Since we've just finished shelling out the donor, we figured it was time to start a build thread. So this is the TARP Racing 818R build thread.
By way of background, we've been racing in the 24 Hours of Lemons for a few years. I started my first Lemons build in September 2008 (an '86 MR2) and we did our first race at MSR-Houston in February 2009. I've done 25+ races since then and have built or participated in building several cars for that series. There are three of us (so far) working on this build. The car and all the parts and tools reside at my house in Dallas. Ben is the really tall guy you'll see in some of these photos, and Roland is the second member working on this one, and then there's me.
We bought the 818R that went on special during the 20 Days of Christmas in June Special or whatever FFR was calling it, so we got a new black powdercoated chassis and the original #5 bodywork:
The chassis and body were delivered in early July, but between work and prepping the Lemons car for the overnight race in Joliet (which did not go well -- we had a lot of problems and finished next-to-DFL after a very long tow), we didn't start working on the donor until 2 weeks ago. Our donor is a 175k mile 02 WRX with the EJ20 motor:
Thanks to our experience with the Lemons builds, we've gotten pretty quick at stripping a car down, so we had the WRX shelled out in 2 full workdays. Here's the traditional "no engine, Ma" photo. That's Ben doing the engine bay honors with Roland on the left:
Our plan is to run essentially stock internals and turbo on a mild tune. We will run a dry sump and are working on spec'ing that part out now. We are shooting for ST-3 for NASA racing. Our goal is to have the car on the track by spring 2016. Cheers.
I bet Chad would have something to say about the dry sump on the R. We'll see when it gets there.
Frank
818 chassis #181 powered by a '93 VW VR6 Turbo GT3582R Go-karted Aug 5, 2016 - Then May 19+21, 2017
Tracked May 27/July 26, 2017 Build time before being driveable on Sep 27, 2019: over 6000h Build Completed Winter 2021
Thanks Frank. We've been lurking Chad's thread for quite awhile now, and now that we're actually laying hands on the chassis and body itself, I've started going back through it from the start to pick up some tips. One thing that I've noticed is that it looks like FFR has made minor changes to the chassis between the early versions and the one that we received. Our main goal is to just get the car running and reliable (and not blowing up). We've learned over the years in Lemons that race cars will devour every dollar that they even think that you have sitting around, so our secondary goal is to try to keep scope creep in check as we do the build, using parts off the shelf and fabricating as we go.
That said, we know all too well that the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
I'm looking forward to watching this build! Sounds like you're bringing some great experience to the table.
Tamra
Building 818SR #297 picked up 10/25/14 with Andrew (xxguitarist)
First start 12/21/14, First "drive" 1/17/15 First Dyno at EFI Logics 3/7/15- 310whp at 15psi for break in, full spool by ~3500rpm! First autocross 3/29/15
1st Registered 818 in Connecticut 7/24/2015. 9 months - 1 day from kit pickup!
I'm tired of my own R, so I want to see others. PM me any questions you have.
Thanks- Chad
818R-SOLD!!!- Go Karted 7/20/14/ Officially raced NASA ST2- 2/28/15
2016 Elan NP01 Prototype Racecar Chassis #20
1969 Porsche 911ST Vintage Race Car
1972 Porsche 911T (#'s matching undergoing nut & bolt resto in my garage)
I am just inching up on my first start of my R and the will be on the ground soon (once I finish my rear AP Brake caliper mounts). Looking forward to watching your build and you will find a great resource here from those that have been there and done it, have fun.
+1 on what everyone else said. Welcome to the forums and I'm excited to see a fellow R builder, especially one bringing it to the track. That body is badass, too. Best of luck with the build and feel free to ask any questions you have!
Thanks for the welcome, guys. A couple quick observations, and then I'll document something that we certainly didn't find in the FSM:
1. We're very excited about this project, but I can't imagine tackling it as a first-timer who had never built (or largely built and rebuilt) at least a couple cars before. The 818 manual is somewhat lacking in detail and that would be really tough for many first-timers to figure out intuitively. For example, I laughed out loud at the single photo & instruction that said, essentially, "remove all mechanical, hydraulic, and electrical connections, then remove engine." It's certainly true, but woe to the builder who is dropping his first engine with that paucity of instructions. Unfortunately, we've dropped the engine on the MR2 so many times that this part was like old home week for us.
