8.2" or 9.5" deck engine? Assuming it's a smallblock....

Guessing if it's a 347 it makes ~950 rwhp like that. If it's a stroker 351 it could make 1200-1350rwhp. Am I in the ballpark?

 

So why skimp on the cage? Your track may not be strict, but you are comprimissing your safety. These outlaw street cars are getting very dangerous at the speeds, weight and lack of proper safety equipment and good welds.

You will get booted off of most tracks with that cage, I would think.

I understand you must compromise for a street car, but when you are putting yours and others lives at risk, it seems like a silly compormise.

The build is obviously much more outlaw sreet car than all around real street car.

 

It's got a TIG welded chromoly 10 point with through the floor subframes and outriggers. The car will have a 10 pound halon system, parachutes, and I'll wear a 3.2A cert firejacket, full face helmet, firegloves, pants, shoes, and use a HANS device.

Most of the racing around here is 1/8th mile... how quick do you have to go before a 25.5 cage is required?

I admit the car is largely overbuilt with the exception of the cage. If I'm driving to and from the track, how hard is it really going to get pushed? Do you consider a car with full interior, AC, radio, etc. a street car or not?

 

My understanding: There is nothing in print officially according to the NHRA for the 1/4 mile 25.x certs. to be used in the 1/8 mile.

This isn't a 4.30 car. Without weight reduction, pushed as HARD as I could push it, I think a high 4.80 is all this thing could do.... and with chassis flex because of no 25.2 cage, realistically I think a 4.99 would be a great goal if I were to trailer the thing to and from the track... but it is a STREET car.

 

Well gee, guess what else I found:

"The only req. is at 4.49 and quicker and as long as your not faster than 180. In theory a sportsman cert. is good to 4.50 in the 1/8th."

Guess I'm good then.

 

I am not saying your car is not a street car. If you can drive it legally, its is by some peoples. Interior, ac, etc.. sure , that adds to its street car cred.

I am talking about saftey here.

You are the one that said it will have 2k hp. Will be able to handle well, etc...


" How hard is it going to get pushed?" I don't know, only you can tell that. But with 2k hp, I would think it would get pushed pretty darn hard.

I, as well as anyone here that has ever been involved with outlaw street racing has seen some serious injuries and even deaths from people pushing these heavy street cars real fast, yes even in the 1/8 mile.

I just hate to see this happen.

Look at Bonnieville, IF you build a car for a class, and the class record is 250mph, but your car is only capable of running 180 mph, guess what, it still has to pass all the requirements for a 250 mph run.

It is done for the safety of the driver.

I think you have a cool build going, and an admirable goal, but safety is safety.

 

Just to clarify, what I meant by your car is more of an outlaw car and not an all around street car, is that I don't see this thing carving any corners. Looks like a great straight liner, but not a real practical driver.

Are you installing 5 point harnesses in the rear seats? If not anyone that rides in the rear will soon feel the headaches of that cross bar.

I spend a lot of time on pro touring.com and there is a lot of discussion on cages in street cars. Unless you have a 5 point harness and a helmet on, these cages can do a lot more harm on the street, than good.

 

I respect your opinion. That said, I've built this to what I see as the optimal compromise.

As far as handling, we'll see what it does when it's done. The car has 19x12's in the rear, and 18x8.5's on the front for a 'street' and 'handling' setup. I think the real challenge will be to get the power low enough so that it is manageable, as well as getting the front swaybar (probably will need to change) to play nicely with the wolfe rear bar, or disconnect the wolfe bar and use a more street friendly setup when turning is desired.

The rear seat is just for looks... nobody will sit back there.

The front seat is mounted low enough that unless there was a failure of the 5 point harness my head should not be able to contact the rollbar. I do have SFI padding installed in case that proves to be false.

The car does have 5 point harnesses.

FWIW I own a vehicle with an SFI 25.5 cage, I wouldn't want to drive it on the street.

Honestly you're generally preaching to the choir here, as there are lots of local street cars that make 1.2k rwhp+ with NO roll bar, cage, nothing. I'm usually the one being the safety ****!

 

Its all good man. It is obvious you know what you are doing and have the experince.

It is shaping up to be a killer car, no doubt about it.

 

We'll see about that, I hope it matches my expectations when I'm done, and that I've really built what I wanted.

In any case, how am I supposed to tell my wife that I'm 'just building a little street car' when she sees a funny car cage?

