Correction

Apparently I made a mistake in the telling of the injured finger story. Phil has since corrected me and , in his own words, retells the grizzly tale:

Just wanted to clear up the injured finger thing. While holding up the last state of the art decorative Bud Light taillight cover to drill and mark the body, with my left hand the 1/8” harbor freight high quality steel drill bit broke. The broke drill bit with the drill, my right hand, and all of my slim trim body weight struck my left pinky finger causing the injury. If anyone ask we now can truthfully say we have put our blood sweat and tears into this car.

That's all for today. Now I had better get back to work (the kind of work that pays the bills, not makes more of them).

A Race Car is Born

What a weekend! I mean, besides the awesome weather we saw great progress on the car. We got together on Thursday and knocked out one project each and then I installed the brake lights on Friday. Saturday morning we were at it early. Our story begins at Pull-A-Part.

What better a place to get parts for a $500 race car than a junk yard! Chris, Phil and I drove up first thing Saturday morning looking for a brake proportioning valve. They didn't have any Colts but they did have two Mirage's. We nabbed both valves just to make sure we got a good one. What a place! I saw many potential race cars in there, all they needed was a few parts!

The three of us got back to the shop and started working on some of the final issues. Chris used the new found brake valve to repair and bleed the brakes. Phil and I re-installed the gas tank and ran the return fuel line. Jeff finally arrived (he had to work in the morning) with our new dashboard. This has to be about the coolest part of the car! It uses our top secret starter button and is a real piece of art.

Meanwhile Russ was scouring the internet for our long awaited rear shocks. He was successful in finding a pair of shorter shocks that almost fit. Hey, nothing an adapter can't fix (read: washers). Chris and Phil then focused their attention on the tail lights, or more accurately the tail light covers. Remember our recycling program? Did you know that recycling can be hazardous to your health? Phil now understands the dangers of recycling. You see, Phil managed to splatter his blood all over Russ' garage. I didn't see it (thankfully), but I guess when you hook a cut open Bud Light can on the end of a drill and spin it through your finger, it tends to cut pretty deep. Ouch. We're thinking of leaving the blood as part of our paint job, what do you think?

Phil isn't the only one who learned some things this weekend. Yours truly got some lessons as well. Luckily mine didn't cost any blood though. Did you know that starter solenoid's are not rated for continuous duty? Bad idea for a remote ignition switch. Anyway, I proceeded to finish the car's electrical system while Chris gave us all a headache as he pounded out new fender flares in the rear. They look pretty good though and we later found out they work too.


We finished up Saturday by firing up the engine and setting the base timing. And yes, she runs great! Granted I wish we had a 600HP small block Chevy under the hood, but we're not rich so we'll run with what we've got.

Sunday comes along and Chris wakes me up early with phone call. Wants to know when I'm going over to work on the car. I'm thinking "It's morning already?". So we work again, and I'm glad we did. We picked up our muffler and attempted to mount that up but we're missing an adapter. But, we finally got out tires and wheels! After a quick coat of fresh paint we mount those bad boys up and dropped her on the ground. WOW!! She looks great! Chris and I stared at her for a couple of hours and dreampt of racing glory. I can't wait for the race!

So what's left? We need to mount our steering wheel, mount the rear shocks, install the muffler, paint the car and install the windshield. There are probably a few other things I'm forgetting but we'll get them knocked out as well. With three weeks to go we also need to start focusing on our supplies and tools for the weekend. So while we've got the car close the done, we still have a lot to do. But we're still focused on the goal!

Are we done yet???

This is not easy. Fun, yes (in a twisted sort of way), but definitely not easy. Everyone but Russ has to travel to work on the car, we have to budget our time and money so that we don't piss off our wives, the car keeps throwing us curve balls and the weather has just sucked lately. AND we only have one month left. I love this!

