Work Day 5-19-2012

We had a productive day, was great having all 4 of the original team members working on the car on the same day! My dad, Ron, Justin, and myself. Thanks guys it was great. We got our lights installed and are almost done modifying the rear fenders to fit the new 14" wheels. We decided for simplicity to only run the 14" wheels in the rear for now and continue running the 13" wheels and tires we have on the front.





My pops cut out the blinker light holes to fit the halogen lights I bought to aim outward as apex lights.



Those lights combined with the pair of Hella 500FF lights we should have much better visibility. We still need to get them aimed better but we did a little test run and they work really well.



The left rear fender is pretty much finished and looks rough.. I like it.



We have some more work to do on the right rear fender, we need to clean up the wiring, and then get started on the brakes. Our progress is coming along nicely.

Oil Cooler Install - May 7th

Well.. I got sent on a two week work trip up to the Bay Area and while I was gone my pops installed the new Oil Cooler Kit.



It looks cool and, with the install location, should keep our oil temp down which will keep our oil pressure up.

He side mounted it so it would be out of the way of the motor if we needed to do a swap, and to protect it from debris that could kick up if anyone goes off track.



He made some high tech mods to radiator cowling giving it some air flow as well.



The total cost of this add on was $200. Kinda funny for what is supposed to be a $500 car, but hey, we were given a $5 residual so with everything we are adding on we are still bellow $500. None of this makes our car any faster.. We are just trying to help the car survive a full 24 hour race in the summer heat.

Residual 3/28/2012 $5.00
Oil Cooler Kit $140.00
Alternator $75.00
Alternator bracket and belt $25.00
larger belt $17.00
Oil cooler and fittings $60.00

Lemons Value $322.00

Motor Swap 4-28-2012

We did a full motor and transmission swap in preparation for our next race. It took us four hours but could have been faster. We ran into two issues with the water pump. The newer water pump has a larger pulley so we needed a larger belt we did not have. The other issue was the water temp gauge we had would not seat correctly and we had to switch to an electronic one.

Here is a time lapse video of the swap. The camera died 30mins before we got it started. If you pay close attention you can see some confusion and me driving off twice to buy a belt. The first one was too big.



Once we got it started and the timing set it sounded really good. It sure does sound like it has some work done (lumpy idle from aftermarket cam) and feels strong.

Here is a video of it right after we got the timing set. Sorry it is a bit jumpy.



Once the wheels come in and the tires are mounted we will be running it some more, then after installing the lights we will be driving it down the dark roads near by for some testing. That all should be enough to get it broken in and shaken down. If anything goes wrong we will still have just enough time to swap the old motor back in.