Such a nice build. Never heard of this hill climb. After some research this is going on my list for next year. Especially my festiva will be 30 years
Such a nice build. Never heard of this hill climb. After some research this is going on my list for next year. Especially my festiva will be 30 years
Hill climb results. Looks like out of the morning sessions I was P2, albeit with 6 runs vs 3 for the cars around me but my 6th to their 3rd was at the same time/conditions. I'm still surprised that hung on for 6th at the end of the day. The Datsun listed ahead of me was actually a backup car instead, early 2000s 911 I believe.
On another note we have a crisis averted. On the way home the EFI went lean and needed fuel added to maintain at cruising speeds. Full throttle seemed ok but not perfect. Yesterday while checking things of I found one injector to be intermittent and barely kicking. After a long time on hold with Holley they figured it was either the connector or injector itself. So I took the rear "bowl" off and sure enough after removing the plug one pin was bent like it hadn't been lined up properly. Straitened that out and the injector is working again. Big difference right away in how the car ran so now I'm wondering if I was down on power during the hill climb too. Oh well, I'm glad I'm not in a panicked hurry to be ready for GridLife at Heartland Motorsports Park in a week and a half.
GridLife season finale at Heartland Motorsports Park was the last event I had planned this year. With winter is coming mode going on around here there wasn't much time for any changes to the car. Just a look over and adding a few more items to the off season list.
Friday morning I go out for first session and right away notice the brakes are hanging up intermittently. After coming back in and suspecting the calipers like before I went to bleed them a bit. Soon as the first stroke to the floor happened the pedal just stayed there, couldn't pull it up either. Turns out the clutch pedal pivot bolt had backed out and was hanging up the brake pedal in an engaged position. After some contortionist moves I was able to get the bolt back in and double nut it this time. I had a lock nut but I guess 5 years of clutch operation caused it to come loose.
Second session I'm p3 in group D due to only doing one lap with the brakes partially engaged. After a banker lap I backed way off until the Sunday Cupers caught up then put in a flyer to pick up 10 seconds and set a new PB by 1.7 only to have the shift knob snap off going into T3 where braking+missed shift+turn in+ wondering where the heck the knob just flew off to = going wide and a ride through the grass. Which just so happened to be when the livestream cameras were pointed at me...
I considered this an easy fix and used the grinder to shape the shift lever and use a die to cut threads lower. Couldn't reinstall the center console like this but I didn't care.
This proved only temporary as a lap and half into session 3 it broke again going into T10 but this time I got the shift completed and finished the lap for another improvement. At this point I need a solid fix and with some angle iron and a bolt. I borrowed a welder from ASM (twice now that's saved my weekend) and put together a very ugly but functional shift lever.
Saturday was a day of improvement and evening session I ran my fastest lap of the weekend: 1:47.704 for a 3.6 second improvement over last year! The biggest change is how easy the car was to drive here with the suspension changes after struggling all weekend last year. I was also able to scale the car for a comparison to last year. Give or take a gallon of gas the car is 140lbs lighter coming in at 3689 this year vs 3828 last year at full tank-1 session with me in it. Almost all of the weight came off the front of the car.
This weekend was also the first time my family has shown up for one of my race events in the 4 years I've been doing this. It was nice to have them there and see what it it's about, even if they don't exactly get it.
Asked very nicely to jump into an HPDE session and take my niece for a ride. She was pretty quiet...I suspect like when Alayne first rode with, she didn't know what to expect and assumed everything was fine. Says it was fun, and as soon as we were back to pits was asking about working on that car at her dad's house!
Sunday the weather was a lot different and I probably partied too much Saturday night to be able to go any faster. Could run within a few tenths but that was it. Another great weekend at the track!
Some pictures from Rob Wilkinson:
Its been a while since I posted here but things have been happening. The car itself has largely sat while getting prepared for winter...it has nicely held off for a while. Big progress has been FINALLY getting the new engine put together. Its been 2 years of collecting parts now...a lot of which was waiting for there to be parts in stock!
Along the way I recorded some videos that may appeal to the DIY engine assembler and the care that should be taken during assembly for the best possible way to get the job done right. I literally did this in my basement, next to the bar. The videos came out kinda long but I trimmed as much as felt I could without cutting out important info. Surprisingly they're doing better than any of my other videos by a good margin.
Going to the Dyno!
This was a great day of fun and nervousness for me. Been over 6 years since I put an engine I built on the dyno and I had forgotten how much it gives you the butterflies. It made the power I expected from it and ran well right from the start. Not all was perfect though as we had to work through some EFI issues, not all were taken care of and since I've made a list of things to test/check next go round. Even tried out running some E85 to see how it went and it was some pretty solid torque gains and pulled the peaks a few hundred rpm lower.
Pump 91
E85
Comparison Graph
Despite running into a major problem at the end of day I'm still very happy with the outcome. I have a proven power plant that just needs some minor tweaks to be reliable and provide and extra 100HP and 1K rpm over the current engine. Diagnosis of the aftermath coming soon.
Winter build season has begun.
One thing I wasnted to get knocked out was a quick release steering wheel hub. This is important for safety as I find it near impossible to get out of the car unless I can tilt the column up or slide the seat back from my driving position.
This was hardly a bolt on affair since the release hub was smaller than the column and that made it very hard to actually use. I had to fabricate a ring to enlarge the release mechanism and make it functional.
I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. Blends in ok and is very easy to release now. Also figured out I could swap some parts around and space it out and inch with stuff I already had and keep the cool Oldsmobile Rocket logo horn button.