2. Having spent a lot of time in the Toyota BGB ("Big Green Book," the MR2 factory service manual), I'm also surprised at the relative lack of completeness of the Subaru FSM. for example, the procedure I'm going to discuss below was not at all described in the transmission-removal section of the FSM, yet it is impossible to remove the trans without implementing this step.
3. It is very nice to be back in the land of JIS fasteners. I have drawers full of JIS fasteners off the MR2's that we've shelled out for spares over the years, and then we went and started racing a BMW. Whereas you pretty much need nothing other than a set of 10, 12, 14, and 17mm wrenches & sockets to do about 90% of the work on a Subaru or Toyota, the BMW requires every size from 8mm to 19, plus other stuff that I never knew existed (like e-torx bits).
Ok, now for some knowledge. The rest of you probably know this already, but maybe this will help somebody else along the way when they search the forum on how to remove a manual transmission for a donor engine:
Once you have the engine/transmission combo dropped out of the car, remove the clutch slave cylinder from the top of the transmission. You should see the activating arm of the clutch fork sticking out of the top of the transmission housing through a rubber bellows. Due to the way that the clutch fork is trapped (by design) betwween the clutch release bearing and the pressure plate, it acts to prevent the transmission from being separated from the engine. You thus must first remove the clutch fork before you can separate the engine from the transmission.
In order to do so, you must use a slide hammer to poll out a long captive pin/bushing that internally secures the clutch fork to the body of transmission housing. There is a cover on the driver's side of the bell housing that needs to be removed to provide access to the end of the bushing that you need to remove:
Then you need a long M6 bolt or threaded rod. We used a double-ended stud that was in one of our hardware bins, I think it was originally a MR2 valve cover fastener, but any longer M6 bolt or threaded rod would work. One end of your M6 fastener threads into the end of the clutch fork pin/bushing while the other end emerges from the transmission housing.
Next you need to develop an attachment to a slide hammer so you can pull the long pin/bushing out with your slide hammer. If you don't have a slide hammer, it's off to Harbor Freight Racing Supply! Once you fabricate a way to attach the M6 fastener to the slide hammer - it's not daunting to fabricate this, and making tools to do things is a pretty satisfying secondary product of working on race cars anyway - then you just operate the slide hammer and the pin/bushing comes right out. Then remove the bolts securing the transmission to the block and it will separate easily. If it does not separate easily, you probably missed a fastener (I've done that more than once myself, this is also true when removing a head from a block).
This photo shows attachment to the slide hammer as the pin was emerging from the transmission housing:
Just to explain that attachment method a bit, we took a piece of flat steel and into it drilled 3 holes. The center hole is where the M6 fastener is bolted to the flat plate. The other 2 holes are where Ben used eye bolts to connect the flat plate to an attachment that threads to the end of the slide hammer. How you fabricate your attachment method obviously depends on your slide hammer & the accessories you have for it. There are many ways to skin this cat (as is true with so much of racing fabrication), but this is how we did it.
Cheers.
Last edited by Mulry; 08-20-2015 at 08:18 AM.
Reason: Added photos
Welcome to the forum! I noticed you had the 02 donor like me, in the 02 FSM it does mention to remove the clutch release fork shaft (in the transmission section). Here's an excerpt: trans.jpg
The first time I changed my clutch I too was wiggling my trans for a while before I figured out this trick. Also, a slide hammer isn't necessary - I just screwed in a 20-30mm M6 bolt and used a flat-head screw driver to pry on the head of the bolt and pull out the shaft. But your method works too.
