TARP Blog

Got a few various and sundry things done last night. I got the airflow meter and air filter bracket finished up and hung on the car, so I was able to attach the AFM wire. Other than getting the timing going and the distributor mounted, I think we now have all the electrics hooked up on the engine. If not, we’ll know quickly.

Most notably, I welded up the new exhaust system and test-fitted it. I need to figure out a couple of hanger locations. Also need to test-fit with the tailpipe turn-down and trim that to fit as necessary, then weld that on also. I need to test fit the passenger-side half shaft to make sure that there’s not any interference there (keep fingers crossed), otherwise I’ll need to come up with a couple inches of extension from between the flange at the end of the header to the flange at the start of the b-pipe.

I also ran some new wire for the fan on the oil cooler and cleaned up the switch panel wiring and got the swichgear mostly worked out. May need to add one more switch for the radiator fan but that all depends on if it’s still automatically cycling or not. Still lots to do, hopefully I can crank out some more tonight.

Race Prep Author: Pat

So the title of the post probably isn’t a “real” word in the English language, but it pretty well describes my weekend past: not a lot got done. The in-laws were in town for the baby’s baptism, so while there was a lot of hanging out and eating good food (and a baptism), there was a decided lack of hard-core car working. I did manage to steal out into the garage for a couple of hours on Saturday and got the danged clutch activation cylinder and the bracket that holds it and the two shifter cables bolted onto the car. I’ve connected most of the engine harness to the engine, but am needing to fabricate a bracket for the air flow meter before I hook that part up. Also need to splice together the positive battery cable from the kill switch to the positive side of the engine wire harness.

Then I need to fabricate the new exhaust system, and then get the engine to TDC and get the distributor lined up right. Then I can fire the engine. Maybe — maybe — by next weekend if all goes well this week?

I need a clone.

Race Prep Author: Pat

I am beat-ass tired today. Or as my brother says that they say it in North Carolina, tar’d. Why? Dave and I got the engine mounted in the car yesterday. And while this might be an easy job if you had a lift that would maneuver the car up and down, we don’t have one of those at my house, which meant a lot of lifting the car up with the cherry picker, then rolling the engine under the car, and then lots of other up and down movements and to and fro movements, and then finally — finally! — the engine was mounted.

Unfortunately, Dave had to leave after we had the engine under the car but before it was actually in its mounts, so he didn’t get to see that part (yet). At one point when I was trying to get the driver’s side/transmission mount into its saddle on the frame, the missus came out into the garage with infant in hand and operated the cherry picker jack handle while I pushed the transmission so that it would get lined up properly.

The rest of you who think/claim that you have kick-ass wives had better get those ladies to start bringing the heat because not only did I just take two consecutive weekdays off from work to work on the car without her even blinking an eye, but she operated a cherry picker jack, having never done so before, while holding a screaming baby. Huzzah!

After that I wrangled with the passenger-side mount for a few minutes and finally got it bolted in. Put the upper timing belt cover back on, and started wiring up everything that needs to be wired up topside. Not much later the missus needed some help with dinner and the three screaming/crying children inside the house, so that pretty much wrapped things up for the day. Which was fine, because I was already beat-ass tar’d at that point. I went back out later to finish cleaning up and straightening things, but that was the end of the work for the day.

Since I finally got all the radiator hoses in front worked out the other day, the only hose left to fit is the output hose from the engine to the tube that takes it up to the radiator. I have a hose temporarily in place but it needs to be cut down and then I think we’re all set. After that I will complete the re-connection of all the stuff in the engine bay, re-mount the clutch/shift cable quadrant, and then complete the re-wire of the dash area and switch gear. If I can pull it together tonight and tomorrow night, we might even have a first attempt at starting this jalopy by the weekend. That’s probably optimistic given the baby’s baptism this weekend and the resulting hoarde of relatives, but a man can dream, can’t he?

Race Prep Author: Pat

I was getting pretty stressed out the past few days, what with the engine not being ready to go in the car and about 10,000 other odds and ends needing to get sorted out. After today, I’m feeling a lot better.

Thanks to Rachel and the wonderful freedom provided by self-employment, I was able to work on the car from about 8:30 am until almost midnight, with breaks mainly just for lunch and dinner and to help clean up the back patio a bit. There’s nothing like a long & uninterrupted work session to melt away lots of stress for me.

Dave came over for a couple hours around lunchtime and it was (again) great to have him helping out on the car. One of the big remaining tasks in getting the car ready for the engine was completing the battery move. We’ve moved the battery to the passenger floor because the new front frame brace made the old spot in the frunk impossible. Dave finished up re-fabricating the brackets that will hold the battery in place and then completed shortening the battery cables. Those BMW cables are thick, so that took awhile, but now they’re the perfect size. And I’d bet that taking just 18″ off of each of them probably removed 10 pounds from the car. Those things are thick! Huge thanks to Dave for pitching in on the car, his help really made things progress smoothly today.

