Captain Obvious

I see... You just wanted a free ride on the cart, huh?

if you're really interested, you could calculate the change in throw. It's linear and straight up ratiometric. I would definitely drill a pilot hole first, for two reasons... First, just to ease the drilling process with the larger bits, but also to double check the concept and look for issues before it's too late. You could walk the small hole around a little with a file if necessary to tweak things into place before you finalize with a larger size. The size of the final hole is important though since it needs to be a good fit with the shifter bushings, right? If the new holes don't overlap with the old holes, then you could always just go back to the stock location without a problem. Call them lightening holes to decrease mass and increase shifting speed and gas mileage.

Looks great and hopefully it handles as good as it looks! I got some questions/comments... About your old Chevette springs - They will get stiffer each time you remove more material, so if they started already too stiff and you were trying to balance ride height by removing coils, they're going to get stiffer and stiffer as you cut coils. Looking at the pic where you have the CC223 installed as shipped - Those top three coils are already pretty much bound, and I'm sure that even with the resting weight of the car on the struts, those top three were completely bound. The point is... The only thing those top three coils were doing for you other is raising the ride height and cutting them off shouldn't do anything other than lower the car: I ran some quick and dirty spring force calculations with the numbers you provided above and came up with the following: Stock spring, assuming 9 active coils - 100 lb per inch CC223 uncut, assuming 8 active coils and no binding - 185 lb per inch CC223 cut, assuming 6 active coils - 250 lb per inch Ballpark based on rough measurements and metallurgical assumptions of the composition. How do you think ride height compares to stock? And even after you cut coils off the CC223, did you have to use a compressor to get them back together?

Dr. Dave, Thanks! I've got no green left though... My dash LED's look greenish in those pics simply because of my camera. In person they are white, not green. I really got to try to get some better shots... Hopefully nothing serious!

Nice. Was that valve dent caused during running, or during testing? And either way, I'd be worried about valve (lip or stem) might be bent after that... You sure that one was OK?

Looking great!!

Yes, it would shorten the throw above the pivot by increasing the throw below the pivot. If the change in pivot location is confined only to the locations you have shown, then I can't imagine any other problems that could cause. All the other geometry should be the same before and after. Looks like there is plenty of room on the ears, but is there really enough metal on the shift shaft to put a new hole?

So that's what was shaking the camera back then? That's why those lucky guys used "tripod mounts"? Well my phone has been dead silent on the order front, not ringing off the hook with orders as you would expect... I guess the multitude of people adding A/C to their Z's are happy adding the vacuum system. I'm clearly the outlier!

Excellent. Glad you got it together! Hope the scratches don't cause any problem.

My car came without A/C and I'm working on adding it. I had originally planned to use my manual control head to run the system, but this does not work. The manual cable driven control heads are completely incompatible with the A/C evaporator box as they both want to occupy the same space. I had to swap over to a control head designed for A/C. That itself is not a big deal. What IS a big deal is that the A/C control heads are vacuum driven instead of cable driven and I really really didn't want to plumb my car with all those vacuum lines. Check valves, that white tank in the engine compartment, solenoid valves, rats nest of vacuum tubing under the dash... I really, really, really didn't want to do that. So instead of installing all the vacuum parts and tubes, I put switches on the control head and converted over to an electric servo from a Honda/Acura HVAC system to control the air distribution instead of vacuum motors. Here's the end result. Works like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggrks_xJAB8 Note the crappy shaky camera work... My second video ever.

You're welcome. Now every time you're driving at night, all you're gonna see is that dead spot. Fix it... You know you want to!!

I've got a couple other camera options and when I get a chance, I'll snap some shots with other cameras. Right now my car is still in pieces. The good weather snuck up on me and I started too many off-season projects this time! About the brightness... Not only did I remove the top LED (which really helped combat hot-spots right next to the bulbs), but I also installed resistors to cut the brightness down even more. I doubt other people would go through that extra work of putting resistors in though. I do recommend removing the top emitter. I don't recommend going through all the effort of putting resistors inside unless you've got a screw loose. I found that installing LED's is easy. The majority of my effort wasn't putting LED's in... It was in getting LED's to look "right". And be brightness matched to each other. And have even light dispersion without hot-spots. And without a haloing ring around the entire gauge because they are so durn bright. Devil is in the details and that's where most of the difficult effort was.