I'm happy with this weekend's progress. We had some issues that elbow grease or money can fix for us pretty quick, so we're not really that worried. We started off by finishing the roll cage, including welding both doors shut. This has taken quite a few weekends, but the end result was worth it. Everyone agrees that this car is a tank and we all feel very safe in it. Jeff did an outstanding job fabricating and welding it all together. Even the seat mount is great, simple yet tied securely to the cage structure itself. I'm not saying go ahead and hit me, but if you do I'll be alright!

With the cage complete I went ahead and put a quick basecoat of paint down on the inside of the car. We'll lay a finish coat when we spray the outside. It's just been too cold lately for painting outside. We also need it to roll so that we can take it outside. Chris then started fitting the roll cage padding into place. With so many tubes in the cage he came up a bit short, so we'll have to order a little bit more. And yes, the steering wheel is missing. We have a quick disconnect steering wheel setup on the car to make it easier and safer to get in and out of the car (how did Bo and Luke do it so easily?).

Chris also managed to get the front suspension put back together. The strut coils have been trimmed down like the backs and there is all new brake hardware and bearings. Ask Chris why one of the rotors is new and one is an old turned down one. We then proceeded to flush and bleed the brake system. The front brakes went quick but then we ran into problems. The back brakes wouldn't bleed. After doing some checks we found out the proportioning valve was seized and not letting fluid to rear brakes. Add that to the shopping list.

And what about that engine? What about it! Back off! Leave me alone! Seriously, it's weird. I screwed with it a few nights during the week, and all night Friday. It acts like it has a bad vacuum leak. I plugged all vacuum passages and ports and retorqued all the bolts and screws in and around the carb. It still wasn't running right. Saturday afternoon Jeff and I decide to screw with it some more and it fires up and runs perfectly. I kid you not. After about 5 minutes though it starts to run rough again. I play with for about a half hour and then can't stand the exhaust fumes anymore so I shut it off. I can't find the problem. Fast forward to about 9pm and Chris and Phil want to hear it run. So I give it a try. Perfect again. This time it runs for about 10 minutes without issue. It idles, it revs smoothly and shows no signs of trouble. I shut it down for the night and go home. At this point, who freakin' knows what the problem is. But if it fixes itself by just warming the engine up and then letting it cool down, great. I can't wait to replace this piece of crap with bigger FI engine.

What else? We ran the new fuel line along the frame rail, plugged all the holes in the body, hung the rear view mirror, finished the new top secret engine start switch and began to recycle the empty beer cans that are beginning to fill up the garage. Believe it or not beer cans make great filler panels for body work. Think about it, they're lightweight, readily available and come prepainted with your sponsor's logo on them (no, Budweiser is not sponsoring us). Russ was missing most of the weekend (buying a car or something) so we had to leave the supervisor duties up to my dog Chika. "Work faster you vile human infidels!! Woof!!"

Trouble

I had high hopes for this work weekend. We had everyone together for almost the entire day, but by looking at the car you wouldn't know it. So what's the problem you ask? Car doesn't run and the cage is not done.


First the carb, and yes the picture says it all. I finished rebuilding it, but after installing it on the engine it didn't work. The first problem was the gas tank was empty. We filled it up and tried again but it would only run on the accelerator pump, not the main venturi. We had the carb apart a few more times double checking passages but they were all clean. As a final check we tried to run the carb under pressure. 3psi of shop air to the bowl vent and the car ran great. So obviously the passages aren't plugged. We suspect a major vacuum leak, but whatever the problem is it's our #1 priority. How can we win a race if we can't start the race?

As for our roll cage, that's an easy problem. Jeff made great progress, that is until he ran out of gas. I guess technically the cage is done (although we may add a few more braces in a few places), but our seat mount is incomplete. After welding for more than 6 hours, Jeff was tired anyway.


How about the things we did accomplish? Ummmm..... Chris and Phil got the gas tank out. The tank needs to be cleaned and a new fuel sock needs to be installed. We may also end up replacing the fuel line because of it being so heavily varnished. This fuel system has become a real pain. The doors were also finished trimmed so that they're ready to be welded closed and the rear quarter panels started to get trimmed to clear our new wider tires.