Welcome to the forum! I noticed you had the 02 donor like me, in the 02 FSM it does mention to remove the clutch release fork shaft (in the transmission section). Here's an excerpt: trans.jpg
The first time I changed my clutch I too was wiggling my trans for a while before I figured out this trick. Also, a slide hammer isn't necessary - I just screwed in a 20-30mm M6 bolt and used a flat-head screw driver to pry on the head of the bolt and pull out the shaft. But your method works too.
Duh. I guess we don't know how to work the FSM LOL.
We're working on front suspension install/setup today. We are starting with the stock R red Koni's and stock R springs (300F/500R). The R-supplemental manual seems indicates that the front shocks at full extension are 15.15" long and that rear shocks should be 2.5" longer at full extension. It appears that we received 4x front shocks. Can someone confirm that the rear shocks should be longer before complain to FFR about needing the correct rear shocks? Thx.
All shocks were the same for me. For a great starting point, increase the rebound 50% on all the shocks, and purchase New springs (2.5" x 8") 375 front, 600 rear springs. Stock was way to boat like, and you rub tires like crazy on the front at the lower height. I'm probably going to go even a little stiffer. Springs are cheap- Eibach.
Thanks- Chad
818R-SOLD!!!- Go Karted 7/20/14/ Officially raced NASA ST2- 2/28/15
2016 Elan NP01 Prototype Racecar Chassis #20
1969 Porsche 911ST Vintage Race Car
1972 Porsche 911T (#'s matching undergoing nut & bolt resto in my garage)
Chad, what's really amusing about that is that I have a set of ERS springs at 400 and 600 sitting on the shelf that I didn't use on a different project. So I guess I'll drop those in here I'm wondering if we'll need to modify the front fenders to get as much tire under there as I think we'll want. I'd like to run a 200TW tire on the car for endurance racing to keep from getting bumped up a class (or two) and also to reduce pit stop times for tire changes. At least that's the plan for now. Given the relatively low weight of this car, I'm thinking about the RivalS, although who knows what tire we'll want on the car by the time it's really ready for that stage.
I'll update our progress last weekend, although I don't think that I took any valuable photos. We got most of the front suspension on the car, but are waiting for the delivery of new wheel bearings before we install the spindles. The ones on our donor are in pretty rough condition, so we'll press in new ones before we install that. One of the front upper ball joints went in really smoothly, the other one required the use of Archimedes' leverage via a jack handle to overcome the tight tolerance, but both of those are on now. Lowers are modified and attached, and we're waiting on the springs/shocks until we are ready to put the spindles on there too.
We spent a good part of Saturday de-powering the power steering rack per the Spec Miata guide on Flyin' Miata's website, it was awfully accurate even given some slight differences between Miata and Impreza P/S racks. We painted the master cylinder side of the aluminum front firewall and installed that, and then installed the master cylinder. Minor peeve -- why would you ask the builder to drill out the pedal cluster using the aluminum panels and brace on the car when the holes are in large part obstructed by the rest of the structure? Hmm.
We also started modifying the stock transmission to delete the center diff, but the rest of that will have to wait until the engine and transmission are mounted and CV's and wheels installed so that we can twist that nut off the back of the transmission shaft without the entire transmission spinning. There are a lot of yellow sticky notes sticking out the side of the FFR manual for things that we've skipped or have to wait upon until we finish other jobs. That's something that would have been nice to know during the engine removal process in the manual -- we would've done it before we separated the trans from the engine if we'd been instructed that way. Hashtag "manualpeeve" for the kids, I guess.
So, steering is hooked up other than the tie rod ends. I'm working on planning out where everything will fit ahead of the front firewall. We will likely relocate the battery from that battery tray and put the oil tank up front (to keep it out of the engine toaster area), and I'd like to fit the ABS control unit up there too (we've learned that ABS is a GREAT way to extend tire life in racing conditions). We'd like to put a small 5-gal fuel cell up there too for passenger-ride purposes, the main fuel cell for endurance racing will go in the passenger seat well but we'd like to remove that for ride-alongs. Will probably plumb the coolant pipe system before I get much further on designing components for up there. I guess that FFR runs the coolant lines & etc around the outside of the tub due to the placement of the stock fuel tank, but I'm hoping to run a bunch of stuff up the tunnel. That's how the MR2 does it and it seems like that's a really good method for protecting coolant lines (for example) from side impact, since we're not running the stock fuel tank.
