We've completed our first season, and are now in the process of tearing the car down to sandblast it,a nd then powdercoat it. We used this season as a test season and didn't really worry too much about how it looked. Now that we are pretty close to complete, we can powdercoat everything.

The project started out as just a cage in street car. It's basically just a bit more than that now...

Day1.


The car already had the V8 when i bought it. It also had JRZ triple adjustable shocks, which was the reason I bought it. It turned out the shocks were a bit too long for the car though and we ended up having Performance Shock here at Infineon Raceway shorten them 1.5". Doh.

Step 1 was to get rid of the interior. it was a bit of a mess already, so I didn't feel too bad.



Next up brakes. I knew the stock brakes were not going to cut it. We were targeting about 450RWHP, and the car would weigh about 2700lbs. I'm a dealer for Brembo, so we used the GT kit up front and the Racing Brake two piece rear kit. I use Raybestos ST41 Front pads and ST45 rears.



With the suspension pretty much already handled by the previous owner (Tripoint front bar, JRZ's) I moved on to finishing off the interior.







With this build being V8 powered, I decided to go with the Pettit rear flares. This would allow me to run 335/30/18 rears, and honestly I was copying Damian a bit.

 

Final tidbits were the dash and rear wing. I'm a EE by trade, so I rewired the entire car to minimize the wiring. this shaved about 30lbs a made it a lot neater.




The rear wind is by G-Stream. It really works. To date I still can't dial in as much as I would like as I develop a push. Next season were going to try a really big splitter.





Here are the Stage I final pictures.

 

Bill's car is amazing and is an absolute MONSTER out on track! Look forward to seeing what the off season holds!

Brent

 

In it's first outing to the track we found out several things.

1. The nose, while looking very cool, produced huge lift with the side openings not having oil coolers in them.

2. Every corner or braking zone over 1.3G produced oil starvation, even with a baffled pan.

3. At 5/8 of a tank the car would starve on fuel. This with the 95 tank and Hyperion baffle. Unfortunately this would happen in 20 minutes, and the SCCA races are 30. Doh!!!

4. This car is really, really fast.

We correct #1 by creating plexy covers for the holes in the nose. I painted the back of them black. I think it looked better without them, but lift at 140mph is scary.

#2 was an Aviaid Dry sump system. This was a real pain. We had to move the battery to the foot well, add a dry sump tank behind the cage, pull the motor and dry sump it, and run all the lines. SCCA requires the dry sump tank to be covered in medal so we had to cover the hatch area.

#4 We added a 15 gallon fuel cell from fuel safe. This was very straight forward.

 

Enough is never enough right?

Our first SCCA race we litterally melted the rear end. Now I know it should have had a cooler, but it didn't. We finished the race with the rear end making really funny noises. But... We finished first...

This necessitated add a Ford 8.8 rear end with torsen II diff and 3.27 gears. The gear I know seem a funny choice, but this allowed me to only need 1-4th, which made shifting much easier. With 430ft/lb of torque, 4 gears seems to be enough.

We used the Samberg rod and custom subframe, and DSS axles. We also added an oil cooler with fan from Derale. They are inexpensive and it has worked great.

 

So this is where the car sat for quite a while. Goodyear sponsored us, so the tire budget was small, and this allowed us to focus our $$ on development. (Much to Fingerlock and SHPNOUT's chagrin)

But we always had a push in the car that we could not get out. We tried spring rates from 700F/1000R to changing the front bar from .188 Wall to .093, camber, castor, etc... The car just didn't want to turn.

We new the issue was the track difference front to rear. The Pettit flares create a 4" difference in track width. With the front being so much narrower, the car always wanted to go straight.

I looked at a lot of different options, and finally decided to get a 7parts.com front nose. This is a one piece nose, and is not an easy install. It widens the front by 4" though and allows 18x12" front wheels







Final Results

 

Late in the season we added some sideskirts.



I'll need to find a final picture.

 

subscribed!! I love build threads like this!!Keep up the great work!

 

The last race of the season I started in the back of the pack. I had to work on Friday and missed qualifying. It was no big deal as we had locked up the championship. Some one forgot to tell the motor it was an easy race....

 

Here are a few pics of the grid. Connie in the Viper Comp Coupe took second.

 

So now were up to the present.

We're just finishing building a new motor. Unfortunately with the old one letting go, it destroyed a lot of things. I'm cleaning and send out to be cleaned things like dry sump tanks and pumps, and throwing away oil coolers and AN lines. Really sucks.

The new motor should be a monster though. It s a RED sleeved LS7 block with a 4.100 crank. We're using Ti connecting rods, and very light weight pistons. It's topped with LS3 heads, and should make about 100ftlb more torque from 3000RPM on up. He He He.

Were also replacing all the bushings. All the bushings were stock believe it or not. I have delrin ones going in, but eventually we'll make tubular a-arms.

We're also stripping down the car to have it sandblasted and powdercoated. Now that the development is mostly done.

