mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

Since the six speed swap was completed a little over a year ago i spent several outings this year trying to get the car sorted. i learned a lot and went from my first pass spinning hard and running a blazing 17 second pass, to my current best with the six speed of a 10.87 @ 127. However, even with the success, the clutch has really managed to reveal some weak links in the setup, so i will be updating this thread throughout the winter with details, pictures, and hopefully video of installs of the pieces, as well as maybe some explanations as to why i'm doing one thing over another.

got my k-member in the mail last week from PA Racing. all the quality is top notch, and Jason worked with me said he'd do any color i want.

details:

-chromoly k-member setup for ls1 mounts and coil overs
-chromoly a-arms, no spring perch, delrin bushings
-12" long 175# springs
-translucent purple powdercoat



i ordered a set of Viking rear double adjustable shocks friday also, hoping to see this late this week or early next. PA Racing is also sending me some billet aluminum ls motor mounts and transverse shock mounts hoping to have this thing hookin' and bookin' next year.

1bad406

iTrader: (1)

Sweet! I have the PA racing front end and love it. Helped my car a lot.

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

yeah, been on the list for a LONG time. glad it's finally happening.

JesasaurusRex

iTrader: (3)

purple...really


, looks good bro, i wound up getting the 150# springs (same length as you though), keep us posted

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

yes, purple I had a Hoffman Bikes "Big Daddy" back in the day, was white, had purple decals. was one of my favorite color combos. Nick Scavo's silver/purple fourth gen (only had it half a season i think) sealed the deal, saw it at Atl Dragway back in like 2005ish. always wanted to go this route, but never had the guts. now i don't care, and just want to do what i want to do, lol!

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

More goodies showed up today! PA Racing billet aluminum ls1 motor mounts


ViKing double adjustable rear shocks:


These shocks come with all the hardware shown. If using the factory layout, you would use the big shank style bolt. because i am using a transverse shock mount, i will be using the thinner of the two included bushing inserts.

the transverse shock mounts in it's purest prototype form:



i will probably put a slight bend in the upright so it will lay flat on the shock mount, then drill a hole in the top of the upright to keep it from trying to move around.

unknown_host

iTrader: (1)

Cool stuff Matt! What do you think you are going to see for weight savings?

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

hard to say man, i've heard 90lbs, but i plan to weigh everything to confrim that

1991sleeper

iTrader: (-3)

where did u get those shocks ? What was the damage to ur wallet ? Lol

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

the shocks are Vi-King performance and i bought them through www.umiperformance.com i bought them on black friday on sale for $170/ea which is insanely cheap for a double adjustable rear shock. but they're really well priced normally too at $190/ea.

86iroc2try

Damn Matt. Looking good!!! I still need to swap out my front a arms and get some real struts.

Mine is going back to HFR Fabrication for new headers next month, so I'll hope to see you at Cecil next season !!!

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

we hope to make it up a bit next season for sure!

today i had to see how the purple looks against the white....so pumped about this combination



and i had a buddy asking about the underside of the strut mounts, so here's a picture of that for future reference:

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

Today started out as many past Saturdays have for me since I moved up to MD. I got up early and headed down to my uncle's place to get to work. I must say that I'm very grateful for him allowing me to keep my car/trailer and tools/junk at his place. Today however, I realized the bad side to parking my car on the trailer in an old garden bed



I spent two damn hours getting that out of there....ugh....

On to the good stuff! Once the car was finally unloaded and in the driveway, I made sure to get a measurement of ground-to-fender on the front so I had a baseline for setting ride height. The trimmed trick springs were really too low, and made for loading/unloading on the trailer a real booger-bear.

24 7/8"


Since I'm at my uncle's house, I'm trying to take up as little space as possible, so I didn't want to get an engine hoist and have to take the engine out. Found this little gem on Craigslist for $35...money well spent as it worked like a champ!