I've tried and tried to get good pics of my dash lighting, but I've not had good luck. A variety of issues have prevented me from getting a good representative shot. My idiot-proof camera automatically compensates for the light changes, etc.. I think they look absolutely phenomenal in person, but "just OK" in the pics. I'll post the best I have. They look too dim in the pics. They're not. They look greenish in the pics. They're not. Everything is fuzzy in the pics and that's my camera adjusting for the lack of light. Here's the whole dash at the brightness at which I drive. Most people seem to want way brighter than stock retina burning brightness, but I just wanted "whiter at and a little brighter than stock". This is how I drive, which is about two-thirds brightness. Also note that I've still got a little bit of a hotspot at the bulb end of the HVAC controls: Here's a closeup of the three smaller gauges at my typical 2/3 brightness: Here's those same three gauges at full brightness: And here's the speedo and tach at full bright. Note the third LED in the speedo completely eliminates that 80-90 mph dark spot!!: I'd be happy to have someone who knows what they're really doing with a camera take better shots!!

Boy I would sure love to be there the day that thing hit the road for the very first time!!

Haha!! As I remember, I made more than one. Sure would be nice to know how the other one works....??

I used warm white everywhere and I removed all the green lenses. Gauges: I used the 5-emitter tower design with the top emitters removed to improve the light dispersion and reduce hot spots. I also added series resistors to cut the brightness down (240 Ohm for everything except for the clock in which I used a 150 Ohm). I also added a third bulb to the speedo housing to improve the dead spot in the upper right two oclock area. HVAC Panel: I used a paddlewheel design with a 1K series resistor. I also refreshed the interior of the light box with a coat of white paint to clean up the yellowing plastic. I also inserted some aluminum reflective tape inside to improve light dispersion and reduce the hot spot at the bulb end. Dimmer: I installed a PWM dimmer instead of the original rheostat. Works full range of brightness. I'm still running an incandescent in my HAZARD switch, although since I'm running a three wire dimmer module, I could change that out as well without losing dimming function. Here's some summary pics of what I did. Dash bulbs (only seven towers shown because I added the third speedo bulb later) and the HVAC paddlewheel. Additional details on page 5 of this thread: PWM dimmer (additional details here: http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/52446-pulse-width-modulated-pwm-dimmer-control-upgrade/ ): Third speedo bulb. Don't think I ever posted these before. New bulb location near 80 mph: Hole drilled without bulb installed. Note the dark dead spot in the upper right: Bulb installed showing removal of the dead spot in the upper right. It's awesome!!:

Yeah, I don't really have an irresistible primal urge to see the Alamo, but figuring I'm going to be so close (compared to where I usually am), it's on the list of things I should do just to be able to say "I saw that." Really looking forward to seeing you again as well bud!

I always wondered if downdraft carbs were more prone to that due to sitting on top of the manifold with all that heat rising.

Haha!! I know Mike! In my own mind, I expanded the topic to "Things not to do while in Texas at ZCON". On a related note... I am hoping to take a side trip to San Antonio to see the Alamo. That's why I researched what not to do there...

Wait.... I did a little digging, and I thought drinking rule #1 was don't do an Ozzy impression and get drunk and wizz on the Alamo. (Or the statue across the street...)

And forgot... It looks like the 280 is different than the 240, but I'm using one of these for my map light, and I love it. Details here: http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/37915-sold-on-leds/?page=7#comment-492975

I put in a LED dome light a couple years ago and I love it. Details here: http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/41585-interior-bulb-replacements/#comment-454583

Always! So I wasn't there when they designed the thing, but my read on the thread directions is just to make it more "intuitive" to set the alignment. I don't think it's an accidental loosening thing like they sometimes do with lug nuts.

Swing through Philly and pick me up on your way south! I'll be your wing man!