Dragon Revival

Oh I’m not really sure where I last left off here. I have been doing stuff slowly as I have time on the Dragon, without much rhyme or reason. My main concern right now is getting the car ready for paint, so there is a lot of prep work to do. Conversion parts are here for the motor, so I will start bolting that stuff together soon.

Front panels off for paint prep.

I also started getting rid of a little weight where the undercoating was really thick. The car has been hit driver side at some point in it’s life, so when they replaced the front driver quarter, they really laid the undercoating on thick.

Today while Wes and I were troubleshooting our next SPEC rental 944, Val was busy working on the hood. We pulled the front and side bracing off the underside in preparation for the motor. Normally the LSx motors require a 1/2″ spacer drop on the crossmember to clear the hood (throttle body in particular). By removing the un-needed bracing, I am hoping to clear the hood with minimal spacing. This allows me to eliminate having to do anything about the steering rack being lower causing bump steer. The hood will be pinned, instead of using a latch. She took quite a bit of weight off the underside of the hood, and we really didn’t lose any rigidity as we left the 90 degree bends at the edges. Here you can see the outline of where the bracing was.

Sanding out the old adhesive and paint.

Then it was time to strip the hood back to primer. It takes a heck of a lot of time to sand through paint.

And the finished product, ready for some primer and paint.

951DragonLS SwapLS1LSxPorscheRennsportKC