Latest Progress

40 days left till Reno, and this is the latest.
Thursday I got all of the gear together and started the roll cage.
Things started out a little slow, I guess I was dreading doing another cage.
I started with the dreaded main hoop, one miscalculation and I'm screwed and the DOM pipe isn't cheep. My first try and all is well!

I decided to move on to the Pillar Towers and get them in place so I could size up the main hoop. This takes too much time, in my opinion. Both Pillars are in and the boys came over to inspect the work.




Bob, Bob T and Larry their friend came around to look so I didn't get much more done. I would like to welcome our 5th team member to the group, Bob T.

Day Two: Friday
Today Bob and Bob T joined in the celebration, it was nice to have some help working on the cage. I think we got a lot done. Thanks guys!

Bob went through and put the rubber coating on all the sharp edges so us "dumb asses" won't get hurt when we are crawling around under the car.(Mainly Me!)

Day Three: Saturday
Andy joined in the celebration today and again it was nice to have help with the cage.

We are very close to having the cage done. I hope to finish the front pillars and have the door bars done tomorrow. then the only thing left will be the harness posts and cleaning before we paint it all up.


Next week the engine and decorations. Thanks again guys!

Two day scramble

So Monday and Tuesday were my first two days off in 17 so I needed to get something accomplished and fast. Monday started out wonderful (NOT) I spent 3 hours dealing with the DMV trying to get the trailer licensed to to no avail. It seems that the bank and the DMV have different rules on how the title is suppose to be presented. Gosh I wish It could be like the Peoples curse where you take the one that pisses you off the most and crush them. In this case it would have been both!

Anyhow I needed to destroy something and fast, so our little car was the victim.
I started with cutting out the battery holder, hmmm starting to feel a little better.
I then moved on to tearing out the interior seats, carpet, console and dash, feeling better.


I then moved to take out the rubber sound insulation that goes along the floor and up the firewall behind the driver. Pat with Team TARP racing told me about using an air chisel to break it all off. Thanks to his info and an hour of venting here are the results of day one.

I'm all better now!

Day two

Day two started by me renting a plasma cutter from a friend. I have never used one before so i didn't know what to expect for results. I started with the sunroof top, it got ugly quick. I could not get the cutter to start up, a phone call to Jeff and adjusting the air pressure and some more adjustments and bamm! it worked. I then proceeded to get carried away, I found out I can't draw a straight line to save my life or yours. It started to get ugly again, my little compressor that I have had for years didn't like pumping life into the plasma cutter so it's little engine died.
Well out to the new trailer to tear out the compressor it has. A half hour later and I was back up and running. I learned that by using a straight edge I could do some real quick work of cutting out weight.




I then tried my hand at doing circles with mixed results but results just the same.

Second try is always better than the first.

Well that's it! I think we are back on schedule for the race, next week will be a full roll cage with an engine thrown in somewhere along the way.

Update

So our first week into this craziness went pretty well. I was able to acquire a trailer with all the goodies like a generator, compressor, tire rack and cabinets.
Bob worked on sponsors and our new logo for the race, when we get stickers we will send them to our followers. After saying quite a few choice words and grinding and cutting for a couple of hours the front suspension is done except for shortening the coils and alignment. That will come later once we get the car running. Here are some of the latest pics.



Notice the notch I cut into the frame trying to get the bolt out. Only to find out later that I didn't need to do it. It made for an easier time when I cut the bolt out of the passenger side control arm.



Nice Pretty red bushings. I know the Judges will see them right away but you have to give them something to bitch about or they will be just bored as hell with our entry.

We are in!

We received our acceptance letter to the Reno/Fernley race today, and it couldn't have come at a better time.
Bob and I decided to do a work day today and well let's just say more things got broke or were broken than fixed. The engine we pulled last week has a couple of nice holes in the side of it, I think it's broke. We decided to work out some frustration because we hadn't heard anything about the race, so we started putting the new Polyurethane bushings in. Needless to say after shearing the nut off the control arm, and a lot of cussing, Judy called me with the good news. Now I have to figure out how to get the rest of that bolt out of the frame. (Anyone with any Ideas?)
Just wanted to thank everyone who made this "hell" possible and to say I will see you at the track! O Yea! and Bob didn't break anything, I did it all by myself.

Let the fun begin!

