Finishing the racecar blog. Yes?

[Horsewidower]

Latest update: Blew it up, still sitting in the trailer.


Bob

[Otto Man]

Me Too
What have you got?

[Raven855]

I would be interested. I don't know anything about breaking the rules Pictures are always welcome. Whats the status of the project?

[svobrown]

I have been watching your car for some time. Want to see it on the track too.

[Ken Potter]

If you want to gauge interest I would highly recommend at least a few teaser pics or maybe even a link?

[Ken Potter]

Very cool. I'd be interested in the process for flairs. Also the wiring, fuel system, and cockpit details. I have a 92 coupe sitting in storage that will be built someday.

[svobud]

Horsewidower - not trying to run you off, but you would probably find more interest for your 2.3T powdered coupe story on turboford.net - if you want to share it here - you'll need to keep it in the LOUNGE section.

[Horsewidower]

If you don't mind Bud, I'd like to keep it in the lounge here. I think there are more road racing/open track folks here than at Turboford. I understand that this is an SVO site and that's why I asked.

Bob

[Horsewidower]

Thanks Mike for the warning. I hope to be touching it more than every couple of months. I'll see if I can get some of the early build stuff together this weekend and have it posted, as well as a list of things I have to get done.

Thanks everyone for your interest.

Bob

[Horsewidower]

Here is a slide show of the early part of the build.

http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q181/horsewidower/Early%20Build%20photos/?action=view&current=1171948139.pbw

We began our slippery slope by purchasing a "track ready" '89 coupe roller to stuff a 2.3 turboford into for the NASA American Iron series. We drove 28 hours up and back to Vancouver, Washington and picked up the car. It looked pretty good, but it was only the beginning. The car had been updated with a wilwood brake system, updated springs, struts and shocks. The 8.8 had been augmented with 9" bearings and retainers, 3.73s and a girdle. A panhard rod and someone's adjustable lower control arms had been added to the rear suspension. The car had been stripped of much of the interior, which was very helpful.

Our goal was to make the car as light as possible in order to use the weight break allowed under the rules. We may have taken it to an extreme! We also found that we didn't like the roll cage, which began an entire series of upgrades to the car. I lucked into working with a number of former Comptech employees, including a turbo expert, their former head fabricator and the guy that was in charge of wiring and tuning their indy car engines. He was a blast and would tell stories of working with the Gurney GTP Toyota effort. Mike, the fabricator, was at Comptech during the GTP lights period and could tell us about working with Parker Johnstone and James Weaver. It was a lot of fun working with the guys.

Of the original car we currently only use:
1. The roof, floorpan, firewall and frame system.
2. The rear axle, and panhard rod
3. The brake calipers

In retrospect, we should have just thrown the engine and tranny in it and gone racing.

Bob

[Horsewidower]

Suspension pics.

We more than went over the top on the suspension on this car. Many of the pieces are one-off and we designed the geometry with Bill Mitchell's Wingeo3 chassis program. I'm also not a proponent of any one company's products, we mixed and matched as we saw fit. On the west coast, Griggs' equipped cars were winning most of the AI races, but MM was just getting into supporting and winning races. I really like Bruce Griggs, but MMs customer support and technical help is far superior.

Here is the list of suspension pieces:

Rear:
Griggs World Challenge LCAs
Owner designed three link with adjustable front mount.
Koni aluminum adjustable coilover shocks
MM panhard rod

Front:
Griggs K-member, upper and lower (modified for different ball joint) control arms, shock mounts, bumpsteer kit and anti-roll bar.
Sweet Spindles
Howe hubs
Howe low-friction height-adjustable ball joints
Koni aluminum adjustable coilover shocks
Flaming River Manual Rack.


We switched to the circle track racing spindles and hubs for a couple of reasons:
We couldn't source the Griggs dropped spindles, their supplier was having trouble getting them the product. After running the standard, undropped spindle through the computer programs it was immediately apparent that the SLA did not work at our designed ride height. We also weren't thrilled with racing on production car, unmaintainable hubs. They would need to be timed out (thrown away) on a regular basis. And the spindle nut itself is a $45 item!! Going to the spindles and hubs we chose, meant using an overbuilt part for the application, a readily available supply and a maintainable unit. They created their own problems though.

The front track was increased 3 inches on each side.
The ball joints had to be changed to match the spindle.
The lower control arms had to be modified to take the new ball joints.
The front wheels had to be modified, they now have 7" of back spacing.
The fenders had to be mounted further out to cover the increased track.

I can't find the rear three link photos, but I'll add them either when they are found or when I take a couple new ones.

Bob

[indiana dave]

Wow... Project looks nice. Grat worksmansip. Can't wait to see how it performs.
I agree with you. You definately have a better audience here. Turboford is a nice site, but they're more interested in junkyard turbo tricks amd swapping 2.3 turbos into Rangers, etc. than no holds barred road-racing efforts.

[Horsewidower]

Three link photos

Here are a couple of photos of the three-link upper attachment.

This is the second attempt at an attachment point. The initial build was shown at the corner-carvers site. A couple of AI racers from the mid-west didn't like that attachement, which used a bar that ran through the floorpan. The rules when the initial build occured allowed you to section the floorpan if that sectioning was used for a suspension attachment point for the third-link. That rule changed during our build, and as a result of the protest made to the rule makers, we were required to come up with a different front attachment. The result is what you see here, which frankly is a better solution than the first one. Now the upper and lower arms are exactly the same length.

[Horsewidower]

Here are some bodywork pics.

The bodywork is an amalgamation of Maier Racing flares and five-star urethane front cover and hood. Below are the pictures of the Maier flares. They are supposed to be 3", but on the rear we found that one of them was 4 (maier said they didn't make a 4, "so we must have mounted it wrong"??) It threw us for a while when we were centering the rear axle, we'd center it based on the centerline of the car and then look at it and measure from the flare lip and think we were an inch off. Nope, it was the flare.

The front fenders, which incorporate the flare, were mounted out an extra 3 inches to cover the new front suspension.

Rear pics

[Horsewidower]

Front Bodywork

I don't currently have pictures of the hood and bumper cover, but that should come pretty soon.