2011 Plans

[340king]

Well, I must have fell and hit my head somewhere along the way, but I am going to a Wissota Midwest Modified this year.The main reason for the change was Black Hills Speedway going back to the big track. It has always been my favorite track. Besides I could get sponsorship to run two nights.

So I have been thrashing on stuff to get ready. I will post some photos as I get things done. I have been busy with things like getting the proper pull bar and such to this point. There is much to do.

This will be my first attempt at running a full season in some time. In the past I could only run partial seasons with my participation in the National Guard. This will be more of a grind than I am used to, but I hope it will be worth it.

[cageman]

That means I have to set my own valves, BOOOOOOOOOO!

[340king]

I guess I could make house calls during the week if necessary. It looks like I will have most Sundays open. That will help since I don't need to be running 3 nights a week with the current fuel prices.

I have attached some photos of the progress. This may make Cageman flip out, so this will be interesting. I picked up a new chassis to make combat in the Midwest Mod class. My old car is flexing too much on the front weighing 2450. At 2600 lbs it would have been too much. I need to spend some time on it adding some reinforcement in some key areas to stiffen it up. Besides this is a pretty rough class and I didn't want to kill my old reliable car.

This first photo is what the car looked like 2 hours after arriving to the shop. It had a poorly assembled body on it and the interior was kind of a mess. The folks that owned it prior to me were mini sprint folks that really didn't seem to know much about mods. There are quite a few bent pieces, but the chassis is very straight. I put the digital level on all of the cross pipe and they were all within about .2°. That is very good. That doesn't mean there aren't battle scars around the chassis. It has been raced.

This is a 2002 Hughes swing arm car or at least what I call a swing arm car. I guess the Z link cars with springs mounted on the swing arm also called swing arm, so there is a little confusion when you talk about it that way. I am making some minor changes to the car. Mostly purifying the thing. It has had some hacking done to it over the years since new. Also, all the chassis mounts are in 1/8" steel and that will not hold up to the use as a MWM. That is the fourth and fifth photo of what I plan to change on the rear suspension. I am adding more locations for the front lower arm to mount. I am of the opinion that an instant center setup is going to be the way to go to start the season. Especially at Huron and Rapid. Both are big tracks that usually are decent for traction. Enjoy.

[moparallen]

Them Hughes cars are bad fast around here.

[340king]

I hope the Hughes cars aren't good at geography or knowing where they are at. I picked up an engine, two transmissions and some other parts yesterday. They are from a former Wissota national champoin.

The engine won some big races. So I hope there is some magic left in it. The bore is wore, so I am using a block I have that was CNC prepped. I hope to measure everything out tomorrow to see if the deck heights will work. With the compression rule you have to be spot on. The only issue is getting the engine shop warm tomorrow. It is not going to be warm. It has very marginal insulation, which may become the priority tomorrow instead.

At first blush, it appears that the current setup was a little conservative and there may be some performance improvement possible in the engine combo. If there is time I may try to get the engine dyno'd. My computer simulations yielded a slightly larger camshaft, so that may be one area to exploit.

[cageman]

Your a busy guy.
So your going to be leaving the champion chassis alone I take it? If I total out both my cars, I hope I get to use that car again!

[moparallen]

I think I asked you this before but what program are you running to do the engine simulations? Is it on the market or a custom piece?

You did see Hughes was the USMTS champion?
Allen

[340king]

I use two programs to simulate dyno pulls. The first is Engine Pro by Patrick Hale. It is the pro version of Engine Jr. The other program is Engine Analyzer Pro from Performance Trends. It is a little more complicated and in depth. I use the Engine Pro to work on basic air flow issues and to work several combinations rather quickly. I think it has 9 inputs or so and can work through combinations real quickly.

I know Jason has had several USMTS championships. He is a very accomplished racer and builder. This is an older car, but seems to be in good enough shape. Hughes has updated the front geometry since this car was built. I studied his new stuff this past weekend. It is very close to the Shaw setup. It offers more caster gain when the car rolls over in the corner.

Cage, if you wreck both of your cars I would have to think twice!! LOL's I need to make the changes to the Champion to make it stiffer. I know what I want to do, but it will have to wait a while. I plan to have it available as my spare if I need it, but it would only take an afternoon to convert it back. So it may be available. Just don't smash up both of your cars and we won't have to worry about it.

[cageman]

Yeah, no kidding, I would think once and no better, lol.
Unless it is motor related on each of em. If that happens, Ill just race the charger and call it a season on the mods, lol

[komakaze]

Whose engine did you get?

[cageman]

You know, stampede winner a few years ago. Quality engines

[340king]

Got the rear suspension pickup points welded in this past weekend. This was after attending the Bob Harris/Kevin Shaw race school this past weekend. Enjoy the photos. Only one minor issue that will be resolved tonight. My spacer for the swing arm mounts was slightly narrower than the Heim joints. No big deal.

