Cali4nia Monte

Really...the back seat is pretty easy to remove. Well kind of...you just have to give it a little bit of assistance where it hooks in underneath. Mike ususally uses a big screwdriver and a rubber mallot to tap on the wire cushion frame (as seen in the picture) and I lift up when it clears the catch part. I actually saw someone post that they used a ball joint separator instead of a screwdriver and I bet that works even better. But you could seriously have your back seat out in about 5 minutes to look for the build sheet. Oh Jake I was thinking steam as well...but have never tried it. I don't think it would damage it...if you don't have a steamer maybe use your wifes iron and give it a couple of blasts.

Not at $875...

Mike says he is definitely interested in one with a 2 inch cowl. We don't need anything bigger then that and not interested in a flat one. How long do you think before he could have them made??

We have the wide belt molding also. I ordered new window felts and they came with the skinny little trim attached. When I went to take them back to OPG..he said he never heard of the wide stuff. We ended up going to a automotive upholstery place and just the felt and attaching it....worked great.

Oh Jim...your car looks soooo nice. What color did you end up choosing? Is that the Atomic Orange?

Alright Sam your beginning to sound like Dr. Evil.

You'll be sorry....Mike wont put our on and the engine compartment gets dirty and splashed if you go through any kind of puddle....and I am not talking about after rain puddles...I mean even a puddle from somebodies sprinkler system.

Oh...yeah I forgot we switched to the MSD distributor when we put in the box and the coil.

I thought the instructions on the coil said not to go over 18 inches from distributor? Won't you loose something mounting it so far away? Mike bought a bracket for ours that attached to the intake, so ours is mounted right behind our carb but in front of the distributor. ~Jaylene~

Yup they are right we have the Holley 4150 750 carb (which has the manual secondaries) and it was a nightmare to get rid of the bog. We still do not have it completely gone but have come very close. We have a 350 crate engine that's got 377+ hp have a TH400 tranny with a 3000 stall and 3.42? posi rear end. In order to get it to run as good as we've got it now we had to take it to a carb guy who completely rebuilt it. In addition we removed a 1 inch spacer (which showed the biggest improvement) and changed the springs in our distributor which was also the carb guys recommendation. Something about it makes the car advance quicker?? We had a Holley 650 before and it had no problems at all....but the car is significantly more powerful with the 750. Anyhow long story short...haha....if we had it to do over we'd probably go with vacuum secondaries next time. ~Jaylene~

Thanks...for our next engine I'm going with an all black theme. I love this new black intake from edelbrock.

Here's ours but as you can see the shroud makes it really difficult to get a good view of it. Electric fans are on the list, but Mike says he has to have a B-Cool radiator to go along with and its just not in the budget right now.

That's a pretty sweet looking set up. We didn't go with a serpentine set up but did upgrade out brackets and the PS, WP, & ALT to aluminum? ones....anyhow one thing to keep in mind is you are going to want to ditch the fan shroud and get electric fans...otherwise the dumb shroud hides all the purdy stuff.

Sorry to be confusing....I found the nut right behind the car...upon first inspection Mike thought the cotter pin was gone. I of course being the inquisitive wife that I am... insulted him by asking if he was "SURE" he put the cotter pin in, in the first place. However when he got back in there the cotter pin was there it had just broken off and what was left was still in the hole. He had to use and little pick to get it out. He doesn't know why it happened...all he can think is that maybe he didn't have the ball joint seated properly and the play between the nut and the ball joint caused enough vibration to shear the pin off and then the nut finally gave. He went back over everything under there now to make sure its all tight. But he didn't find anything else loose.

I have no idea where they were made.

Yeah thats why I posted it Sam...you came to mind immediately. Mike cant explain why it happened...he's hoping it was just some error on his part. We will definitely let you know if we have any other problems. But as Allen pointed out we probably should have gone back over everything a week or two later and rechecked it and we did not. The balljoint threads were perfectly fine it was just the nut that was kind of stripped. We bought new cotter pins and nuts just to be safe.

We were going very slow when it came down. It scarfed a little bit of metal off our centerlines but the wheel didn't even make a full revolution before we came to a stop. We have plastic wheel wells they didn't break but I think the force of the tire pushing into the fender bent the fender a little bit where the wheel wells attach to the fender. Luckily we were going to replace this fender when we have the $$$ anyways because when we patched it somebody didn't want to listen to his wife and test fit it BEFORE we painted it and it doesn't fit right. You can't really see the damage unless you bend down and look so it's still minimal damage.

Bottom ball joint on the passenger side of the car. Mike just did the front suspension about 6-8 weeks ago. The ball joint came in the CPP front suspension kit that we bought. When Mike took it all apart today the ball joint is fine, at first he thought the cotter pin came out but when he got in there the pin was still in the hole it had just sheared off. I had found the nut in the street right behind the car and its threads were pretty gone. All he can figure is it was loose and must have been just vibrating back and forth on the cotter pin until it gave. He checked everything else while he was under there as well as the other side of the car and its all good.

Instructions??? What are those? He He He....Yup...Mike said its his bad...he just forgot. Like I said we're just feeling very fortunate that we weren't doing 75 or 80. He's going back over everything now....just to be safe.

Well we must have been traveling with our Guardian Angel lately because Mike and I went to take the Monte out this morning and got right around the corner from the house when the Monte came to a grinding halt! It felt like the wheel fell off the car on the passenger side. The cotter pin sheared off of the ball joint and the nut holding it together stripped. Luckily we were only doing about 10 mph coming up to a stop sign when it happened. I can only imagine how catastrophic it could have been if we were flying down the freeway. Mikes a bit concerned as to what would cause the pin and nut to fail like that. He said last week he felt a vibration but we couldn't narrow it down...now we know!

No tailpipes...Mike has the exhaust ending right at the diff. Although we are not sure were gonna leave it like that because we've got some issues with a strong exhaust smell in the car. Its always worse with the windows down obviously but were wondering if the reason we smell it so bad inside right now is because we have no interior in...all we really have in the car right now is seats. So if after we get our fatmat, carpet, and door panels in we still have the strong smell then we will probably have to extend the exhaust farther out the back.

Where is it bubbling and cracking? Are you sure your engine isn't just running too warm? What size is your engine? What does your cooling system consist of? It can't just be the fiberglass hood because as Bill said there are plenty of guys running painted FG hoods. Plus when you think about it Corvettes are primarily fiberglass and have a much smaller engine compartment. We just bought a FG hood with a 2" cowl and will be prepping and painting it in the next few weekends....so this is definitely a topic of interest. Anybody else have this problem?

Wow that last one's a hard one to follow. We have Doug's shortie headers, Flowmaster 40 series with a crossover and 2.5" pipe dumps out right in front of the differential.

Hey that looks pretty cool...it kind looks like a satin finish chrome...

By the way you guys are my hero's I have been looking for a supplier of Carbon Fiber and couldn't find it anywhere, whenever I did a search online all I was getting were links companies that sell products made of carbon fiber, not the cloth itself! Mike wants to use it for a custom center console for us. Has anyone made anything with it? If so do you have pictures and are there any tips for working with it?