2023 mid-year update

I have done quite a lot in the time since my last post. Electrical, electronics, interior, lighting, and more.

I did get the LT4 completely installed and running, and it runs extremely well. It also gets 25-27 mpg while cruising on the freeway, which is just astounding.

LT4 and 8L90e installed and functional

Shortly after I got the LT4 swap completed, I needed to replace the headlights because I simply could not see anything after dark, which made for one rather stressful drive home one night.

So lets start out with:

Lighting and Electrical

I decided to go with a set of LED Projector lights that were from a later model Jeep. These had an integrated halo ring that would be white with running lights, but turn amber with the turn signals. They were perfect. I did the conversion and everything seemed great, until the turn signals would not blink. I attempted to swap relays, converted to an LED capable relay, replaced the steering column harness and turn indicator switch, and eventually went back to the old head lights and turn signals. Nothing got the indicators working again, even going back to how it was. 

Shortly thereafter, I started having issues with the starter. So I ordered a new starter and installed it... no change. Intermittent failure to engage. Had to be the wiring. So I ordered up a new Painless wiring harness to replace every single wire in the car. With so much of the car being far from stock, I purchased the 22 circuit un-terminated harness. 

Painless 22 Circuit un-terminated GM harness

Original wiring harness starting to come out

Original engine bay harness removed

New harness getting ready to be installed

Dash harness installed and terminated

Trunk harness installed and terminated

Trunk harness and old, decrepit tail lights

With the harness replacement complete, the car was finally back up and running consistently!

Instrumentation

Next up, the digital dash project has taken a bit of a twist. I did get the screen in my previous post up and running and it looked great. But the screen only lasted a few months before it got a large section of the display failing to display a proper image. Upon closer inspection of the screen, the case was damaged right at the corner that was displaying incorrectly, so I needed a new screen.

So I had to come up with another idea. One thing I kept running into with the first screen I had chosen was that I still needed to use a keyboard/touchpad to navigate the menus, which was rather inconvenient. I also could not view the entire screen, as the dash bezel itself would interfere with my view of the full screen, so I was always missing either the top or bottom of the screen depending on where my head position was.

I searched online and found a very nice 12.3" capacitive touch screen made by a company named Waveshare. This screen was 1920x720 resolution, and had a very nice integration/mount with the raspberry pi. Simply bolting a Raspberry Pi onto the back would power the Pi, and it came with some very nice HDMI and USB bridges that fit perfectly.

12.3" Waveshare capacitive touch screen

Raspberry Pi mount directly to PCB

Very nice USB and HDMI bridge connectors

So I started designing a method to mount this touchscreen into the dash of the car. The problem though was that this screen was taller than what would fit in the dash without modifying it. So first up was a design that would clamp into the original Bezel and hold the screen a few inches out over the steering column.

Clamp-in screen holder

At the same time, I needed a place to mount the fuel gauge. I had temporarily hot-glued it into the area that the radio would normally be. I wanted to remedy that, so I had to come up with a better location. Since the car does not have A/C or heat, I decided to mount where the A/C controls usually reside. So I removed the A/C control plate, and duplicated it in Fusion 360. I then modified my model to accept the stock fuel gage without requiring any fasteners or other modifications. The model is freely available on Thingiverse if anyone is interested.

Front of the fuel gauge relocation panel

Back of the fuel gauge relocation panel

Fresh off the Elegoo Saturn SLA printer

Painted it flat black and test fit it into the bezel

Test fit along side the new screen

The fuel relocation worked beautifully. The screen mount, not so much. I did not like how far out it was, as the steering wheel (which is also new! More on that later!) interfered with my vision of a large part of the screen. So I knew I needed to set it back into the bezel.

I spent some time trying to think of better, non-invasive mounting options before I decided that it would simply be better to just cut up the bezel and integrate it directly in to the dash. To do this properly, I needed an accurate 3d scan of the dash. I didn't want to spend upwards of $1,000 on a 3d scanner, so I used my old XBox 360 Kinect sensor and some free software to create a model of my dash.

The initial scan was not the greatest, but I was able to improve upon them significantly with more iterations. I eventually got the model into a good enough state to where I could create the templates I'd need to cut the existing bezel, and also to create the screen mount and protective housings.

Screen housing/mount with an unmodified bezel

Screen mount epoxied into the bezel, along with a small reinforcement

Test fitting the screen into the newly married housing/bezel

This solution worked rather beautifully. I also printed out some inserts for either side of the screen that housed 6 LEDs (R/L turn signal, check engine light, headlights, high-beams, and aux indicators). I wired everything up through a pair of deutsch connectors, and integrated them into the new wiring.

Instrument cluster together and functional

Interior

The interior hasn't changed much. But the wife did get me a new dash cover for my birthday this year. Since I needed to take the old severely cracked one off, I decided it would be a good time to sand and primer the dash to get it ready for paint in the near future.

Instrument cluster removed

Masked off and protected the interior

Sanded and ready for primer

Once everything was sanded down enough, I shot some flat black primer on to give it a consistent color

Primer has been applied

And then finally installed the new Dash pad to complete the look.

Dash put back together

Everything working properly

Tail Lights

The tail lights are the reason I own a 3d printer. When I saw that manufacturers were asking $400+ for plastic tail light lenses/housings... I simply couldn't do it. I could not pay $400+ for plastic that was manufactured 50 years ago. So I bought a 3d printer to make them myself. And then I bought another.... and another...

Creality Ender 5 Plus FDM printer and two Elegoo Saturn SLA printers

Anyway... one thing led to another and I re-created a set of tail lights that fit into the stock location.

First set of new tail lights

These lights were ok. They used a translucent orange filament for the lenses and simple black PLA for the housings. I realized that with my plan, I didn't need to have them this bulky... first off, I wasn't going to use incandescent bulbs anymore. So I went back and re-designed them again and came up with something much, much nicer.

First lens coming off the printer

First new LED housing printed

First LED housing pair complete

First pair wired up with deutsch connectors

First pair complete

Beautiful pattern in the lens

Paddle Shifters

The TCM of the 8L90e allows for the manual shifting via a paddle shifter setup. 

So I made a custom paddle shifter setup to use with the new steering wheel. I did not want to utilize any springs, so this paddle shifter uses neodymium to create an opposing force that completely replaces a spring. 

First iteration of the paddle shifter

Installed on the new steering wheel

Includes mounts for momentary buttons

I did break the shifter several times (shirt kept catching on it when doing the wiring under the dash), so I ended up printing out a completely new one from ASA filament, which is significantly stronger than the standard resin I had used for the first iteration.

newly printed from ASA