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I missed the answer to your tow hook question earlier, that came with the car but required a little creativity to implement with the new setup. Previously it was harbored in that little cove but now it had to stick out farther to clear the NACA duct. Here you can see it attached to the old bumper, it was mounted to a nice flat area so nuts on both sides and washers out back were good enough.
Why the black splotches on that LT1 bumper beam? Because a white Chinese bumper foam was utilized in the fascia swap. Black paint on the beam and black tape over the foam. This is also another great shot that illustrates the stupid ******* turbulent radiator ducting. Motivation is the greatest factor that has prevented me from addressing this thus far as you have likely seen, my hands have still been full.
The silver is an LS beam vs my red LT beam. There's less material on the LS beam ad you can see the back side of the LS foam has added material to help center itself. The holes for the plastic pins that hold the foam to the beam are also drilled differently. Since I already had a red LS beam on hand I just swapped that with a GM LS foam piece as it should have been anyway. Those NACA ducts would have been a way bigger asspain had I kept the LT beam and LS skin as a good deal more material would have had to been removed.
To extend the to hook I used a coupling nut and bolt. Unfortunately Ace didn't stock a 12x1.5mm coupling nut and quite frankly I think this is my first encounter with a 12x1.5mm anything. Luckily they did stock 12x1.5mm nuts, so I welded 3 together and made my own damn coupling nut. I also ended up using a longer bolt than pictured once I decided to add that piece of flat steel to the beam.
Not sure if I mentioned this car's history: it started as CMC, got booted for some reason and went AI with a tubular core support which this picture is evidence thereof, then later returned to CMC. I ASSume drama was involved but am unapprised. Those 3 shitty self tapping screws you see? They hold ghetto *** plastic pieces to the core support to seal the airflow the the radiator. There is a vastly simpler way to achieve this effect and that is what you will see happen over the next few days.
Another mounting plate down low for said tubular core support which saved no weight whatsoever. And 2 of the 3 ghetto *** ******* self tappers. At least in the end I'll save the weight of the holes left in the metal.
Alright happy times! Getting restickered with the new body parts and showing off my fancy curved 2 tone Toyo stickers. Plus FWD sucks, I think we can all agree here. Also tucked the CMC and FWD sucks stickers down where tire contact is far less likely to shorten their life span. Live and learn.
Here's a before shot of what remains of what shall not be spoken of.
And here's the after with just a little base coat touch up applied to most things not red. Really doesn't attract as much attention. I'm legitimately attempting to comply with the 50/50 rule this season. I guess I could squeeze some more in there where the door was grinding the fender before. Maybe some day.
New Spectra/Napa radiator showed up today so I slapped it in with a mostly unmolested stock upper radiator shroud and got about fingering out how I wanted to make the new shroud compared to what I'd previously dreamed up. My first ideas are always deficient in many ways, so as painful as it is to ponder over them and redo them, it is absolutely necessary as it ensures maximum simplicity, cheapassery, and serviceability.
Repurposed stock C5 shroud was clearly not the answer. My C5 currently wears a Hurricane intake which consists of a new fiberglass shroud. It would have been as much as, if not more work, to hack this into submission vs making one from scratch for which I already posses the material to do so.
Same old CAD (cardboard aided design) template for the main piece still fits perfectly, though I have decided to narrow it down to only the core width. I'll plug what's leftover on the bottom later on. I'm really digging the newfound gap between the main bit and the radiator, will definitely make the top of the radiator even more effective which is the part that collects the most tire turds therefore I ASSume it is the part that flows the most and does the most anyway.
This ought to look familiar ASSuming I posted it before. What's interesting is that the stock radiator sits significantly left of center. This may make more sense once I start building the 100% unmolested V6 tub, but in the meantime some things about this car continue to make me scratch my head. I do know there is material removed from the bottom of the core support for the purpose of airflow to the radiator, but I do not know what stock looks like at this point. Hopefully I don't find more cheater **** in the meantime seeing how I am a director and all.
Last edited by Supercharged111; 02-21-2019 at 12:10 AM.
I went after the radiator ducting tonight, will wrap up to some degree tomorrow as I have practice Sunday.
Transferred the cardboard template to plastic and set about making cardboard side pieces. This does a good job of showing how off center the stock radiator is.
You can get an idea of how this will shape up now. I'll rely on positive pressure to press the side pieces out and seal themselves against the radiator.
I've also left a gap so the side pieces don't eat the radiator.
Some final pics so I can make tweaks to the plastic pieces I'm about to cut out.
This side requires less in the way of tweaking.
I did cut out the new side pieces, but won't bother to fit them until tomorrow. I'll use angle aluminum to rivet these 3 pieces together. I also have to install the fan to this radiator, tighten a bunch of inner fender/air lip fasteners, secure this shroud to the bumper beam somehow, hog out wheel spacers, and go get my trailer. Really not all that much but enough crap that I need to not forget to do. Oh, and the trailer needs 2 new tires.
