Don’t you just love it when nothing seems to go right? Where would the fun be in working on a race car if everything worked the way it was supposed to 100% of the time?

 

It wouldn't be as frustrating if I wasn't running so low on time. I don't have much room for error here. I should be able to have it down off of jackstands by Sunday, but now that I've typed it I'm sure that won't happen. Dyno next Thursday, race on Saturday.

 

That's cutting it close.
At least it is spring and you can look forward to races all summer.
I have friends that rush to make a race.
It's more fun for me to have everything ready and the car in the trailer a week before the event.
Prefer to avoid rushing to make a race, now I don't pay an entry fee till I know my car is ready.
I enjoy all of it, getting the car and trailer ready, towing the race car and most of all the short time we get to drive them on track.
I missed a race day last weekend because of 5 different reasons, saw it coming 5 weeks in advance, not bothered.

 

Typically my off season starts Oct/Nov, so me playing around until almost December in CA definitely set me back. Then I couldn't just jump right into race car stuff after being away from home for 3 months. At this rate I'll need to keep going with my off season improvements in the on season (quarter panel and the rest of the body work). I have a bunch of pics on the phone, but I'm not with it. Spoiler: I got the correct keyway and a new timing set in there. Now I'm worried it'll make too much torque at the dyno! The old set was so worn out it retarded the cam, but I don't know how much and it really doesn't matter.

 

Alright, time to try and catch up to where I am.

So a big part of why I pulled the motor to deal with the heads was so that I could slap a 4x reluctor into this thing which required me to drop the oil pan. Fast forward to a week ago and every online source was backordered on the OBDII LT1 keyway. The local GM dealer was not, so on Tuesday I picked up the correct keyway. I was cautiously optimistic about it.



That's not .100" worth of keyway to engage as much reluctor wheel.



But it's OK. Here is the keyway with a 350 Vortec unit and the chewed up early one I removed.



I probably could have Dremeled down that 350 key, but I'm glad I got the correct OBDII one from the general.

Next thing was to seal up the bottom. First I had to address the busted crank windage tray thingy. Luckily I had one in a spare truck block on the shelf. This would have sucked to grab at the pull and pay.




Much better.



Time to deal with the top end. My machinist scolded me for whiz wheeling everything. We'll see if this thing is still fucked, then I'll rub it in his face if it is. He suggested 320 grit on a rubber brick as a less bad alternative. It gave a much different appearance and even old machining marks reappeared. Maybe he's not full of it? My halfassery has served me quite well to this point. So I set the heads on the block, and before I cranked them down noticed that the one appeared to suck for oil drainage.



That's quite the wall.



Much better. After cleaning I cranked these down to 70 ft/lb per ARP specs. Next up was the valvetrain. Check out these.



I wonder if one head got hotter than the other? The rockets went back on at 7/8 turn of preload.

Here I was last night with a (finally) fully assembled LT-Juan.



This morning the weather was nice, so I dropped it in before it turned sour around lunch time.



What a sight for sore eyes. Once that was done I ran the engine stand and cherry picker to the hangar and procured some brake pads and a way better clutch release bearing for reinstall. Upon return, I got the clutch and trans reinstalled. I don't know what got into me, but I lifted that T56 back in like nobody's business. I got it most of the way in, propped it with a jack and spun the crank just a smidge, got back under it and that trans about fell into place. Quite possibly my smoothest install EVER. Too good to be true, right? Yep. Forgot the damned fork! So I yanked it back out, popped the fork in, and the trans fell right back into place. Is it better to be good or lucky? No need to celebrate just yet, I have plenty to keep me busy between now and the weekend getting this thing race ready again. But being where I am now feels a damn sight better than this morning with a completely blown apart car.

 

Making progress!! You we're humping for sure, good to see it going back together.

 

On Monday I went to finish buttoning up the trans and got the first u joint clamp on nice and tight. Since the driveshaft wouldn't rotate, I figured my next step was to put the shifter in and pop it into neutral. I found I had 1,2, and R. The rest didn't exist. F me. So I started on redoing my radiator shroud from plastic to aluminum. I quickly realized I couldn't get the center reinforcement snapped down with my new gun, so had to run to the hangar Tuesday to get that. I took Tuesday off to slay on this thing. When I got to the hangar, I found this.



