Rebuilding Dad's Panoz; LS1 swap

[NZGTRA17]

Originally Posted by Cobra4B

Does anyone make the piece in aluminum? I don't have access to the tools needed to fabricate one and don't really want to pay someone local to do it. Not sure what holds your trans tunnel in place now, but this one is just four bolts. There are nut-serts in the chassis. The car won't have anything on the tunnel (no switch panel) so it will just be a matter of removing four blots to pull it.

Not sure if anyone sells them in aluminium. Unlikely. Well if it is already held in by 4 bolts that saves you a job.

[Cobra4B]

Old dash panel full of holes dents removed.


New dash panel installed. Need to grind some of the welds down a bit. Added another piece of angle iron to support the left side.

[Cobra4B]

After much trial and error the engine mounts are done. Used a Prothane poly mount for a Jeep CJ7 and was able to make an adapter plate to use the existing pedestal on the chassis.






Engine as far back as it can go. Bellhousing clears nicely.


Shifter lines up in the existing tunnel cover.

[Cobra4B]

Somewhat copied the battery cutoff mount from the Panoz GTS and added the passenger side fire pull.


Driver's side fire pull

[Cobra4B]

New window net mount tabs for the Joe's Racing mount kit.



Harnessbar fabbed and installed. Thanks to my buddy Mills for the help cutting and welding on this one.



Finally time to head off to powdercoat.

[Cobra4B]

Decided to clean up the passenger side floor before powdercoating. Over the years extra seat mount bars where added haphazardly to fit various seats. Cut them out and filled all the holes leaving the originals.







Cut out the area where the remote shifter went.

[Cobra4B]

Stock 40k mile clutch from my old yellow Z06. Have had this thing in my shed for like 7 years. Nothing wrong with it, but was having my rear diff replaced under warranty and took that time to put in a Luk Stage-II clutch with a Fidanza flywheel; driveline has to be removed for both jobs.

After 7 years in a box in my shed.


After some elbow grease with a wirewheel and scouring pad.


Clutch along with lightweight flywheel. Taking it all to get the flywheel resurfaced and the assembly balanced tomorrow.

[Cobra4B]

Resurfaced light weight chromoly flywheel


Less than .001" runout on bellhousing face


Max rotational runout of bellhousing center bore vs. crank centerline .003". Max tolerance .005"... good to go!


Now to install the clutch and mate with the gearbox

[Cobra4B]

Calipers refreshed and ready for pickup from Hayworth Racing Brakes. Had the old powdercoat stripped off down to the original hard-coat anodizing. Calipers were inspected and rebuilt with new seals and hardware. Fresh decals too.

[Panoz60]

Just FYI, I enjoy this thread and watching the progress. FWIW, I think you are doing a top notch, professional job on this car. Even if you did put a damn Chevy motor in it! (lol)

[Cobra4B]

Surface rust was coming back on the clutch so I painted it with 2000 degree rattle-can.


Installed with ARP hardware... new engine stand came in handy.

[Cobra4B]

Quartermaster throw-out bearing shimmed and installed.



Got everything put together... ready to go in the chassis.


Got the hubs/brakes off the rear axle finally.

[NZGTRA17]

Originally Posted by Cobra4B

Quartermaster throw-out bearing shimmed and installed.



Got everything put together... ready to go in the chassis.


Got the hubs/brakes off the rear axle finally.

Brian, while you have the rear axle out like that have a really good look at your rear brake caliper alignment to the discs. We have suffered a lot of taper wear on the rear pads which is wasting a lot of pad material.

I suspect this is either due to poor alignment or the caliper mounts (ones welded to the diff tubes) are just not stiff enough and are flexing under load.

How have your rear pads been looking wear wise? Even or not? Let me know what you find if you do some checks.

Kel.

[Cobra4B]

Car hasn't had much consistent use in over 2+ years. Ever since the first engine failed summer 2010 the car has been nothing but problems (hence this project). Prior to that we never even changed pads as the car was slow and the PFC97 pads didn't wear at all.

Another member recently posted about one of the rear caliper mounts sheering off going into 10A at Road Atlanta (150 mph downhill braking for a 50 mph chicane)... not a good place to lose the brakes.

I'll check parallelism for sure.

[panozracing]

Originally Posted by NZGTRA17

Brian, while you have the rear axle out like that have a really good look at your rear brake caliper alignment to the discs. We have suffered a lot of taper wear on the rear pads which is wasting a lot of pad material.

I suspect this is either due to poor alignment or the caliper mounts (ones welded to the diff tubes) are just not stiff enough and are flexing under load.

How have your rear pads been looking wear wise? Even or not? Let me know what you find if you do some checks.

Kel.

Definitely! They move around a lot and will need constant attention. I shim the calipers differently on each brake change. One day I will gusset the mounts so this stops.