45 mins later and the kmember is out


Here was the SINGLE interference issue I had. The motor mounts had a radius machined into them and it hit the pedestal saddle before it allowed it align. A little grinder action had us in business.



billety-goodness


coil overs


all put back together and ready to go on the ground


beautimous strut mounts. i gotta get some more purple in the bay now (but not too much)



back on the ground after a quick little run around the block. 25 9/16".


a couple of things worth noting:

-this kmember places the engine/trans in the EXACT SAME SPOT as the spohn swap mounts on the factory k-member
-my factory stuff weighed 118.9lbs
-as optioned, my kmember setup weighs 49.8lbs

total weight savings of 69.1lbs

i will be putting in an s10 manual box for more weight savings, and i'm still working (slowly) on getting more weight out of the driver's seat.

86iroc2try

Damn matt. Looks good!!! You did all that pretty quick! You gonna build the white firebird next? ;-)

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

the white bird is my cousin chucky's and there is a build thread on here for it.

86iroc2try

Oh ok. It looks like it could be something cool.

I'm workin on a GTA trans am right now with a 750hp 454 in it and a glide. That's my winter project.

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

yeah, just a fun bracket car for him to learn with and play with. here's the link to that build thread:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/orga...et-bomber.html

brandoz28

iTrader: (1)

Looking good! can't wait to see how it works out for you in the spring!

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

itemized weights(lbs):

Stock:
A-arms (ea): 14.7
kmember with spohn stands and homemade solid mounts and triangle braces: 57.2
stock strut mounts (ea): 4
cut trick springs(ea): 12.3
total: 118.9

Pa Racing stuff:
coil over (ea): 3.3 (includes adjuster sleeve and top spring locator
a-arms (ea): 5.7
kmember with mounts: 20.4
strut mounts (ea): 5.7
total: 49.8

unknown_host

iTrader: (1)

Very cool Matt

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

got some more purple

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

i got the transverse mounts and rear shocks in the car today. to begin with these mounts were a first run from PA Racing, something that Jason and his fabricator spun up for me after looking at a picture without any real dimensions. the mounts were made with a strange shock in mind, which use a 1" side bushing. my shocks use a 1.130" wide bushing, so i had to trim my bushings down. not really a big deal. here's a picture of the shocks, one bushing trimmed, the other still stock.



I tweaked the brackets a little bit to follow the lines of the shock mounts, then drilled holes for 7/16" hardware to keep them from rotating. then gave them a shot of satin black paint and torqued them on.



and i spun up a little video to kind of give an overview on what these things do for you

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

also got some purple stuff mounted

shawnc16

Whats the goal for next season? Car's lookin good!

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

130mph no power adders and to complete drag week (so long as it's not a million miles away from me)

skinny z

So at what point is this no longer a "Strace Car"? (I can't say I like the term but it is appropriate) You must be getting close.
Looks great.

skinny z

I'd like to do the same. Wonder if there would be more than one other Sport Coupe in the mix?

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

lol, until i can't stand to drive it any longer, for whatever reason that may be. for at least this next season, i'm going to put a 3" catback on it, with quick release clamps to be able to pull it off the car quickly and easily. it will go on the car for the trips between racetracks on drag week.

*maybe* next winter, i'd like to build a set of forward swept headers with fender exits in front of the front tires. they will be stepped, as equal length as i can get them, and have a merge collector with short mufflers. This will make ground clearance a non-issue and transmission/clutch access will be wide open.

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

this isn't really "suspension" related, but is going to help with the overall package of what i'm doing as this is normally good for 15-20lbs. got a GREAT deal on this s10 manual box. gonna do the astro steering shaft swap too i think.

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

The SpeedMu11et got some love yesterday! started early and got the oil changed out. oil came out fairly clean. Made the switch to amsoil in everything else i own, so this car gets some too.



got it fired up, great oil pressure and i let it run for a minute or two to get things warmed. i pull it up into the driveway and noticed i had a coolant leak...yup, right out of the weep hole. i guess the 15 year old factory water pump didn't like the cold winter...now to figure out if i'm going to just swap out the water pump for another factory one or save my pennies for an electric pump.

of course today wasn't just an oil change day...that's not really worth making a post about. but installing THIS guy is:



with launch speeds increasing, and et's dropping, i am well passed needing this bellhousing as NHRA/IHRA rules mandate it at 11.49. It's a heavy mother too. 30lbs compared to 9lbs of the factory cast housing.

