I don't know why you think you need to patch that small hole (add lightness!) but back in the day we'd cut up an old street sign and put a few pop rivets in it - done! 
I don't know why you think you need to patch that small hole (add lightness!) but back in the day we'd cut up an old street sign and put a few pop rivets in it - done!
In reply to MiniDave :
I think you're probably right, I was maybe a little tired when I wrote that post, I think I should be able to clean up and cover the hole just fine as long as the surrounding sheet metal is alright.
In reply to AMiataCalledSteve :
Load a twist brush into your angle grinder and clear it down to bare metal. If the hole doesn't enlarge by 50% - don't worry about it. This is a tube framed racecar, not a unibody street car. The floor pans are basically there to put feet on.
I ground back the surface rust last night, and I'm pleased at how little metal seems to have been seriously affected. I think the red staining made it look worse than it was.
I bought some cheap painter's plastic from HF to keep the dust down in the rest of the garage:
Before:
After:
It only took maybe 10 minutes to knock most of it off, and I didn't even get as dirty as I expected to!
I'll go back in with a hand-held wire brush for a couple little areas, buy a shop vac to clean everything up, and then I can start painting, but that probably won't happen for another couple of weeks.
I'm saving this here for my own future reference and for anyone else in the future trying to figure out a dry sump system for themselves.
So there's a NASCAR auction coming up on Iron Horse Auctions that has some parts that I really want to buy. Specifically, the stainless under-car tubes that carry the oil from the tank to the front of the car. Since I plan on spending potentially a lot more money on dry sump parts, I figured I should probably drop the oil pan to see what's going on in there. I got it mostly all the way off, but the starter was preventing me from taking it off all the way, and it was getting late, so I stopped for the night. But I was able to take a picture of the inside of the pan from the front of the engine:
The oil pickup in the back is going off to a reservoir on the side of the pan. I'll finish taking the rest off soon to investigate further, but this looks promising to me.
When you go to paint the interior, I've had excellent luck with Rust-Oleum's appliance epoxy. Sprays on pretty easy from a rattle can and is more durable than the regular stuff. Drawbacks are limited colors (black, white, stainless silver, and tan) and that it takes longer to dry.
My bugeye's interior is appliance epoxy black and it's still looking pretty good a few years on.
That's good to know, thanks! Do you know if they have brush on paint as well?
In reply to AMiataCalledSteve :
it appears they do http:// https://www.rustoleum.com/product-catalog/consumer-brands/specialty/appliance-epoxy
that said, I have just seen/used the spray as I can get it in stores locally.
An additional note: they actually recommend NOT using primer with it. I didnt and as I said, I have been happy with the results.
I have an old Craftsman series truck that I painted the interior in over the winter and I second the Rusto choice although I used regular grey paint which is available in quarts. I tested both brush and roller and I went with the spray in the end. I found that brushing no matter how you do it will show the brush marks. Roller was fine on flat surface's because gravity would help to level the paint but on vertical the roller marks would show so I went with the spray can which came out real good in my opinion.
In case your planning on painting the whole interior Ill give you some tips from my experience. There are two things to worry about, drips which you will have to start with very light coats and progressively work your way towards a nice coat (takes alot of patience) otherwise it will be drip city. The other is over spray, painting the entire inside like I did will produce a ton of over spray and those areas will look bad when it dries, the floor in particular. So starting from roof and working your way down would be best. I actually covered the floor with plastic until I was done painting the higher areas to avoid the over spray. I started with the roof first and only roof, then pillars and only pillars then doors and floor and the same fashion. I also had all the windows out and used a small fan to draw out the over spray.
Over all it was a huge project but I wanted it to come out good so I went all out on it. The entire half of the garage, car, even floor was covered. I have to large windows on that side of the garage that I put box fans in with hvac filters taped to them to draw the over spray out and used about 20 spray cans. It took me about a week and half to paint and let dry for another two and half weeks before I started putting it back together. Definitely worth it in the end. Good Luck!
Thanks for the input guys! I'm planning to do some more grinding on the floor pans soon, then I'll repaint the floor and do some touch up work on some of the bars. After that I'll move to repaint the underside in a few areas, as well as some touch ups in the engine bay.
After talking about it and buying parts for what feels like forever, I've finally started putting the drys sump system together in the stock car. I recently bought a couple more tanks at a NASCAR auction (so now I have four lol), but these ones split so I could inspect them and make sure they were really in good shape. I took the best one and opened it up and looks great.
This tank came with wiggins-type inlet and outlets, which would normally be prohibitively expensive - new ones cost almost $90. Fortunately, this tank came with fittings and a couple of hoses attached, so I'll reuse them and cut off the o-ring style hose end to replace it with AN-style hose ends to attach to the rest of the system.
The inside of the tank is very clean and it has heating elements inside, which is much better than those rubber band-style heaters that you can get for circle track oil tanks. It also has a temperature probe with a K-type connector on the end.
I hooked up the probe to my multimeter to make sure it worked, and the resistance changed whenever I held the probe between my fingers, so we should be good to go. My plan is to build a PID controller so that I can plug the heaters in, set the temperature I want the oil to be and walk away.
I had to order a lot of parts and tools for this job, fortunately the Miata makes almost as good of a shelf as it does a track car lol
I made a simple bracket for the oil tank out of 1.5" steel angle.
Of course, I measured incorrectly, so I had to redrill the top holes, but it works! The bracket mounts to the roll bar with the passenger seat back support bracket bolts.
That is a BIG tank, how many gallons does it hold?
In reply to MiniDave :
The outside dimesnsions are about 9" x 28" IIRC, so it probably has a volume of 25-ish gallons, thought it will not have nearly that much in it.
HO LEE crap that's a lot of oil! Even 5 gallons is a lot, even tho it's a dry sump system. I don't know what NASCARs run with, but a Porsche 911 holds 12 quarts in its dry sump system.
I modified a second bracket to stabilize the tank and lowered the whole thing down about an inch and a half:
At this height the tank should hide entirely behind the passenger seat.
Do you really want that much oil (any really) in the meat sack compartment? That's a lot of Slippery flammable stuff!
I know that wouldn't pass tech in lemons or champcar. I would be surprised if it's okay at most tracks.
That being said, I don't know ANY specifics of how dry sumps are normally fabricated and where the parts normally live.
Looks like a pretty slick tube mount setup! Where did you find it?
In reply to wvumtnbkr :
I plan to construct a sheet metal enclosure in the future, but this is about the location that most stock cars use, except they have them on the driver's side for weight reasons. Since I plan to turn both ways I'm putting it on the other side.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
It's a cheap aluminum amazon light bar mount lol. The angle bracket I made earlier is taking all the weight so this is just for stabilization
In reply to AMiataCalledSteve :
Do you have a link and any feedback on it? I actually had been looking at those as a possible solution to doing things like mounting ECM and overflow bottle and switch panels and such what was kind of worried about quality and all that
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
This is what I bought:
They're made of cheap aluminum that chunked out some when I drilled it. The holes are two different sizes, but both were smaller than the 3/8" bolt I was using so drilling was a necessity. The mount has to bend to get around the bar, which is fine for me but if you plan to take things on and off they make hinged versions that would probably work better. But they're very adjustable and serve me just fine, especially since they're so cheap, so I don't have any complaints.
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