Finishing the racecar blog. Yes?

[Horsewidower]

Brake Pedal Assembly

Below are pictures of the brake pedal assembly. Its Wilwood pedals, with tilton master cylinders.

#1: unassembled pedals and cylinders. Front, Back and clutch. They are all differently sized based on their use. Smallest is clutch, largest is back brake.

#2:Assembled

#3: Another view, the cylinders have remote mounted reservoirs.

#4: side by side with the assembly we wanted to use. The floor mounted assembly,, which had all the stops, throttle and throttle spring as one unit worked great when we used a straight up seat, however, the seat was uncomfortable and we went to a 20* layback. That pushed us forward enough so that it we infeasible to use the floormounted pedals. Maybe next time.

Bob

[Horsewidower]

TDC Pointer

This didn't work for ****, so ignore it.


The engine uses an esslinger pulley set with a pyropete EDIS crank trigger. There is no off the shelf pointer for this set up. So I made one, Jr. High Shop finally paid off.

1 The set up. The pointer needs to go over the trigger wheel and then drop down to the pulley.

2 Pattern time.

3 layout on aluminum

4 Bending time

5 One pointer, ready to go.

[Horsewidower]

I forgot the money shot:

[Horsewidower]

Fire System

Fire System. We're big sticklers for safety, so we have a 10 lb. Safecraft three nozzle system. One nozzle for the fuel cell, one for the engine and one for the driver. Its a pull system with the handle mounted next to the driver's door so that it can be easily accessed by both the driver and safety crew. Now for the pics:

1: mounting location for the bottle, right side rear. Still trying to balance out my fat butt. You can see the beginnings of the accusump installation also.

2: See the pull handle. It will just be lower than the door sill so that it can't be kicked when we are climbing in.

3. You can see the routing of the lines.

4. Nozzle location for the driver.

5. Nozzle location in the engine compartment.

[Horsewidower]

A month and counting.

One month and 2 days to go.

Any odds on successful completion? Hold on there, don't lay your bets yet. I gotta come clean on a couple of things.

The wiring and Haltech expert is AWOL, I'd kill him if I ever found him, but I need him to finish the work. I'm working on a contingency plan, but he has my 2.3 specific software that I got from Clay Autrey.

The "brake" problem isn't, its a bent axle. Out of a problem comes an opportunity, I've hated the 1 and 1/2 inch spacers that we bought for the rear axles when we made the front end track wider. Now we will just lengthen the new axles the proper amount. But, like I really needed that expense at the moment!! Of course when we widen the axle, the current brake mounts for the rear end won't fit, just another opportunity to practice the old fabrication skills.

The engine is not in yet!! We couldn't get the clutch and master cylinder to bleed. After trying for two days, we finally figured out that we had tightened down the pedal rod on the master cylinder too far so it wouldn't let any fluid through. ARRRGGHHHHH. Have you ever gotten so pissed at something that you just can't see the simple solution??

The best part is that I called Thunderhill and they don't require that the car be teched and I don't have to pay the test fee until we show up.

So, who wants to lay odds?

Bob

[Raven855]

I personally think you are going to make it! You started this thread on 2-16 and look how far you've come. Why wouldn't you make it? Hang in there, we're rooting for ya!

[Horsewidower]

Thanks Tony for the vote of confidence, I appreciate it.

Just got in from finally getting the clutch set up. Its almost midnight here, not to bad. Because we finally got it bleed last night, we set the engine and tranny up on the stand and set up the clearance between the throwout bearing and the clutch. .170 clearance from the bearing to the clutch fingers, then no more than .170 after contact. Only took a couple of times putting the tranny on, taking it off and adjusting. Final adjustment will occur when its in the car. I welded in a pedal stop on the fire wall in order to limit the pedal stroke.

Tomorrow, if everything goes well (when has that ever happened!) the engine goes in for the last time before start up.

Bob

[Horsewidower]

Thanks Mike. I got a belly laugh out of that one. I think I was just pissed off and whiney. I'll get back at it!! More pics by the end of the weekend.;

Bob

[Horsewidower]

Engine bits

Here we go, time to get the engine in the car. Lets be clear, there is nothing special about this first engine, stock '84 TC long block. I got the engine free, along with the rest of the car, from a friend who's wife told him to get rid of it. Drove it home, didn't smoke and was reasonably strong. Given that we have'nt ever used this Haltech, we thought we'd use an expendable engine for the initial tests. Here are some of the pics of the parts we are attaching to it.

1. Table full of bits.

2. Turbo and 40Bob log modified with an external wastegate.

3. Turbo and piping.

4. Turbojoe fuel rail and 1000cc RC injectors.

[Horsewidower]

The engine is in!! Pictures later.