Of course the block saver plate has to fit flush against the back of the motor, otherwise the flywheel will rub it, and generally push things out of alignment. i knew that there may be some interference issues with the oil pan, and there was infact interference. the area under the rear main seal where the oil pan meets the rear cover needs to be ground down to clear the plate. What i didn't anticipate was that the rear cover bolts hit it! grrrr. figuring out a mod to the plate that wouldn't decrease integrity of the plate took some time. at first i started to grind down the bolt heads. i quickly realized that was going to take a very long time and abandoned the idea. next i hit the back of the plate with some spray paint and placed it onto the motor and smacked it with my hand some so the bolt heads would mark the paint. of course i'd already had ground the heads down a little bit so only a couple of the bolts transfered to the paint. i ended up finding another cover to get the bolt pattern and transfered it to the plate. as my luck would have it, i didn't center every bolt hole and ended up having to open up or elongate most of the bolt holes. here's the end result of that debacle.



I'd never indexed a bellhousing before and it took a little bit of playing with before i felt comfortable with the accuracy of the readings from the dial indicator. once i got the indicator setup, i found that the housing was offset to the driver's side of the crank centerline about .030", or about .015" off center. i had some .014" offset dowels already ordered and was able to get it straight. the dowel removal was a pain all in it's own. i tried vicegrips to pull them out at first and quickly discovered that wasn't going to work. i was able to get the driver's side out with a center punch and a hammer from the front side driving it backwards. the passenger's side was a different story though. i had to pull the header off to gain access. then i got in there with an alignment punch was able to push it out.

while this was all out, i also swapped the pilot bearing to a solid pilot bushing. i've read they're a bit more forgiving in the event that the bellhousing isn't quite indexed right. this resulted in a broken pilot bushing removal tool that i rented from autozone...guess i won't be getting my deposit back, lol.

whew...all installed and in the home stretch, right?



wrong...

the new bellhousing and block saver plate are approximately .050" thicker in overall stacked height than my factory one. i took this into account and ordered shims for my slave in the event that i had an issue. the measurement here is taken from the fingers of the clutch diaphragm to a straight edge across the transmission mounting surface of the bellhousing. you then compare it to the compressed height of the slave in relation to the front mounting surface on the front cover of the trans. this measurement differential is supposed to be .090"-.200" depending on where you read or who you believe. mine with no shims was right at .090". which means that it was less than spec with the factory stuff. this is good, i can resell or inventory the shims i bought, lol.

what's bad though is that i have a custom driveshaft that is really a bit too long to begin with. i mean, it's an EXTREMELY tight fit. to the point where pulling the driveshaft is a real pain in the butt. i have to pull the ujoint caps off to get enough clearance to get the shaft out. well...with this increased stack height, my transmission was moved just enough to now be a problem and now i have to have the driveshaft shortened. we had a stock driveshaft laying around. interestingly enough, the factory 3R u-joint was a near direct bolt in to the 1350 yoke, and was good enough to drive it out of the driveway and onto the trailer.

after all this opposition, i get into the car and hit the button to move the car and have no starter. i had managed to pinch the wire going to the starter solenoid and my guess was it fried the relay. i swapped out the relay and nothing. i had power in, ground, and even switched power from the button, and still no action. i jumped across the relay to get the car started and put it on the trailer. electrical gremlins be damned, i'll look at that next weekend when we are rewiring my switch panel. ugh.

Hirevsjoe

Hey Matt I have a question. I was looking at the pictures of when you installed the K member. Your lakewood drag shocks have a spring setup around them. I've never seen them that way. Is that a kit you can buy? Did you still run a coil spring in the A arm? Remember, I'm new to these cars. I just picked up a set of 90/10s for Super cheap.

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

no it's a coil over conversion. as you can see, my new a-arms don't have perches anymore at all. the coilover kit is from PA Racing.

