2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

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NBrehm
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by NBrehm » Sat May 16, 2020 10:25 am

Next up was tracking down the issue with the Drivers side headlamp. I've been having an occasional short circuit that was making both the motor and low beam intermittent. I also had the aforementioned issue of the LMC headlamp upgrade issue with their choice (or lack of) for a connector. SO while I was in there I removed the OE connectors (save enough wire to put them back on if you ever choose to!) and replaced it all with some decent 2 wire weather packs. Not only makes for a better connection, but makes the process of taking them apart in the future significantly easier.

I tackled the weather packs first. If you have basic wiring knowledge it's pretty simple. I pulled the headlamp bulbs out, then closed the lights as the wires are easier to reach from behind. Write down which wire from the LMC headlamps is connected to which wire on the car so you don't accidentally mic them up. Then I pulled all the electrical tape off from last year and was left with this. The 2 bare terminals are the wiring from the LMC headlamps, the plug is the OE connector.
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I cut the ends off both. I left enough wire on the OE connector to be able to reconnect it in the future if need be, then packed them away to put in storage. I then wagged the lengths I wanted on the new weatherpacks and trimmed their wires down to leave me with a harness a little longer than stock. There is plenty of open space under the headlamp when it is closed, and a little extra wire will allow me to pull the headlamp housing out completely to get at the plug for future bulb changes. Just check your clearances to make sure it avoids the hinge when you close the headlamps. I then used weather proof butt splices to tie it all together, then wrapped the harness in electrical tape to keep it as dry as possible.
OE plug vs Weatherpack
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Then just repeat across the board.
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Next was the bad connector on the motor assembly. For this you 100% want to remove the headlamp assembly. You can look a few posts back to see how to do that.

****DISCONNECT THE BATTERY for this, you will be working with leads that are hot all the time****


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Here is the suspect plug, I tracked down the part number and hunted down new ones on Ebay. They come in a package of 5 for around $20.00. This is a bit more complex than your typical cut and splice job as it is just the connector and does not come as a pig tail. To get the old one apart there is a black clip on the back you need to seperate from the grey connector. It slides straight back.
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Once it is out you can tug gently on the back and see if the wires happen to be loose, they should not be. I had 2 that came right out, which lead me to examine those wires closely as clearly the terminal was bad. The terminals have small tabs that lock them into the plug. You can see their location on the new terminals in the kit with the plug. You use are terminal removal tool, or a precision screwdriver, to push the tab down and the terminal and rubber boot should slide out the back of the plug. I did one wire at a time to make it easy to keep them in order, but you can also write it down or take a pic. Once I got them out it was clear which wire was the issue. The yellow wire was burnt to a crisp (I think it's the 12V lead but didn't look it up)
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I had to chase the wire back about 18" to find the end of the burn, then spliced a new wire in from a junk harness I had lying around.

I'll apologize now I don't have pics on how to reassemble the connector because ti was a 2 hand job. I tried a few times but it is pretty precision work and I just couldn't hold all the pieces with one hand and get pics, but I'll do my best to describe it to you. I'll try and remember to get some pics of the pieces for reference and hang them up here. If I forget and you need it for a job just lmk. When you get the kit it comes with the plug, terminals, and rubber boots.

1: Cut the original terminal off as close to the terminal as possible. Strip about a 1/4 inch of wire from the end and check the wire. If it is clean copper you are gtg, if it is burnt or damaged keep stripping it back and clipping it until you reach good copper. You may need to put a splice in depending on how much cancer you have to cut out.
2:Once the wire is stripped, slide one of the rubber boots in the kit onto it. The smaller side goes into the connector so make sure it is on right
3: To install the terminal it has 2 sets of tabs on the car end of it. The first set you use to connect the terminal to the INSULATION on the wire. Line it up so the exposed wire sits directly underneath the second set of tabs. Use a set of crimps, or small needle nose if you are careful but I don't suggest it, and crimp the terminal first to the insulation, then crimp the second set of tabs onto the bare wire. Make sure both crimps are tight and you can't slide the wire out.
4: Slide the wire into the correct slot in the plug until you feel a small "click". That's the lock engaging in the plug. Pull out GENTLY on the wire and it should not move. If it comes out check the locking tab and try it again until it works.
5: Once it's locked, push the rubber grommet into the plug behind it until it is tight.
6: Repeat for the other 4 wires
7: Install the new black clip on the backside. If you had to cut back into the harness to fix wires make sure you tape up the connector and reinstall any wire loom you had to remove,

That's it!