Here's the complete shroud in plastic. To seal the top and bottom of the radiator I used some expanding weather seal from Lowes. Once I hit it with a hair dryer it foofed up to an inch thick. The heat gun would only nuke the surface, I couldn't hold it long enough to heat the inside without destroying it. And the top. Here you can see the gaps I filled with the little side pieces. The silver dealies serve primarily to hold the bottom of the shroud forward and away from the core so it doesn't grind through. Same here. This is the fan I'll be using on RD 2.0, it's larger in diameter which means I can hold it to the radiator with 2 pieces of 1" angle aluminum and be done. The Spal that my car came with was not as user friendly WRT mounting. Since no 2 mounts like up nice and flat like the above Flexalite this mounting leaves a bit to be desired, but I think it'll work out. 1 screw up top and 2 ghetto zip tie things down on the bottom. I did use 3 screws on the angle aluminum to the radiator to help spread the load up there. I ended up centering both of these to hold them as far away from letting the center piece rub through a tube as possible. Here you can kind of see the weather stripping doing its thing and the aforementioned gap. Next up I took it out in the street, jacked it up on the driver's side, and blasted away all the oily gook I could get to. The oil pressure sending unit had been the cause of my multi year oil leak and it finally quit working altogether. I kept thinking it was a rear main which I'd done last year again or the sandwich plate for the oil cooler that's now deleted.
After I brought it back in and the weather turned to **** I remembered that the right side had endured a PS cooler reservoir incident and the ghetto *** oil puke can I got the car with, so we'll be revisiting that again soon. While there are more improvements I now want to make, this pretty well wraps up what I'd had in store for the car for the winter. It's ready to kick *** and chew bubble gum, and I'm not much of a bubble gum guy.
Somehow this post showed up in reverse, so bear that in mind when trying to make sense of it.
Had to trim the pre-existing screen to fit the passenger airflow blockoff plate. Came out nice IMO. Better than before the radiator swap so hopefully fewer tire turds wedged in the radiator. Not holding my breath though. Next is a shot of how much more laminar radiator airflow should be compared to before. You can also see the one blockoff plate in work. This looks a lot less neglected.
This is before, somehow it ended up after. This was caused by the PO's choice of valve covers and catch can. A great recipe for a ****** mess.
Sweet .My phone appears to be going full retard WRT to picture order.
I used that same screen on my Cobra for 12 years. Not one single bent fin. Same thing on the Exocet. After three seasons, the radiator still looks pristine. Cheap and easy, yet so effective.
This now pretty well matches the width of the opening unlike before. I did with and without comparisons a couple years back and observed no difference in coolant temps so I kept it. The Afco had tire turds and grass and dirt galore in it but no bent fins on it either.
Decided to do my annual tech yesterday instead of at the track next weekend and shame on me. The master wouldn't kill the running engine, good to find now vs then. I removed it and ohmed it out last night and it came out just fine, so reinstalled to check it out in car with a multimeter today. I also cycled it a bunch of times which may have helped as well. Then when I unloaded it and left it idling behind the trailer it started chirping. Stupid belt jumped a tooth off the crank pulley. When I put it back I see the it rides off the back of the tensioner, so I'll grab a new one of those and hope my issues are behind me. April is a good month to (re)break lap records and I'd prefer to car be on point.
So the switch is good, turns out the alternator doesn't stop making juice even when you unplug the regulator. It keeps making 9.5V which is enough to keep the engine running. I'll be running the ignition relay signal wire through the cutoff now instead of the alternator excite signal.
Got the master rewired and it now works properly so I can continue to run crappy parts store alternators that don't turn off. Another thing I noticed with the garage door open a week or so ago was that my radiator shroud distorted significantly in the presence of sunlight. It made me concerned that the heat of the track and the car could do the same so I phoned a friend whose designed I was kind of copying. I learned that I needed a horizontal support for the main panel.
The ends were easy, the middle not so much. Kinda tough to hold the rivet gun firm and the backing washer with the installed shroud so some creativity was required.
Tough to see, but I snuck a zip tie up there to hold the washer against the plastic shroud so I could crank it down from the top. Worked great and the zip tie was reusable to boot.
And as you can see I ran out of black rivets. Almost forgot that I need to hunt down a new tensioner as the belt is suddenly wanting to jump off the back of the crank pulley. It's the only logical conclusion that I can come to seeing how the belt is also trying to ride off the back of the tensioner pulley itself. Got the first race event this weekend so I better be right.
Saw Bob at the track this weekend, car sounded healthy. I ran about a tenth off of the (my) record. I really feel like if I got my act together, I could run a 1:42.XXX in a race with the perfect conditions we had Saturday. I ran a 1:42.8 during qual before, but only counts if during a race. That means a pro could find a second or 2 more. I practiced on garbage tires and corded 3 of them. I then spent warmup and qual relearning the car on good tires Saturday morning. All winter I've noticed strange intermittent power steering assist. I first blamed the tensioner, so I replaced that the day before I loaded up for the track. Unfortunately, despite the newfound belt tension, that was not the answer as the car would briefly lose assist at very inopportune moments. Turns out the existing belt was somehow too long. I've run the same length belt for years on end and never had a problem. Suddenly at an idle I can see the thing slapping back and forth. I can also grab it and wiggle it back and forth. A lot. I managed to find a 5 rib belt in the right length at O Reilly's, slapped it on, and had a successful weekend. I had shitty starts the whole weekend, but manged to win all 4 races. Race 2 on Saturday I drove someone else's car and still won. It was wet and super sketchy. Tons of good racing the whole weekend. Lots of position swaps and questionable judgment, but no hurt cars so a resounding success for the season opener. Looking forward to the next race weekend and hope to make a couple tweaks before then.
