KWIK84

iTrader: (5)

Any drag racers out there, I would like a little bit of help, have gotten rid of the stock tank, and converted to a 3 gal cell, would like to make it front mounted, have started to fab it up and looks like it will work pretty well, anybody out there done this?

AlkyIROC

Yes but I also don't have the factory rad support any more. All of the front bumper stuff has also been removed. Here are some older pics. I've moved things around slightly but the fuel cell is still in the same place. No new pics with the new engine yet.

KWIK84

iTrader: (5)

Looks good, just curious on the rad support, just a custom built deal? and what rad are you using? Also wondering if you are doing anything to support the lower part of the front end?

AlkyIROC

Like I said, these are old pics.

I made a custom lower brace to tie the front frame rails together back in the spring before I took the car into an alignment shop. In the bottom picture you can also see a roll cage tube going down to the front of the frame rail. The entire nose of the car, forward of the rad support, can be taken off now by pulling a couple of pins and undoing about 6 screws. I have a tubular framework supporting the nose that slides into some tubes welded to what's left of the front frame rails. It's not exactly the way I wanted it but it works. Pulling the nose off makes working on the engine much easier but it's not something I would do at the track.

The rad support is just some 1" square tubing welded at both ends to what's left of the factory support. The rad is from a turbo Firefly. With an alcohol engine, that's more than enough cooling. This isn't a high mileage engine. The rad overflow bottle mounted beside the fuel cell is from an old Volvo 240.

That huge tranny cooler behind the fuel cell has been changed to a smaller cooler and is now mounted in front of the rad.

In the bottom picture you can see the fuel lines are routed differently. That's because there's now a tunnel ram on the engine and a bypass regulater is mounted on the side of it. The fuel overflow line easily seen in the top 2 pictures is high, I have a factory fiberglass hood and cut a section out of the underside bracing so that the elbow will fit up into it.

There's been a lot of changes since those picture were taken. There's nothing pretty. I sure won't win any car shows. Hack it up and make it work. The exterior looks good in pictures and going down the track. That's all that matters. If it's not needed for speed or track safety, get rid of it.

If I was going to do it again, I'd fabricate the rad support forward a lot more and put the fuel cell behind it. There's not enough room between the support and the steering box right now to put the fuel cell there.

KWIK84

iTrader: (5)

I like your thoughts on the framework behind the front end, have been drawing up some plans to due the same, i like the tube idea to remove it, just wondering where you put the pins in the front end area to remove it, or is it now mounted?? to the frame work, and comes off as one piece? I was looking at your site, I like your weight #'s. I have gutted the inside pretty much the same as yours, except i still have the factory tilt column. I need to get rid of the power window motors and all of the uneeded crap in the doors, would like to switch to lexan, but I'll wait till I have everything else sorted out first. Still need to do the manual brake conversion, just trying to find the right setup for 4whl disc, have got a manual box from an s-10 as well, just need to get it installed.

AlkyIROC

I doubt your interior is gutted as much as mine but it might be. I also have a lot of the inner sheetmetal cut out GM likes using multiple layers of sheetmetal.

Factory tilt column (everything that I removed to what I have now) is 10 pounds of extra weight.

Factory power everything doors, complete, are 105 pounds each. I haven't weighed mine lately be they're probably down in the 50-60 pound range each.

Manual brakes doesn't save a lot of weight. The booster is probably only 5-10 pounds at the most. The biggest advantage is just for more access to the engine especially with the BBC.

The front end support framework isn't much. Mostly a bunch of 1" round tubing as the base framework with some smaller tubing used in key points as supports. Two pieces of tubing welded into the front frame rails that some smaller tubing that's welded to the base framework can slide into. 3/16" holes drilled through both so hairpins can be installed to hold it on. Alignment needs to be critical so the tubes on both sides can slide in together without binding. This is the part I didn't like about my fabrication.

Since there's no way it could really fall off, the hairpins are not really required. The better way to do it is more like the front end kits you can buy. On the front frame rails are the receiver mounts. Cup your hand in a C shape. That's what they would look like. Mounted in the nose is some tubing that simply slides into the C shaped receiver. Once in place it can't go anywhere except forward. Normally a front end is then secured with Dzus fasteners keeping it from moving forward.

When I remove the nose, all the body pieces forward of the rad support and the entire spoiler comes off as one piece. I pull the hair pins, unbolt a couple of screws under the sides of the spoiler, unbolt a couple of nuts inside the fenders and the 2 screws on top of the old rad supports, unplug the low beam headlights and pull the entire nose off. It takes more time to access the couple of inner fender nuts than it does to disconnect everything else but it still takes less that 5 minutes to pull the nose off.