[cageman]

Those holes dont look indexed, and that looks like alot of work to change one hole!

[340king]

I used a laser set up using the existing holes and then placed the identically notched new plates at the same height with respect to the laser. If the old holes were off, then the new ones are also the same amount. I was within 1/16" of the previous holes, which for non-jig work is pretty acceptable tolerances. The old mounts were flimsy, bent and didn't have enough adjustability if I wanted to go to a instant center type of setup. I didn't want to add more holes to a flimsy bent bracket.

I used through bolts and spacers to index the mounts prior to welding. They were placed as pairs and the bolts glide right through the holes. It went really well considering. It took about 2 hours to complete the lower mounts and another 1.5 hours to do the pull bar mount.

[340king]

Well, I have been kind of quiet lately due to being busy and having a computer go down. Now with newer computer I am back to normal or maybe even better than normal now. This new computer rocks.

I have been doing the sort of stuff you get into with a used car. I straightened the rear end, after welding on the new mounts and adding another pull bar brace, it was crooked. I then started on the front suspension. It needed a lot of work. I have been thrashing very hard on it. Every aspect of the components was either bent or mis-aligned. The front end is now tight.

The spindles had the wrong taper on them. There was only about 1/4" of contact right at the top of the lower ball joint taper. After a little reaming they fit nicely. No more easily bent lower ball joints. The joint that was in the right front was bent. They also had two different ball joints in it. So that was fixed.

I also had to fix the fuel cell. It had tiny straps and the cage didn't extend down below the fuel cell. Both of those things are fixed.

It is just a typical used car.

[cageman]

That fuel cell is triple the size you will need.
I too had the wrong taper on my lower ball joints, I would snap a lower off every few races, and that isnt fun.

[340king]

Originally Posted by cageman

That fuel cell is triple the size you will need.
I too had the wrong taper on my lower ball joints, I would snap a lower off every few races, and that isnt fun.

I know that cell is too big, but the budget says it has to stay at this time.

[340king]

Well, I finally got the body put on the car. It has been a long hard fought battle. Virtually every part has been removed and rebuilt. About the only parts not fixed/changed are the guages. Everything else has been rebuilt. I used the old body parts and copied them since I was in a hurry. So the interior and body is less than desired. Here are a couple of photos of the bare body.

I forgot, the nose and hood are the old ones.

[340king]

This is why maintenance is key in a race car. These are the rear calipers off the car. I was told that the car was disassembled a year ago and everything was replaced or freshened. It is obvious that that wasn't the case. It appears that the car was freshened up a few years ago, then raced a lot without any maintenance. This photo is a pretty good indication of what I have been dealing with. Just part of the used car blues.

[cageman]

Looks like spacers for the calipers are in order, look at how far out the pistons were, must have the thin rotors. I run a spacer on all of mine.

[340king]

The graphics are going on the car. This is a sneak peak at what the car will look like. There is more, but it will be late tomorrow before it is done from what I can see right now.

I will have to order those spacers. Just another little thing that was left undone.

OBTW Cage, I may go camping for the first couple of races!!

[cageman]

camping, pahh.
I dont like it, the only Brad I know drives a blue 81 with flames.

[340king]

I was referring to my power plant. I may have to go the camper route, only I will use the Dually engine to start with. My only question is what rpm to gear for. I can go anywhere from 5,500 down to about 4,000. I was thinking about 5,000 as a target for that engine. I have a 727 that is setup for racing, a converter with the stupid drain plug in it and all the other stuff to make it work. So that is what I was referring to.

P.S. After 23 years of camping in the Guard, I don't have a lot of desire to go camping!

[cageman]

OOOHHHH, I see, lol
The camper motor I had was good till 5500, it would float the valves, so I set it for 5400 on the chip and let it eat all the way around. I didnt want to put valve springs in it as then it would probably blow the rods out, lol either way, if it was going to blow, it wasnt gonna be pretty.
As for that, I thought you was going to use the 340 out of your truck? Or did you have second thoughts.

[340king]

I looked at the schedule and I won't have time to do everything to run that engine. The dually engine is sitting in the garage on a crate, ready to go. I just need to put a pan and valve covers on it. It ran good in the dually, just not a power house. We can't run a rev limiter.

[340king]

Here are some photos of the completed car, enjoy! I barely beat the snow with these photos!

[cageman]

It has been snowing here for three days, and we are supposed to get more this whole week. Like a foot has fallen here, it blows.

[chrisII]

snow usually blows. we are supposed to get an inch or two tonight

[JVMopar]

How much snow you getting? They are saying 9 inches here tuesday night.

[moparracer]

So....just how freakin' late in the spring does it normally snow up there? When do you guys actually get to race? I'm goin apesh!t here in Nebraska cuz it's only been in the 50's here the last few days (except for that odd 90 we had a week ago), and we had an inch of wet snow-slush last Friday. A few tracks have had specials around here already, and our regular season is set to start next weekend.