I suppose these tires are one of the high points of the weekend and maybe even the car. We may not be fast but we should stick to the track!

Even though we didn't get as much done as we wanted, it was still a good weekend. I mean come on, the worst day of working on a race car is still better than the best day at work! There was plenty of beer (do you think this is hampering our progress?) and Russ grilled burgers and brats for everyone. Russ has also promised to paint the inside of the car today while I write this. We shall see....

We've got 5 weekends left before the race so I wouldn't say we're in trouble, but we'll all feel a lot better when the engine runs right. Most of our parts are already in the shop and there isn't much welding left. I think until the engine is running I may be working more than one day a week. I would much rather have the car done early and give us some time to pack some other weekend items than be scrambling around that last week still trying to finish the car. Well maybe next weekend we'll look a little bit better than this.

We're in!!!

So the news we all wanted to hear finally came yesterday. Apparently enough other better qualified teams have failed to pony up the dough to race in April. Their loss, our gain! Our number came up in the random waitlist lottery and now we're headed for CMP. For your browsing pleasure, here is Jay's invite:

"Hi, Team Captain:

Good news--I think. Your team has officially been ACCEPTED for LeMons South Spring, on 4-5 April 2009, at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw SC. We got tons of crappy entries for this race; yours was just enough crappier to be selected. Nice work.

Okay: What do you need to do now?

A: Read this email completely.

B: Forward it to the rest of your team, one of whom is certainly smarter than you are. (You agreed to be captain, so clearly you're not the genius.)

C: Acknowledge this email with a reply that says "Team (Whatever the Hell it Is) Received the Acceptance." If you don't confirm, we'll assume you've wised up and will give away your slot. And yes, I am getting tired of receiving "Team (Whatever) etc" replies. Har har. Very clever. Never saw that one coming, nosireeebob.

Got all that? Good."

So now what? We're actually in good shape with the car. All we need to do is finish a few details and get her painted. In other news, we've had a team member change. We dropped that chump Jerad (actually with the economy and all, he respectfully backed out; can't say I blame him), and replaced him with Chris' father. Don't remember his name so Chris will have to remind me later. This gives up four drivers and one pit member. We are actually in negotiations for a fifth driver right now, but we'll have to see if they're serious or not (cash talks).

That's it for now. If your reading this and you're not following the blog, why the heck not?! Click the link to the right and join the crowd! There may be a free prize for following......

Armored Personnel Carrier

Another week has gone by and two positive things have happened. One, we all still have our jobs. Two, our cage kit arrived! That means it's time to bust out the welder (and a few Doritos). We manged to get the whole crew together Friday night despite any complaints from the wives and it being Valentines Day weekend. I'd say we made some good progress. I always have lofty aspirations (like get it all done in an hour), but realistically we got a lot closer to complete. There was, of course, much "down" time.

While waiting for the others to arrive I started things off by finishing the electrical system. The engine fan is wired to come on with the ignition switch and we now have spark back. The addition of a brake light rounds out our simple electrical system. I wish my Cadillac's electrical system was this easy.

Now throughout the week I have been rebuilding the carburetor at my house. I stripped it all the way down so that I could inspect and clean it. What a piece of crap. Have any idea what 5 year old gas looks and smells like? It looks and feels like that old Tootsie roll you find under the couch cushion. And smell? Let's just say my wife wasn't so happy about my "project" this week. The new gasket set is on the way and hopefully I'll be able to clean all the jets out this weekend. Hey, all I need is fuel to flow. I don't really care how well it flows. Those are squirrel nuts in the secondary.