I'm going to have to fire up the parts-ordering part of this operation pretty soon. We'll need seat(s) to figure out some of the interior stuff, the dry sump setup for all that business, a limited slip for the transmission and a new clutch plate, just off the top of my head. I guess I can do that when I'm back home tomorrow, and then I'm out of town again for the next 5 or 7 days. That dry sump purchase is going to hurt.
My thought right now is to mainly go with the ARE dry sump setup with a 3 gallon (9" diameter) oil tank and the 3-stage oil pump, including the pressure side. I just don't like the idea of using a scavenge pump and then a separate oil pump, just one more part to break/troubleshoot. But I'd love to hear opinions about why I should give more credence to the Element Tuning setup. This is probably the single most expensive component on the car other than the kit itself. Cheers guys.
Was out of town last weekend, so no progress to report, but a question to ask.
Has anybody tried using the Speedway Motors tie rod adapter for the Pinto front suspension for the bumpsteer correction on the 818R? They are 7 degrees, which should match the angle of the spindle casting, and at $20 they are very affordable. I used them on the rear of the MR2 to make some dirt-track type rear links and they worked great in that use.
I bought the Bear kit (I think) from Summit. For the R ride height you ditch the tie rod adaptor buy a 5/8 grade bolt, drill the steering arm for the bolt, use the tie rod adaptor, rod ends and shims to fine tune your bump steer. ( the R supplement will give you the bolt length 5" if I remember correctly and spacer I think it is 2 3/4)
Thanks- Chad
818R-SOLD!!!- Go Karted 7/20/14/ Officially raced NASA ST2- 2/28/15
2016 Elan NP01 Prototype Racecar Chassis #20
1969 Porsche 911ST Vintage Race Car
1972 Porsche 911T (#'s matching undergoing nut & bolt resto in my garage)
Thanks Chad. I had seen that awhile back but until this reading it didn't dawn on me that the Baer part discussed was the outer tie rod arm & heim. I think we'll follow post 7 on that thread and DIY some outer tie rod arms on the drill press and save the $$ for the Baer parts. I'm pretty sure that I've got some leftover NIB 5/8-18 heims in a suspension parts bin.
After a weekend off, we got back to work on the 818R over Labor Day weekend. We didn't receive all the parts that we'd ordered, so we got stopped short on a few things.
One thing that did come in was the tub of new Red Line CV grease, so Ben completed assembly of the new halfshafts. Ben also pressed out the hubs and all the bearings, so those are ready for replacement once the parts arrive. Most of them were in pretty good shape, but not all, and with what we are going to do to this car, bearing replacement is just a solid plan. I really like the way that Subaru did their wheel bearings vs. the way that Toyota does theirs.
We got most of the old wheel studs out for replacement with the ARP extended bullet-nose wheel studs. I find it really amusing that the best replacement are the ones originally spec'd for a Lancer EVO. The new wheel studs arrived, but we decided to not install those until we are done with pressing in the new wheel bearings, seals, etc.
I stripped the engine down to the bare block to see what we are dealing with. We knew that it was a filthy pig, but I wanted to get a look at the internals a bit. I didn't pull the heads or disassemble the block, just stripped it down. I got VERY concerned when I saw the screen on the oil pickup, there were many large flakes on it, but then it turned out that they all were just RTV that flaked off the pretty-sloppy seal job that someone did when they pulled the oil pan sometime in this engine's prior history. I know that someone was in here before not only because of that, but also because there were supposed to be 6 bolts holding on the windage tray and there were only 5 bolts in place. I wonder if this engine was rebuilt at some point -- why else would one have the windage tray off? Hmm.
After stripping the engine down, I got to work with soap, water, WD-40, lots of blue shop towels, and a toothbrush to clean off the block and heads. I don't like using the power sprayer on engines that I'm not tearing down fully, I don't like the chances that I soak down the rings with pressurized water, so I do it by hand instead. The engine's not perfectly clean, but it's a lot cleaner than it was before. I'll spare you the nasty photos.
