Here comes the Judge, my 69 GTO

quietsailor · 06-01-2023 02:09AM

Mrs_XB is such a brilliant helper it'll definitely be worth having her seal of approval on the car

Daved_XB · 08-01-2023 12:15AM

Despite it being over 30 deg yesterday I decided to put up with the extreme heat in the garage & rip the interior out of the car

I figured that the 54 year old sound deadening fitted by Pontiac back in the day was probably a bit shite... I was right, it's so brittle it just crumbled as I touched it

In went my shiny new dynamat flooring, hopefully this will help with come of the floor vibration & help keep Mrs_XB on side

Daved_XB · 24-01-2023 12:33AM

I was out driving the other day & a mate was following me & he told me that my rear lights where not working correctly at all, so I've replaced the rear loom now & also fitted new earth straps as lets face it nearly all electrical/light issues on old cars are an earth issue. Added all new bulbs for reasons.

Daved_XB · 28-03-2023 04:27AM

I'm not happy with the braking performance of the car, considering the upgraded disks & callipers I expected more. Now it's not dangerous, the brakes work fine but they take a lot of effort to use & as I said don't pull the car up as fast as I want.

As it feels like I need to use more leg power than I should & it feels like the assistance drops off after the first few mm of pedal travel. I figured that the cam profile is obviously limiting the amount of vacuum being produced, I hooked up a vac gauge & yes, the can produces 3/5's of 5/8's of F-All vacuum at idle... so this is my issue, I'm effectively running manual brakes as there is no vac assist coming from the engine due to the intake/exhaust overlap from the cam grind profile.

I've had this before in cars & the normal go to fix is to simple plumb in a vac tank that will store vacuum from the engine for the brake booster to draw from... I've done this before & I don't want to just do that again.

I actually have somewhere in the shed an electric vacuum pump from a hybrid car to supply the constant vacuum as they clearly have an issue with ICE supplied vacuum from time to time, I tossed around the idea of installing that in the engine bay.

But I've always wanted to play with a hydroboost setup so I figured this was the time to do that, in a nut shell a hydroboost setup is a hydraulic system that is plumbed into your power steering setup & it uses the hydraulic pressure from that system to provide the brake boost when needed.

It'll be interesting to see just how "bolt in" the 1969 GTO Bolt In kit ends up being....

Daved_XB · 05-09-2023 12:15PM

I've just been driving this car & loving it, but it's time to do some more small jobs to her.... after all a project is never finished. I've had some fun chasing a good tune on the carb so I've decided that I need to know how it's running from an AFR point of view. To that end I'm going to fit an senser to the exhaust so I can see exactly how lean or rich she's running.

Now that I have the gauge out of the box, I'm not happy with the style of the face of it... I don't think I can install it next to the other gauges, I don't think it would look good here.

Maybe I can install it further under the dash so it can't really be seen unless you're actually looking for it?

Or I guess I could install it in the glove box so that it's hidden unless I want to open the glove box & look at it when tuning, I mean in theory once tuned I shouldn't need to be looking at the gauge constantly like I would with say the oil pressure gauge

The other option I guess... is I can get another gauge, this time get the same brand & style as to the other gauges I have already

Krombopulos Michael · 05-09-2023 12:20PM

if the cost isnt too much, i'd get the replacement gauge in the same style as you would be much happier with that. Otherwise, further under the dash would be my option. I'd avoid the glovebox as do you really want to be cutting into it for a gauge?.

Daved_XB · 06-09-2023 05:57AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071688#Comment_121071688

The inner plastic liner of the glovebox is already cracked & chipped so it's not big a deal I don't think to put a hole in it for the wiring.

Daved_XB · 06-09-2023 06:25AM

Ok, so a while back I bought a restored His n' Her Hurst shifter that would have been an option for this car... it came with a cheap black shift knob

I finally got around to getting myself a genuine Hurst shift knob.... don't ask what that cost, it doesn't matter as I didn't want to eat this week anyway

It's so worth it... the white really pops in the cabin... sometimes it's the little details

Daved_XB · 25-10-2024 03:48AM

Right, well I never did get around to installing that Air/fuel sensor & gauge in the car & I never could find a carb tune that did it all. The engine needs so much fuel at WOT that the only safe option is to have her running rich at idle & when in traffic & that just fouls plugs & causes misfires like no ones business.

To this end I've decided to turn to the dark side of EFI. I've always liked the ideal of the Holley Sniper EFI system but I've never liked the bland black box shape of the it

But now they make a shiny Holley Carb shaped Sniper EFI unit & I really like the fact that it just like a carb & I really like that & I think it won't look too out of place in the engine bay.

It looks like there is a LOT of wiring but reading the destructions they give you looms with every possible wiring option in them & I won't need to wire all of the wires in is my belief based on my very quick read through.

They make a Bluetooth option for these now where you don't get the little in car screen & you use an App on your phone for tuning & gauge monitoring but think I'd rather just have the little dedicated screen in the car.

I still have the Hydraboost breaking setup to install too.. so I'll need to find a window of time between working on the XE Racecar replica & the XB & the Challenger oh & the GT-Four to install these two upgrades to the GTO. I must be mental...

