Ben280

To quote George Mallory "we climb turbo because it is there!"

I'd definitely talk with Viking as well. Back when I worked at a performance race shop, they were pretty helpful. Once you get parts in hand from Apex, or just generally more information, I'd call Viking up and see what's what.

Good post. I was frustrated for a long time with companies not sharing spring rates on these parts. FWIW, Viking is legit, lots of fast SCCA guys run those things with good results. IF those spring rates were chosen to prevent bottoming out of the shocks, that's pretty poor design. My guess is that the motion ratio of the bellcrank will be the limiting/bottoming out feature here, and that the conversion to pushrods has resulted in some high force multipliers. My guess would be Viking starting point is mounting in a "muscle car" front end, where the motion ratio is fairly low. I'll be interested to hear what the APEX guys say!

Thanks Leon!! Really happy to have the car back out. Dug into the car over the weekend, found a couple loose nuts, and some unexpected and unwelcome suprises! The big one was my front rotors are not handling the heat very well. The car is stopping pretty nicely, but it seems that's coming at a cost. I'm not sure if this is new, or if it's an old crack that I hadn't noticed before, but it's here now and it's a problem. If I get a second crack, that means I now have a mostly disconnected piece of rotor flying around, and generally not a great idea. I've had these on the car since 2021, so I guess I can't be THAT mad at them. Anyway, rather than sinking $450 into new rotor rings, I'm taking the opportunity to go full floating rotor. Wilwood has been making a lot more lug-drive setups, and it will let me get away from the bolted hat/rotor combo. This will hopefully help fight some of the pad knockback issues I've been having, and generally improve braking feel. Consumable cost is about the same, the big cost of upgrading is new hats. Got some routine maintenance done as well, fluids changed etc. Filling the transmission is a pain in the neck, but a little hose and some creativity made it a little easier. I probably could make this a permanent feature if I wanted to. Modern problems require modern solutions. Ordered up some fresh-ish tires, going with a Pirelli slick, 325/660 rear, 305/660 front. Might be a slight challenge fitting the front, but I think this is the tire the car will run from here, so it will be nice to set it up for one size and call it a day.

Went out for some Auto-x this weekend, and had a proper blast. Highly recommended for anyone here who still hasn't gone to try it. Enjoy a slow lap, some V8 noises and straight cut gearbox whine. I have a handful of things to think about and address moving forward, but overall I'm very happy with where this sits. Next up is OnGrid at the Ridge in late July for more testing, and maybe, just maaaaybe a little redemption.

I guess the end of the story here is "be the change you want to see". Hype the forums, post on the forums, link to the forums etc. Viewership drives ad dollars which means things will stay solvent and remain online. In that vein, have we done a sticker fundraiser lately? I miss the old HybridZ forum header with the logo too. Can we bring that back?

Searchability, and the loss of a lot of photos because of imgur/photobucket policy changes have been hugely detrimental. Even back in the day, I would use Google to search HybridZ, rather than use the forum search tools. It's tough for sure. I think the forums that are thriving right now have had a strong social component, rather than just knowledge, and don't have a facebook/instagram equivalent.

This is the most activity this thread has seen in years, ANOTHER WEEKEND UPDATE! Got the intake welded up, some gasketing on the radiator extractor, and got the car back on the ground. Also got a nut and bolt done on the car. I still need to bleed the brakes, and do a quick fluid check and I'll be in good shape for a few events!

If this car only inspired, I'd feel pretty good about it. As it sits, planning to go up to Packwood WA for an auto-x event in late June. Basically, doing what I should have done in 2023 and actually shaken the car out before driving it on a race track! From there, I'm hoping to get back to The Ridge in July with OnGrid for an HPDE day, and then up to Area27 in BC for a couple days with a buddy. That's going to be a great event, so I'm pretty stoked on that one. Got material coming tomorrow, should be a good weekend of welding!

Good progress over the long weekend. Paint, bondo and fiberglass is mostly a waiting game which is pretty annoying. Got the duct glued together and painted so it looks like something. Trimmed it up a little and we are in great shape! The holes in the hood are a little bit large, but that's ok, and will likely get solved with a new hood (fiberglass) or something on top. Also got the transition piece painted which is exciting! This will help blend the splitter into the air dam, and will get taped onto the splitter once I put some trim on top of it. Need to get to work on the new intake pipe as well, going to put the filter over near the wheel for now. In the future, I'll flip the manifold and pull air from the cowl/wiper box area, but that's a bigger lift in terms of fabrication. Can't tell you how excited I am to have a metal fabrication project after 10 months of composites.

