fbekholden.com

well then send it over here Mal i'll fix it for you hahahah

yeah when he said that it had to ratchet twice for 1 gear i was a bit sus, later on after that he was telling me about a mechanic mate thats hlped him and his throttle body is sticking open and he was wondering why his car would idle at 1500-2000 rpm at idle!!!

i feel sorry for the bloke, feel like i HAVE to help him because its obvious the current help has f-all idea what they are doing!!

well bit of an update, but not much in the way of images ....

i've been going through alot of little things, like the accelerator pedal, its in and working now, also put the buttons in the pillars for the interior light ... i know the buttons are working because if the door is open and i press the button on the key it wont lock the doors, but once i press the button in on the door it will then allow the central locking to work .... problem is the interior light stays on all the time!!

i know its not the interior light switch on the dash because i can turn the light on and off with it when the body control module is disconnected but theres obviously some quirky issue going on somewhere thats stopping it from turning off.

thats about it really, i have some more stuff to do but i have run out of mig gas so i'm stuck with that for the time being.

so you have working brakes, working accelerator........have you been round the block yet

nah because i also have this



and yes it is a commodore tailshaft with the centre bearing cut out and welded back together

i have been thinking of a driveway run to see how the vibrations are

Your a gamer man than me Sammy, To be honest, I wouldn't be using that shaft.

Commodore Wall thickness is to thin and the diameter size of the tube is to small for the length. Their designed to be 2 piece, with a center bearing to reduce rotational flex - run out. If that shaft works for length size, take it to a Tail shaft man and get him to make you a larger shaft for your application.

I would hate to see you injure yourself and wreck your build.

Regards John

yeah the tailshaft is a serious component and can cause serious damage to your car even causing rollovers, not to mention endangering yours and even worse other peoples lives, i no a mob that does custom tailshafts with any combo you want and fully balanced for a price of $180, now for that price its not really worth risking all that is it.
but thats just my 2 cents
cheers matty

oldnek wrote:If that shaft works for length size, take it to a Tail shaft man and get him to make you a larger shaft for your application.

you've hit the nail on the head thats all this shaft is for, 1. to get the length right and 2. so i can move the car in and out of the shed for the time being.

i hope that my finished product will look similar to the one in the Torana

jumped to conclusions then didnt i, sorry

thats alright man ... i do some crazy shit at times but not that crazy ... actually the first thing i thought when i read your posts was ... hell no i've had enough dramas trying to get pinion angles and driveline vibrations sorted out etc with other cars, i want this one to be like silk to drive! ...

well maybe rough silk

ok well i've had a nice productive sunday!!

went to see me mates at rarespares and got two of these:



these are to suit cars that already have belts so they come with all the bolts but no nuts or retaining plates, so i got myself a heap of 7/16 unf nuts and used a piece of flat bar i had in the shed to make a heap of these...



now one thing i will note here is you can buy a kit of these from rarespares but i didn't bother.....

so my engineering requires that i put one of these plates behind all areas where the bolts go through the floors etc and it specifies a minimum of 45x65mm plate of 3mm thickness. I used 50x80mm plates and the flat bar was 5mm thick, i prefer to over engineer rather than use the bare minimum.

so the above mentioned kits from rarespares comes with a barrel bolt which you drill a hole through the pillar from the inside to the outside and then the barrel bolt goes through the outside and the normal seatbelt bolt screws into it. this works fine but then you get a nice 3/4 inch bolt sticking out of the pillar and it just looks crap. so the other option which my engineer advised will work fine is to cut a hole in the pillar below where you want the hole for the seatbelt, then insert the reinforcing plate up into it, then spot weld it in place, then weld the original cut out section back in.

so i took some photos of this as i thought people looking at putting seat belts in might be interested...


so as you can see above, hole cut out below reinforcing plate, then spot weld holes drilled and centre hole also.

so then insert the plate and use the bolt through it to hold it in place while the welding is being done ... please note the bolts in my kit where too long and i needed to space them out otherwise it would hit the outer pillar and probably leave a dint in it!!



so here you can see, plate is welded in place, welds smoothed off and all thats left to do is weld the cut out plate back on.... i am leaving this out till the engineer inspects it.



as you can see, once the belt is installed and interior is over the top, no one will know it ever happened!!

and while we're on the subject



i love my dogs personality

ok sorry, back to the seat belt install

being a ute i don't have alot of options for the reel so i decided to mount it on the back wall of the cabin, as it was a nice flat surface and its out of the way. on the other side of it is the usual reinforement plate.



the bottom section is through the floor again with another plate underneath. i plan to spot weld all the plates on at some stage so i can easily just unscrew the bolts if ever needed and have the plates stay in place, especially the plates in the lower tray section!

i haven't installed the buckle part yet as i have a few ideas about them i want to run by the engineer before i proceed with it, but pretty simply they will be using a reinforement plate up in the transmission tunnel and have stiff but flexable stalks on them that bring the buckle up to beside the edge of the seat like most cars!

just a quick note, atleast for NSW people, if you are planning to do a seat or seatbelt setup like this, you should first have a read through the state rules about them .... theres a few ADR's you have to comply to, things like the above plate sizes etc. at the end of the day though if your fitting belts to these cars which originally never had them, then your going in the right direction i know i'd put them in my car even if i didn't need to, makes me feel safer!

Nice work Sammy

This is the same way I plan to do mine.
Good to see it done

i hate seatbelts...........but having austar you see some scarey stuff with accidents involving cars with no seatbelts
ADR's only apply to cars with them, there's recomondations to fitting seatbelts and other rules for engineering requirements

yeah thats right, i need them for the v6 conversion but i also would feel weird in a car without them because i've never had a car without them, even my EK Wagon had full belts installed when i got it.

ok got the nod from the engineer to fabricate this .... rather than having two plates i decided to have this whole piece which should spread the load across the whole tunnel, also i reckon it looks neater and i plan to spot weld it to the tunnel so it will never move!



with that completed there was only one thing left to do, screw the buckles in place and test it out



they feel so smooth to operate, its a really weird feeling having that in an old holden i guess its something im just gonna have to get used to

not much else to report its been a bit quiet this last week on the car, i'm starting to run out of low cost tasks so i'll have to save some more dollars