AngryCorvair's $2008 Challenge Project

hmmm. there's still plenty of packaging space where the original muffler lived. perhaps the cherry bombs will be supplemented by a normal muffler. in an ideal world, the existing system would be replaced by a single 3" pipe with a muffler from a full-size van or pickup. we'll see.

Let's see...

We've got:
A small block chevy going into a german car.
A child holding car parts and wearing flipflops.
A child standing right beside a car supported on jackstands at what appears to be max height for said stands. [edit: I see they're actually, probably at min height.].
Glass packs and flex pipe on aforementioned German car.
A grassmat windowshade/tablecloth/picknick blanket/work-under-the-car thing that doubles as a paint boot AND a photostudio backdrop.
A bench grinder not mounted to a bench.
Random child safety seats sitting around in close proximity to racecars (or streetcars that can race).
Appropriating employer's time and resources to aid in completeion of personal cars.

You...ROCK!

Clem (who except for the fact that you have a german car and a shop...probably works quite similarly to you)

Cherrybomb on my 4.2 CJ-8 sounded quite nice.

here's how the bracket looks welded and painted

and here's how it looks installed

and here are my tailpipes with turnouts

i put the coolant tubes together and filled the system with water, and after a few minutes of standing there my right foot got cold from the water dripping out of the radiator onto my shoe. it's not leaking really fast, so i'm going to top it off before firing the engine, and dump in an egg white, or maybe some bars leak. i haven't decided yet. either way, i'm looking for a cheap "solution". if that doesn't work, i'll start scrounging the junkyard for a radiator that'll fit.

Didn't do much tonight, but got a big morale boost from what I did. Finally torqued the lower control arm mounting bolts, put the front wheels on, and took the car down off the jackstands, then rolled it outside. Neighbors already think I'm crazy, so I didn't worry about them as I sat in the car making vroom vroom noises. For your viewing pleasure:

that Kumho sticker is left from the $2005 Challenge.

Well done so far Angry. That's a ride that even the Undaground Masta would be proud to pimp in!

Get your entry in so I can set you up with a build diary!

Depending on where the radiator leak is coming from, there are free (or darn near) ways to fix it. If it's coming from any of the tubes (between the end tanks) you can pull the fins out of the way with needle nose pliers, then use the pliers to roll the tubes, effectively pinching them off so they won't provide any cooling aid but they also won't leak. If there's a whole bunch of tubes leaking I've seen bondo or epoxy repair large damage sections pretty well on trail rigs. If it's an end tank crack, I've seen epoxy (or solder if it's metal) hold up well. If it's the gasket between the end tank and the center section on a plastic/aluminum radiator, then you're running out of options as even bars leak will have a hard time with that one (expansion/contraction). I can't see your pics right now, so forgive me if you posted a pic of the leak.

Bryce

Bryce, thanks for the ideas. I'll go cheap first and see if it holds. Either way, the rad has to come out again when I swap in the roller engine (that was almost $200 cheaper than the flat-tappet engine that's in the car now!)

I asked Andy Nelson how his family is able to build such sick cars in such seemingly short time. His answer was brilliantly simple: "When I have two hours, I do a two hour job. When I have five minutes, I do a five minute job."

Tonight I only had five minutes, so I dropped in my oil pump priming tool (an old Accel dual-point distributor with the top of the housing removed and the teeth cut off of the gear) and primed the oil pump. I think I now know why the PO mounted the aftermarket gauge panel the way he did: I could read the oil pressure gauge through the windshield while squeezing the trigger on the drill. With the drill set on the slow speed range, I saw 45 psi on the gauge, and let it spin until i saw oil on all 16 rocker arms.

Then I cleaned up the mess and took this sweet picture.

This weekend I should have enough of a wiring harness in place to start and run the engine, which will make me very happy. I'm getting very antsy to hear this beast cut a horsepower fart.

'Horsepower fart.' I like that!

Very nice work. Hey, how much of a PITA is it to adapt a SBC to the Porsche torque tube? I have heard of it being done and obviously it does work, never seen it in the flesh. Just wondering how it all goes together.

