An exciting update! I ordered the GTM floormats from Factory Five last week and received them the other day. I was concerned with their fitment when I ordered as they have malleable/bendable sections that match the shape of the footboxes, and I wasn’t sure if the added padding from the Dynamat I used would mess with that or not. Fortunately, they fit great. You can form the floormats so the bendable sections conform to your interior very well. The logo is not super colorful, which I’m glad for, as that would have been kind of gaudy.

When I sat in the GTM to take it for its first public road test I realized I needed a place to store registration and insurance papers. I just stuffed them in my pocket then, but today I came up with a quick solution. I used a plastic document sleeve, and adhesive backed velcro tape. Now I have a little storage sleeve that velcros behind the passenger dash pod that is within easy reach and can just be ‘ripped’ out, should the need arise.

I also ran the GTM at idle for a half hour to build a desired idle airflow histogram. These values that were produced were then plugged into the RAF  table (base running airflow). The more precise these values are, the smoother the engine will slip into idle. Hopefully this will fix any stalling issues. Until now I just guessed at what the RAF values should be. I was close, but ended up 2 grams/sec too high on the warm temp idle airflow values, so hopefully this will help things quite a bit. I will test soon.

Got the new steering wheel today so I installed that.  The outer portion of the quick disconnect bolts to the back of the steering wheel, horn is connected to the quick disconnect wiring and pushed/inserted into the quick disconnect piece. I had some troubles getting the quick disconnect to work at first – I could not lock the wheel into place. I realized that one of the bolts that holds the steering wheel onto the disconnect piece was rubbing on the inside of the main disconnect hub so I had to grind that down a bit with a file.  Now it locks/unlocks as it should.

This setup is very nice. The steering wheel can be removed or connected in seconds, and getting in and out of the car is much, much easier. This steering wheel allows for a great view of the gauges, as it follows the curvature of the dash nearly perfectly.

As I await for my inspection date to arrive I decided to upgrade the steering wheel with a quick release hub from NRG. I am using their SRK-400B ‘thin’ model. The quick release unit consists of two pieces – one bolts to the FFR supplied steering column hub, and the other bolts to the back of the steering wheel. Horn functionality is retained without having to disconnect anything when removing the steering wheel. I installed the column-side portion of the quick release tonight, and will install the new steering wheel when that arrives later this week. Pretty self-explanatory stuff. Not having the steering wheel in the way makes getting in and out much easier.

I haven’t posted in a few days, but I’ve been keeping busy with small tasks here and there:

– wired up the rear view mirror
– fine tuned the intake tubing positions so that they are ready for mounting when I get the intake duct mesh silicone’d in
– formed the exhaust and intake duct mesh pieces; dropped them off for powder coat
– picked up louvers from powder coating, will install on diffuser soon
– prepped diffuser by drilling more rivnut/bolt attachment points to the body to make it sturdier
– Josh finished the exhaust mount, waiting on a new mandrel to install bigger rivnuts to mount it and complete the exhaust
– making progress on getting the motor running properly: installed a Nick Williams 96mm tb, and am currently working on tuning it with HP Tuners. Motor runs if I stay on the throttle at 1000rpm or higher, but it dies if I let off.

At this point the interior is complete, and all that remains is buttoning up the exhaust and intake, creating a heat barrier between the two, installing the exhaust and intake mesh, and installing the louvers and diffuser.  I also need to get the motor to idle, too.

The GTM actually looks like a complete car! Had the glass guy come by and install the windshield and rear view mirror. Looks great! I just have to wire up the mirror and the interior will be complete. Afterwards I mounted the wiper blade and tested that out and got it to park where I wanted.

What an absolute nightmare! If anything could go wrong, it did while trying to get this seat installed. As planned, I installed the FFR seat tracks to the seat using David Borden’s seat track mounts, as they are supposed to allow for the installation of the tracks without lifting the seat off the floor at all. However, once I got the tracks on and mounts installed, I set the seat in the car and realized there was no way for the lever to function to adjust the seat position (push down to release the track). I lifted the seats as high as they can go on the track mounts (David made them slotted out), and was able to get enough clearance, but this lifted the seat around 1.5″ and I didn’t like that. THEN while trying to adjust the seat the lever broke off the seat track. Quality welding by the manufacturer! At this point I threw my hands up and took the tracks and mounts off and threw them to the side.

I returned the next day to simply bolt the seat to the floor like I did with the passenger seat. Should have been easy enough since I already did it once before. Wrong. I don’t know what was up with with the fiberglass on the driver seat, but I had 4 rivnuts COME OUT of the seat while bolting it down. Once the rivnut slipped out the hole was way too large to place another rivnut. Long story short, I drilled at least 8 holes into the seat and floor of the car while crossing my fingers that the rivnuts would hold. Hours later, the seat was  installed and harnesses clipped in. Excess holes were siliconed over.

Instead of using the FFR provided rear-view mirror I decided to use the Corvette rear-view since it has driver and passenger map lights built in. To utilize this lighting, I had to run a ground wire, and the white ‘dome light’ wire from the Painless fusebox up to the center of the windshield where the mirror will be. Not an easy task with the roll-bar padding/fabric in place! I ended up snaking a coat hanger down the pillar under the fabric with a hook bent on the end. Once I got it down behind the dash I was able to hook the mirror wires and pull them up the pillar. I then pushed the wires on top of the front halo bar (sandwiched between the roof and halo bar) and ran them to the center of the windshield. Tested the mirror wiring to ensure it will work – good.

Since my car stereo has a really great iPhone interface, I mounted a nice iPhone holster on the driver side for easy access. This holster is actually designed to mount on vents, but I just unscrewed and removed the mounting mechanism it uses and affixed it to the tunnel vinyl with heavy-duty double-sided tape. Perfect setup.

Lastly, for some reason FFR leaves a nice ugly gap between the engine cover and dash console. They don’t tell you to cover it, nor do they supply a piece to cover this gap. To fix this a cover has to be made. I cut a piece of cardboard and bent it to fit over the console and engine cover edges to get a basic measurement of the aluminum piece I would need. I have a handful of aluminum scrap left over from the build so I cut a piece to match the cardboard and bent it to match the tunnel sides. 1/4″ holes were drilled on each side, and then the tunnel frame holes were drilled out and rivnuts were installed. I trimmed the aluminum piece a bit more, then covered the top with some 1/4″ Dynamat for padding.  Left over suede from the build was used to cover it. Bolted back in place, the cover actually makes for a nice elbow rest since it’s padded fairly well. Not bad.

Finally, the interior is nearly complete. With the driver dash pod re-glued and ready for install I cleaned up some wiring that will be under the dash, wired the transmission oil cooler LED indicator, then installed the pod. Before riveting in place I attached the air duct and dash switches for camera and lights. Dash pod was then riveted into place, and then the gauge face was plugged in and screwed down.  I then threw on the steering column cover and screwed that in place.

I wanted to add some accent lighting to the footboxes so I purchased some LED light strips. These strips are very thin, very bendy, and have an adhesive back so they can be stuck just about anywhere. I opted to stick them on the frame members running across each footbox under the dash. The power and ground wires were soldered together and will be connected to a switch on the dash when that is installed.

I also mounted the switches that will power the LED lights and video activation to the driver dash pod.