 

Went to seal the passenger header for the (hopefully) last time, and saw this.

Guess big EGTs, 30 psi in the hot side, etc. wasn't super friendly for this header.



Brought out the 308SS rod, ran a bead around the flange, then back on the beltsander, and we have this:




ultra copper silicone around the ports and bolted it up!

 

Got the steering rack in finally.

Looks weird doesn't it?

tie rod pivot points duplicate stock so I should be able to ZERO bumpsteer compared to factory.

There is 6" of travel.



Got a Spohn bumpsteer kit, asked them on the phone if it was threaded for 5/8-18 RHT, they said yes.... turns out it's LHT so I had to swap the outer tie rod end and I'm going to Smiley's today to find some 5/8-18 LHT heim joints.

 

Simply amazing. Subscribed.

I admire how you can accomplish this much work with a little one in the house.

 

Got the steering done. It's not really an ideal install but it is what it is. I wish I could have gotten the steering rack more in line with the steering arm on the spindles.

I got some 1.25" .090" DOM steel tubing, and built a mount for it.

I have had the bottom of the k member hit the ground in normal driving if I hit a good sized bump, and I figured that I wanted to mount the rack so it wouldn't contact first...

Here's the mount I built:



Here it is tacked onto the rack. It's pretty far forward because it had to go between the oilpan and the harmonic balancer so that it would let the k member hit first and not the rack. Again, not idea, but what can you do? If it causes huge problems, I'll move the engine up, but you can imagine how much rework that entails.


Gussets built and TIG welded.


Pic installed with spohn bumpsteer kit installed.


Close up showing oil tank and pump just kind of laying there, it's going to be pretty challenging to make it all fit, but I think it's possible.


What I don't know is if the swaybar can stay at all, I think I might have contact between the swaybar and the outer tie rods to make it clear the downpipe. Really it needs slightly different curvature.

 

Trying to get the oilpump installed... it's pretty challenging.

I bought a low profile fitting pictured here:



Here you can see the difficulties, with the hot side on one side


And the pan on the other


However, since the pump is internally manifolded for the scavenge section, I swapped two of the fittings and voila! I think it might work.

 

Got the oilpump mount done finally, I had to weld some additional material on to get the alignment the way I wanted it.

The piece I welded on was 1" x 1" x 2". I had to preheat the thing to 350 and my machine still struggled to weld it. Welding oily aluminum SUCKS!



Fabbed a bracket for the oil tank. I think I might make one more support for it that holds the tank in one other place, but we'll see how this works when the tank has got some fluid in it.


Far away and close up view of oil tank mount. Bolts to driver side cylinder head. Yes, the tank clears the stock hood BARELY!




Welded on the big red procharger BOV flange. Another old oily aluminum welding good fun time. Lots of heating, brushing, grinding, laquer thinner, lather rinse repeat. I cut out a square around the old bead, used tin snips to get to the bead, then welded it on... That is why it looks like there are two weld beads.

 

Sir, do you know there is a ford motor in your pontiac. Nice job so far dude. I'm impressed as all the work your putting in to get that monster going. And yes I read your post about why your going with a ford block.

 

I think using a Ford engine makes this project way more interesting than your typical lame LSx build.

 

TwinTurboROC1, Someone stole my BBC, or I'd be using that instead.

Dave, it sure makes everything harder! No shelf parts to mount the engine, have to fab everything in, etc. Nothing takes less than an hour to do it seems...


Got the procharger valve mounted... it's a tight fit but it seems that everything is going to fit in there, I'm pretty pleased with how the floorplanning of the layout has worked out. It sure would have looked cooler out to the side or on the top, but I need to be able to see the timing pointer with a timing light, hood has to close, etc.

 

How does someone steal a BBC?

 

Just a tip Andrew, putting a groove or bevel on that thick aluminum will help it weld a lot better, especially since it's a thickness far beyond what your machine is really rated for


"Welded on the big red procharger BOV flange. Another old oily aluminum welding good fun time. Lots of heating, brushing, grinding, laquer thinner, lather rinse repeat. I cut out a square around the old bead, used tin snips to get to the bead, then welded it on... That is why it looks like there are two weld beads."