Daved_XB · 29-09-2025 05:25AM

Ok, so this car has been close to a daily for me this year & I've been following the trend of "don't get it right, just get it running" so whilst I've had a list of jobs I wanted to do I've been putting off doing any of them as I didn't want to pull the car off the road unless the job in question made the car undrivable. Well that day came this Sunday just gone.

I fired the car up to move it & it was running horribly & the smell of fuel was extreme... well got out of the car & saw fuel just pissing out from under the car, the braided fuel lines are wrapped in protective heat wrap as they pass by the exhaust so I can't see where this leak may be, but it was so sudden coming on that I think a line must of cracked. None of the AN fittings I can see are leaking.

Guess this moves the job of fitting the Holley Sniper EFI right to the top of the list now as I have to get the car on the lift & potentially remove & inspect all the fuel lines & fittings anyway so swapping the carb out will be a small addition to that anyway.

Will probably have another go at fixing the trans leak too as that's getting pretty bad now.

Gremlinertia · 29-09-2025 08:02AM

Yikes you were not joking about it pissing out

Daved_XB · 29-09-2025 11:52AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123860344#Comment_123860344

Nope, I was not… made me happy that I have so many fire extinguishers from rallying as they won't pass scrutineering after 2 years so every car has at least one & the shed has a few too… nothing scarier than fuel leaking around a hot car/shed.

Daved_XB · 31-10-2025 07:30AM

Went looking got my fuel leak, since I couldn't start the car for risk of burning it & the shed to the ground I was really happy that I'd made that boat winch tool up for skull dragging cars into the hoist

Couldn't see where the leak was coming from with the lines in place, all I could see was the heat sock getting soaked

With the lines disconnected & inspected, couldn't see a smoking gun as it where, so I had a spare fuel reg so I hooked them to that with the line for the feed to the carb blocked off so I could build fuel pressure from the pump to make it easier to see the leak.

Turned out to be a crack in the fitting for the return line... this will make it an easy fit at least, but I've no idea how this happened as I haven't touched that fitting after the day I installed the line in the car which was 4 years ago maybe...

Daved_XB · 14-04-2026 04:36AM

I've been very lazy updating this thread, in some ways simply because this car has been fighting me hard & I was very much over it for a bit... but time to update as to where we are at

I'll cut long story short for the first bit... I replaced the fittings & the line that had leaked, fitted the new EFI fuel pressure regulator

Then I went to fit up the new Holly EFI unit & that's when I realised that the fittings that join the fuel rail to the EFI body don't work with the original fittings I had for the Holly carb, odd that Holly went that way but that stopped play & I needed to order new fittings to allow the install to happen.

Got it all installed when the new parts rocked up, plumbed it all in & went to test all the fuel line plumbing with the new fitting in

Did it all work.... did it ****, fuel pissed out of the back of the EFI body & all over the back of the engine... pulled it back off to investigate & found one of the O-rings that seals the injector was badly torn & leaked really badly... not sure how that passed QA, I would have assumed that Holley would have pressure tested the unit before shipping

Waited another week to get new O-rings ordered & shipped as none of the O-Rings in my generic pack of random ones fitted

Right with that all fixed & reassembled it all went fine right... **** no.... fuel pissed out all over the place... this time from the return line right down at the fuel tank end... so I dropped the tank & ripped out all of the old line

Daved_XB · 14-04-2026 04:58AM

Talking to some speed shops & people who smarter than I (that's a big pool to draw from) the only thing we can think off is that the small 10% or less amount of ethanol in the fuel has slowly eaten the rubber in the fuel lines as there are no cracks or kinks anywhere it's just leaking out of the side of the rubber... so all new lines made with the ethanol safe Teflon lining has been used.

I've also wrapped all the lines in this tough rubber hydraulic hose line protection that they use on the lines on JCB's etc

Came up with a better way to cut braided lines too, instead of wrapping with electrical tape that always starts to unravel with the heat.. I used heat shrink to hold the end tight to make it easy to install the fitting end

Right so with all of that done it all worked fine right..... it all worked fine right..... right..... **** no!!!!!

The 50+ year old wiring decided that running such fancy stuff like EFI wasn't something it was interested in so after the first fire up (which seemed to be going well) the smoke escaped from the old fuse block & that was all she wrote... did lots of testing & asked folks in GTO forums etc & all the advice was the same... it's worse than that it's dead Dave... go source another fuse block/loom from a wreakers yard they all said... no GTO's or similar in wreckers here in Aus... plus I don't want to replace 50+ year old wiring with 50+ year old wiring...

so I ordered a full bumper to bumper new modernised loom for the car

Now, removing the dash & fully rewiring this car will be a big job so I've opted to not start that task yet now until the XB is finished & running then I'll focus on this....

Get a classic muscle car they said.... it'll be fun they said

Daved_XB · 14-04-2026 05:56AM

Before throwing a cover of it & walking away, decided to do one more job... the trans pan has been leaking forever & I was given some advice on a different type of sealant to run on the gasket by a trans shop to sort my issue... so the old pan was going off & going in the bin as the kids say... well not really got cleaned & stored away in case it can be used somewhere else later.

Have opted for a deep pan this time because reasons

This needs the extension tube for the filter to push it down to the bottom of the new pan

This pan has a location for the temp sender, so I've moved mine from the T fitting I'd installed in the trans cooler out line & now have it reading direct from the fluid in the pan