For this post:

Parts
Headlamp motor connector (Male) GM 12084891: $20.00 for a pack of 5
Highrocks 2 wire weather pack connectors: $8.00 for pack of 5


Total Cost for This post: $28.00
Total Cost Overall: $7683.00

Labor this Post: 2 hours
Total Labor: 109 hours
-Nick
2001 Formula Firehawk #293

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NBrehm
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by NBrehm » Mon May 25, 2020 11:38 am

If all goes well this will be the last post for awhile. I may do some work on the rear axle later in the summer, but hoping that this is it for the season. So last up (hopefully) is a new water pump since the old one was noisy, thermostat, upper and lower radiator hoses, and I decided to delete the factory power steering cooler and go aftermarket as they are prone to failure and can damage both your power steering system, and get metal into your coolant.
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I'm not going to waste any time with how to change the water pump, it is literally unbolt the old one and bolt in the new one. to make it easier I would suggest if you do it you remove the following, which are also just unbolt/bolt back on.


Throttle body
Tensioner
Idler Pulley

That just gives you room to work. As a general rule If I pull the water pump, the thermostat and radiator hoses are getting changed unless they are already new. Both the top radiator hoses are still available from AC Delco (with or without the cooler), the lower one is discontinued and the only company I could find that makes one was Car Quest.

I will, however, go into some detail about moving the PS cooler. To do the cooler I also had to remove the factory Air box and the electric fans, and obviously disconnect the lines from the cooler and remove that as well. There are 4 bolts that hold the airbox in, then for the fans you just have to unplug them, disconnect the wiring harness from the clips and they lift straight up and out and you are left with this:
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The Derale cooler I bought comes with 4Ft of 11/32" hose. It was a tight run but I did make it work, you may want to get a little bit more if you don't have it.
***NOTE: One thing I should of checked and did not is I made the assumption that since the cooler goes into the return line and is low pressure, both ends of the hoses would have clips on them. This was incorrect. The end of the line that threads into the rack is swedge fit, so there is no removing it. I plan on having a new line made in the future, but for now I raided the Auto parts store bin and got 2 3/8" inverted flare hose ends, and a 3/8" inverted flare junction. I used 3/8 because it is slightly larger than the hose so it will be a really tight fit and help it seal. I'll get to that shortly****
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After that I mounted the cooler, i put it as far over to the driver side and up high as possible to try and make the 4 ft of hose work. You mount it by pushing the 2 zip tie looking mounting pins THROUGH the condensor and radiator. I did not put the locks on at this point because I wanted to make sure it didn't need to move again and they are 1 use only.
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So now for the hoses, remove the hose from the PS reservoir (drain as much as you can if you have not already, cause it's gonna leak)
Line from Reservoir to Cooler: I used about 2.5 of the 4 Ft for this line. If you go to the frame rail just below the upper radiator hose outlet there is room to sneak both hoses through, but it is NOT easy. Once I snaked it through I measured up to the reservoir and left about 2 extra inches to make sure I could get it ziptied out of the way of the serpentine belt.

Line from The cooler to the Rack: I had about 1.5Ft of hose left, so I snaked it through next to the other one, which was even harder this time, lol. This is where if you don't have a new line made of some kind, you have to measure carefully. I took the remaining hose as far as it would reach and put my ghetto adapter fitting in it and clamped it down with a hose clamp so i couldn't pull it out. The factory line coming of the rack was longer than I needed to make them meet, but if I had trimmed the new line back to save it it would have put ghetto fitting up in a mess of wiring and hoses, so I measured it out, left about 2 inched for clearance and cut the factory line back. I then hooked it up to the adapter I made and tightened it down with a hose clamp. Then I used factory wiring harnesses to ziptie the hoses too to make sure they cleared everything. The only place I had interference was where I ran the lines through the nose so I protected them with some wire loom to make sure if they rub they won't rub the actual hose.
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Upper hose with no cooler
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Now all i had to do was tighten and check all the hose clamps, put the locks on the PS cooler mounting tabs, put all the other parts back on, refill the coolant and PS fluid and then ran the car to bleed out any air. Make sure you come back and check for leaks, that you don't OVER tighten any hose clamps, and check the fluid levels after driving


For this post:
Torque Specs:
Water pump: 11 Lb/Ft (first pass)
Water Pump: 22 LB/FT (final pass)