Just another thought, if you're grinding where you'll be welding later, that can cause problems. It can seem to cause really bad contamination, both from the aluminum oxide from the wheel being embedded into the aluminum, and if the wheel has been used on steel previously, contamination from that as well. You might have had more a problem from the grinding than the aluminum being oily/dirty. But I'm just speculating here

I want to see this thing drive though

 

I just find it hilarious to see all this hard work, time, money and fabrication work with all the nice parts crammed in that engine bay and then see the stock looking AC unit in there... Just seems out of place in a build like this, but a true street car should have a/c.

Looks great so far! getting close

 

I think you're right, I hit it on the bandsaw to clean it up a bit.

When I lit up on the aluminum it turned green and black in my helmet and started kind of oozing out like those snake things that your parents buy you for 4th of july when you're 8 years old... but at the same time some parts were caving in, and not from heat saturation (I don't think - thats' when the puddle starts sagging in when the part has too much heat in it) does that make sense?

Enough rounds of brushing and laquer thinner and I was able to weld it up.

 

It is stock! It worked, so I figured why not keep it if I can.

 

Welded trans temp bung on trans pan, installed it, installed the shifter linkage.

Put on the flaming river steering ujoint, it fits... not much clearance but there is enough not to hit!

Yanked the radiator, it needs to be modified for the overflow, the old overflow came out right at the hot side pipe on that side, wouldn't have worked. I plugged it with an 1/8" NPT plug and got an 1/8" NPT to -6 adapter fitting, drilled and tapped another hole for it. Now I have to finish grinding the fittings down on the inside so the cap will go back on.

 

Took the words right outa' my mouth Daverr.

I love it when people build cars themselves. All the blood sweat and tears. Oh and countless hangovers. Then the payoff in the end. I kinda find the whole car scene a bit bleh recently. Too many store bought HP cars. No one ever gets real creative or radical anymore. (And im not talking chip foose radical, that just horseshit sometimes). It's good to see something break up the monotony.

BTW, how did you get your big block stolen?

 

Yeah, I hear you there. That does sound like heavy contamination, if it was just oxides it would look like a bunch of black specs floating around in the pool.

If it's really badly contaminated, like you experienced, it often helps to make a few "dry passes" without filler, to burn a lot of it out before you try to weld it. Then weld, use carbide cutter to remove said weld if it's contaminated or poor quality, and reweld (Rinse, lather, repeat..). That's pretty common practice anytime you're welding an aluminum casting, they're notorious for being "dirty".

When you mention the puddle "caving in", I think you might have been observing the effects of the arc force. It actually "pushes" on the puddle, that's why there's always that crater at the end of a bead that you need that last dab of filler to fill in. It's kinda cool if you ever weld overhead, you can actually see the arc force help suspend the puddle

 

It didn't really get stolen, I never had one. I wanted one though!

I wanted the inspiration for this car to come from Larry Larson, but a few more creature comforts, and the ability to turn.

 

Did a little more work.

Yanked the intercooler, checked for leaks... found one, it was obvious that I missed a spot when I welded it up the first time. Fired up the TIG, and it was done. Put some triangular right angle reinforcements on the 90 degree brackets that bolt to the bumper support. This aluminum welding requires keeping in practice for sure, I wasn't real impressed with what I did this time. It will work, but it's really ugly!

I cut the front core support flush and welded a piece of 1/8" stock across the front of it to reinforce it, painted it satin black.

Took the turbos off, reclocked them, put the oil feed fitting and drain flanges on.

Made the water pump send lines, tightened the fittings down, mounted the water pump in the front bumper for the last time (I hope).

Got the bumper cover back on, noticed that with the stuff I cut out of the bumper cover support/latch bracket that the front bumper sagged a bit. I bent the bracket a bit, no improvement. I scratched my head a bit, and came up with this idea:

I drilled two holes in the bumper (not the bumper cover) and welded 3/8" nuts in them. I put two 4" long 3/8" bolts with set nuts on them, and turned them out enough to push the bumper cover back close to flush with the hood when it was closed... Here's a pic (not so good, sorry about that).



Here you can see the set nut, but not the one welded to the bumper.



I also fabbed up the radiator support.. it was a little tricky because the stock fan sits on those aluminum plates welded to the top of the radiator, and i needed to provide room for it to continue to do that, so they had to be out to the side a bit. I made those from 1" x 1/8" flat stock, put in the vise and hammered to a ~90 degree angle. Not the most elegant thing in the world, but it will work for now.

 

More steering shaft woes.

Here I'm using a double chromoly 3/4"DD to 3/4"DD, a single moly ujoint, and the ujoint on the rack. I'll have to use bearings to support the shafts and all, but I can't yet get there from here.