Bad day. It was grandfather, father, and some. Last I heard they were all alive, but in critical condition. My hangar neighbor always raves about how we have a front row seat to the runway. That seems to go both ways.

Tuesday I did finish the shroud among other things.






Wednesday the UPS fairy came with an SA2020 helmet and 2 sets of stickers.



But Wednesday wasn't about tires, it was about unfucking my transmission. I started around 4 PM, stopped for dinner and a trip to get beer, and by 9 PM I had removed, disassembled, prepared, reassembled, and reinstalled all but the shifter. It was the big win that I needed to get this thing together on time. . . or so I thought. More to come on that.

Thursday morning I went to the hangar before work and hooked up the trailer to truck and camper. After work I got the rest of the crap reinstalled/secured in the engine bay so Friday (which I also took off) I was left with what I thought was an hour's worth of work plus a brake job. I couldn't have been more wrong. I got the starter lug on wrong somehow so when I turned the master on the starter immediately engaged. Easy fix, but a time suck. When it came time to do the brakes, I screwed up the passenger side and knocked the pistons out of one side when I left the bleeder bottle set on 10 psi and I was trying to push them back in. Oh what a ****** mess that made. Why? Because I've already blown the 2:00 Dyno off and I'm beyond rushed/stressed. Next I go to load the thing and on the test drive something is just wrong.



I said screw it and loaded it anyway. Put 2 random spares on when I got to the track after 9 PM.




The car seemed to run normal again so I left it that way and went to bed. The next morning I had to be sure to be up as soon as tech was open so I could get my annual. I then went out and warmed up and roached the #7 plug wire that I hadn't tied down. Why? Rushed. Yep, I'm pissed again. I'm sooo ******* over this. So I swap it out, tie everything down better, and go out to qualify.



I ended up pulling the handle and getting out the passenger side.


At first I thought a fuel line failed. At this point I called the weekend off and took a shower because the theme seemed to be rushing is really ******* me over here. Then I was poking around under the hood wondering why there was so much fire there and under the car. After poking around some, I realized that the return line wasn't hooked up! Damn thing popped off going into that turn. I saw a big huff of black smoke roll out from under the hood and a flame licking down by my feet.



You can see where it came through. Wild. At this point, my faith in the stock lines was restored and I decided to see what it'd take to patch the lines that failed not as the cause, but as a victim of the fire.



Well hot damn, I can fix this with those repair kits they keep on the shelf at Napa being so close to a disconnect. So that's exactly what I did: Chinese finger trap unions and 2 repair kits later the car was alive again! But those unions are bulky and the whole mess didn't want to stay tucked in without some help. I got lucky and found this metal strap at Walmart and proceeded to cut and bend it into a suitable shape to use as a bracket to support everything. I even had some self tappers in the trailer to hold bolt it down.



With that but of encouragement I went and bought a fire extinguisher and mounted it within reach so I'm be legal. From there I was able to race Sunday without any more BS, though as I was loading the trailer I noticed the bumper beam and skin bolts were only put down finger tight and came loose. At least now I can take my time doing a full on bolt check. I'll change out the doors for the next event, replace the fire bottle, and be good to go. And try some ST47 pads, these ST45 pads suck so bad they're pretty much unusable. They fade to the point I can't tell what the hell the car is doing. It'll still lock them up, but there is zero communication in that brake pedal.​​​​​​

 

Seems to me like the car just wants to die.

 

The theme here is how badly rushing bit me in the *** and how all that work damn near flew out the window.

 

That's quite the unfortunate series of events you had there! good to see you made it out mostly unscathed. Do you have any more information or pictures of your shroud? I want to do something like this with my car.

 

I bought a 24x36 piece of sheet aluminum from Lowes, it was thin. The rest is 3/4" angle aluminum, 3 pieces total. There's not much to it, the CAD process takes the longest so you don't waste the product you care about.

Here's the inside of the driver's side.



