In reply to corsepervita :
Sex bolts? (AKA Chicago screws)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_bolt
So was there ever a result for the dyno numbers?
Awesome project. I signed up just to congratulate you. Long time lurker. Locked down recovering from the 'rona, this thread has kept me sane for the last two days. Best therapy ever!
When you got to the astrophotography and talk of the Great Eclipse, my fear was that if you became frustrated enough soon we would see pics of a broken white Jalpa racing across space to catch up with Elon's roadster;)
So, is your first extended road trip going to be to Arizona to give your machinist buddy a ride?
HoserRacing said:So was there ever a result for the dyno numbers?
There are some things that led to us getting the engine on the dyno but not actually getting a proper dyno run. The timing really sucked because my machinist managed to get the engine on the dyno itself, but he's a carb guy not an EFI guy. We found out later that the fuel pressure was incorrect and some of the stuff he had wired up was wrong but he thought was correct. It is what it is and while I was really hoping to get some numbers on the engine, I didn't. However, I do plan on throwing the car on a rolling dyno at some point after the 'rona makes it to where I feel safer going to go do stuff like that. I have health issues that put me at pretty bad risk, so needless to say, I've been a recluse this year. Top that with losing my job a while back (I got one now) but I basically spiraled into oblivion in early 2020.
Parnell said:Awesome project. I signed up just to congratulate you. Long time lurker. Locked down recovering from the 'rona, this thread has kept me sane for the last two days. Best therapy ever!
When you got to the astrophotography and talk of the Great Eclipse, my fear was that if you became frustrated enough soon we would see pics of a broken white Jalpa racing across space to catch up with Elon's roadster;)
So, is your first extended road trip going to be to Arizona to give your machinist buddy a ride?
In terms of visiting my Machinist, I have switched machinists due to some stuff that happened that has deeply frustrated me with him. I do, however, plan on a road trip down to Monterey sometime because italiano concorso is there, and most of the oldschool lambo guys go to it, and I would love nothing more than to go there to meet Valentino Balboni.
In reply to corsepervita :
Yep, I knew you had issues with the engine dyno, just didn't know if you had ever done a regular dyno. I completely understand the health & safety, my wife has some issues and I had to try to keep her safe early on. She didn't comprehend until she got overwhelmed with cabin fever and decided she was going to Walmart for something, and saw families there with no masks on, etc. I really want to thank you for your openness with your depression. My wife has been battling it since losing a job she had for 20+ years, and it's rough.
HoserRacing said:In reply to corsepervita :
Yep, I knew you had issues with the engine dyno, just didn't know if you had ever done a regular dyno. I completely understand the health & safety, my wife has some issues and I had to try to keep her safe early on. She didn't comprehend until she got overwhelmed with cabin fever and decided she was going to Walmart for something, and saw families there with no masks on, etc. I really want to thank you for your openness with your depression. My wife has been battling it since losing a job she had for 20+ years, and it's rough.
I made the decision a few years back to not let the stigma get to me and allow myself to just be open about it, even if it was difficult at first. I refuse to identify myself as a "lesser" or "inferior" person because I battle clinical depression. I think often times people are made to feel this way if they bring it up. It becomes something people often want to push out of the conversation and quickly dismiss. "Go outside! just get some fresh air! we all get sad!" but when it's because of a chemical imbalance in your body or brain, that'll just lead to you feel depressed outside :P
Instead I try to be open about it because I think people who deal with it need to know they are not alone. It is never bad to reach out, ask for help, talk to someone, and acknowledge that things are tough. Only when we identify and acknowledge our struggles can we begin finding ways to battle them.
I'm sorry to hear about your wife, and I hope she's able to find another job to replace the one she lost soon. That's a really hard thing to go through. I can imagine it would be difficult for a job that one has held for that long, she must have very much enjoyed it. If you ever need to talk, don't hesitate to reach out (and that goes for anyone on here as well).
Well guys, the bench test of repairs on the motor seem to be working. It seems that the mechanism for alignment in the motor itself broke sometime between testing it on the driver side and passenger side. I bench tested it in my office on rails and I think it's good.
So this weekend I'll end up putting it back together.
I also may or may not have bought a Viper. Because reasons.
Transport has picked it up, it'll be in my driveway by midnight :)
HNGGGGGGGGGGGG it's here
Nice! Merry Christmas to you!
ugh. I want one so bad. Such a childhood lust car for me. I still remember my first car show I ever went to was put on by a combo Viper and NSX owners group. I'll never forget that day.
Congrats man, that's amazing.
It has been a very long time since I've updated here.
After I got the viper, my very first season with autocross it starved of oil because someone decided to use a massive amount of rtv as an oil pan gasket and you can guess where that went.
Rebuilt the engine, got a new job, which was a soulsucking experience of nights and weekends.
Got another job, which was better, but at that point I was trying to get established. That didn't work out because reasons.
Got ANOTHER job which I've been at now for quite some time and things are good. I finally broke down and realized how much I miss driving this car, so I've been working with my friend at a local shop to get a bunch of work done. I usually do all of my own work but I trust my friend and his shop, so he's been helping me out and we're working to get it back on the road.
So far since we last met:
- Digital dash is good to go, so is the GPS unit
- New adjustable konis in the front end
- New wheel bearings
In process as we speak
- Fuel pump relocate for safety reasons.
