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14 days to build a racecar


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Had some serious brake line issues on Sunday....every flared line connection leaked....bad. I remade all the lines and they still leaked. Today at work I made some calls and had Mr. Brakeline himself come by the house tonight....took one look at my flares (which looked perfect to me) and said they were crap.....told me to throw my tool in the trash. I used his $400 tool and redid the whole car again...now they don't leak, and I've got a solid pedal. I changed the booster tonight as well, and finished hooking up the sway bars and rear axles. Tomorrow I'll do the wiring and exhaust, and hopefully I'll be able to fire it up.

 

3 days left

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Cheap tools end up costing a lot more then expensive tools. You're racing in Mexico right? Exhaust is easy, just dump it out the side behind the front wheels - that'll keep the locals and cows scared away.

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ITS ALIVE!!!!! And it sound @#$%#$ mean!

 

Official Update:

 

All the fluids are filled, we've got a bit too much fuel pressure, so I'll have to pick up a regulator in the morning. The suspension is set right, I'll cornerweight it tomorrow night just to be safe. I've got the belts in, mirrors on, everything under the car is bolted down...just the little piddly stuff left. I've got another few hours tonight, so I hope to get most of the nut & bolt stuff done. Practice starts on Saturday morning, but we usually leave friday morning and get there early to set up the paddock. I wish I had more time, but it looks like the maiden voyage might take place around our warehouse on Friday morning, and then its off to the track. I think I made it. Pictures later tonight.

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Do laps around your warehouse for about 30 minutes if you get time. Just put it in second gear and drive. That will help shakeout 50% of the problems you're going to have this weekend and its nice to find them 100 yards from the shop.

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i gotta say dude, you might be my new hero.

can anyone name the movie this came from?

 

"DUDE! On a scale of 1 to 10, one being not so extreme, and 10 being extremely extreme, i give this a nine point SEVEN!"

 

anyhow, that's your car.

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Well, I lost the bet. I got home from work tonight, and the garage floor was covered with water. One of the pipe plugs in the right cylinder head was leaking....no problem. I tightened it up a few turns, the pressure tested it to make sure it was fixed....and it was, but now there were a couple more leaks. Water bubbling out around 5 of the head studs. I used Permatex Teflon thread sealer liberally on all the head studs. There is no reason why they should leak. I could just yank the studs, butter them up with Silicone, and reinstall them, but if 5 are leaking for no reason, there's no telling whats going to happen with the others, so I'm going to yank the heads, re-chase all the bolt holes, clean all the studs, use a better sealer, and put it all back together, which I don't have time to do before the race, and I can't get another set of headgaskets tonight. Otherwise, the car is ready to hit the track. If I didn't have as much money in the motor...I'd do the band-aid fix, but I can't afford to build another one of these, so I'll do it right. I lost my dollar. Dammit.

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damn, that really sucks about losing the bet after all that work. :(

 

How about this: I bet you 10 bucks that you can't rebuild my Z in 2 months off your dime. ;)

 

Seriously though, Are you going to the race still, or are you totally screwed? Wish you could...

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I'm not racing this weekend, I'm going as a crew chief only for our team. So instead of driving the fastest thing I've ever sat in with 4 wheels, I'll spend the weekend drunk, turning wrenches, playing with strippers, and whatever other trouble I manage to get into....so it won't be all bad, just kind of a bummer for me right now. I was really looking forward to running the Z.

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lbh,

 

I have no doubt that I speak for many of us on this forum.

 

You're our new hero (at least for the moment).

 

Huge props for everything you got done; bummer you didn't succeed, but congrats on having the judgement to make the right trade between discretion and valor (it'd be a bummer to waste an engine build on an ego trip).

 

The Karma gods will reward you eventually; please share that event.

 

Cheers -- Gary

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Better to find the problem now in the garage then braking hard from 120 mph. Saw a Posche 944 Turbo go completely sideways at 140 mph when he braked for turn 1 at WSIR. He slid off the track and vanished in a cloud of dust. Car was a complete writeoff but the driver walked away. Blown head gasket dumped water on the track right in front of his rear wheels.

 

Now you have alot more time to get ready for the next race!

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Mind if i ask you what you do for a living? That is incredable amount of deadication and creativity, and in that time line.......WOW!

 

 

I run the Tech Support, Quality control, and caliper production dept. for Centric Parts. Its a 9-5 job, so I've got some time after work to get MY work done. We've also got quite a few connections through work to get parts quick. JohnC did an awesome job getting me stuff when I needed it. The car, when its done, will be wearing some nice big BetaMotorsports stickers. I couldn't have done what I did to the car without the help I received from a few select vendors.....and my machinist, who pissed me off in the beginning but has showed up at the house the last few nights to turn wrenches, weld, whatever needed to get done.

 

JohnC, I thought about it for about 2 minutes last night....I could have resealed just the leaky studs and been down the road, but the last thing I wanted was for one of the studs under the valve cover to start leaking and contaminate the oil...I figured it would be best to admit defeat now, instead of later on this weekend, and then go out with solid equipment for the next race.

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Better to find the problem now in the garage then braking hard from 120 mph. Saw a Posche 944 Turbo go completely sideways at 140 mph when he braked for turn 1 at WSIR. He slid off the track and vanished in a cloud of dust. Car was a complete writeoff but the driver walked away. Blown head gasket dumped water on the track right in front of his rear wheels.

 

Now you have alot more time to get ready for the next race!

wouldn't be a problem with an aircooled porsche... bummer.

 

as for ibh, dude, no reason to admit defeat, what you've done is pretty inspiring to me.

 

The joke "the aristocrats" is kinda like working on a car the way we all do. The more gross and verbose the joke is as it leads up to the punchline, the more ironic and thus funny the punchline.

 

the more work you do, the more hardship you go through to get this crap done, the more rewarding it will be when you take it out.

 

I don't even haveaspire to have a v-8 z anytime soon, and I still keep track of this thread, cause it's f*cking amazing to me how much work you've done in such little time. Keep it up, holmes.

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Awesome execution!!!!

 

I've been through the damned leaking head stud thing. I'll never user studs again on a SBC head, except for the 406 I'm building with the Dart Sportsman block which has dry (blind) head bolt holes! Here is a thread about Scottie-GNZ's and my and other's experiences with head studs leaking: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=76947

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