Get a airdam on it?
Get a airdam on it?
In reply to Professor_Brap :
Let's not get carried away.
It's on my "optional" list right now. Once I get the brake controller and the wheel bearings on the motorhome squared away, I'll circle back to that.
It's not a modification to the car, but I did work out a way to ease the pain of working the clutch with my broken toe. The plan was to throw some wood on the table saw and shave off something a few mm thick and then use the scroll saw to make it fit my shoe. As I was setting up the saw though, I saw one of these sitting on the work table:
I had a couple of these that I got for something like $0.98 each at LowAcDepArds and the handle is pretty sturdy. Cramming that into my shoe so that the handle is under the toe actually gives a surprising amount of support so that each shift is only mildly painful instead of excruciating. I may add some Velcro or medical tape to keep everything where I want it, but I'm pleasantly surprised.
Lots of good news with a little dribble of bad news from the Great Lakes National Tour event over the weekend. As far as how the car was running on course, I could not be happier. Power is good, boost is solid, temps stayed down (as long as I remembered to run the cooling fans...), and there were no running issues at all. Off course is a little different. The lack of an IAC plus a couple mm of slack in the throttle cable makes coming off idle tricky so it stalls a lot. And after each run, my power steering fluid was boiling over and burning off on the manifold. It was actually a little bit funny because I had about 8 people run over and helpfully tell me that my car was smoking (seeing as the smoke was significant and coming from the cowl and right into the windshield, I don't know why they thought I didn't already know that...). Each time I just shrugged and said "yeah, she does that" and I think many were taken aback at my nonchalant attitude. But then, I have a history with cars and fires, so...
In further good news, the car managed a 3rd place finish out of a field of 17 cars. No idea how it would have been overall because the MF group got screwed out of our final run by lightning. Obviously our times were way faster than everyone else since we only had 8 runs compared to 9. If I could learn how to drive, the car could have placed second, but I was just a mess in the afternoon course for some reason.
The bad news. First off, I really need to learn how to drive. The car has the power and the handling to place higher and go faster. In the right hands, I think the car had another 1-1.5 sec per run in it at least. Second, when the motor mounts broke before, I think the threads got torn out of the block on the upper rear bolt on the passenger-side mount bracket. The bolt threads in but won't get tight and then just works its way out in the span of a single run. There wasn't much to do about it at the time, but I'm going to try to pull the bolt out and re-tap it at the same thread pitch. If that doesn't work, I'll try an oversize pitch tap and bolt. If THAT doesn't work, I'll drill it out to the next size up and tap it.
Next problem is the power steering fluid. I can solve a couple problems at once if I relocate the reservoir - the pre-heating of the fluid by the exhaust turbofold as well as the funky stretching of the hoses. It also appears that the 2gn pump is a drop-in and is better mechanically than the 1gn one, so that's also on the table. The Mishimoto has a loop for an ATX fluid cooler, so I could use that for the PS fluid as well. Or I could use that for engine oil. We shall see.
I also discovered that when I was putting in the suspension (I guess?) I managed to tear the outer boots on the axles. I reached out to A1CVTech and they want pictures of the axles to be able to sell me some new boots.
Finally, the defroster vent really needs to be fixed. It only blows on the passenger side which meant that during my run in the rain I was actually putting my head out the window to be able to see. Not the best situation.
Next event is going to be July 20th and I also have to have Dark Helmet modified a bit before then to look a little more authentic, so work on the car is going to have to be kept to a bare minimum. I will probably just put in some sort of ghetto drip tray to direct the PS fluid away from the manifold and then take care of the engine mount bolt. I patched up the boots and it seems to be holding for now so if I can change them, great, if not I'll just have to roll with it.
Oh. And my broken toe is absolutely throbbing at this point.
Congrats on the 3rd place finish!
I used a piece of aluminum as a drip tray/heat shield on the PS reservoir. Fit to the studs that hold the reservoir to the head, and a 90 degree bend. It worked okay, but I still think the 2g pump swap (not a perfect bolt in, but close) is a better long term solution. If you end up needing any various fluid coolers, I think there are two or three stashed in my garage taking up space.
Relevant to discussions in the motorhome over the weekend.
Hyatt was intoning that your car was exhibiting signs of excessive fluid leakage after you'd come in from a run and park in grid with a plume of smoke from underhood like you were signaling the neighboring tribes, and that per safety regs it should be excluded from competition. I, likewise, intoned that it always did that and it ain't ever caught fire yet, and anyway that wasn't my decision to make, so sitting right there in my chair was my highest priority.
Now mind you, I'm not against the idea of preventing future conflagration. I'm all for it, to be honest. It makes for less paperwork, and the other people in MF would be upset if they'd forgotten their bratwurts and marshmallows that day.
wae said:I was supposed to take advantage of our office's "summer hours" and spend Friday working on the car, but instead I went to Dayton to drop a log on my toe and break it. My toe, not the log. The log was fine.
You had to come all the way up here to break your toe? Surely you could have broken it in NKY. Also, I want to hear more about Dark Helmet. (ComiCon?)