We spent a lot of time on TGV removal. What a pain in the butt. We chewed through about a set and a half of the cheap Harbor Freight rasps trying to finish grinding out the remnants and still aren't done. Guess I'll buy a carbide rasp to finish the job. Top tip: using beeswax on the cutter definitly prevents clogging with aluminum swarf. But we can't pass on the free HP gain that we'll get with the TGV removal, and the DIY work is cheaper than buying a set of aftermarket intakes.
We also got the harness weeded of circuits that we don't need for this project. I think that we reduced the weight of the harness by about half just in removing the gobs of factory electrical tape.
We spent a lot of time trying to think through cooling and dry sump issues. I picked up a used 4 gallon oil tank off eBay and we know where that's going to go (near the radiator to keep it out of the engine heat), and we're also going to run an oil/water heat exchanger up there, but we are waiting to get all the parts to start figuring out how they will all fit, along with the ABS control unit (yes, we're keeping ABS).
We also decided to flip the intake so that the throttle body points to the rear of the car to make it easier to route to the A2A intercooler(s) that we're going to locate somewhere in the side duct cooling path -- we'll duct that whole thing to keep it isolated from engine heat. I think we'll start with just 1 A2A intercooler and then if that's insufficient we'll work out how to make it work with two, which will be a little tricky since the turbo's off to the passenger side of the engine already.
Next weekend, we should be able to at least start on installing the LSD into the transmission case. We'll modify on the fly as needed so that we can plumb in a transmission oil cooler. I have a spare cooler from a prior car, so we'll need to add a pump (I'm thinking Tilton 40-527; anybody have a different idea?) and the fittings to make that work. Cheers.
More progress this weekend. We finally got the TGV removal finished, turns out that the crappy die grinder rasps at HF are really crappy. We bought some carbide rasps from Amazon and those made quick work of cleaning out the TGV's and now we're prepping the exterior for paint. Don't use these when doing the TGV removal:
Handy tip is to use beeswax on the carbide bit to prevent aluminum from clogging the bits. Ben had some leftover from another project (mixed with mineral spirits to form a liquid) and that worked great. That's what's in the jar in that photo.
Spent a lot of time the last couple weeks figuring out parts for the dry sump system and ordering those. Quite a few came from eBay. Good used parts are a bargain hunter's dream, so long as they work right. Got a great 4 gallon dry sump and a 3-stage pump for way less than retail. Also snagged a former DP car oil/water heat exchanger and are going to try to use that for our oil cooling needs. I have a Setrab air/oil heat exchanger on the shelf if the oil/water one proves insufficient.
We got most of the new hub bearings and seals installed, but the rear inner's were wrong from RockAuto, so we're waiting on those. We hung the front suspension, except for the Baer arms, on which we're still waiting. Upgraded the front springs to 400# and the rears to 600# thanks to Plavan's suggestion and set the Koni's to 75% on rebound before installing (thanks Chad!). Here's a tip for my fellow builders: put a zip tie on your shock rods before you put the springs on the shocks. It will serve as an easy trackside way to see the maximum that your shock is retracting. I like to use the orange zip ties for this since they are easy to see at a glance:
Because we have some good racing radiators sitting around and don't particularly want to invest more $$ in that part of the operation -- and certainly aren't going to use the plastic end-tank stock radiator for a race car -- we modified the front radiator mounting tabs. Well, we just removed them entirely, then are going to fabricate and weld on some new ones so that we can use a universal Ford/Mopar radiator. It's easy and cheap to find those and to get them repaired near tracks everywhere in the US. Plus I had a spare sitting in the shed from the prior race car project. Putting a big American radiator on the MR2 got rid of its cooling woes, so hopefully that will hold true for the 818 as well. I'll post photos when we've fabricated the new part so that the outlet doesn't interfere with the steering rack.