Back to the garage. With all of us present, as well as our new cage kit, we got to work on installing the only thing protecting us from rogue Crown Vic's. The cage looked small on the shop floor, but it turned out to be an almost perfect fit for our car. Tight against the sides and roof, just how you'd like it. In fact, all of the notches and tube lengths were perfect. Hats off to Day Motorsports of Texas for such a great kit at a great price. Before we welded the main hoop in, we strengthened the floor by welding in the hoop support plates. Before Russ got too sleepy he layed a few beads to prove to us his welding prowess.

With the seat position decided and our main hoop located, the rest of the cage went together rather quickly. Granted, it was all just tacked at that point, but seeing it in was a big boost. So much so that Jeff and I decided to stay until in was secured in the car which wound up being midnight. One of the things we noticed after the door bars were in was that the doors would not close anymore. Our original plan was to weld the doors closed anyway, but now it looked like we were going to have to remove the inner door panels and just run with an outer skin over the car. Charge up the sawzall, I'm going in!

For the last hour Jeff (our certified welder) began his finish welding and I continued to cut the doors apart. We still have to add a pair of rear down bars from the main hoop to the floor, but that will be easy. Also we have to make a seat box for our seat and get that mounted. Seatbelts and, budget allowing, quick disconnect steering wheel should finish off the inside of the car.

We also got a preview of the finished car's ride height. Slammed! Once the new tires are on, it will actually sit almost 2 inches lower yet. Of course this will require us to make so minor fender modifications. We may also be zeroing in on a paint scheme. I'm afraid I can't leak any info on that just yet, but with any luck we may be laying paint by next weekend. Did I mention that we were still on the waitlist and may not even be able to race this thing?

Big (?) Work Day

Alrighty then! It's Saturday night and we've got the whole team together for some work and beers! We still have not purchased any parts (what are we waiting for, a donation?!) so we continue with what I call Stage II weight reductions. If it's not required to make the car go around the track, it's gone. Stage III weight reductions are coming in the form of yours truly going on a diet. We also get into the suspension, carb and electrical system. We start things off by thinking of actually working.

So what else is slowing this car down? Exhaust, heater core and washer fluid tank are all obvious. 10 miles of vacuum lines and a charcoal canister (don't tell the EPA) don't need to be there. A few select cuts on the body to trim fat. How about all that wire? Don't need it, wiring harness gone. So now our non-running car is more non-running. We are sooooo smart. But hey we stripped another 100-200 pounds off the car!

The engine bay now looks clean, uncluttered and ready to propel this go-kart to the checkered flag! Other underhood modifications include thermostat surgical alterations (read: sawzall), drain coolant and flush, new electrical system wiring (more on that later) and an intercooled 23psi twin turbo system. Oh wait, scratch that last one. I'm not allowed to add horsepower to this engine.

Not quite sure what to do with this piece of crap. The '80's were a bad time for engines. We've got enough room under our $500 limit that we might pay to have somebody rebuild it. They'll probably laugh at us though so we'll be back to plan B (yes, the beer next to it).

So anyway, back to that wiring thing. Are you concerned that we completely removed the vehicle wiring harness from a quasi-computer controlled vehicle? Bah! No worries mate! We decided that we only need 5 electrical circuits: start, charge, ignition, fan and brake. The car runs an old school cap and rotor distributor with separate coil, so we're golden! Start and charge is auto shop 101, so if we couldn't get that working Russ should fire us from our real jobs anyway. Fan and brake? My dog could figure that out. And yes, to answer your question we did get the starting and charging system working by the end of the night (could've been sooner if Russ would have given me a solenoid that wasn't broken!). We'll route the wires and mount the switches to the rollcage when it's in.

By the end of the night we had got quite a few things done. That list is getting shorter (and yes, it's written on the roof)!


This week we swear we're going to order the roll cage. Plus, if we're feeling really ambitious, we might order the fuel pump as well. Somebody (Russ) said they were going to take care of spray bombing the interior flat black, and Jeff is going to finish the work on the coils. Which reminds me, we need shocks. Or do we......
Well kids, that concludes another action packed update! Tune in next time to see if we get more work done than beer drank, and remember DON"T DRINK AND DRIVE!