Off of the column



Rack to second ujoint, see the angle on the second ujoint?


Two views looking up





I think as a first plan of attack I'm going to modify the steering column to bring the first ujoint further towards the firewall, I think that will get me closer to where I need to be.

oil return lines for turbos, etc.

 

longest racecar build thread evar

 

Racecar? 1821 posts? Wat?

http://www.theturboforums.com/smf/th...roject-thread/

 

Not to knock your expertise, but your steering linkage looks like its not gonna work well. That midshaft might rotate on its axis under load; unless there is a bracket that I didnt see. I saw you noted the "angle" one on of your pics. You could try and replace one of the shafts with a round shaft and support it with a rod end or 2. Borgeson makes univeral round steering components. Alot of the hotrod/off road guys tend to use them when they have to frankenstein their steerings. There is a few companies that make <used to make> angled mini gear boxes to adapt steering shafts for extreme angles like whats going on there, but I don't remember any of their names.

As a side thought, i see no reason why you could'nt use the rod ends on the double DD shafts other than you may gall the rod end a little.

 

Good job, Nice build. Should be fun. Kinda wish I went with a rack and pinion on my build. Like the stock a/c bracket.

 

thats some serious steering shaft woes. and i thought my steering shaft is a very tight fit ,just a few mm from my headers . yours takes the cake. Your going to have to anchor them down.

 

TwinTurboROC1, you're absolutely right. The pics that I posted are just a mockup using some el cheapo square tubing from home depot to see if it was possible before I went cutting up my expensive 3/4" DD rod.

I took 2" off of the steering column, and that got the initial angle down far enough that I could swap the positions of the single and the double ujoints. I welded in two brackets for support bearings, and this is what you get:










I then yanked the steering shaft out, drilled indentations where the set screws go on the flats, pulled the header, sealed it with ultra copper RTV and reinstalled.

Then I welded the other side of the brackets, painted them, and reinstalled the steering shaft. Unfortunately, I failed to make my oil feed line which is maybe 1/16" from the steering shaft, so it's got to come back out, but I'm pleased with how it ended up!

 

Nicely done sir. I would have just took out a BFH and aborted the header.

 

holy steering linkage. with all those bends changing the ratios I wonder what your steering is gonna be like in the end.

 

That steering is scary, and certianly does not look street friendly.

 

In what way? How do you think it could be improved?

 

All of those u joints, the various angles in the steering. Just seems overly complicated.
I would be concerned with binding, loads on the mount etc.

Have you tried to turn the wheels, does it work?
Wonder what steering response you will get, Can it turn lock to lock?

What about bumpstop?

 

It works nicely. I had to use the moly joints because they can stand a higher angle before binding. The normal joints are good for 30 degrees for a single and 60 for a double as per flaming river. The moly joints will do 35 for a single and 80 for a double. Yes I think it is strange that it isn't 2x, but that's what their sales/tech support said.

The purpose of the mockup was to get a setup that would work and not bind, it was easy to make it bind, not so easy to get something useable.

 

Btw what kind of FI controller are you gonna use? I did'nt see the atypical ford maf anywhere in those pics... and at 2000hp... lulz

 

Efi is a fast, crank trigger with individual cylinder control. Ignition is an msd 7530 digital 7 with an hvc2 coil. None of it is the latest and greatest but it will get me by.

 

I meant bumpsteer not bumpstop.

 

I had the rack custom made to duplicate the stock tie rod dimensions which should give me a shot at zero bumpsteer. Unfortunately I had to mount it forward of the stock mounting location, not sure how that will affect things. Also have a spohn bumpsteer kit, so I should be able to minimize bumpsteer.

 

i just read everything on this i love this car

 

Thanks!

Got one wastegate tube fitted and welded. Well, fitment wasn't great, made for more challenging welding. I'll have to try to learn from that on the next tube.



I'm going to add a tube going from the wastegate tube to the T04 flange to support it so it doesn't crack. The GT wastegate is pretty heavy!

I think this will have decent wastegate priority so it ought to regulate boost fairly well.

 

lol i learned alot from just reading this i dont know much about forced induction ive had a few turbo cars but i wasnt the one who did it im thinking about twin turboing my 91 ( cheap ebay kit) but anyway the welds look really good

 

Why are 4 inch steel vbands so expensive and hard to find. = (
Btw, that low grade SS or alum. steel?