limiting myself to 6-7 hour days in Shop (7 days a week) to try to get better.

So next I will finish the neutral safety wiring into a relay, figure out the line-lock, sort out the gauges, bring main 16v power to the board, mount the ignition box and wire up, wire the remote switch, and run wires to the Starter Solenoid. Then it will be ready for the smoke test.

To the rear of the car was the taillights and fuel pump.

Next were the bundles going to the engine compartment for Crank Trigger, Coil, Water Pump, Fan, Head lights, gauge sensors, Solenoid and remote Starter switch (fir running the valves.

This afternoon and evening, I hope to finish the wiring – although I’ve thus far underestimated the time this is taking me. I have 20 hours into it so far.

I started by ripping all wiring out of the car.

The system I’m installing is a K & R Circuitboard.

I fabricated a plate to hold the circuit board and distribution blocks, and attached it to the Passenger side door crossbar.

Next was the bench work of wiring up everything according to the diagram that comes with the kit. Then to bundle up tight bundles of the wires going to the different locations of the car and wrap them in convuluted tubing, marked with a specific color tie wrap every three feet. the below are some progress photos.

I’m at the point now to where I need to mount the board and ignition box, then route the bundles to the areas of car the components are, and wire them up.

The new carpet is in. Since I went the stock 60 Plymouth molded carpet than glue and hammering in real thin carpet. The benefit is that I thing it looks nicer, and has the foot wear pads. The drawback is that it has very think Jute, and my car’s floor was far from stock with a roll cage, race shifter with cable coming through the floor, and the transmission tunnel is bigger than stock as I originally had a Jerico transmission, Ling shifter and Boninfante Clutch.

Reality was that I had to make a lot of cuts in the carpet for the pipes, and especially pie cuts to widen for the trans tunnel. All of those area had to be repaired with iron-on seaming. While it is not concours quality work, it is more than acceptable than what I had.

The below are the final photos after the seats (redyed black) reinstalled, headliner replaced, door panels recovered, interior trim painted black, all Lexan replaced and the cage painted.

These were taken during the process,

Also recovered the two door panel, that were red.

The below are photos of what the interior previously looked like.

It’s getting down to crunch time as I still have to completely rewire the car, recover and install the interior panels in the back, anchor the seat belts, install a rear window and detail the car head to toe. Racing is in three weeks and yet I’m still working on this car, the Vitamin C, the Stacker and the motorhome.

Partitioning off a 20’X20′ area where I have grinders, saws, sanders, drill press to keep the other 3/4 of shop clean. I bought ten 7′ tall by 6′ wide shower curtains, a roll of chain, some girder clamps and 40′ of 3/”4 Schedule 40 PVC. Tomorrow I’ll put the other 9 curtains on, and then raise it another foot to have curtains just touch the floor.