Project : X-BOMB

I'm so sorry for your loss.  Family is so important in our lives.  Prayers for you and your family.  

Thanks everybody for the kind wishes!

Don't worry, we haven't given up. Just bought a 7875 today, which will replace the 7665

Eenie meenie minie moe

YES 

Eenie, meenie, minie, AND moe 

Hey Guys, I want to thank everyone for the well wishes, cards, letters and emails over the past few months. 

The last 4 months have been difficult after losing my Dad. Many other issues compounded the low time we had to get through. Yesterday being Father’s Day was particularly challenging. However, having a great day with my family was wonderful, and that reminded us that we wanted share that the build is re-starting. Calvin will start adding updates soon.

In light of the limited progress due to the recent challenges, I wanted to also share some details. As many of you know this car was/is intentionally being built as a “rolling/running engine tester” nicknamed ‘Dynova’. We set up multiple trans mounts positions, SBC/BBC, LS twin turbo and LS single turbo set-ups. However, the delays are now pushing us to take on a simpler build. As such, we will be focusing on the $2018 build and finish the other power plant related work at a later date. There was a major scope change and a relatively small scope change that will be made that has personal significant meaning, but we will share at the main event.

Hope everyone is progressing well on their projects. It is hard to believe that we pull out and head South in 113 days.

Today seems like as good a day as any to start this thing back up.

I plan to do weekly updates, until we build up more of a buffer, or we complete the car.

Day 126 - June 2, 2018

Began cleaning and painting the car.

Very nice.  Maybe you should bring a floor mirror for the judges to see the underside.  :)

Years ago I wanted to pull off the tires for the Judging of our TR-7 because I spent so much time refinishing the suspension, but I think the pavilion floor was new and no jacks were allowed. 

spin_out said:

Very nice.  Maybe you should bring a floor mirror for the judges to see the underside.  :)

Years ago I wanted to pull off the tires for the Judging of our TR-7 because I spent so much time refinishing the suspension, but I think the pavilion floor was new and no jacks were allowed. 

 

Thanks. With this build (and with most of our builds) we are not going for a show quality finish. It's a race car. I mainly wanted it to be one color. It came out really nice.

Function over form. 

I love that the updates are back, you guys are truly an inspiration with your work/family ethic and the attitude of "get something done no matter how small".  I now have SWMBO saying "if you have 5 minutes, do a 5 minute job".  She's seen how much it's helped me keep atleast a little progress on projects that at first seem too daunting to ever complete.  She's said it's really helped her with mundane work around the house which can seem depressing if you look at it as a whole.

Looking forward to the updates! 

Dead_Sled said:

I love that the updates are back, you guys are truly an inspiration with your work/family ethic and the attitude of "get something done no matter how small".  I now have SWMBO saying "if you have 5 minutes, do a 5 minute job".  She's seen how much it's helped me keep atleast a little progress on projects that at first seem too daunting to ever complete.  She's said it's really helped her with mundane work around the house which can seem depressing if you look at it as a whole.

Looking forward to the updates! 

That's awesome! You can thank my dad for that one.

TheV8Kid said:

Dead_Sled said:

I love that the updates are back, you guys are truly an inspiration with your work/family ethic and the attitude of "get something done no matter how small".  I now have SWMBO saying "if you have 5 minutes, do a 5 minute job".  She's seen how much it's helped me keep atleast a little progress on projects that at first seem too daunting to ever complete.  She's said it's really helped her with mundane work around the house which can seem depressing if you look at it as a whole.

Looking forward to the updates! 

That's awesome! You can thank my dad for that one.

Another +1 on using the time we have. It's made all my progress on the Fiat possible. Keep up the inspiring work here.

I'm curious on the paint. Any specific super budget friendly mix?

In reply to bigben :

Krylon. $4 a can at Walmart. I'm pretty happy with the quality so far. We just painted the body. It came out very nice.