Awesome work on the car and thanks for documenting. Curious about your brake setup and how it performs. I see you're running stock C5 up front and while I'm sure the car is lighter than a street version, are they holding up? I dont race, only track days but I feel I'm approaching the limit of the C5/6 setup.
Awesome work on the car and thanks for documenting. Curious about your brake setup and how it performs. I see you're running stock C5 up front and while I'm sure the car is lighter than a street version, are they holding up? I dont race, only track days but I feel I'm approaching the limit of the C5/6 setup.
They're good for 260whp and sub 3300# post race. I can almost get a season from the front pads, 2 sets of rotors per season. What pads are you running and do you have spindle ducts?
Last edited by Supercharged111; 04-15-2019 at 08:30 AM.
They're good for 260whp and sub 3300# post race. I can almost get a season from the front pads, 2 sets of rotors per season. What pads are you running and do you have spindle ducts?
400whp, 3700# with me, with ducts, centric/stop tech/raybestoes c6 rotors, DTC 30s, I tried 60s last year but don't think I got them hot enough or didn't fully bed but I'm killing the 30s so Im gonna try 60s again. What pads/rotor are you running?
400whp, 3700# with me, with ducts, centric/stop tech/raybestoes c6 rotors, DTC 30s, I tried 60s last year but don't think I got them hot enough or didn't fully bed but I'm killing the 30s so Im gonna try 60s again. What pads/rotor are you running?
I run Raybestos ST43, similar in grip to a DTC60. I ran 70 once and modulation sucked. Hawk pads just don't last, I wasted those 70s in 1 practice day and 1 weekend. Parts store rotors for now, but have been piecing together a Stoptech setup with the floating rotors.
I run Raybestos ST43, similar in grip to a DTC60. I ran 70 once and modulation sucked. Hawk pads just don't last, I wasted those 70s in 1 practice day and 1 weekend. Parts store rotors for now, but have been piecing together a Stoptech setup with the floating rotors.
Oh yeah forgot about the st43, I think I'll try those next since I'm due for some. I've been sticking with hawk since I swap to HPS for street duty but that's a crappy reason to use subpar pads, I'll just re-bed for changes, not like it takes long
*Edit, doing some searching and found your CF thread about the st43, did you ever end up trying the st47?
Last edited by mikedamageinc; 04-15-2019 at 12:49 PM.
No, I really like the modulation of the ST43. Part of my brake cooling upgrade is now done, the NACA ducts and non-busted hoses. I still saw just a hint of pad fade a couple times, so need to change spindle ducts to pieces that fit the C5 rotors, I currently have ducts made for the LS1 rotors so there's an air gap there. That requires LS spindles which I'm not willing to hack up for C5 calipers, so that means I need to do the Stoptech Swap. If I can snag some rotors like I think I can, then all I'd need next is pads and mine are probably nearing the end of their usefulness anyway. Really eyeing that Strano master cylinder brace too.
Love it enough to build a CMC car and come racing?
Round 1 of dent pulling was accomplished. We simply ran out of time, but even with the wavy/lumpy butt it's still looking way less demolished. Before.
Now.
He was genuinely disappointed in his 90 minutes worth of progress which to me is a good sign as he really want to put out top quality work. We'll re-engage next week to work out the rest of what is feasible. I'm glad I know a guy who knew a guy because this will only come in around a couple hundred bucks. Round 1 was at the dealer after hours with all the tools in the world. Round 2 will be in my garage as he now has a much better idea of how the panel is responding and therefore what tools to bring and what tools to leave there.
Last edited by Supercharged111; 04-23-2019 at 10:09 PM.
Love it enough to build a CMC car and come racing?
Round 1 of dent pulling was accomplished. We simply ran out of time, but even with the wavy/lumpy butt it's still looking way less demolished. Before.
Now.
He was genuinely disappointed in his 90 minutes worth of progress which to me is a good sign as he really want to put out top quality work. We'll re-engage next week to work out the rest of what is feasible. I'm glad I know a guy who knew a guy because this will only come in around a couple hundred bucks. Round 1 was at the dealer after hours with all the tools in the world. Round 2 will be in my garage as he now has a much better idea of how the panel is responding and therefore what tools to bring and what tools to leave there.
Is that being tapped out from the inside? Is it necessary to heat or anything? I've got some minor dents in that same area. I'm not big on body work but planning to learn, is this an "advanced skill" area? I have a few other dented vehicles to practice on just been putting it off.
That was all glue pull, next he'll drill a hole in the door jamb and shove his bendy stick through to clean the rest of the front up as well as it possible. It's definitely an art form and a lot of specialized tools involved too. Access to the front half or 2 thirds really isn't accessible from behind, hence the hole being drilled to gain that access.
02-21-2019, 12:03 AM
