The package hass been delievered..

I received a call yesterday that the motor was done and ready to be picked up! I was very happy. I picked it up and set it on the workbench. And then that is when i realized that i wasn’t going to have time to work on it for about 3 weeks…

This weekend my best friend is coming up from SD for an “engagement party”, then i am going to SEMA in vegas. That weekend is NASA NorCals last race of the year. the following weekend I am going to Honda Performance Development for an open house. And then shortly after that Thanksgiving comes up. My goal is to have the motor back together before December 1st.

And during that time we have to fabricate some new suspension parts, from scratch. This will probably occupy a 3 day weekend.

The schedule is looking like i probably wont be on track until January, however i will push to have the car on track in December. Track time during the winter is very cheap usually so i am looking to gobble it up.

I will have my camera, and laptop with me next week at SEMA so i’ll be posting some pictures of the cooler stuff I see.

STOPING yep it is important part of a race car.

So more work is being done on the car! I spent 6 days at Laguna Seca helping out www.prima-racing.com We had a good run and learned a lot about what the car needs. This was the first time we have ever ran against the other pro cars.

Here are some pictures taken by Chris the team photog.
RTR 09 TSX

Garham Downey-Redstone Motorsports-

Andrie Hartanto 07 TSX www.prima-racing.com

the corkscrew

Patron/highcroft Acura LMP1

De Farren Acura LMP1

On to the pictures of the car. My task is to get the brake system done. This isn’t as easy as i thought it would be, especially the front. This was super close to the car but i got it done.

Tilton Bias Valved Mocked up

and the Rear, were it will split.  I forgot to buy a bulkhead T, so i orded one today, and will finish off the rear once that gets in.

I am waiting for more nut-certs to come in so i can mount the battery, ill likely be changing to a different battery also.

the major fabrication is done…

So i lacked big time on the up-dates but i have a pretty comprehensive picture by picture to go along with it all.

I left off with the drive side gusseting just getting wrapped up.  The driver’s side followed.  But we were short on time so i don’t have any pictures of it.  Here is the passenger side with a coat of paint

Next we moved onto the B-pilliar integration.  When the cage was built, it was built very tight to the car, so there wasn’t really any room to do the typical B-pilliar integration.  Mike came up with the idea to do it down low.

driver side… note the plate was clean, these pictures were snapped a few days after we did the welding and the weather turn rainy/cold and rust was quick to set in

Passenger side

next were the battery mounting plate and  fire system mounting plate.

laid out and starting to weld

welding more

fire bottle mounting plate welded in, and nut-certs in

battery mount plate done.

fire bottle mounted and lines ran. 1 nozzle directly onto the fuel tank.

two nozzles for the driver

three in the engine bay

This system came with 2 pull mechanisms, i mounted one on the passenger side of the car, and one on the drivers side.  So that I can reach one, while belted in and a corner worker could pull one no matter what side of the car they ran to in the event of a fire.

everything is all painted up in these pictures also

Here is the new HPD/HRL window banner along with the gussets painted

I also tackled and started the process to install a bias valve for the brakes.  The first step is removing all of the OEM lines.  This can be pretty messy but the might vac (brake vacuum bleeder) made the job easy.  I just DC’d all of the OE hard lines were they connected to the SS lines, hooked up the plastic line and turned it on at every corner.

Here is the fire wall with all of the OE brake line stuff removed.  Sorry for the blurry picture…

When removing all of the OE brake lines it cleared a spot for the electric PS pump.  Fabbing the mount for that, and running the brake lines will be done next week with the help of Mike U along with figuring out how mount the battery box.

So the fab work is flowing, and almost complete.  In two weekends the car will be waiting for the motor to come back from the machine shop.  And progress on that is under way, as all of their contract motors are “done” for the season.

Thanks for looking, and i will be on the track soon

fabrication has begun

So last night was great, we got a lot done, i headed over to Mike’s right after work.  Mike does most of the fabrication as he has a TON more experience then I do, i was relegated to cleaning/prepping/getting beverages/supplies.

