Progress Thread Seriously? Another Boosted Coyote Swap Build? - Still Slowly Moving Forward

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Finished drilling the mounting holes for the IRS cradle. I mounted the IRS to the vehicle and pre-drilled each mounting hole through the IRS mount and through the frame so I could attempt to keep everything lined up. I them took the IRS off the car and finished drilling out the mounting holes. The mounting holes on the IRS are slightly oversized to allow for some variance as by the time I drill through the frame and weld in the nuts and crush tube, I doubt I will be exactly on. There still isn't much room for variance, but at least a little helps.

This cradle is finally 100% done and goes to the powder coater this week and should be done in a week or two. Getting it media blasted and coated with semi-gloss black.

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The slotted hole in the middle of the rear hard mount is to aid in installation. The process to get the cradle mounted on the car is to sit the cradle on my chest while on a creeper, bench press it into the car and get the front mounts somewhat into the torque boxes, and then bring the back end up into it's location. That slotted hole will allow me to get a bolt threaded in to hold the back of the cradle up while I "gently" hammer the cradle into final location.

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Drilled the spot welds and removed the remaining brackets on the frame rail to clean it up for the fuel-cell cage and battery box install;
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And cleaned up all the spot welds (both on the frame rail and from all the other things I removed underneath the back of the car). Being as anal as I am, I will probably end up welding in all the marks I create when drilling out the spot welds, and then grind them back down so everything is smooth.

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I tacked the first set of plates to the frame rail. This is where a 1 3/4 DOM support bar will go and the first fuel cell cage rail gets welded too. I only tacked these in as I am going to build the cage on the car, then drop it out to final weld everything.

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Got the first bar of the fuel cell cage in. Everything else will be built off of this. I have my overall design finished (that's the papers you see under the green tape measure) so this shouldn't take too long to get tacked together.

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Making some forward progress. I'm a little concerned with how deep I have to make this cage to be able to fit the fuel cell below the floor and provide room for the plumbing at the top, but I think I'll be ok. The overall depth is going to be the same or slightly less then the depth of the spare tire well and stock tank when installed, the difference being the stock tank has a different profile at the front of it (side closest to the IRS cradle). The cage profile is going to be square. Since I have an IRS, the exhaust is going to have to route under the IRS and then make a 90 on either side to clear the cage and tank. Of course my IRS cradle is at the power coater right now so I can't test fit, so I'm going off of pictures for the design right now.

The "box" on the left, closest to you, is for the battery. The internal dimensions are 7.2" Wide X 12.2" Long with a total possible height of 12" (should give me plenty of battery options). The "box" on the right, closest to you, is for mounting a fuel filter and any other fuel system component I might need room for. The battery box will be completely separated from the fuel cell and fuel filter compartment. I kept the battery box toward the middle of the car for best weight distribution. The fuel cell opening is 24.25" long X 21" wide x 12" high. The fuel cell dimensions for the Aeromotive eliminator tank are 24" x 20" x 10", so this should give me just enough room to build a mount for the tank inside the opening and enough height to keep all the plumbing underneath the lid I will make. I kept the fuel cell on the right so I can consider utilizing the stock fuel filler location, I don't want to have to open my trunk everytime to fill the fuel cell. I'm entertaining the idea of creating an aluminum box to go around the entire assembly from the bottom so as to keep road dirt and grime off everything.

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I ended up cutting the back of the trunk out a little higher so I could fit the rear top bar as far back as possible and keep the whole assembly as far back as I could. I will weld the sheet metal to the bar once I have all the pre-fab and fitment done. I'm thinking I am going to make the trunk latch support and panel mounting tab removable so I can take it out to mount the tank and then bolt it back in so I can still run the stock interior panels and dress everything up nice. I will be forming and welding sheet metal to the rear and sides of the assembly to fill in the areas I had to cut out.

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In the end, you will have a 100k foxbody that......because you built it yourself, was done at a quarter of that.

Ill take a 100k car that I built for 25k everytime over a car I paid somebody100k to build that's worth half of that.
 
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In the end you will have a $100,000.00 fox body. I cant wait to see the finished product.

I can't wait for the finished product either, ha! One year down on the build at this point, I'm predicting another 2-3.

quarter of that.

Couldn't agree more! As odd as it may sound, I actually really enjoy this work and this is my dream project, so I'm putting all the effort into this to make it something I'm going to be proud of. I couldn't imagine how much this would cost me if I outsourced the labor and I sure know if wouldn't be worth it if I wasn't doing it myself.
 
Got the bottom rails of the fuel cell cage fabricated and tacked in. Then I final squared up the whole cage as best as possible.
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I added corner gussets to each outside corner on the top and bottom to give the cage some more rigidity. I also added gussets to the bottom of the fuel cell cage area for some more support in the floor. This also helps keep the cage square as I start welding all the joints. Here I welded the tops of most the joints to keep the whole cage together while I dropped it out of the vehicle.
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And here it is getting final welded outside of the vehicle. Should be able to finish this up in a couple days and start working on other things in the rear.
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Man....all I can say is that you are staying true to your thread title.How much does your fuel cell cage weigh ya think?

When does the need to overbuild stuff start to actually affect performance?


Final weight came out to 32lbs for cage (after gusseting welding which I finished last night). I forgot to mention I was using lighter weight .063 1" square tubing on this cage, which is one of the reasons I gusseted it so much. I figure a lightweight battery (lithium ion) should help and the IRS is going to be the biggest weight gain in the rear. Some weight gain in the rear is actually going to benefit as we all know these cars are nose heavy.

I've been paying attention to weight and is one of the reasons I'm removing everything that's not necessary on the car. Also another reason I am using thinner wall material than most people since all this is being engineered as a whole. The cage will add the biggest overall weight gain since nothing is getting taken out to build that. My scrap pile weight is surprisingly closer to my material and welding wire estimates than you'd think.
 
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Final weight came out to 32lbs for cage (after gusseting welding which I finished last night). I forgot to mention I was using lighter weight .063 1" square tubing on this cage, which is one of the reasons I gusseted it so much. I figure a lightweight battery (lithium ion) should help and the IRS is going to be the biggest weight gain in the rear. Some weight gain in the rear is actually going to benefit as we all know these cars are nose heavy.

I've been paying attention to weight and is one of the reasons I'm removing everything that's not necessary on the car. Also another reason I am using thinner wall material than most people since all this is being engineered as a whole. The cage will add the biggest overall weight gain since nothing is getting taken out to build that. My scrap pile weight is surprisingly closer to my material and welding wire estimates than you'd think.
Which in turn prompts the question:

What are you removing "that's not necessary on the car.?"

* makes secret bet in head as to what answer will be
 
Which in turn prompts the question:

What are you removing "that's not necessary on the car.?"

* makes secret bet in head as to what answer will be

This is the short list of what I can think of right now:

-Material in floor pan and frame rails was removed for through floor subframes, offset some weight gains there
-All unnecessary underbody brackets removed
-Rear upper torque box assembly was removed
-Rear seats, all unnecessary mounting brackets, seat belt mounts, ect removed.
-Snubber mounts removed on both sides
-All unnecessary underbody brackets and suspension mounting points removed in rear removed
-Spare tire area cut out and removed for fuel cell cage. New tank is lighter than stock tank, battery will be lighter
-All sound deadening material removed (will be using a spray in sound deadener on floor)
-All seam sealer removed (will re-seam seal but won't be as liberal with application as the factory)

Future:
-Front end will be tubed
-Lighterweight k-member and suspension components
-Ect, ect, ect

She's not going to be a lightweight, but as a whole, she should be at stock weight (or better) with a better weight balance.