I ordered the parts to assemble the rear lower control arms. Apparently the swaged steel rear lower arms are an option now instead of coming standard? At least Speedway Motors is just a website away. Cheers.
Finally got the rear suspension finished up this weekend, which was shorter than usual due to kid's events. Those rear spindles are a huge PITA to get drilled out, even with the drill press. After building a fixture to gain more control over the axes of movement, got those done and fitted, and then the rest of the rear suspension on the car. Also added the new steering wheel and adapter.
Spent a lot of time working on packaging ahead of the front firewall. We're going to put our oil tank for the dry sump up there to keep it out of the engine room heat, plus the Spintric, oil/water cooler, oil diverter/filter/bypass, oil breather tank, coolant overflow tank, and ABS control module. Still need to do some adapting of our oil tank for the Spintric diverter fitting and need to clock an input on the oil/water cooler so that it will work better with our radiator.
Someday I will start having fewer things to do, but it seems like this project is definitely at the stage where everytime I finish something, I add 3 or 4 more things to the to-do list. But I guess that's what keeps it fun too. Cheers.
Yup I can relate to that, finish one 10 minute job (3-6 hours) cross it off the list but you think of 3 other things you want to change or do.
Thought I would get my firewall cut out along with reinstalling rear uprights and interior kick panels, I guess 2 out of 3 is not bad. Left Hand kick panel.JPGRH R brakes.JPG
I can relate too, only the problem I have is that I tend to buy things, install them, then realize after more research, "Oh no, that's all wrong" and have to buy a bunch of other things to re-do it.
This is why I need to buy more clecos. I hate drilling out rivets, putting them back in, and then drilling them out again. Especially on closed tubes, where the drilled-out backside of the pop rivet gets to rattle around for the rest of eternity.
Work continued last weekend. Fitted the brake rotors and calipers (re-using stock for now), re-attached the wheel speed sensors for ABS, and dropped the chassis from jackstands onto its wheels (on wheel dollies). It's funny how much more it looks like a race car just being off the stands and having its roller wheels on it -- despite the fact that it seems like most race cars spend most of their lives on jack stands. At least that's the case in my garage...
Ben worked on fabricating a radiator mount system for the larger radiator that we're installing and got that about 90% complete, with the goal being that we can remove and insert a replacement by removing only two bolts. We also started templating the ducting system for the lower part of the radiator too. After that we'll work on building a stronger front bumper to protect the radiator and the front of the car in the event of light contact. We don't anticipate that, but you really do have to anticipate it in wheel-to-wheel racing.
We received the rest of the parts for the firewall-forward section, so I worked some more on the exact locations for all those components, then started fabricating a subframe/bracket to which the lower components (oil tank, ABS pump, Spintric) will attach. Need to start drilling holes in that subframe and then adding on weld nuts for the attachment of those components.
I found a 5-stage (4 suction, 1 pressure) Weaver Bros dry sump oil pump on eBay in great condition and sent that in to have it modified to a 3-stage (2 suction, 1 pressure) pump. Once we get that back, then we can fabricate the mount for it and order the mandrels and drive pulleys as necessary and start getting the engine back together.
Picked up some sheet aluminum (for the flat rear firewall) and .090 sheet steel for a thicker driver protection shield on the outside of the cage on the driver's side. Will need to break out the plasma to cut that to size, fortunately we can use the stock aluminum as a template.
Not having any luck finding an OBX diff for the transmission. Don't want to pony up the 4 figures for a Cusco. Hmm.
I just googled and found an OBX diff listed here for an 02-06 WRX. Did you try these guys?
Don't forget to buy the upgraded washer kit for it, here
We've been happy with ours.
At $750 for a Quaife though, I'd be tempted.
Tamra
Building 818SR #297 picked up 10/25/14 with Andrew (xxguitarist)
First start 12/21/14, First "drive" 1/17/15 First Dyno at EFI Logics 3/7/15- 310whp at 15psi for break in, full spool by ~3500rpm! First autocross 3/29/15
1st Registered 818 in Connecticut 7/24/2015. 9 months - 1 day from kit pickup!
