TARP Blog

Sometimes progress takes a back seat to trying to get it done right. I got the engine off the engine stand and on the cherry picker and was getting everything ready so that I could mount the transmission. I finished hooking up the wire harness and went to put on the rear plate (which separates the block from the flywheel/clutch assembly and basically contains the clutch dust inside the transmission bellhousing) and remembered that I had not been able to get all the bolts torqued down on the rear main seal while the engine was on the engine stand. There just wasn’t enough room between the engine stand and the block to get a wrench in there.

So I went to torque down the rear main seal bolts. The rear main seal, of course, prevents the pressurized oil in the crankcase from seeping out the back of the engine and all over things. As cruel experience has taught, the failure to keep things oiled in an internal combustion engine leads to, among other things, catastrophic engine failure, overnight drives to find a replacement engine, et cetera. On the other hand, we know that the puny M6×1mm bolts that Toyota uses for things like the oil pan and the rear main seal are not very manly and cannot withstand prodigious torquing.

I used my most sensitive beam-balance torque wrench, since the BGB says that the rear main seal bolts should only be torqued to 9.5 newton-meters. For those of you not familiar with newton-meters as a form of measurement, that’s about the amount of torque that a bumblebee produces when it alights on a tulip. The licking of a cat’s tongue probably produces more than 9.5 N-m. Regardless, I tried my best, but I snapped off two of the 7 bolts that hold in the rear main seal. As a first effort at repair, I thus uttered forth some choice swear words (no doubt procured from a drunken sailor on shore leave, or Nancy Pelosi), but those were insufficient to remove the snapped studs from their ironclad threaded caves.

I next tried to use what is commonly called an easy-out or Grabit bit to turn the studs backward out of their holes. This has proved successful in the past when I’ve broken off an M6×1mm bolt in a block, but not this time. There was no avoiding it any longer, the rear main seal had to come off so that I could repair this work. Unfortunately, to remove the rear main seal, you also have to remove the oil pan, and that was held on by about a metric ton of RTV gasket sealer. All of which will need to be removed and re-installed, a tedious and time-consuming process. Durn.

Rear main seal removed, and one of the bolts actually had enough thread sticking out of the block that I was able to turn it out with a vise-grip. But no such doing with the other one. Several minutes of drilling and tapping later and voila, a Heli-Coil was in place and all was right with the world. The rear main seal went back on (after throwing away all the stretched out bolts that were holding it in before), but the re-gasketing of the oil pan will have to wait for another night. I just wasn’t up to the task last night. So I gapped and installed the new spark plugs, smeared the threads with anti-seal grease and the insulators with dielectric grease, and installed all to their torque spec.

Hopefully tonight I will get to re-attach the oil pan and be done with buttoning up the engine.

Race Prep Author: Pat

Our Northern Division team competed at the American Irony Detroit-ish LeMons race last weekend and had a marvelous and successful time. Here’s a photo of what the car looked like as it was going out on the track on Saturday:

(click the photo for a bigger version)

And here’s one of Doug on the track:

They rebuilt the motor that we blew up (and by we I mean me) at Nelson Ledges last fall. Apparently Stevo got a penalty on Sunday (he claims it was the other guy’s fault, LOL) and the judges made him dress up in drag, including 3″ stilettos, and engage in a footrace versus the other driver to see who got to go out on track and who had to serve the penalty. The other guy was in flats and won, but I’m surprised after the Pinewood Derby at Infineon that Stevo didn’t think of just knocking him over and then cruising to the win. Here’s a cellphone photo that one of the guys took of Mark in his Sunday best, reclining on the hood of the car:

Stevo wrote the following report and sent it out via email last night, and I’m republishing it in its entirety below, without his permission. That’s what he gets for taunting me about not sending me the swirl pot. I haven’t read it all the way through, so I hope that it’s not too blue:

American Irony is done.  We placed 19th, but more importantly, we finished a race and learned a lot of valuable lessons.   Little things like transponder placement and big things like the new fender rule. The new motor ran flawlessly.  The oil cooling, swirlpot-ing, dethermostating cooling combination is POTENT.  A huge big thanks to Bender and Stick Figure Racing.  Murl, I don’t hardly want to give that can up.  I’ll ask Big Pete if he wants to copy it before we send or if we can wait to get it back.  At the least I’ll draw a plan of it.  Our short race summary:  the car was fabulous, black flag disease owned us.  I myself racked up 2.  I’ll say I deserved them at Infineon.  I cooked into a chicane x2 and got my just desserts. Gingerman was me driving good clean stints and getting hit by cars trying dumb passes.

