lasater. Question for you. Are you going to mount stock style seats in the stock location ? Or, are you going with some different seats.

 

I'm going with standard transmission SS seats and front door panels.

 

I am starting to see the Devil in this car! Zoom Zoom!

 

The reason for asking about the seats. When I 1st got my SS there were a lot of comments that the factory SS seats seemed to be mounted a little too high. Taller SS drivers would find there was virtually no headroom.
I'm 5'10 and it even bugged me. I did a slight seat bar mod on my drivers side and dropped the back mount about 1.5" .
Here's the seat bar mod I did from some L bar stock.


Just telling you this because with your vast skills, you may want to consider altering those seat mounts. I wasn't skilled enough to do anything about the front "hook' location but I'm sure you could.
Just something for you to think about.

 

I believe those seats came from my SS Panel. You bought them from Dr. Phil ,right? He replaced them with a pair with armrest from an automatic trans. car. Keep up the good work Lasater... john

 

If I had more money and more time; and maybe skills too, I would love to build something like this. Great progress!

 

Since this is the first and only V8 HHR that will have catalytic converters on it I ran into a space problem recently. Cats must go in a pretty precise location from the engine so there is not much lee-way on their locations. This area is pretty low to start with and without making some room, I'm afraid the cats would hit the street. To fix this I had to remove the area directly behind where the rear bolt on the A-arms threads into the body. As you can imagine, this is an area that needs to be super strong. I cut out 2 layers of 10 guage steel and I'm replacing it with 2 layers of welded in 1/8" plate. About half way thru the passenger side I ran out of welding wire. I can't get any more welding wire till Monday so here is where I stop for now. Here are a couple of pictures of the area in it's stock form and where I am now just 1 of the 2 layers welded in.

 

Progress has it's own pace, I have found when I have to wait for supplies it gives me time to review and think and rethink pieces of the puzzle , but you have every nook and cranny figured out, rock on , rock on!

 

As I said before FANTASTIC job, Thanks for the photo updates can not wait till it is finished and see the #s on the track :)

 

It's been a while,since I have been here and I wanted to come by and check out the progress.... Wow! You are a patient and persistent individual. I can't belive the amount of engineering and fabrication you have put in to this project. When I saw the roof cut off at the bottom of the pillers I developed a tremendous respect for you taking on this project. I plan on dropping by more often to check out the progress.

Good luck and I can't wait to see that HHR run with that LS in there.