Parts
Flowkooler Water Pump 1670: $210.00
ARP Water Pump Bolt Kit 434-3201: $35.00
AC Delco Water Pump gaskets 251-663: $14.00 (for 2)
AC Delco 2 piece thermostat 15-11057: $40.00
AC Delco Upper Radiator hose (No cooler) 26347X: $15.00
Dayco Lower Radiator Hose C71982: $14.00
Derale PS cooler 13211: $36.00
3 Gallons AC Delco Anti freeze 12378390 : $48.00 (for 3 gallons, mixed)
Prestone Synthetic PS Fluid for American Vehicles: $20.00 (for 24 oz, i only ended up needing 12 Oz, but was just barely enough)

Total Cost for This post: $432.00
Total Cost Overall: $8115.00

Labor this Post: 6 hours
Total Labor: 115 hours
-Nick
2001 Formula Firehawk #293

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NBrehm
Posts: 236
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by NBrehm » Fri May 29, 2020 8:23 am

Just a random update on the headlamps. The low beams are great, but my high beam housings keep getting water in them and i am honestly not impressed with their functionality. Without a front reflector the light scatters a lot more than I would like. Considering an LED high beam upgrade in the near future, we'll see how it turns out
-Nick
2001 Formula Firehawk #293

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NBrehm
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by NBrehm » Sun Jul 25, 2021 8:46 am

Apologies for being MIA on this build, ran into a major snag. Theres been a persistent noise in the top end of the car ever since I bought it, so I got into it and rebuilt the rockers and changed the pushrods. The noise not only persisted after that but got significantly worse so I decided to pull the engine and tear it down for a rebuild and it all got alot worse from there. Right off the bat it was not the original engine. The heads are right but the block is a 99 block. My best guess was the original bottom end met some sort of demise and that was reinforced the further I got into the tear down. All the head bolts had no loctite on them, so likely were re-used. The head gaskets weren't MLS but instead a cheap soft material that tore to shreds as I pulled the head off The noise from the engine was, I kid you not, a piece of gravel wedged in the lifter cup that had the lifter permanently compressed, I found a piece of a sensor that isn't even from an LS1 in the valley pan as well as other debris. How this engine never suffered a catastrophic failure is beyond me but obviously the lack of hydraulic action from the lifter damaged the camshaft and the cylinder walls look like they have about 250,000 miles on them. Since it's not the correct 01-02 block it really can't be safely bored so essentially the short block is toast. Thankfully I have some good friends and have been loaned an engine out of an 02 Trans Am to keep the car running, and I swept up an L33 that is on it's way to the machine shop for a mild build over the winter. Also have a 12 bolt on the way since there is really little reason to keep the car close to stock anymore, so hopefully there will be some better news and some new write ups on the way.
-Nick
2001 Formula Firehawk #293

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NBrehm
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by NBrehm » Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:07 pm

Well the drama continues. Ordered up the 12 bolt and it came and for some reason they didn't put the powdercoating on. I'm a teeny bit pissed about it because my choices now are to refuse it (which I don't have the time to send it back and get another), Paint it, or disassemble the entire thing, send it out for powder, and re assemble it. I've decided to go with paint and I'll let you all know how it turns out with Moser about it, but that is a pretty damn huge mistake for them to make on a $4000 axle.

Image
-Nick
2001 Formula Firehawk #293

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BLACK-HAWK
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by BLACK-HAWK » Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:36 pm

paint it red
2001#194 (Unicorn)

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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by PontiacFan » Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:41 pm

POR-15 ?
Don’t they make it in colors now?

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NBrehm
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by NBrehm » Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:33 pm

PontiacFan wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:41 pm
POR-15 ?
Don’t they make it in colors now?
I just used chassis black since it was clean
-Nick
2001 Formula Firehawk #293

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NBrehm
Posts: 236
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2015 8:58 pm
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by NBrehm » Thu Jul 07, 2022 9:28 am

I know I haven't posted in awhile, being Military, been pretty busy the last few months. Have done some more stuff I'll catch you up on soon, unfortunately time did not permit doing more tutorials for some of it, but I can show some finished products soon.
-Nick
2001 Formula Firehawk #293

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BLACK-HAWK
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Re: 2001 Formula Hawk #293 Resto-mod thread.

Post by BLACK-HAWK » Thu Aug 18, 2022 2:42 pm

looking good!
2001#194 (Unicorn)

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