Its this way on a 928 and I think the same on a 944:

SBC-SBC flex plate-adapter to mate flexplate to porsche spline "driveshaft"-GM Bellhousing-spacer (2 1/4" plates on a piece of 4" pipe"-then torque tube.

it's surprisingly simple. there's an adapter plate between the back of the Chevy bellhousing and the front of the Porsche torque tube, about 1" thick. Apparently the Chevy BH is shorter than the Porsche BH, so the adapter plate thickness was chosen to fill the gap. input shaft length lines right up, but there's a special pilot bearing and spacer assembly required to go from the ID of the chevy crank to the OD of the porsche input shaft snout. the swap uses a hydraulic TO brg, and a typical Chevy pressure plate clamping a small block MoPar clutch disc. my setup uses a 153-tooth flywheel with a 10.5" diameter clutch disc. There are industry-standard clutch splines, and the 944 happens to use the 1" diameter, 23-spline which is the same as the MoPar. motor mounts and headers are the hardest part, and they're not really that hard.

check out the porsche hybrids board for home-brewed alternatives to the Renegade Hybrid$ conversion.

nice work angry, cant wai to see it done...are you going to havesome vid you firing the beast up the first time i hope.....

Made some more progress yesterday, figuring out how the car's going to be wired. I removed the original ignition switch and gave it to my 6-year-old Sarah so she could help me figure out which terminals are hot in the various key positions. She's better than me with the DMM.

and since I'm kinda weak with electrical stuff, I have to sketch everything out and review it a few times before heating up the soldering iron.

I thought i heard a rule of thumb that we're always supposed to switch the ground side of the device, but I don't remember if that was an automotive or a home rule. anyway, from looking at a lot of car schematics it seems like we switch hot, not ground. Anyone care to chime in?

it's gonna run this week. i still need a battery and a set of plugs and wires, and a carb base gasket. cash is tight until payday (this friday), so i'm getting the wiring and a couple other "free" jobs done first.

You can save lots of wire if you switch positive in most cars, that way you can go to chassis ground immediately after the load, effectively running only one wire (from battery through switch to load) instead of two (from battery to load then from load to switch). Technically it depends on where your battery is, where your switches/loads are, etc. but on most cars that is the case. Also, putting the switch before the load will usually result in less hot power getting routed around the car which theoretically reduces the likelihood of short circuits.

This is all assuming basic switches and loads being used. If you get into power transistors (like fuel injection or ignition control) then those will usually control the ground circuit, that's a different ballgame.

Bryce

hey Bryce, thanks again for another dose of good info. some things (taillights, turn signals, etc) will be powered through the switches, but higher-load stuff(headlights, starter, etc) will be relayed. In fact, one of my tasks today was to test a bunch of relays. check out my high-tech relay test stand:

here i'm testing a double relay (two normally-open devices in one package). both are good, but i don't know whether i'll use it or sell it on eBlow.

AngryCorvair wrote: ... ...

How on God's green earth did you make something that darn cute.

You're wife's UPS man must be goregeus

I'm kidding. Car looks great P.

Wow, this car is looking good! I wouldn't worry much about the noise. There was an open exhaust Audi at the '04 event that was freakin' loud at idle!

AngryCorvair wrote: check out the porsche hybrids board for home-brewed alternatives to the Renegade Hybrid$ conversion.

My fiance wishes you never posted that link.

I like the "bench" grinder mounted at child height!

made some progress this weekend! traded the tall valve covers that came with the engine for a set of standard-height covers, which gained me the required clearance to install the driver's side cover without "Step 1: Remove Master Cylinder." decided where to locate the starter relay and all the subsystem relays and got that about 80% mocked up. got a bunch of family stuff to do today, but if all goes well we'll have fire in the hole by thursday night 04-Sep-2008.

31 days to go?!!?

mocking up the relays

detail of alternator harness

gratuitous engine pr0n

sexy engine bay shots on challenge cars make me depressed.

got some more wiring done, plus a couple of small mechanical tasks. installed spark plugs and wires, centered the steering wheel, soldered up the wires that come out of the ignition switch connector. verified with 12v power source and test light that the ignition switch, connector, and wires are all doing what they're supposed to do. open issues list is still pretty long, but once i get past the wiring everything else will fall together fairly quickly. the friggin' fuel inlet on the edelbrock carb is horizontal, at the top right rear of the carb, so of course if i attach a rubber hose it crashes into the bottom of the drop-base air cleaner. will look into other available fittings, or may look for a rubber fuel line with a molded 90* bend in it.

If you guys were parked down at the end with the trailer in $2006, I found a nice set of wire crimpers where you were parked and still have them.