I just googled and found an OBX diff listed here for an 02-06 WRX. Did you try these guys?
Don't forget to buy the upgraded washer kit for it, here
We've been happy with ours.
At $750 for a Quaife though, I'd be tempted.
I just emailed them to see if they actually have them in stock or not. My experience so far has been that the tuners who say that they have them in stock really don't, they usually just drop ship from a distributor. So they'll take the order and process the credit card, and then not fulfill the order and then refund the money. This has happened to me numerous times with stuff like this (including a prior OBX order on this car). So we'll see if those guys are on the up and up with this or not.
I've already ordered and received the washer kit, assuming that the first vendor who said they had an OBX actually did. They didn't. Will go Quaife if I can't find an OBX soon. I want to get that transmission done and attached to the motor (already have the clutch stuff on hand and ready to install).
Can't wait to have this car running. Gotta think about a seat for it soon. Am really curious about the Momo Daytona or Daytona Evo, but I saw an OMP one the other day that I liked too. Definitely want a HANS-compatible seat with the head surrounds on this open-cockpit car.
I have the Momo Start seat which is their lowest end seat. It is very light and smaller than most racing seats in width. I'm only 150lbs so it fits me perfect. If your waist is 34 or above, it may be too snug unless the Daytona runs wider.
I put a Quaife in mine and in a friend's. They have come down in price. Saw the Race Line advertise one here for like $750 the other day.
BTW, thanks for the tip. Just got in on the last day of sale for that one at that price, shipped. For those playing at home, it's a QDH3Y.
Just realized that I hadn't posted the stuff about our lubrication system yet, so I'll add that into this post. We are running a full dry sump oil pump with 2 scavenge sections and one pressure section. We thought about going the Element Tuning route, but we like the ability to control the oil pressure that you get with a full pump, whereas you're stuck with whatever comes off the factory oil pump that way. We bought a used Weaver Bros pump off eBay and then sent it to Stock Car Products to have it gone through and revised from a 5-stage to a 3-stage. They did a great job, super fast turn around, and doing it this way got us basically a fully custom pump for less $$ than if we'd bought one new.
We are going to place our oil tank at the front of the car, for a couple reasons. First, it gets the oil tank out of the radiant heat of the engine compartment, which should help nominally with oil temps. Second, the packaging up there is easier than in the crowded engine compartment. Thirdly, we have more room for coolers up front should we need them, and we know that the airflow is good on the nose of the car, whereas it's pretty sketchy on any of the rear inlets. Here's how that all is going to look (for now):
On the bottom layer, we have the Spintric (closest to the front firewall), which then feeds into the oil tank, which sits in the middle of that rectangle on that frame. To the left is the ABS pump. Here's what it looks like when the oil tank is in place:
That's the oil tank in the middle. It's a Butler Built 4+ gallon oil tank removed from stock car service with a large Racor Oberg tatletale oil filter on top. The oil comes out of the Spintric to one side of the Oberg and the air side of the Spintric goes to the other side. Oil feed comes out near the bottom of the slanted side of the oil tank and then up to the remote filter/cooler bypass that's mounted high on the firewall and is partially obscured by the clamps in that photo.
The yellow clamp is holding the oil/water heat exchanger. After the oil circulates through there, then it's back through the remote filter and back to the dry sump pump and into the engine. I really like the Peterson Remote Mount Oil Filters with primer pump but I can't see how I'd work that into the system at this point. I still might incorporate a spare Accusump into the build just for pre-start oil priming.
So we've had a couple of slower weekends due to family commitments, but we were back at it hammer and tongs this weekend.