Entire engine bay wiring has been redone!
Once the fuel pump relocate is done I plan on getting a whole photo shoot and video shoot and getting this thing back up on the road, and probably even take it to autocross.
Hell yeah! Glad to see you back, and that things are looking good for you. Sucks for the Viper engine, but glad to hear you're in a good place. Looking forward to pics & video!
In reply to HoserRacing :
It's all good. The viper is running strong now. I'm on season 2.5 with it (I only got half a season my first because engine). I'm still running in A Street, completely stock, street tires. I'm feeling far more comfortable with the car now. Handles beautifully. I am starting to feel like I'm running into a competitive wall though, everyone placing higher times is rocking really good tires, and very few are in any kind of street class. Every time I start to push that limit just a little bit more, the back goes "Yeah you thought though." So I'm more comfortable with where that limit is. But.... The rear tires aren't ultra sticky, have few choices for tires on the 17" wheels. I'm tempted to jump down the rabbithole and get some 2nd or 3rd gen wheels, some ultra sticky tires, and go all out on the suspension.
Out of some 60 people last time, I got Pax 13th on a completely stock 28 year old car with meh street tires. I felt pretty okay with that. But I want moooooore.
Anyway, looking forward to getting the Jalpa back up on the road. It's been far too long and it's such a fun car and I miss it dearly.
Pics from the shop.
The wheel bearings on this car are pretty odd. Interestingly enough they cross reference to a fiat limo. Over the years, those bearings have been reused by other manufacturers and I was lucky enough to cross reference them out to a Citroen C6. This took my cost from $500 a bearing to about $50 a bearing.
Shout out to XLNT Automotive in Redmond Oregon. Chris, the owner, and a good friend, is the only person I have ever let touch this car since I've bought it. It's never seen any other shop, but he earned my trust and knows what he's doing, so I wouldn't have anyone else doing work on it and help me.
My friend came up with a very slick way of doing these, without harming anything.
In other tutorials floating throughout the community, people recommended splitting the nut because it's too difficult to get a socket into the hub.
Solution? He bought a 54mm socket, chop the corner off, and plasma cut a plate underneath of it to use as a spanner wrench. This allows the nut to stay stationary, and then use the spanner wrench end to turn the assembly, getting it off successfully with no issues, and retaining the original hardware.
There are currently no new kits available, and the old fiat limo kits you can find which are NOS, are being held hostage at about $500 each. Which is... insane. Lamborghini has brought back their "restoration" program where you can order any part, but it comes at a cost of however long it takes them to find the blueprints, custom make it, and then a hefty fee on top. No thanks.
There was another tutorial online which showed how to do adjustable koni inserts into the suspension, however, after reviewing the measurements they used and the way they machined it, was unhappy with the fitment. A separate spacer was made, and the hat was machined down to a different diameter to snugly fit these in place properly.
Once this is modified, there is no going back to stock inserts, so this Jalpa will now only be able to utilize any inserts of similar dimensions, not OEM. But I'm not sad about this, because these are 1437RACE style konis, and a massive improvement over OEM. At a price of $300 per set vs $6400 for an old outdated strut assembly, this seems like a great deal. Chris got all this stuff shaved down and fit in his shop, and I am very happy with it.
Life has just been utterly crazy, so again, massive shoutout to Chris at XLNT for helping me revive the Jalpa.
I missed it. And am looking forward to time with it again.
I was just thinking about this thread the other day and wishing for an update.
That's a neat solution on the wheel bearings (both the cross-referenced part and the custom made tool to replace them).
welcome back, good to see this on page 1 again!
Definitely great to see this back on page 1! Looking forward to seeing the adventure continue.
Not surprised on the ability to find a cheaper source for those bearings. See that all the time with the Lancia/Fiat crowd. Same part but if it has a Ferrari box, it will be 10X the cost, but Fiat box, not so much!
Yay! Lambo's back! Thanks for updating. Please keep it coming when you can.
My friend just called and the car is ready so it should be back tomorrow or the next day.
At that point I just need to tie up a few loose ends on cleaning up connections and a few wires and it'll be time to fire it back up :)
Alright, fuel pump relocate was successful, and is in a much better place. Compared to the OEM location, it is at least now isolated in an area that will be covered by the inner liner of the fender, so if there were leaks, they will be contained, which is much better and helps me sleep at night.
I'm going to head there tonight and work on it a bit. I just got done being sick and woke up and am starting to feel like ass, so apparently my body is like, "Oh, you are feeling better? wellllll we can't have that" lol. It's all good though we'll get it going. I will need to extend the original harness wires I had to the relocate though tonight.
We. Are. Back.
Timing needs a little tweak, but it fired right up.
https://youtube.com/shorts/jcvwfFYkPuc?feature=share
Che bella!
One running Lombargine machine
One Vipe Vipe
Very nice, looking forward to videos where we get to hear those ITBs sing in anger!
Alright, took it around the block today, it's misfiring and I already forgot it was before and forgot that swapping to MSD makes these rotors very unhappy. So ... first order is to "make" a jalpa rotor for it lol. I recall someone on the lambo forums saying, "if you're using a stock rotor, you need to solder in a copper run because it'll burn the E36 M3 out of the resistor."
Well....
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