So this was my first year acting as autocross chairman for my club (Sports Car Club of New Hampshire). The season went great until my buddy asked me how the championship trophies looked five days before the awards banquet. In my excitement of setting up our 2013 schedule I had forgotten about trophies.
E36 M3.
When in doubt - PISTONS! I quickly made some calls and procured 16 very gross pistons. 8 of which were from an SBC and included con rods, 8 were from Subaru 2.5s and had wrist pins hidden under 5 pounds of grease and carbon.
With the banquet scheduled fo Saturday, I picked the pistons up Thursday night. The plan: Champions get gold spray-bombed SBC pistons and rods mounted on plaques (standing up). Second gets a silver spray-bombed Suby piston on a plaque (not mounted, just sitting) and third gets a bronze spray bombed piston and a plaque.
Pics!
Degreasing session #1: Ajax and 140 degree water
Three sessions later, including scrubbing with steel wool, these things were still awful. So I moved on to Fast 505 industrial degreaser, which includes warnings about permanant nerve damage.
It works!
Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the process. Some cliff notes: Couldn't manage to press the wrist pins out of two of the SBC pistons to use for 2nd place trophies. Luckily, we had two Champsionship races that were really close so I painted them silver and rolled with it.
I had bought small feet to put on the bottom of the plaques to make room for the con rod studs only to discover my correctly sized drill bit had grown legs. I ended up cutting the studs off short and pressure fitting them into the plaques.
Final result:
Next year I'll remember to order trophies.
Good work Dave!