Wow, what fun.  Big Pete said he reached to shift gears driving into work this morning.  Little Pete says he’s feeling it today where the car beat up on him all over.  My shifting arm is a bit sore from the seat support on that side.  I can’t complain though.  The seat is comfy for this frame as long as the belts are good’n'tight.  Wow, I picked some sucky restaurant food up there.  Mega thanks to Dusty for riding up and supporting the team in a whole lot of different ways on the weekend.

Ginger Man rocked.  Not bumpy as advertised.  Did I have that mixed up with Gratten?  Some complained of the surface nuking their tires. We had no tire or brake issues. Still need to look over the brakes postrace.  It looks like we used up most of that set that is on the car.  We could go back there.

MyLaps has the race data but we can’t log in and we don’t have our transponder number.  Even if we get the # it may be hard to log in with it depending on its status.  I have an email in with Nick at Lemons and a post on the forum trying to get some help.

I haven’t had enough time to go thru films yet.  Day one there is just one film about 25 minutes long.  It is yellow pace laps, then 4 jackasses trying to move a transponder around on the car.  Right at the end Pete is driving his fisrt green lap and the video stops at turn 7.  Thanks to PK hooking up some juice for us, we have most of day 2.  Dusty, Doug and I watched some of Big Pete’s runs from day 2 over dinner on the way home.  Big Pete is superbly competent at many things.  Driving tops that list.  I have watched my vid. Unfortunately stops before I get pegged in turn 10 by the #11 car, it may very well be JUST before and the camera shuts down from the knock.  Anyway, you wouldn’t be able to see a shot from behind given the current camera position which brings me to another idea.

If you think of ideas to do things differently next go, let me know. Try to jot them down now while its fresh.  A few of mine:  More mirrors.  A camera bracket that runs way out back behind the spoiler at the driver’s eye level.  We should get a wider view forward, a look at the steering wheel, tach,  AND rearview if we find the sweet spot. Sweet Jesus, you have no idea what I plan to write on the back of the car for the next race.  Also, we need a new theme idea.  Bonus points if it includes a lot of Kubota Orange rattle can.

Ok, I gotta go to bed and do more work and Dad stuff tomorrow.  The whole set of films is 8.5GBish, LMK if you want the whole set.  How hard is it to host ginormous files for free on the internets?  Or if you are local go buy a keychain flash drive if you don’t already have one.  I’ll try to edit things down but it will be SEVERAL days for that finished product.  That will prolly hit YouTube for your ease of consumption.

Misty Watercolored Memories of the Way We Were, Race Analysis Author: Pat

This weekend saw the completion of engine assembly. It took a lot longer than I thought it would have, but everything seems to have gone together just fine. I guess I kind of took my time to try to make sure that everything got put back in its correct place, in the correct orientation, with the appropriate amount and type of lubrication. I took the engine off the engine stand and am hoping to get back out there later tonight to fit the rear engine plate, flywheel, and clutch. Depending on how things go, I might even try to mount the transmission up, although to be honest that will probably have to wait until tomorrow.

In other exciting news, former (and future?) team driver Sam and her friend Trevor donated two sets of Miata wheels to the team for the grand total of $0.00. Seems all the Spec Miata teams are moving to 15″ wheels and tires, so these 5-spoke 14″ wheels are out of vogue for them now. That’s great news for us, as the 14″ wheels are lighter and the tires are cheaper (and lighter).