Here's the bottom gap sealed.



This is the passenger's side, but you can see the airflow doesn't come through here, it all goes through the radiator.



Here's an attempt to show the front, it's riveted on with just 2 little 1/8" rivets to the bumper beam.



I can't say how different the top would be with an LS1 airbox. This looks sloppy, I'll probably stick some weather stripping up there. Or perhaps some thin flat stock to help stiffen it.

 

Thanks for those!! It helps a lot to visualize it, I'll bust out the poster board this weekend maybe and see if I can't whip up something.

 

When version 1 was under development, I ended up dynoing with a cardboard shroud.

 

It just dyno'd right on the money, so I can pull some weight out and not get DQ'd for this past weekend. I played it safe and put a 35mm plate in thinking I'd run a 36 last year. I'd actually run a 37 last year. Now with the 35 it's right on the money and torque is up a few ft/lb as well.

 

Last night I yoinked the old beat *** doors and today plucked/gutted/installed the new donor doors. This was already on the agenda, but since lighting the thing on fire crept near the top of the to do list. First off, check out this mish mash of hardware holding the old doors on.



That's a mix of metric and freedom. What a f'in mess. Well I decided to gut doors prior to removal to make them lighter. Here's door #1, took a little figuring out to get here and get it out.



Then I realized that this was not gutted enough, so I gutted the bare minimum to get the windows and **** out of the second floor faster in a way where I didn't breathe so much grinding dust.




This came out waaaayy faster than the first. Alright, now that I'm home it's time to remove all that I want while leaving the extra structure that I want in there.




There's the passenger door looking good. The crash bar structure removal was an asspain. Seriously. The asspain cannot be understated.



This pipe is serious.




​​​​​​Seriously heavy. Talk about some schedule 40.

But the damn door won't close.




So even though I scatterbrained gutted the driver's door a smidge more, it turned out to not be enough due to the cage design. Out came the cell phone camera to dial it in.



After buzzing back this entire aft section I had adequate clearance.



So there's the answer to how would I gut a door if I were to gut a door.




I'll probably add a little reinforcement dealie to both sides to stabilize the mirrors.



Yep, that quarter's still fucked.



You can see here why the upper structure had to go.



And here's the passenger side. I kept the black 93 handles to match the black lock cylinders from the donor. Now to get stickers on this thing, it looks like a boring street car now.

 

Tonight I painted the factory steel mirror mounts. Last night I chucked the rubber crap off of them. I painted them black so they'd blend into the background and I really like the way they came out.





Next I went after the door trim. I sawed it off with fishing line, hit the double sided tape with 3M adhesive remover, then rolled it off with my thumbs. They're not happy, but I got it done and even knocked out the RF fender I changed out last year.





Next order of business is to get this thing cleaned up, put it on jackstands, pull the front wheels, and get to aligning the door/hinges to make everything play nice.

 

Great fully recovered and now improved from your last race day.
For those high vibration fasteners try drilled bolts with safety wire or nylock fasteners.

 

You're talking about some fancy stuff right there. They only came loose because I neglected to tighten them. Again, in a rush, and I was finding stuff like that as the car was going together which I didn't like. The to do list isn't terrible, but I can't afford to slack off either:

Get brake pads that don't suck
Purge brakes again
Wash in/out/under
New fire bottle (gotta order)
Get the new stickers on (they're ordered)
Mount fresh tires (s/b this week)
100% nut and bolt checkChange out a couple of crispy wiring pigtails and a missing power steering boot
I'm sure there's more, but that's the lion's share.

 

I tweaked on the driver's door and fender to improve fitment. The bottom of the door is finally flush with the quarter, it's never been since I bought the car in 2013. Feels good to get this thing 1 step closer to how I would have done it.





The gaps are still weird though, it's like the door needs to rotate clockwise but if I raise it in the front it won't line up correctly there.

Passenger door sticks out too far, not sure what my options are there.

 

The Cobalt Friction XR1/XR2 pads are pretty popular with some of the time attack builds I’ve seen around. I know of a BMW that does 1:40’s around HPR that uses them.