Here he is with he template done and starting to cut it out of the plate

Here is the first guest with everything done and the final test fit.

tacking into place

All done being tacked into place

And all welded in

both sides done!!!

Tonight will be spent on the battery mount and fire system mount, along with the B-pillar intergration/guessesting.

Updates are coming…

So i went to NASA national’s with Andrie Hartanto and www.prima-racing.com  We had a busy but good week.  Some pictures from the event will follow.

For some odd reason we call my dog emre “pumpernickel” some times, and i saw this on the way out to Utah in NV.

these are the view from on top of the garages that are on pit lane

and then these random pictures from the way home

So that is it for pictures, i know i know kinda of a let down, didn’t have any of cars..  Well we were really busy the whole week, check out www.twitter.com/thenextenth to catch up on what went down, and when we weren’t busy we were socializing!!

So on the to the updates…

I took the car down to my buddy and fabricator, Mike Lock, to do some work.  After ~2 hours, several beers each, cuts from razors, cuts from glass, and a few hundred select words we accomplished this..

A note to any one, buy the snap-on/blue point/Mac tools window remover tool.  We did this with the plastic cheap “snap” razors and it was horrible.

And here is the car

So thats it for now.  We were burnt from pulling the window out and i need to pick up some other small things to go any further.  Tonight we should make some good progress.

Check back tomorrow for more updates.

Moving forward with car development

Well it’s been awhile since i updated this.  Partially because i have been pretty busy with work and side jobs, and partially because i have been reading, researching, and listening to “white Mikey” and the reading he has done, also getting parts to test/try out for the suspension.

So here is the car in the shop, picked up some wheel dolly’s/skates and did some reorganizing of the garage to create more room for working and space for just chilling.  Working on getting a TV and satellite down to the shop, not sure if i’d ever leave it with all of that in there…

Borrowed this from my buddy Mike Lock for a few little projects i’ve got planned.

I finally got my MR2 electric PS pump, and i have it mocked up were I am planning on putting it.

Picked up a ITR swap bar with bushings and brackets.  I wanted more front roll resistance, and i wanted to get rid of the rubber mushy endlinks up front.  This bar allows you to use the traditional style racing endlink

The U bracket is the same one i use on the rear of the car for the rear sway bar.  The whole end link kit is a CT engineering.  Should work out pretty good once i get the spacers and get it bolted down.

My battery and fire bottle were at the very back of the car.  I didn’t like them being there but at the time i was short on time and it was easy to put them there.  Now with some down time i decided to put them were i actually wanted too.

Here is were i plan on mounting the batter (black square) and the fire bottle (just using my old one for mock up ill be getting a new, bigger system soon.  The area here is not smooth so i plan on building a platform so there is a nice level secure spot to mount these two items.  This requires dropping the gas tank as it is not advisable to be welding right above a gas tank…

So on with draining the tank..

I ended up getting 7.5 gallons of fuel out of the tank, this was pretty close to the 8 that i had estimated was in the tank.

Here is the tank.  I have a new one that i am probably going to replace this one with, just because.  I was pretty surprised at how much fuel was still in the tank.  We have always been able to fuel starve on track and then dump 10gallons of gas in.  And it sure looked like there was more then 2 gallons left in the tank.  And all reports are that an EG held around 11.8 to 12.5gallons.

And i went to work on getting the front end lighter, I am putting my CF hood back on along with some custom headlight molds.  The headlights by themselves come in at 10lbs , the OEM aftermarket replacement hood with alot of the frame cut out was 30lbs, the CF hood it is getting replaced with is 10lbs, and the new thicker sway bar is 3lbs heavier, along with 7lbs for Mr2 PS pump.  If money allows i will also be switch to some other light weight trick parts on the front end..

Well that is it for now  stay tuned after the 14th of September there should be some good progress made.

The Re-Build….

Yes yes I am well aware that this blog started life as a “rebuild” blog, but this time the re-build is for the motor.

So it has been ~ two weeks since Numero Deuce gave up its ghost, and that would make it three weeks since Numero Uno saw 10k rpms.  And the rebuild is well under way.