While Dave was working on the battery issues, I finished getting the rear radiator pipes re-arranged for the new-used engine configuration, then finished off the radiator mounting hoses. Many hose cuts and worm clamps later, I think that the cooling system is finally ready to hold water once the engine gets into the car. I still need to figure out the best way to hang a cooling fan on the radiator but otherwise the cooling part of this project is done.

There were a bunch of other little odds and ends that I finally got taken care of too but hardly even remember, but all stuff that is critical to function of the car. Like one of the engine to ground straps had come un-ended, the charcoal canister needed replacement of its vacuum hose, etc. Lots of niggling little stuff that all adds up. Well, I got a lot of that cranked out of the way today.

Also finally got the oil cooler placement and installation completed. I decided to locate it on the passenger side rear fender in the trunk and put the engine compartment fan on it. This isolates it from the heat of the engine bay itself, has easy access to the engine compartment for the oil transport tubes through the fender and the engine cooling vent, and it’s less likely to get collided there than if it were mounted on the rear facade of the car. I want to rig up a scoop to help feed air through the cooler, but I’m happy with it for now.

Speaking of oil, I filled the new-used engine with oil for the first time and didn’t see any of it leak onto the driveway. Of course, I haven’t run the engine yet, so…

Tomorrow I hope to get the oil pressure and temp gauges installed then get the engine moved into the car. I’m not ready to start it yet — not until the gauges are all installed so I can tell what’s going on inside the engine — but that day’s coming soon. Not soon enough

Race Prep Author: Pat

No work on the car last night, as I was tasked with assembly of the new LP grill that I bought for the missus. We like to grill and the one we bought when we moved into the house 7 summers ago is no longer working very well. So now we have a new grill to cook upon. That will not, unfortunately, help us turn laps at the race.

I’m taking a mental health day from work today to do a solid 12 hours on the car today. I’m hoping that Dave can come over for part of that. Full update tomorrow.

Race Prep Author: Pat

Days tend to run together in memory. I look at the blog and it’s been several days since my last post — things have been crazy busy both at work and at home. And yet, the car still needs work and the clock keeps ticking.

Thanks to Dave Anderson, the engine is (finally) mounted to the transmission and ready to be mounted in the car. I had the rest of the engine finished and wired up and everything, but although it’s not really all that heavy, it was just heavy and bulky enough that I couldn’t get it mounted alone. So Dave came over to the house around lunchtime on Sunday and helped me squirm that transmission into place. With 2 people, it actually wasn’t very difficult. The downside was that to get the transmission in place, we had to remove the side gear on the passenger side, which drained all the (pricey) transmission oil onto the floor. Oh well. And then the bracket/brace that connects the bottom of the transmission to the bottom of the block on the silvertop engine, well there’s a section that has to be cut out, otherwise that same side gear doesn’t have room to turn.

A little work with the grinder later and the bracket was clearanced and we had the transmission bolted up to spec, the brace mounted, and the side gear back on the transmission. I need to run out and get some more transmission oil at lunchtime today, as refilling the transmission took more than what little extra I had on the shelf. Nothing like seeing red transmission oil flowing out of the transmission onto the floor to get one scrambling for the oil dry and being very, very glad to have an extra full bag over in the corner of the garage.

Dave and I scrounged around for awhile in the bins of castoff parts to find the transmission mounting plate for the driver’s side engine mount. Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near where I thought it would be, but we found it and got that bolted on, as well as the other mounting brackets. Other than finishing the transmission oil refill, I’m pretty sure that it’s ready to go in the car.

There are a couple odds and ends that I need to clean up in order to get the car ready to receive its new engine. Late last night I figured out the mounting solution for the oil cooler and fan, so I want to get that complete and drill the holes through the trunk firewall for the oil line passthrough. Also, a couple of fuel and vacuum lines need to be extended, and I want to try to finish off the return radiator hose line issue so that’s ready to bolt up. Getting down to that bottom return line will be a total PITA once the engine is in the car. I hope to finish off those couple of items, as well as completing the hookup of the front radiator lines so that once the engine is in the car, I can get water in it and get it started up. Yes, at just under 6 weeks until the race I want to get this engine running

Race Prep Author: Pat

The Top 51 Lemons of the Detroit Irony 24 Hours of Lemons feature on Jalopnik this weekend opens with this scintillating photo of TARP North’s Topless Asset MR2 leading the pack around a turn:

I’m no expert on the firesuit/helmet combos of the drivers up there, but I’m speculating that’s PK. I know that Stevo and Doug both have red suits, and I remember that PK’s has some white on it. I think that Big Pete’s suit is all black, but I could be wrong about that. Pretty cool to have the lead photo on the Jalopnik, though. Here’s another action photo of the Topless Asset in action, I think this is PK too:

That car really does just get better looking every time I see it. I especially like the non-matching wheels, that’s just strong, Lemon-y goodness right there.

Misty Watercolored Memories of the Way We Were Author: Pat

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