Race Prep Author: Pat

Got a lot of work done on the engine today after receiving the new bearings in the mail yesterday. Installed the main bearings and crankshaft dry and plastigauged them to make sure our clearances are okay (they are). Pulled it all back out, lubed up all the moving/rotating parts, and got the mains and crank back in. Installed the rod bearings, installed the pistons, and tightened those all down. Then I re-installed the rear main seal and the oil pump (making sure to fill it with oil as I was going. Squirted a little oil down the front of the main oil gallery too before I buttoned that up. Then I measured the distance of the oil pickup from the bottom of the oil pan and decided that the oil pickup could move at least a half-inch closer to the bottom of the pan, which should help with any problems of lower oil pressure in right-hand sweepers (there are 2 of these at Eagles Canyon, but neither are too extreme). Fabricated a custom pickup spacer from some scrap 1/4″ thick aluminum. Installed the windage tray, the new pickup spacer and the oil pickup, and then, finally, the oil pan. So, the bottom end is all buttoned up. Tomorrow night I’ll get to work on bolting up the newly-cleaned up head and getting the rest of the accessories attached to the engine. I’d love to get this motor back in the car on Saturday…

Race Prep Author: Pat

Given our clown car theme for the upcoming race, I’m thinking that putting one of these on the front of the car is going to be pretty much mandatory. Not that it’s clowny in the traditional sense, more like the idea of a mustache on a car is very clowning-around:

The replacement bearings came in today, so I’ll be working on engine re-assembly tonight and tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed that I can follow the instructions in the book…

Race Prep Author: Pat

I worked last night on getting the radiator hoses fabricated and all finished up. I’m waiting on a couple of parts for this too — some aluminum connector pipes — but I think that I have everything cut to size. Of course, the American big-block radiator that we’ve switched to has different sizes than the teensy Japanese radiator hoses, so there have been some upsize and downsize issues, but I’ve found some reducers that mostly take care of that. I worked in a bleeder near the top of the intake side to help bleed the system of air (we know that is a problem) and a fitting on the output side of the radiator into which I’m going to fit a secondary water temp gauge with a peak/warn light so that our driver(s) will have a better visual warning if the water’s getting too hot. I can finish up this job once the additional connector pipes arrive (one in 1.5″ and one in 1.75″) and then get the fan fitted. After that I need to figure out the ducting from the radiator through the firewall and then from the firewall to the new escape duct that I need to cut out of the hood.

After working the cooling pipes issue to the point where I’m waiting on parts to complete, I resumed work on the bumper/air dam. Taking a week or so off from this topic has helped to provide me with some clarity on how to solve the problems (namely, crappy cheap bumper cover and the near-total absence of hard points on the front of the car from which to mount the entire contraption), and I think I’ve figured out how to structure the whole thing so that we can get it on and off with just a few dzus but keep it in place for the race. I want to make it easy to remove and put in place because one thing we’ve seen is that the low nose of the car gets messed up when getting the car on and off the trailer.

So, unless the mail/UPS brings a cornucopia of engine parts (keep fingers crossed!), tonight I’ll resume work on the front end/air dam.

MR2

After ordering the replacement main and rod bearings today, I figured I might as well press on with the non-engine related tasks. So tonight I finished up the revised driver’s seat position and got everything mounted up. The good things about the revised seat position is that it is about 1.5″ (maybe more) closer to the center console and further away from the door bars, which makes it safer. It’s also about 2″ lower — we’re almost literally sitting on the floor of the car. The difference in height is really noticeable. The car is still the same small car that it’s always been, so it’s not like our helmets are ever going to have a ton of room away from the roll cage, but at least they’re a couple inches further away now.

The seat now goes back further than it ever did before, in fact, so far that I now need to revise the lap belt attachment points. Right now, with the seat in its rearmost position, the factory lap belt attachment points are actually ahead of the point where they pass through the seat. Not the safest way to fly. So I’ve ordered some Class 8 eyebolts and snap ends for the belts and will add those to the car after they arrive.