I am not moving that quickly on the re-build mainly because I worked non stop to get the car together and then non stop getting it sorted so I needed to slow down, this is a good thing for the people who frequent my blog as i will keep it updated better.

Numero Deuce came out of the car late last week and this week I tore it down to the bare long block.  Here it sits on the engine dolly (aka furnature dolly).

look familiar?

And the empty engine bay..

look familar too?

I have the parts list of what is most likely need for the block, 25 over pistons rings,  bearings, and gaskets.  But that order is waiting untill i know what bearings i will be using (going OEM).

I decided to go with ARP head studs, and rod bolts.  Head studs are already here, rod bolts were on back order but should be here in a week or so.

ARP headstuds

With the above long block i have a total of 3 motors (complete long blocks)  Here are the various states of the other two.

over rev motor number 1

i bought this motor for $50 it was complete but in this state... he overev'd it also

two motor in one week

Well i got everything together and was out looking forward to the race weekend…

When i tried to go out for the first session on Saturday morning the car didn’t want to rev. So i pulled the valve cover and to my amazement ALL of the cam cap bolts were loose, some of them so loose that they were sticking up a half inch or more. This lead to all of three cam caps breaking.

I was very pissed, to say the least. I had JUST bought this motor and put it in. So after some time to vent i decided to try and fix it. I drove the 4 hours round trip to my house to get the other cam caps, and cams.

I get back to the track at 2:00pm and with the help of Andrie and Wanye from Red Zone we get it back together at 3:55pm. The race starts at 4:15pm. I start the motor let it rev then a vibration comes and the motor seizes up, with a loud screeching noise. We tried to crank it over by hand and it was a no go.

It seems that when the cam caps and cams were destroying themselves damage was also being done to the rod bearings.

My week was over.

So at this point i am going to build a motor, it isn’t the cheapest option but I feel like it is what needs to be done. If I build a motor I KNOW it will last.

Some pictures of the weekend.

And my faithful side kick Emre watching on

10,000 rpms is not a good thing…

aaaaaa well i went to do some testing on Saturday..

I was feeling much more confident but new to the track, on my second hot lap going onto the front straight i went for 4th gear in the middle of the turn but i grabbed second…

10,110rpms did this to the motor…




I haven’t pulled the head off yet to see how bad the pistons and block are…

So i drove down and picked up a motor Saturday night and finished putting it back in last night after work

new motor in its home

old busted motor.

But a good thing was that since i was down in the area i got to pick something up from my new sponsor

HUGE THANKS to rota, great rims, lightweight and affordable!

Well tonight will be spent packing the car up, and loading the trail for the second race for this new setup! Ill keep this updated. I am going to see if there is a BB app for wordpress..

alllllll mmoooosttttttt there…

Well i haven’t updated in a while so here i go.

I decided to take the other weekend off, i was getting to frustrated and the car was beginning to bug me.  So i left it alone for a weekend.  And went and watched my buddy from 034 motorsports race in the Grand Am Koni Challenge ST race at Laguna Seca Raceway.  It was a blast.  Snapped a few pictures with my buddies camera too…

it was a lot of fun and kinda kicked me in gear to finish my car.  It was also great to see a car that the 3 of us who went built, and doing really well.  It finished in the top 10.

So i figured out that the transmission was just the ball bearing/springs for the gear selectors.  When i originally pulled apart the trans these ball bearings were stuck in the bolts.  I didn’t think anything of it, but after me and Andrie tore the transmission apart and put it back together he noted that they aren’t supposed to be stuck in there and that is why it wouldn’t shift.

So tomorrow I am ordering three new bolts, ball bearings, springs, nuts for the the throttle body, and bolts for the header.  Hopefully that stuff will get here by Thursday.  Thursday i will be taking the car down to Auto Innovations for an alignment, and then take it over to RedZone Performance for some dyno tuning.  And if everything goes as planed Friday will see me going to thunderhill for the first race of the year for me!

I will keep every one updated.

j