Scanner Control Box Mounted

I had been trying for a long time now to decide on a good place to mount my Scanner control box from Brenon. I thought for a while I was going to have to lengthen the wires in order to get it to go anywhere that would be good places to secure the Scanner box but with a little playing around with the wires under the hood and taking up as much of the slack on the wire looms as possible I was able to get a little more wire inside under the dash area to play around with more.

As you can see I have mounted the Scanner control box to the underside of the cover plate I am still working on. Once I get the dash completely settled as to where it will sit properly and I have drilled in holes to screw the side wings onto the stock OEM dash then I can work on completing the underside cover plate more which is going to involve a little work with making a temporary cardboard form so I can fabricate the fibreglass to fit. But anyways, that's a whole different ball game, for now I'm happy that we have our Scanner control box location all sorted out.

Headlight Covers Repainting

I started painting the headlight covers since they had some light chipping along the front edges where the original white paint was starting to show through. I was going to take them right off and do both sides but then determined it would be just as easy to just mask them off from the rest of the car and prime and paint them in place.

First I needed to prep the surface of the covers by going over each one with scuff pad. I know a lot of people use the grey scuff pad for this but I find with the sand-able primer I can get away with using the red scuff pad, its a little more or a coarser grade but the primer fills in the surface really well.

Once all sanded or I should say scuffed up it was time to mask off the covers from the rest of the car. Normally I use plastic drop sheet material for my masking but for small stuff like this and considering that it was an under the hood kind of area news print is more than good enough. I'm actually using flyers which are a little thicker paper.

Once all masked off it was time to give each headlight cover a good cleaning with some isopropyl alcohol to clean up and grease and dust. Then a going over with a tac cloth.

Once the primer was dry it was time to paint. I let the paint fully dry over night before putting on a few coats of clear coat. I'll let that dry over night as well so that way the clear coat is good and set before the wet sanding.

They look pretty shiny already with the clear coat applied. They will look even shiner when they are eventually wet sanded and then polished.















With the hood open I took the time to paint the edged of the scanner bar a matt black so it does not stick out as much. I just used my fine brush and brushed on some model paint as it's just a small area and that paint is pretty durable. I may eventually make some kind of plastic covers for those end pieces just to make the ends look a little neater, I'll see what I come up with and what looks good.

Front End Nearing Completion

K.I.T.T.s front end is nearing completion. I still have a few things to do but as you can see it is getting closer and closer to being done. You know I was amazed going through my photographs the other day at just how far I have come along with this project. I mean for a guy with absolutely no prior automotive experience I feel I have done pretty darned good all things being considered. I am well on my way to achieving a life long dream of owning my very own Knight Rider car.

I took some of the rubber that was on the original GM flat hood that came stock with my '82 Trans Am and cut some to fit across the top of the scanner between the hood so it helps close up the small gap at the top of the scanner. The rubber also acts as a bit of cushion between the top of the scanner and the front of the hood.

Here is a shot of K.I.T.T. with his new Turbo Hood finally on and his scanner working.

You can see I still need to do something with those front ground effects, not yet sure if I am going to use trim fasteners to attach those to the underside of the front nose or if people just take them out. I'm still looking into that.

I think I figured out the issues I was having with how the air cleaner assembly was attached. My guess is that they must have done some kind of engine modification that bypasses most of what the air cleaners original function was as that small short hose was clearly NOT attached to the Carburetor, where it would have gone was sealed up with a short piece of rubber hose with a screw in the end. So I figured OK if it was working fine like that before why mess with something I don't understand I'll just attach the new shiny one in the same manor. I'll get someone with much more automotive skills than me to have a look at it later on when I can get a chance.

Turbo Hood Ready

Finally!! I have the Turbo Hood ready to go on the car. All the hardware is back mounted onto the hood, all cleaned up, repainted, new lift supports added that I picked up from eBay. I'm just going to let it sit for a day or so to let the paint fully cure and then I'm going to wrap bubble wrap around the edges with masking tape and cover the hood with a tarp and more bubble wrap for when it's transported to the garage. I just want to take a few precautions in order to help protect it from any potential mishaps along the way.

I'll be so happy when this is finally on the car. K.I.T.T. needs his hood in order to make him look more the part. ;) I still have a little polishing to do on the hood here and there, but that will be just as easy, if not easier on the car and out in the garage, hopefully better lighting too with the main garage door open. Dying to see how this looks now that the scanner is installed. I'm hoping it all fits well otherwise I'll have some tweaking to do.

Marine Speakers Enclosure W.I.P.

This is a work in progress of my enclosure for my 100 W Marine speakers that I'm planning to use with Brenon's LED scanner for the sound effects. So far I have just drilled a hole in the back of the PVC pipe and thread through 3 18 gauge wires for the speakers. I believe they are a mono setup but just in case I have a 3rd wire I can use for either a right or left channel. Once the speakers arrive I can.... or I should say, I should be able to mount them onto the ends of the pipe after wiring them up. If all goes well I'll work out a mounting bracket and mount this assembly under the front nose support plate.