 

Specs

2535 lbs with 6 gallons of fuel

Drivetrain
15 Gallon Fuel Safe Fuel Cell
Ford 8.8 rear end with Torsen IIR differential and DSS axles
Derale differential cooler with Tilton Pump
G-Force GSR 4 Speed Dog Box Tranny with magnesium case (for a cup car)
Tilton triple disk clutch and flywheel (clutch and flywheel are 15.4lbs!!!)
Tilton Bell Housing
Samberg Rod and Customs Front and Rear subframes
Samberg Rod and Customs Intake and radiator

Engine
LS1ish 372 V8 now trashed. 438cu in going in
3 stage Aviaid Dry Sump
Hinson shorty headers
Hinson 3" y pipe
Hinson 3.5" single exhaust


Brakes
Brembo GT Front 13" brake kit
Racing Brake 12.8" rear kit with custom mount Wilwood Dynalite calipers

Suspension
JRZ triple adj shocks 900F/900R springs
Tripoint front swaybar .188 Wall
Stock rear swaybar

Aero/Body
Lexan front and rear windows
7Parts one piece front end
Ebay fiberglass doors
G-Stream rear wing

Interior
Race Technology DL1 GPS data acquisition and Dash2 Race Dash
Sparco Racing Seat
Momo quick disconnect and steering wheel

Wheels and Tires
18x12 front and rear CCW C10 Wheels
315/30/18 Front tires
335/30/18 Rear tires


Next year for sure

Delrin Bushings in place of stock
320/650/18 Michelin Slicks
Honda S2000 ABS - We developed it this year and it will be ready next year I hope
Tilton 600 series brake/clutch pedal box
438 cu-in motor about 650hp
Sandblasted and powdercoated chassis
tube frame front end in front of swaybar mount - cuts about 30lbs


Maybe's

Forgestar wheels - saves about 6lbs a wheel
New rear hatch - saves about 25lbs
Lightweight hood - cooling and weight
Long tube headers
custom dual exhaust from a local mandrel bender

 

youre awesome!

 

Damn unreliable piston engines LOL. The car looks awesome, dude. Congratulations on the championship.

 

How did you determine that the JRZ's were too long, and was it just front/rear?

 

Bill,

If you want to install FEED pillow ball bushings instead of Delrin, Niles might kill me for telling you this, contact Yasu at Performance Partners International. link

Guy

 

Anything but delrins.

I can't begin to comprehend what it must feel like to be behind the wheel of this monster, I bet you feel like dancin just lookin at it

 

We were bottoming them out, but a wire tie around the shaft is an easy way to tell. We were pushing the wire tie into top hats. The rears were way too long and you could feel it. The fronts were just a bit too long and it effected handling, but we had to test it.


"Damn unreliable piston engines LOL"

Yea tell me about it!!! - The engine was in it's second car and was built in 99, but...

 

What's wrong with the Delrins? Do tell. I have them, but I could to pillowballs.

Bill

 

Tightens the rear a bit much and/or may causing binding basically the car just feels like **** overall versus just plain good stockers. The only place you want them is in the diff and even then car feels better with mazda comps they just wear too fast. It's also tuff to keep the alignment true especially with slicks. Too many heavy hits to the adj bolts cause them to move changing the alignment but I think this would also be a problem with anything that's solid.

All the track/autox cars I've purchased over the years that had these bushings the owners either went back to stock/partially stock or wished they'd never installed them. However I've heard others that like them but I don't think they knew any better.

 

Fritz probably has better info on the Delrin bushings but the Feed "pillowball" style bushings are a better design and offer better articulation than the traditional Delrin/Poly bush design where its just a sleeve inside a chunk of material.


Guy - Niles might just have to kill you for leaking that info. Bill's gonna be tough to beat.



This is a cool build. The JRZ suspension came from Rceron's old car. I remember seeing this car on track at Lime Rock when Scott owned it.


Bill - so adjusting track width with the wider front end wheels cured the push?

 

I already knew about the Feed pillowballs, but if I remember they are about $1800ish. -> so Niles shouldn't get toooo.. upset.


Sounds like switching to the delrin ones are a bad idea though. I'll see about the Feeds, or maybe we'll just make a set. I know he's been wanting to make some.

 

Bill,
I know you mentioned that the S2000 ABS didn't work out. Can you go into a little more detail on what didn't work? What is your brake plan for the offseason? I'm full manual(3 tilton master cylinders) right now and have a long road ahead of me to get them fully sorted. Currently working on matching piston calipers to master cylinders, better proportioning adjustment, etc, etc... I really wish I still had power and ABS brakes. My cage goes through where the ABS and brake booster use to be as the previous owner had the cage installed. I think I have a decent plan, but wouldn't mind hearing what you have in the works.

Brent

 

Ouch. Never realized they were that pricey.




Niles ex-Pettit car has a cool setup with regards to ABS pump placement. It is mounted in the cockpit on the firewall.

 

I did a lot of research on bushings recently, and my conclusion was to either stick with stock (or MazdaSpeed, though I doubt there's much "gain" to be had with them), or go to spherical/pillow ***** and adjustable arms. As Fritz alludes to, the cam-adjustments for the arms are easily pushed out of spec with zero-compliance bushings, so if you're going solid you probably want threaded/lock nut adjustment in the arm. There's also the constant lubrication issue.

I think the ideal thing would be sphericals wrapped in rubber, like the factory lower rear inner bushing.