I'm just wondering about the slight play in the splines to hub clearance...If I'll notice it on track and be annoyed more than anything else.
With the spacer I should be able to move my seating position back a little which will increase safety too. More room to exit and more surrounded by the cage. Should be able to make the pedals work out without huge changes.
At the rear of the car I'm replacing...the rear....
The 9" housing to be more accurate. Ordered this Colman Racing "ultra light" floater kit. The big reason is I ordered it with cambered snouts. I'll be getting 1 degree of negative camber in the rear from this swap as well as stronger parts/safety from the floater hubs/axles. Hopefully lighter too as I optioned for gundrilled axles and the hubs have integrated rotor mounts that are definitely a lot stronger than the hats I run now.
However like most things... modifications are required.
I had to fabricate brake brakets again. Not a big deal for me at this point and I came up with a better way to do too. Using steel shims to hold the pads snug on the rotor keeping the caliper square and in position for starting to weld the brackets on.
The hub flanges are also much larger than they need to be at 7" so I cut them down to 6-3/8 to match the hub flange of the wheels. The larger diameter was just extra weigh.
If I really wanted to get after it there's probably another half pound that could be cut off but I'll worry about that later if demed nessessary. These hubs came setup for threaded wheel studs, aka bolts installed from the back...well they didn't even install properly because the bolt thread to head radius bottomed out before the head contacted the hub.....I didn't want to run 1/2-20 anyway when the fronts are 12mmx1.5 so got a reamer from work and opened the holes up to 1/2" smooth bore and now I'll be able to press in the 12mm wheel studs I have.
Of course this isn't all that needs modification. I'll have to make the lower mounts adjustable, modify the drive flanges because the hub centric step is too big for my wheels, and the plan is to convert to a 3link/watts setup. I do kinda want to leave the 4 link mounts and try some A/B testing between the 4 link and 3 link just to feel the difference same day.
As for dyno day problems its easy to see what happened. How it happened is more difficult as this wasn't a run of the mill failure.
Rod bearing number 8 was the problem. I originally expect that there would be wear across all the bearings due to unregulated vacuum in the crankcase. But if that was it then all the bearings would be wore similarly. Whats more, unlike a typical rod bearing failure that get beat up near TDC on the crank due to compression and power strokes, the crank and rod only got hot on the lower side like the rod and piston were trying to exit the top of the block...
One theory that holds water is that the vacuum tore off a chunk of rear main seal and some how that got all the way back around to number 8 (first to get oil) and blocked oil to the lower half of the rod by getting stuck in the oil clearance. Another is that the bearing half was somehow defective that wasn't related to sizing, because I did measure all the clearances and it was the same as the others.
Overall other than the failure and the evidence of bearing material going through the engine it looks like it was in great shape. This is a failure I haven't seen before and many of my engine builder/racing friends haven't seen something like this either.
Will be changing up a few things next go round like adding a vacuum regulator, regrind the crank for tighter clearances as they were a little big. Nothing I haven't had success with before but the dry sump may be a factor that prefers a little less clearance.
Spent the weekend doing a lot of measuring, math, and fabrication.
More progress on the Watts Link last night. Welded up the prop and bridge support. Machined the parts including a delrin bushing a few days ago so it will be ready to start assembling pretty soon.
Been swapping bump stops on the Viking coilovers in the front. The originals never got close to engagement. Between the longer stop and relocating the upper mount on the chassis I should be able to get a setup where the bump does it's job, increase droop travel and have the ability to tune the bump stop stiffness.
The rears are also getting shaft mounted stops. The new rear end housing doesn't have any provisions for the factory style and with the tighter clearance of the wider track width I'll need to have control of the travel amount.
G Bodies for life, maing!
Man, I *LOVE* this build. What did you decide to do about the hub pilot diameter on the drive hubs? I'm considering going with a similar cambered 9" setup and that's one of the details that is staying my hand for the moment.
LuigiAndretti said:Man, I *LOVE* this build. What did you decide to do about the hub pilot diameter on the drive hubs? I'm considering going with a similar cambered 9" setup and that's one of the details that is staying my hand for the moment.
Haven't finished it yet but I ground all the zinc coating off the hub side and will be filling that relief area with weld so I can then machine the wheel side to fit.
I've been making progress on the 3 link conversion. Decided to give Send Cut Send a try with the mounts/brackets. I figure if it this works out to be a huge improvement I can then sell kits and having laser cut parts will make it easier. Plus it'll save me hours of fab time hopefully.
Being as I had to search and dig through a lot of internet and still could find much info for road race type 3 link info I put together a video about the basics as I've come to understand. Not an expert by any means but I've put in at least 20+ hrs just searching for information over the last year and have found basically nothing that directly addresses a handling application. The overriding topics that come up are dirt cars or 4link drag race stuff. I may not have everything but as I learn more I could do another video. I do want to keep adding good tech information as i find it/learn it.
Rear end build part 2:
Currently waiting on my send cut send order to come in with the axle housing side brackets so that the overall mockup can begin. Should move along pretty quickly after that. Also got the crankshaft back yesterday and should have all the parts to reassemble the engine next week sometime.
Relocated the front upper coil over mounts the other day. This gets the coilover into a position where the shouldn't be upper control arm to coil contact during peak travel, gets to where I can make proper use of a bump stop, and increased droop travel.
And today my send cut send order showed up! Didn't waist any time getting the axle brackets welded up.
Video of putting together the brackets. I'm glad I didn't just guess at the coul over mount location as I'm moving it to more inboard location to handle more compression travel without the spring hitting the frame.
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