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

Last week i fought with the electrical system kind of out of nowhere. it was one of those situations that had been compounding and i knew i was going to have to take care of it eventually. So...this weekend i pulled the dash off and spent a solid 10 hours or so getting it all sorted. here's what i started with:



here's where it is now (well...the dash is back in actually but this is where the wiring is now). it's still not perfect, but it's way better than it was and i think it's something a little more workable in the event that i need to chase something down.



here's the new switch panel. i took the time to build a harness with some weatherpacks on it this time. only the first 3 switches are being used at the moment, but they're all wired to the connectors so i can easily add 3 more circuits.



next weekend i'm pulling the wore out grey front carpet out, pulling the rear seats out, and pulling all the superfluous tubes in the roll bar out. i have 5 bars that are unneeded (for slower 10.00) and i intend to remove them as my guess that's 25lbs that i don't need. i also have to thank member jbenge for the water pump. he sent it to me for basically the cost of shipping. real stand up dude there. it'll get painted and installed next weekend also. we only have 2 weekends left to work on the cars before our Mu11et Militia race on 4/13 at Capitol Raceway.

unknown_host

iTrader: (1)

Looks awesome Matt! You have your work cut out for the next 2 weeks

shawnc16

Come do mine when you're done! Looks good! Race car!

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

no kidding. here's what's left:
roll bar mods/paint
steering box and shaft swap
carpet
driveshaft mods and install
water pump
swap out headlights
engine bay wiring needs more attention
adjust clutch pedal
alignment
door lightening
trim front frame horns
finalize switch panels.

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

i made a hard decision today. i do not believe the SpeedMu11et will be making a DragWeek14 appearance....just too much on our plate as we continue our transition from GA to MD. There will be many local races and possibly an NMCA/LSX race in the cards though.

85SILVERBULLET1

Bummer

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

how about a little good news? today i dropped off my driveshaft at A1 Driveshaft in Baltimore on my way to work. The guys there were really cool and willing to work with me. since i go to work before they open and get off after they close, they gave me a secure drop-off area, and then were willing to hang around long enough to get my shaft shortened. when we spoke about the driveshaft, they said they'd try to salvage the weld yoke, but they weren't able to. so they welded a new one on, and installed a new u-joint, all at no cost! they got a customer out of me!

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

today was not as bad as it could have been. it rained all day so working generally sucked. the driveshaft went in easily but since i pulled an inch out of it the yoke hit the driveshaft loop. out it all came again to mod the loop. that added about 2 hours to my day i hadn't anticipated. otherwise it wasn't bad though. i finally pulled the power steering off, as well as installed my astro van shaft. i also got the switch panels all finished up. here's some pics from today

articwhiteZ

iTrader: (56)

coming right along..looking good. sucks ya have to work in the rain..but you do this stuff in the snow and ice...

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

i think i'd rather work in the snow/ice than the rain. laying down in a puddle to change the driveshaft is teh suck -_- i'm ready for a shop now...k-thanks

articwhiteZ

iTrader: (56)

just getting set to put down the new Polyurethane floor covering in my new shop.now that the walls are done. and the new lights installed.cars still sitting at my place in WA. im 40 miles away now in ID. the new place.

got to bolt the front end back together. and get her moved to her new home.
after its all done.nice and clean...thats what iv been telling my self...lol

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

we are looking at different places to rent. my only criteria is that it has at least an oversized 1 car garage and is not a town house.

got an idle clip from yesterday

quik88

man looks great sounds great but two things missing...... about 7 grand and 1320 feet of straightness!!!!!

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

it's coming...two weeks from this morning

skinny z

Where's the cold air induction? With all of the work you've done, I can't see you skipping over something as first principled as supplying the engine with nice fresh air.
Sounds great. (I can't imagine having ANY racing facility open around HERE in a couple of weeks. Good luck.)

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

i have a pan that seals the motor to the cowl that i only use for the track. it's not a pretty piece and is quite large and gets in the way of things. i don't often take pictures of it

skinny z

I didn't think you would skip over something so basic.
Now I have to figure out what to do with this uniquely anodized overflow/catch can/water bottle.

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

you know you love the purple.