It's funny how in a build sometimes you run into those frustrating impediments, and then when you clear them out, the build flows fast again. We'd come up against a few of those. One was that the PO of the donor had snapped off a valve cover bolt in the head when he was replacing a leaky valve cover gasket awhile back. He'd RTV'd the cover in place, but I wanted to fix it. The bolt was sheared below the level of the bolt hole, so it was a pain to grind a flat on the busted bolt shank. But we finally got that done, got the shank out (see below) and then helicoiled that hole for a new bolt. We didn't really want to do any more work on re-assembly of the engine, because if we couldn't get it done in the shop then we were going to need to do a complete disassembly of the motor and take the head to a machine shop. Since we got it out, then we were able to get reassembly of the motor mostly completed and ready to build up the new fuel rail and lines:
We need to get to work on a plate mount for the dry sump oil pump, it will live on the upper-right side of that motor. I think we're going to design it in CAD and print a 3D model in ABS for fitment testing first, then we'll send it out to emachineshop.com or something for final production. The dry sump pump will be driven off a mandrel that attaches to the front of that damper pulley.
We also finally got the LSD install finished (thanks again for Hindsight's guide to that). We struggled a bit with the shims and circle clip at the back during re-assembly, but once we had 4 hands working on it at the same time, it finished off quickly.
We secured our seat (a Momo Daytona XL) last week, so we started building the frame mount for it that will weld to the chassis. Mostly got that worked out but are waiting on delivery of some M8 weld nuts from McMaster to complete that design and fabrication. I'll take photos of that when it's done but the goal was to make it possible to do all the seat install from above so that we don't have to take off the flat floor once it's installed.
I pulled out the plasma cutter and used it for the first time in awhile. Used the stock thin aluminum driver's side panel as a drawing template, then cut out a steel intrusion panel from some plate steel that I got a few weeks back. It's not lightweight, but I'll feel a lot better knowing that our drivers are less likely to get impaled if we were to be t-boned on track. Here it's just being held on by a few cleco's but eventually we will stitch weld it to the frame, for now we want it removable to make it easier to do work inside the car:
We're going to put more substantial front (and rear) bumpers on the car, so we fabricated and welded on these simple plates. We will eventually run some 1.5" (probably) tube forward from these and from the lower corner (under the rack) to form a better push bumper at the front of the car. The stock nose assembly is fine for autocross, and I don't want my drivers pushing anything with the nose of the car, but racing incidents do happen and I don't want our nose pulled off the car because somebody else did something stupid (my drivers would never do something stupid, right? LOL). These are the plates (in grey primer):
We'll do something similar at the rear of the car but we want to get some of the other packaging in there first before we commit to a solution there. Probably something like Bob did on his car.
Since I had the plasma cutter out, I also cut down some sheet aluminum for our rear firewall. We can do a one-piece rear since we will run a fuel cell in the passenger seat area for the races. I'd never used the plasma cutter on aluminum before, man that's weird. Hardly any sparks and it throws melted aluminum spatter all over the place. But it is always fun to use that tiny light saber on stuff. That's visible here along with the seat and the new steering wheel, the cowl and dash are just there for show, they're not installed yet:
I've figured out about 90% of the line routing and fittings for the lubrication system, not looking forward to placing that order but we'll get that done soon. We have a Lemons race next weekend and then there may be a substantial honey-do list for the following weekend, and then the weekend after that's Thanksgiving, so it may be a few weeks before anything else substantial is done to the car.
Question for those playing at home: What solution are you guys coming up with for filling the brake and clutch reservoirs, other than making the cowl (and dash?) removable? I typically like to change out the brake and clutch fluids on a 6-month basis on the race cars and that's going to be a pain with this cowl covering those up.
I have the Wilwood pedal assy I am using a Tilton reservoir that will be mounted to the front of the cowl.
Mike Everson I think makes a remote reservoir set up for the OE master's.
Last edited by Mitch Wright; 11-09-2015 at 07:52 PM.
I have the Wilwood pedal assy I am using a Tilton reservoir that will be mounted to the front of the cowl.
Mike Everson I think make a remote reservoir for the OE master's.
Thanks John. It's definitely on delay right now while we build/rebuild the Lemons car following its crash in November, but I suspect that I'll start working on doing the head gaskets on the Scoob motor any evening now. Because if you can have one race car project in process, why not two simultaneously?
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We'll see when it gets there.
Originally Posted by STiPWRD
