Mar 12 - More progress, wheels back, mock up steering

We've been waiting a VERY long time for my wheels to come back from the rim repair shop.  They're real (2003-2004) Lambo Murci 2 piece wheels, if you hadn't seen them before now. 

I had the shop powder my centers black for the Diablo SV look.  My God was that an ordeal.  I should have listened to my intuition on that.  I usually do.  But in this case, I let them stay (I should have done the work and only gave them my centers, not the whole wheel).  But I wanted them to clean the wheels up (which they never did).  Fix the air leaking on the valve stems by cleaning them up (maybe inserting some new o-rings?), using silicone grease (not sealant) on the original o-rings (or new ones, whatever).  Guess what got done?  *sigh*  Well, the guys there thought that the 2 piece wheels, where the two bolt together, had air leaking there.  Those bolts do not go through to the inside of the rim where the tire is.  I told them that.  They didn't believe me.  They put all manner of crap in those holes and over torqued the screws trying to get it all together.  WHAT A MESS!
I'm now paying Nate (who helps on the build and is in a lot of the pics where you can see someone) to go back and clean up their mess.  Oh and the valve stems that wouldn't hold air?  They do.  All I did was clean up the threads on the stems (they screw in) and put some silicone grease (from my swimming pool o-ring goodness) on the o-rings.  Tightened them down.  Put air in the tire.  It held over night at 30 PSI.  I ran it up to 39 PSI today.  I'll have Nate check it tomorrow, I'm sure it'll still be there in the morning.  :-)  It's really not hard, just got to know what you're doing with it.  :-)

Anyhow.  I like the look.  The Murci wheel with black centers are as nice I suspected they'd be.  And that's all that matters right?  That I am getting what I want.  It is my build after all, isn't it?  :-)

Steering mock up looks pretty good.  We used the bracket for the Fiero wheel and the f-body steering wheel/column.  I had to cut plastic out from around the steel to make room for the bracket to do it's job.  We made the mounting height work out right with some spacers and bolts from Lowe's.  So we set the mount location height as on the money as we could for what we need.  It come out well with the alignment (even tho this column/wheel isn't square with the interior), I've held the wheel and spun it in my hands like I'm driving it left and right, it doesn't bother me any.  It's not grossly off anyway.  But purist would be hollering from here on, about it.

I didn't hold the camera exactly center on the wheel, but you can see the gauges inside of the wheel just right when you're in the car.  I raised the point of view so you can see the double bubble better when you peek over the wheel to see the idiot light group.

I don't think I've posted up any pics of the steering rack brackets after they were painted and/or installed painted.  Anyhow, here they are.  I will need to brace them up with some extra metal to cross member tying them down from any twisting action.  So I think I'm just going to weld the brackets in.  No one is going to remove them in the future anyway.  You'll still be able to remove the rack if need be.  So why not?  I'll have that done within another week I'm sure.