In reply to TheV8Kid :

I once painted a car in high school with rattle cans for less than $20. Back then you could get the $1 a can stuff in lots of colors, now it seems your choices are limited to black and white. A lot of people don't realize that spray can paint jobs can actually look good if you follow the correct procedure.

To some it may be a surprise that we switched power adders again. Here are some reasons to choose nitrous over turbo:

• It's lighter - if you have been following this build for a while, you know we went all out on making the car light.
• It is easier to add a fixed amount of power - On turbo cars you need quite a bit of equipment to control boost accurately. With nitrous, it is a jet change.
• It's cheaper - you can put together a nitrous combo that will make the same amount of power as a turbo combo for half of the price.

There are some disadvantages, but we will not go into that.

So, why did we do it. To be honest, we were having trouble with our other turbo car at the time, and I was getting a little frustrated. We've been wanting to try a nitrous powered LS for a while, so we proceeded. It is coming out really well, and I think it is the right decision.

Besides, how can you have an engine Dyno that isn't capable of testing a nitrous breathing LS?!? 

Day 127 - June 3, 2018

Began fabricating headers. 

I'm adding blue painter's tape for steering column joints to my list of tricks. 

Stampie said:

I'm adding blue painter's tape for steering column joints to my list of tricks. 

Duct Tape works even better!

So I have a serious question on the cost of turbos vs NO2. Was the cost difference because of the FI controller or other things?  I did a similar cost benefit analysis on a 300hp ish engine and decided for a target of 400hp ish the turbo was cheaper and of course has the bonus of being useful in the autocross.  Of course every build is different I'm just interested in your thought process on your build. 

In reply to Stampie :

Had we gone turbo, the fuel injection setup would have been the same. I was planning to go with a Microsquirt either way. The speeduino did not work out. More on that later.

The turbo setup would have looked like this:

• Turbo - $250
• Intercooler - $30
• Piping ~ $75

The nitrous setup will look like this

• Nitrous kit - $75

I guess it really depends on what you can get a nitrous kit for, but we bought a used one for $75. 

I just threw out half earlier as a point of reference.

In reply to TheV8Kid :

That makes sense.  With each car being different here's mine.

• Turbo $135
• Intercooler and piping $22.50

Nitious

• ~$150-$200

I see how a $75 nitrous kit can tilt the balance. 

In reply to Stampie :

Where are you all getting sub-$100 intercooler and piping??? My turbo budget including wastegate, piping, couplers, turbo, rebuild, and modifying my carb is over $300...

In reply to gabecar3 :

Oh yeah. I forgot the wastegate. That would have been another ~$30. 

The intercooler we we're going to use came off a truck. It was cheap because it was damaged.

Flea Markets, Craigslist, Facebook market place. That is where we get all of our deals.

In reply to TheV8Kid :

That's unfortunate re: the speeduino. I'm looking forward to hearing about how that process and decision came to be.

Do you know if you'll be using the cased microsquirt, or doing a build based off of a micromodule?

For my rallyx car I went the module route, using a small "waterproof" pelican case and some connectors I got cheaper than the amp connectors at the time. Not sure I ended up saving over the cased version, but if better planned, I could for a future build. Kinda just depends if you think you'll need to modify the regular microsquirt.

In reply to bluej :

I picked up a cased Microsquirt and LSx harness for $125. The previous owner could not get it to talk to his computer. When I received it, I cut his harness off, and bench powered it. It worked fine for me. 

I was not aware of the non cased version I will have to investigate that. Perhaps I could wire that into the case I was making for the speeduino.

gabecar3 said:

In reply to Stampie :

Where are you all getting sub-$100 intercooler and piping??? My turbo budget including wastegate, piping, couplers, turbo, rebuild, and modifying my carb is over $300...

International School bus at the junkyard on half off day. They didn't have intercooler piping in their system so it was included in the price of the intercooler. 

Day 128 - Continued work on the headers.