I've got a long winter of downtime. I may redesign the nose piece to make it even easier to remove. I'd like to be able to pull the nose off in much less than a minute. More like 30 seconds or less. Maybe use some Dzus fasteners in key locations instead of the screws or nuts.

KWIK84

iTrader: (5)

I'm close in the interior department, except for the doors (but from the weight savings that you are talking about they are going on a diet this winter ) Basic dash shell, nothing behind it except a few support brackets, no carpet, only a plastic race bucket, shifter and a 8 pt cage.

I've got some extra tubing laying around, i'll have to see what I can come up with for the framework, definetely sounds like what I want to do. I also have a 6 in cowl on my hood (bonded on) wish that I would have went your route though, the hood weighs a ton now! With my small block, my goal is to reach 2850, probably not going to happen for a while though, lexan will probably be my last step in reaching that goal. Although if possible I will keep the glass in the rear hatch to try and even out my weight some (just a thought anyway).

After doing some reading on this sight, I've got a quick question for ya....Are you running sfc? I put my cage, and have a set that I made setting in the garage, not sure if I should put them in or not though, car leaves good, and not showing any signs of body flex, at least not yet, I have only made about 25 or so passes in it since I got it back out on the track.

AlkyIROC

My old aeroscoop hood was bondo'd and I agree, it makes it extremely heavy. That's why I went with the bolted down style with the cowl this time. You get some edge molding to run around the lip and use stainless screws so they don't rust. I use machine screws with stainless flat washers on the top and have nuts with built in star washers on the underside but I had to double nut them since the vibrations were loosening all the nuts. There's also a strip of 1" wide house door molding under the cowl to make a good seal to the hood. Both hoods are factory fiberglass hoods. The cowl covers the hood indents a lot better than the aeroscoop does. I've also trashed a couple other factory fiberglass hoods trying different modifications.

The only thing factory about my dash is the actual pad and I have the ends cut off to fit between the a-piller tubes. It's only there as cosmetics. The face of the dash is a sheet of aluminum supported by some braces welded to the cage knee bar behind it. Most of the braces I make for light duty supports like the dash, rear and side windows is made from 3/8" steel brake line. It's easy to bend and shape then it can be welded into place.

I had SFC in the car before it even got close to needing a 6 point bar and still have them. SFC tie the front and rear of the car together. They add strength that a cage can't do. You need both to do the job properly.

Swapping the glass windshield to Lexan only saves 10 pounds. Door glass I have no idea. I stripped my doors down in stages. Converting the rear hatch takes a lot of work and can be very frustrating to do but cuts at least 100 pounds off the car even though it's all at the rear over the tires. It's still weight.

I cut my entire rear hatch seal lip out where the window is. It's cut flush to the outer skin. The Lexan is slid under the skin and secured with rivits to the outer skin. The heads of the rivits are painted black so you'll never see them in any of the pictures. To do a pretty job you would smooth the edge of the skin then bondo over the rivit heads making them disappear. At the back of the Lexan, I made a retaining lip to hold it up across the back. It could never accidently fall out or off the car even at high speed. There's also two supports running down the middle to hold it up. The windshield is 3/16" which provides some stiffness but the back window is only 1/8" think and as no built in support.

The deck lid is nothing but a sheet of aluminum with the factory spoiler bolted on. Probably weighs 5 pounds. The factory deck lid alone is closer to 30. The lid is held down with a bunch of Dzus fasteners. The only thing I have in the back that needs access is the battery so the lid rarely comes off.

Like I said before, nothing pretty, just make it work. With all the weight reduction, my car is very nose heavy. There's a 60/40 weight distribution but I can still pull the front wheels off the ground. 50/50 is the goal to shoot for but adding weight to the rear to balance it out is stepping backwards.

AlkyIROC

Yes the welds look a little ugly but before it was painted, you could see there's lots of penetration. Here's roughly what the dash and supports look like. You can easily see the bent one that supports the face. Bent to the shape required. Flatten the end and drill a hole through it for the screw. There's 4 or 5 of them across the dash. The one that holds the dash pad up comes up from the knee bar, runs across the underside of the dash pad then comes back down to the knee bar on the other side. Welded to the knee bar on both ends. The front of the dash is still held down with the factory screws at the base of the windshield.