Fitted diagonal. Not sure if I'm putting harness bar in until I get different seats.
Fitted diagonal. Not sure if I'm putting harness bar in until I get different seats.
Love the build! This thing is gonna be a hoot!
A couple pictures of the reinforcement to the inner rear quarters to stiffen the panels and provide a mounting point for the fiberglass.
And today I finished up the roll bar, squirted a little paint on it, and got the quarters back on. About ready for Autocross I think.
She is ready, I think, to go fight some cones.
Steering is heavy, and the shocks are 40 years old, so I'm not expecting top times. But I am expecting to have a blast. I have a few weeks to shake it down more before the first event I can make. Biggest thing is just to start driving it around.
It's really deep geared with the short rubber and 3.73 rear axle. 5200rpm in third is 70mph. Maybe 3.08s would be nice.
Future changes? I want to try a sweet style steering rack, maybe power. Build some control arms from scratch or Roundy-round parts. Coilover shocks front and back and 4-link the back. Fuel cell. Fitting the body better and getting it one shade of silver. Aero. At least one race seat and harnesses. Water-methanol injection. A TKX transmission and regear the back.
So a couple weeks, and about 150 miles on the car.
This weekend I got the tires balanced, installed a set of KYB monotube shocks. Just couldn't show up with clapped out shocks to autocross. Found and fixed a couple little brake leaks, and retorqued all the suspension stuff. Made a shifter hole plate and tidied up the stray wiring inside the car. Painted the rear tub area black, and made a hood pin.
Still have a ways to go to get the tune great, but it is pretty good. First gear is near useless, will spin in 2nd to 60mph, bounce the limiter, and finally hook somewhere in third gear. Seems happy anyway.
Handles decent with the new shocks, we will find out as first autocross for it looks like next weekend.
Braking is pretty good. I did a few panic stops from 40-50 and brake effort and pedal feel is great, but was a bit tail happy at max effort. I had prop valve full on, so I backed that down and will see how it goes. Masters are still at 50-50, so I have room to move the Bias bar if needed.
Made a walkaround video of the car as it sits now.
Autocross Day! got all loaded up!
Made It!
First run was Incredible! the car has so much power. 1st gear as I expected was about useless. 2nd gear was not hooking, and 3rd was rocket ship! Car actually handles ok, doesn't try to oversteeer too bad, even stops ok. Second run was great, but something felt off at the end, wasn't sure what. Third run went fine too, but she was rattling above idle after. I put it on the trailer at the lunch break and tried to figure out what was making noise in the top end.
Not good. Turns out I spun a rod bearing and stampted the piston into the head.
So, we are building another motor right now.
I did throw together a litlle video that has what run footage I did get, (camera shifted, but sounds epic) and some theory of what happened. Still not 100 percent sure of why it happened, but was old junkyard engine.
Well, I got an engine back together.
Inspected the rod bearings on another L36 Na shortblock, looked ok enough. Swapped in my old cam and lifters, bolted on the heads and top stuff.
Used a different blower I had on the shelf. A Roush version of the Lightning M112 that I believe was part of a F150 kit 2004-08.
Got It back in the car over Memorial Weekend, and got to cruise it a little that Sunday.
Then I took all the interior and dash out. Rattle can painted the floors and inner panels satin black, and the door jambs that smoke grey. Removed all the guages and cleaned up and painted my flat panel black too.
While that was out, I wired in a gm Drac module to condition my VSS signal to the MS3. I haven't been able to get rid of enough noise in the vss, and have been showing 10-20mph at idle. Makes the ecu never get into an Idle state and made an using an idle valve impossible. I went as far as putting a ball valve under the dash to give myself a manual cold fast idle valve. Drac module fixed it and was easy to wire up.
Today, I finally got out and went a Cars n Coffee with it. Had a great time, and the car was very well received.
If you are looking for a shock for the rear that will help, the Bilstein for a C-1 Corvette will work. You do need the larger bushings for the upper body mount, available from Belstein.
I purchases mine from ShockWarehouse, on line. Turns out this shock was specked for a number of cars of that vintage. They have made a huge difference, in a positive way. The fronts require more effort, but there are options. That lower spring mount has to be reworked.
In reply to jr02518 :
Actually planning to relocate the upper shock mounts behind the axle and mount some adjustable coilovers. I figure a light spring on a coilover will combine with the leaf spring rate to stiffen the rear a bit, and will be an easy change to full coilover when I do a 4-link and mini-tubs later. Working on coilovers, swaybar, and a steering rack conversion for the front too. For now, I'm just going to enjoy driving it.
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