In reply to Knurled. :
You just sucked one hour of my life away. I knew there was something I needed to watch and that was it!
If it was going to cause anyone serious heartburn, I probably could have had a tinfoil drip shield whipped up in a few minutes to direct the flow away from the manifold. I guess I've just desensitized myself to burning things under the hood over the years but I can see how someone that's used to nicer things might get a little concerned. It's definitely something that is going to get fixed sooner rather than later, though. If nothing else, I'm getting a little tired of having to top off the PS fluid after every event!
Jerry said:wae said:I was supposed to take advantage of our office's "summer hours" and spend Friday working on the car, but instead I went to Dayton to drop a log on my toe and break it. My toe, not the log. The log was fine.
You had to come all the way up here to break your toe? Surely you could have broken it in NKY. Also, I want to hear more about Dark Helmet. (ComiCon?)
Some people do medical travel, some do adventure travel, I do injury travel. Causing nauseating pain in fun and exotic locations. And Dayton.
The Dark Helmet update needs to be ready for GenCon in August and will then go on to DragonCon in Atlanta as well as probably make another appearance at Cindy's Comic Expo:
It turns out that we have a friend who (unbeknownst to us but knownst to him) already had a Spaceball costume. I need to cut off the flare at the bottom and lay new glass to bring it lower and tighten up the shape. And I'll probably re-re-do the face mask.
Work performed on car so far is approximately zero. I've verified that I have the correct tap size for the motor mount bolt and also verified that with the motor mount in place on the engine, there's pretty much no way that I'm going to be able to get the tap to the threads. The upside, however, is that if I support the engine from the bottom and then take the whole motor mount apparatus off the car, I'll have the room that I need to manipulate the tap. And if I need to drill it out and re-tap it to a slightly larger size, I'll also have room to get a right-angle drill in there. That means I don't need to completely separate the engine from the car and/or risk damaging the other mounts to raise and lower the engine to be able to get to the bolt hole.
What I have done with the car, however, is drive it to the office yesterday. The cooling system worked perfectly in 90 degree rush-hour heat although I have definitely lost enough power steering fluid for it to be a bit of a problem, so I need to address that. Also, I have a small airdam right now since the panel that I taped up to go under the intercooler and parallel to the ground lost its sticky and flopped down. Other than that (and being hotter than hell inside - even with both windows open at 60mph, there's just no airflow!), the trip to and from the office was problem-free.
That car is a complete bastard though. 40mph, third gear, uphill, dry pavement. Floor the throttle, boost gauge goes positive, and both front wheels break traction while your brains go into your feet. All the while making all sorts of hissing and whistling sounds. There's also a little spot on the throttle where it's putting in just enough fuel to not stop engine braking when you're going downhill, but it will make the exhaust crackle and pop. I could probably tune that out, but I will never tune that out. 
In reply to wae :
I miss my turbo neons sometimes. My SOHC turbo car was almost identical in its manors.
Update time! I've spent most of my time here working on the helmet and that's coming along nicely. Tonight, however, I laid down a couple layers of glass and then brought the car in.
First things first, I am officially renaming The Workshop to Toiletbird Industries. I present our mascot:
Damn did that stink!
Anyway, tonight here at Toiletbird I got the motor mount pulled off and made a discovery:
That is the nut I welded to a bracket to take the place of the dogear that got ripped out of the block. It's hard to see in that picture, but that weld has mostly failed, so really there was only one bolt holding the right side of the engine in. I was considering just sayi g the heck with it and running it this weekend without trying to fix that one bolt. Glad I didn't!
I'll pull that off and weld it back up, no big deal.
The original problem child is coming along nicely though. The bolt was kind of ugly:
That bolt only goes into the block 9 threads deep, so I've been running the tap to a little past that. It's not bottoming out but it is getting easier each time and pulling out more metal bits. So far so good, I'm going to try bolting up the mount plate to see if that bolt snugs up and then I'll call it a night.
Ah, so actually because of the way the bracket is shaped, this bolt only goes in 5 or 6 threads and while the bolt will snug up nicely without the bracket, when the bracket is in place the first few threads on the block are just destroyed, so no joy. Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can source a slightly longer m10x1.50 bolt so that I can bypass the thrashed threads and bite into the ones that are still good. If that doesn't work out, then I may try to modify the bracket to countersink the bolt more.
Menards came through with a grade 10.9 M10x1.50 bolt in a 110mm length. That should get me the same amount of thread engagement -or maybe more. I've also welded the other bracket back up. It ain't pretty, but it should get the job done.
Time to head back over to Toiletbird Industries and get everything buttoned up.
The 110mm bolt snugs up perfectly.
I ran the tap through the newly repaired bracket a couple time just to clean everything up and then went ahead and bolted everything back together.
Tires are switched and everything is ready to roll. Later this evening, I'll pick up the trailer and get the car loaded up but otherwise everything is ready to roll.
Hahahahaha! Ready to roll.
First, the right light assembly on the trailer was completely dark. So I had to fix that.