Tomorrow night I will work on finishing the revisions to the radiator and front cooling hoses and maybe get to work on the front grille/air dam/splitter assembly. Once the engine parts get in, it will be all engine, all the time. There is some suspension work to do too — super-discount ball joints that I picked up on a wholesaler closeout at Rock Auto means new ball joints on all 4 corners, which should tighten up our suspension and take some of the wobble/slop out of things. I don’t have any illusions that we’ll ever really contend in this race (our driving just isn’t good enough, even for LeMons), but at least we could be challenging.

Race Prep Author: Pat

The in-laws were in town all Easter weekend, so while I got some work done on Saturday, Easter Sunday was a wash, car-wise. But here’s the summary from the weekend:

I got the crankshaft and started messing around with it on Saturday and the block and thought to myself, self, let’s get this block good and cleaned out. Took it to the local spray-and-wash and $1 later the block was all sprayed down with engine cleaner and cleaned out with high-power water. Brought it back home and sprayed it down everywhere with WD-40 to force out all the water in the nooks/crannies. Made the floor in the garage damned slippery. Then I chased every threaded hole in the block with some thread chasers so that the fasteners will go in right. Only one or two of the holes had much resistance at all so the block stayed clean.

I got the mains and the crankshaft into the block and plastigauged them and everything was fine, but then I got to looking at the main bearings and although they came from shrink wrap, they are all pitted. I confirmed that fresh new mains should be smooth and shiny, so I’m going to get some others. No sense in putting marginal bearings in this engine at this point.

Since I need to order those online and couldn’t get any more work done on the engine on Saturday, I turned to something else on the list: safety improvement. Last race we liked the sliders but the seat was both higher than we wanted for our Lurch-height drivers and closer to the cage than we’d prefer. So I pulled out the seat and all the brackets and re-engineered it. Test-fitting the new installation shows that the seat is about 1.5″ lower and about 1.25″ more inboard than before, so that gives us a little more room between helmet and cage. I sat in the car for the test-fit and although I’m shorter than our really tall guys, even with my helmet on, I wasn’t touching the cage unless I leaned my head over to the left deliberately. So hopefully that makes things safer for us. I’ll probably need to jack with the steering column a little bit to center it up on the new seat position but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker. I’ll finish that up tonight, I hope. Cheers.

Race Prep Author: Pat

No, not the abominable cartoon of the same name. I mean the crankshaft for our engine! It returned from its long stay at the machine shop that polished the journals of the small scratches/grooves that appeared when the former owner of this used engine didn’t change the oil very often. Did I mention that when I disassembled this motor it reminded me of one of my favorite reviews of a bad restaurant buffet line: it was awful-looking and there wasn’t nearly enough of it. That oil was tar-black and I don’t know that there was even a full quart that came out of the engine.

Well, that’s all behind us now as I’ve got the engine disassembled, cleaned, and ready for re-assembly. We did a cheapie “valve job” with one of those wooden dowels with a suction cup and reassembled the head, but it’s got no “hot” parts, no “upgraded” camshaft, none of that. I just want an engine that will hold together for an entire race. So it’s new bearings and rings and time to re-assemble now. Last night I cleaned out the oil galleys and the water jacket on the block and the oil passages on the crank before I got too tired and came into the house. I’ve decided that one longevity measure of this engine is that I’m not going to work on assembly when I start getting bleary-eyed; I’ve talked to too many LeMons folks who have put in a bearing upside-down because they were too tired when they were working on it.

The in-laws are coming into town for the Easter weekend, so that may significantly hamper my progress over the weekend. But the next step is to dry-fit the main bearings and plastigage them to make sure that the clearances are all in order, then to fit the rings on the pistons. Cheers.

Race Prep Author: Pat

I’m getting the crankshaft back from the machine shop today where they were polishing out the journals and am going to start re-assembly of the engine today. Keep your fingers crossed for me

In a brief what-else-is-happening update, last night I welded in some new attachment points for the passenger side door. The door is now held shut by two dzus quarter-turn fasteners, the kinds that are captive and sprung. Should be better than the spin-knob on bolt method we were using before.

Race Prep Author: Pat