Small fiberglass update. I got the general shape made, and it's ready for trimming and bonding together. I'd like to test fit it on the car, and make sure the radiator is picking up in the right spot. Excited for this, we've got fully ducted air going into and coming out of the radiator now!

I for one, appreciate that the one active thread on this website is a handful of folks coming to defend Derek, and somebody with an ax to grind.

FWIW, when I spoke with Bluemoon Performance (importers in SoCal for the PAMS head) in 2022 they quoted $8-10k for the head with no cam towers or other parts. Do with that what you will, I would expect the PAMS twin cam head to decently expensive.

Also working on getting the radiator extractor wrapped up. This part has been a LONG time coming, and after a lot of pausing since I wanted to do it with carbon fiber, I've cheaped out and will just make it out of fiberglass and waft black paint towards it. This was a pretty fun thing to build, and figure I can get y'all up to speed! First tho, everybody in the way-back machine to March 2024. First thing to do was figure out how to make the shape. I started by cutting two huge holes in the hood, and start taping cardboard and paper to connect the three shapes. The challenge with this method is that I've firmly attached the hood to the car with tape, and because the shape is mostly paper, there was no good way to remove it to do anything with it! I decided here that expanding foam was going to be necessary to keep the shape and give me something to work with. I managed to squeeze a trash bag around the radiator, and bought some 2 part expanding foam from Amazon and started pouring. This process took SOOO MUCH FOAM! So much foam. I had to re-order 3 times to fill the shape out. Two things to note for folks thinking about doing this: This foam expands quite a bit requiring a pretty rigid form, and it gets HOT. The foam expands as part of an exothermic reaction, and will get up to about 180*. This gets worse if you pour a lot of foam on top of other foam, so you really want to let it cure and do it's thing before you layer it up. Once the thing was full, I trimmed the outlet and then took the hood off and realized the Big Chungus (tm) that I had created. Realized here that I forgot we need to make space for the air filter. Also, realizing that all the cardboard and other crap I used to make the shape is now glued forever to the foam. The drivers side channel is also quite a bit bigger than the passenger side, as the passenger side dodges a number of cooling tubes. Some shaping is clearly needed. Luckily because this is 2 part foam (never NEVER use Great Stuff foam for this), it was easily shaped with saws, grinders and other tools, was sandable and fillable with bondo. Ended up with a good shape! Last thing to do was fill in the area where the radiator sat so the fiberglass has a mounting flange. I then wrapped the whole thing in metal tape to promote reasonable release and it promptly sat in the shop for a year. I started fiberglassing it up this week, and have the bottom of the shape glassed in. My plan is to use plastic and more metal tape to create this piece in 2 parts, rather than trying to break, dissolve and generally remove the foam by disastrous methods. It's looking pretty alright, hoping to get the rest of it glassed up today!

Got into the fiberglass over the weekend to start popping out the last few parts I need to get this thing "finished". First up is the 3d printed splitter transition piece. I think in a modern car this would be a lip, or airdam, but we all know the area it's filling! I knew I didn't want to encapsulate the PLA core, since this is just a wind diverter, so I taped down a bunch of plastic sign board to the bench, and then used hot-glue and foil tape to attach the piece to the boards. Polyester resin doesn't like to attach to foil tape, or corrugated plastic sign board, so I was pretty sure I could pop this piece off when I was done. A little bit of fiberglassing later, and we had the piece ready to go! Side note; People who are able to take in progress photos of fiberglassing are wild, and have a huge budget for gloves. Once the glass cured (which took a long time, I'm using a resin that i'm not super used to, under catalyzed to extend the working time), I was able to mark my trim lines, and then pop the part off! Super satisfying de-molding the part like that. For a Positive to Positive process, I couldn't be happier. I do think I'd like to try printing a mold, rather than a buck like this, it might make the finishing process just a little nicer. Needs to be sanded, some filling bondo applied and then primer and paint. This piece will then get a little rubber lip along the top, and likely be "speed taped" to the splitter. The front of the car is already low, if this were attached forever, I'd be in trouble!