[Horsewidower]

Rog came over this evening. Got the lower bumper cover support welded up and the exhaust installed. Summit sent the rest of the fuel system. AFPR and the associated fittings. AWOL wiring guy called back after I said I wanted the software and instructions back because I had someone else lined up if he didn't produce. I hate to dump this guy because of his experience doing motors for Gurney's TRD GTP effort and Comptech's GTP light experience. He has some great ideas on using a wide band and closed loop system and integrating the knock sensor. But, I want the car on the road by June 6th. We will see how that ends up by the weekend. I really like the guy but his business , structured wiring for office systems, has taken off and I understand his need to attend to his bread and butter.

Bob

[Horsewidower]

5/13 update

Don't worry, I've got about 80 pics I've got to sort through for the work that we have done over the last week. Here is the narrative update.

We have the car loaded and set to go to the computer/wiring expert tomorrow. Its supposed to come back on Thursday.

The engine is in, its full of fluids and has 5 gallons of gas. Rog came over Saturday and squared up the chassis, we weren't far off, about an 1/8 of an inch. But now we are right on! We need to refabricate the lower shock mounts for the rear end, we only have about 1 and 3/4 inch of shock travel and we need to plan for about 3". I have all the new brackets, they just haven't been installed. Fuel system is complete, oil system is plumbed except for the accusump.

Damn Griggs sent us tierod ends that have two right hand threads, so we can't get the toe set other than 1/4 inch in or 1/4 inch out. As much as their stuff wins most of the races on the west coast, their business is just sloppy. We'll see how that phone call goes tomorrow. I'm assuming that we will have to just fix it ourselves by retapping the outer end and going to a larger heim joint.

We filled the oil and the radiator, we have been plagued by the "hot bolting" that was done by everyone as we have been going along. The thermostat housing (although it has no thermostat and is a new part made of aluminum) was missing its gasket and the engne coolant temperature sensor was not teflon taped and screwed all the way in, causing a coolant leak.

Our vaunted Haltech E11v2 was supposed to deal with boost levels, but after rereading the specs, I realized that I had not purchased the proper solenoid. So for the immediate need I plumbed in a manual turbonetics controller. Its an expediate soluition , but not a good one. I'll get the other on order tomorrow.

Axle was ordered to replace the bent one, should be in a week from Monday. Then we can hang the right rear caliper and finish the brakes. Should be an easy job, but that would be an exception.

The car sits really low, I mean really low. Its a kick in the a$$. We are thinking about calling it the GT 48. For those of you who know race history, you know how tall it is.

So, when the car comes back:

Finish the fire system
Finish the brake system
Mount the windows
Fabricate the radiator ducting
Mount the seat, and harness
Nut and Bolt EVERYTHING
Cornerweight and ballast as necessary
Fix the tierod ends (can you say scrub with a 1/4 inch toe-in, I don't even want to talk about 1/4 inch of toe-out!)
Lower the rear shock mounts.
Finish and mount the fenders and the bumper cover.
Trim the new carbon fiber hood to fit.

If we have any time left, mount the rear wing and the front splitter. We don't intend to test with them. We want to establish grip without the aero aids to begin with, but if things go well in the morning on June 6th, it would be nice to have the wing and spltter ready.

Pics in the next couple of days.

Bob

[Meotchh]

Damn Griggs sent us tierod ends that have two right hand threads, so we can't get the toe set other than 1/4 inch in or 1/4 inch out. As much as their stuff wins most of the races on the west coast, their business is just sloppy. We'll see how that phone call goes tomorrow. I'm assuming that we will have to just fix it ourselves by retapping the outer end and going to a larger heim joint.


Bob

Calling Griggs' business sloppy is an understatement. If you call them their answer may be to just wack it with a pipe. I wish I could just wack them with a goddmn pipe

[Horsewidower]

Still waiting on the computer and wiring expert

Hauled the car to him last Monday, so far everything is supposed to be working except the Haltech won't talk to the ignition. So we dumped the Ford EDIS and tried a bosch, that didn't work, now we've ordered an MSD DIS 2. Its supposed to be here Monday. We'll see if it will finally fire.

Here are some pics.

Putting together the intake and fuel system.

1. Lower with TurboJoe rail. If you get one of these make sure to remove the flash left from the drilling of the rail, otherwise it might break off and clog an injector.

2. Gutted upper.

3. Lower mounted, injectors mounted and wired. 1000cc rc engineering.

4. Plumbing, Plumbing and more Plumbing.

5. AFPR.

[Horsewidower]

More Fuel system

Just some pics of the installation. I chose to insulate the fuel lines over the turbo.

Also a couple of oil system pics, the oil cooler is in the C&R radiator.