Well we did it, we started something that's going to be hard to stop now. We got together to do a little engine thrashing and photo taking to officially set the wheels in motion for the Reno race. We know we still have not been accepted for the race but at this point I don't really think that matters much. We are a team and that's a good start.
Bob and Andy did some more crazy work and pulled the engine out of our little racer. I think we will be good enough at pulling engines that if it ever comes to pulling it out of the car during the race we could probably do it. It may take us a couple hours but now we know it can be done. I think we got some of our inspiration from Larry's brother Joe when team Snow Speeder Association attempted a full engine replacement at the track at Altamont in 08. Here are a few pics of us working on all the wiring and such, notice the nice layer of sand on the motor and around the top of the engine compartment. I think I learned the real reason you wear safety glasses and keep your mouth shut when you under the car. I used an impact wrench to remove an engine mount and the car fought back the only way it could, with sand and lots of it. Lets just say when you take the car to wash it, you do your best to get the damn engine hood open! Having said as much we did really good for the first 6 hours of work on the car.

Jerry joined us for the team photo and Bob said something about using the photos to persuade some sponsors to give us some much needed moolaa...

Here are some pics of this weekend, Judy of course had to pic us at best or in some cases our worst poses. Enjoy and thanks to everybody for their support including Judy our "Official Photographer"

Hanta Virus

Last weekend Bob and I drove up to Vernal and picked up a spare parts car. The owner had told me many times, that the car was pretty scary and that it wasn't worth much, now I believe him!

This weekend Andy, Bob and I got together to do a plethora of damage to the car. Little did we know that the whole interior, trunk and fronk of the car was full mice urine and feces, a perfect breeding ground for the Hanta Virus. Well I do feel muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups-thighs, hips, back, and shoulders. No Wait that's how I feel every time I work on cars.
With guts, determination and lacquer thinner to kill the smell and hopefully the virus we persisted in our quest. I am very impressed with Bobs determination to learn as much as he can about cars. We let him loose on taking the engine out of the car, Andy explaining a few details about the wiring harness and axles, and between Bob and Andy they had the complete engine and transmission out in about 3 hours. I got the wonder full job of taking out the interior, trunk, and fronk junk out. The mice had stolen insulation from the farmers house and filled in areas of the car to create nests. I compared it to being on a version of "FEAR FACTOR" waiting for mice or even rats to start invading the shop, didn't happen. The engine will need to be taken apart, it seems that the previous owner had taken a spark plug out and never put it back, I wouldn't be to worried except for the fact that the car has been sitting in the high desert for the last 4 years. The car was covered with a nice coating of red sand.

So what did we get done?
The engine and transmission are out, trunk, engine and fronk lid are off.
Interior carpet, seats, console and garbage gone.
Doors are off and a list of parts started for future Ebay consideration.
Fluids drained and radiator removed.

What's next?
The suspension needs to be labeled, taken apart and boxed.
Master brake, clutch and slave cylinders drained, removed and boxed.
Draining the gas tank and removal.
Removal of dash gauges and other possible sale-able parts.
Front clip including fenders removed and stored for possible damage replacement.
Last but not least, taking out the saws-all and going crazy on the rest of the body for recycling.
Anybody that may need parts let me know, I will check our list of needs and wants to see if we can possibly do some trading or gifting.

Lunch with Larry

So Larry from team V-ram/Snow speeder and I had lunch today so that I could pick his brain about the Thunderhill race. Larry said there was no comparison between T-Hill and the previous Altamont race. T-Hill is nice and open, and you have less chance of playing bumper cars, which equals less car damage overall. The track was a lot faster and you really felt more competitive, although he did say there were quite a few more yellow flags. Having said that, he has a few good suggestions that we will be following at Reno.
Fueling was a big issue for us at Altamont because all we had were the 5 gallon store bought tanks that ended up being sloppy and a little dangerous because of spillage. Larry suggested using a 35 gallon tank with a hand pump to fill with, he said it was quite a bit quicker to fuel with and a lot safer.
Overheating, During Altamont we had major problems with overheating due to not getting all the air out of the system. I think we have resolve that issue. Larry did mention that having a separate switch that turns the radiator fans on manually does make a big difference in cooling while on the track.
We will be trying to park next to Snowspeeder, V-Ram and Free range racing at the Reno event.
Larry thought that having teams that drive mr2s close together helps a lot especially when one team runs into trouble. It's all about being a team and assisting our bretheren when they are in trouble. Thanks to Larry for taking the time to share the input.