Then, I noticed that coolant was pooling under the car. The hose clamp on the upper hose had failed. So I fixed that.
Next, I barely touched the positive battery terminal and the cable end broke apart in my hand.
I made it to the FLAPS about 5 minutes before closing time.
But now it's on the trailer. Oy
I'm starting to wonder if maybe the power steering was overfilled because I completely forgot to do anything about it and there wasn't any smoking or other strange fire-adjacent behaviors from the car yesterday. The only change was that the power steering belt was pretty loose and when I put the motor mount back in, I got the belt tight. I can't see how a loose belt could have caused the fluid to boil and that's the only thing that changed with the power steering system.
Other good news is that despite a small run group and scorching temperatures, the temp gauge was rock solid all day even without the garden sprayer. We had some good conversations about mounting a fluid tank in the trunk and some sprayers in front of the radiator with a MS-controlled switch to mist the system at a certain temperature, but I don't think it needs it at this point. The real test would be taking a co-driver to see what hot-lapping it would do.
Oh, and the other other positive thing (heh) is that I didn't have any problems starting the car at all. That positive terminal must have been damaged for a while because it wasn't unusual that I would have to go around and basically touch the positive cable to get the car to start.
That's a really good thing because I couldn't get the thing to idle for nothing in the later parts of the day. I don't know if it was related to the heat and MS trying to pull too much fuel out to compensate for the heat or what, but it was pretty annoying. When it cools down a bit outside, I'm going to go see if it idles okay. If it does, then it's probably tuneable. If it still acts up, then I've got something broken in there somewhere.
In reply to wae :
I toyed with the radiator sprayer idea too. Besides lack of ambition, the reason I didn't do it is because on days where you'd really need it, it's very dusty. You'd cake the radiator with mud, which is no good at all. At least when you spray it down in grid, the water has a fighting chance of evaporating before you go out into the dust bowl.
Points event 6 was yesterday and I tried running it as a two-driver car for the first time since the new engine. Good news is that as long as the cooling fans were turned on, it was able to hot lap with no temperature problems at all. It ran a little hot but not too hot - definitely in the range of acceptable. It was also pretty cool to be able to see and hear the car from the outside. I had no idea it was that percussive!
During my last run of the morning session, though, I started smelling coolant and then the windshield started getting sprayed upon. Right after that I lost power steering, but I kept an eye on the temp gauge and completed the run with a great time and no overheating. Turns out that the power steering belt was found in turn 4 and when I pulled the hood, one of the sections of upper radiator hose had come loose and the hose clamp was missing. No big deal, right? I bummed a new hose clamp and got it hooked up and then put the belt back on. While I was doing that someone else pointed this out to me:
Motor mount bracket. Broken. Again. I think that's the third time if I'm counting right.
I really think that the main source of my issue is that the motor is out of place. In order to get the right side mount installed, I need to put a significant amount of force on the engine to line it up and I think that having it pre-loaded that much is just causing problems. Parked in the paddock next to me was John Moore of Moorespeed and he's put together some pretty serious drag racing Neons and has some experience with 1gn SRT swaps as well as a motor mount that should be better than using the stock one. He also gave me some ideas around some front-to-back bracing to put on the underside of the engine that would tie the bobble strut to the core support with attachments to the bellhousing.
Right now, I have to get back to the Dark Helmet helmet (again, again) as well as make some repairs to the Scissor Hands gloves. But my plan right now is to get the Moorespeed mount, completely unbolt the motor, replace the busted mount bits on the engine again, and then try to mount the engine with only the trans mount and the right side mounts. If those will bolt up nicely, then I can put the bobble and the torque struts back into place and adjust them properly. And then I can look at the front-to-back bracing and maybe use that to also incorporate a skidplate.
Yesterday was a wild ride while it lasted. Thanks again for letting me co-drive. The car is completely insane.
Haha! I'm glad you enjoyed it! Sorry again that you only got half your runs. Other than the two obvious things (better motor mounts and tune it to idle properly), any feedback on how it drives/areas to improve?
Won't believe what I saw yesterday.
A CRX.
Same Bridgestone Potenza ChunkyMuds.
In reply to Knurled. :
Oooh! It's even an HF trim! As much as I love displacing my fillings with teh Neon, I really miss the old CRX.
Okay, I was totally putting off getting motor mount situation squared away, and I'm still not sure it'll be ready in time for the next event, but:
I finally had a chance to call Jon earlier this week and he shipped out this beauty for only the cost of the shipping. I offered to pay for it and he told me he wanted to see if I could break it. Challenge accepted!
My wrenching time between now and then is going to be a bit limited, though. I've got to finish getting this S10 engine squared away first, and then I'm going to be out of town most of next week, not getting back in until 4pm on Friday. Plus there's apparently a wedding of some sort that might or might not be this weekend so I've got to figure that out, too. I also need a new mount bracket to go onto the engine, but I've heard that the regular steel bracket can work for this instead of using the aluminium Stratus bit. Time to do some more research!
Yep. It's pretty broken. All the bolts are bent and the stratus mount is pretty well destroyed.
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