My other thought is that this speaker arrangement could work very well for K.I.T.T.'s "Voice Projection" unit... just a thought depending on how they work out. Once the speakers are mounted my plan is to re hook up the battery and test out all of my wiring.... I'm hoping I have everything wired up correctly.... maybe I should have a water hose close by just in case lol ;)

June General Updates

Some general updates for stuff I have been working on over the last several weeks just in case you were beginning to think that I have been slacking.  I patched up the antenna hole in the fender with some metal screen patch and some Bondo. I accidentally stuck my finger in it before it had a chance to fully cure so I had to skim it over with a little extra Bondo once the first application had fully cured. Primed and painted it. It just need some wet sanding when the paint has had a chance to cure. Maybe another light coat of paint after the wet sanding, I'll see where I'm at when that is done. Once wet sanded and eventually clear coated you will never know that there ever was an antenna hole in the fender.

I have decided that the whole car does not need to be painted just re-touched up here and there. I have found that the Duplicolor Universal Black seems to be a perfect match for the nice deep rich black currently on the car so I might as well just touch up where needed as it's mostly a few minor rust spots along weather stripping and a few paint chips here and there. I did have to re-do most of the rear spoiler, mostly just a few paint chips along the edges but I did discover that the underside of the spoiler was given the same kind of paint job treatment as the rear taillights compartment, just not cleaned up very well so the paint did not adhere very well to the original paint surface.

I have finally started to get the first few coats of paint on the front nose. I'm doing it with Duplicolor Universal Black in the spray cans and just wet sanding out any paint runs with 1000 grit wet dry sandpaper. .. So far it's turning out very well considering the use of spray cans... I wish Duplicolor made the Universal Black in a spray gun for but for some twisted reason they don't. .. Oh well.... I can use spray cans pretty good and I do have the clear coat for my spray guns so that is what really maters.... heck half the time you still end up doing a little wet sanding and polishing out rough spots anyways. 

I gave the nose a second coat of paint after wet sanding some of the paint runs and rough spots off tomorrow if all goes well after some more wet sanding I may be able to clear coat it and then let it sit for a full day before doing any wet sanding and polishing of the clear coat layer... if that goes well then I should be able to put the front nose on the car.

I got word From Brenon Fullbright that my scanner is done and has been shipped so the timing could not have been any more perfect. Can't wait to see Brenon's awesome work. I have seen other scanners he has done for other Knight Rider builders and they look just absolutely AMAZING!! I'm so stoked.

Progress Updates

With the warmer weather slowly approaching I've been taking advantage of as many of the warmest days as possible. it's still too cold to do any priming and painting on the car in the garage and it being out of season still I have had no luck finding a simple box fan that I can use as an exhaust fan for my back work room in the house to rig up a temporary paint booth to paint the hood and other small parts that I should have been able to do over the winter months. It's amazing how something as simple as a box fan can slow up the work. Grrrr...

Anyways Like I say I have been doing as much as I can with what I have. I've found some interesting things on the car like this odd little switch or something on the hatch back, the switch appears to be disconnected and there is a loose wire that I'll need to track down.

Here are a couple of pictures of the weird little switch on the back of the hatchback located on the drivers side near the weather stripping, as you can see it is clearly disconnected, perhaps it was part of hatch open indicator light or alarm or something??

I also need to figure out a good method to re-stick the rear defroster wire back onto the hatchback glass.

After the removal of the rear stock bumper I cleaned up the rear of the car a little more, it still has a good deal of cleanup to be done before I can sand it down and prime and paint it. I did end up needing to take out the plastic wire clips that hold the wires for the rear tail light bulbs. Those plastic clips were pretty brittle and broke trying to get them out so they will need to be replaced with new ones.

The flat hood on the car has been removed. I still need to take off the hood struts or supports as they are in much better shape than the ones that were on the Turbo Hood from the parts car. I can install the struts on the correct hood once the hood is finally painted. All I need is that blasted box fan!!

You can see here the car with the flat hood removed. It's one of those jobs that is best done with a helping hand as the steel hood is pretty heavy and a bit awkward removing by yourself, I did it but it was a bit of a pain in the butt doing it by myself.

You can also see that I still need to fix up the fibreglass front nose, prime and paint it. Also still waiting for the Scanner I ordered from Lectric Enterprises. Once I get that I can install the scanner into K.I.T.T.'s front nose.

I also need to relocate the turn signals into the front nose and add the fog lights.

I also need to still work on the dash electronics, I have most of it done, I just need some PANP switches, count down indicators, and add the speed sensor from Cyberdyn, .... lots of just little things but they add up lol ;)