Building our Lemons/Chumpcar (Page 12/29)
katatak FEB 01, 08:10 PM
Thanks for posting up the info on the cage Don - Great info there!
DonP FEB 02, 12:25 PM

quote
Originally posted by thesameguy:

... but I have my eyes on a friend's XR4Ti... I have lots of stock parts leftover from mine, so it could be a cheap build. If he doesn't do something with it soon (other than let it collect dust), I may just disappear it.



I actually looked for an LeMony grade XR4Ti. My recollection from back in the day, they were considered a pretty hot car with an emphasis on handling. They have just enough character to be suitable for the task. But they only one I found was in So. Cal. and just too far away. And, as you alluded to, I saw a lot of less than encouraging reviews. If i recall, most were electrical problems. In any case, when they made the comment that Fieros never finish, that sounded like enough challenge to us.

Don
DonP FEB 02, 12:35 PM

quote
Originally posted by katatak:

Thanks for posting up the info on the cage Don - Great info there!



Thank you Pat. I hope there's some informative material. Done with the garage yet?

Don
DonP FEB 04, 01:07 PM
We knew that we were pushing things by not having operating windshield wipers on the car. We had been to Infineon twice and not had any precipitation. But fog is always a serious consideration in the greater Bay area. Heck, we had to use wipers in the Reno desert while driving the Mustang in early 2011. We encountered both light rain and snow during that race. The closest we had come to a problem was when we left the car out overnight at the first race. A couple passes with a towel had taken care of that problem.

We had left the wiper motor and drives intact. We had removed the arms but had them in our supply boxes. And we had removed all the electrical circuits that ran the motor. The original thought was to just put a toggle switch in place to start the wiper motor. But just look at these diagrams. Where would you start?






As near as we could tell, if we try to use the delay function, we would be cutting out random fuel injectors. Or something. Nothing was straight-forward. We had the problem that we wanted to maintain the delay function as well as be able to run the washer's as needed.

In the Mustang, McSwiggen settled on just tie-wrapping the still functional wiper/cruise stalk to the dash bar.





Hmm? The plaid seat cover? Didn't I mention the official team uniform for our inaugural LeMons race?



That's right, we had kilts made up by a co-worker for the other team members. She did the work free, just to be able to take back the story of these macho fellow employees wearing skirts, uh, kilts. I was conveniently behind the camera. When we started our new team around the Fiero, Rich made me sign a statement that we would NOT be wearing kilts. I'm not sure where Robert came down on the issue.


Anyway, back to the wiper controls. I think we spent a full evening trying to work out a schematic of various switches to get the functionality we wanted. It just wasn't that easy. So we considered using the stock stalk, as had the Mustang guys. But, besides being tacky, Robert would never be able to reach the controls. Finally, we settled on a compromise. We used the stalk, but mounted it in a way that it could be accessed.




We drilled a hole through the switch panel Rich had fabricated. The stalk was mounted through a rubber grommet on the inside of the hole and fastened to the back of the panel. Rich had earlier separated out the wiper/washer harness and integrated that into the harness we were now using. Robert could now reach the controls if needed. We also retained the ability to use the washer pump. Of course we didn't plan on actually using the wipers and used massive amounts of Rain-x at every event just to help deal with the normal debris
katatak FEB 04, 02:58 PM

quote
Originally posted by DonP:


Thank you Pat. I hope there's some informative material. Done with the garage yet?

Don



Garage is nearly ready to accept the Fiero. I love the Uniforms! Did anyone actually "drive" in thier Kilt? The wiper solution is shear Genius! I must have missed it but I see that you have changed out the stock gauge's for some aftermarket unit's. Just keeps getting better!
DonP FEB 04, 04:45 PM
Unfortunately, nomex kilts are just too expensive. Oddly enough, kilts aren't all that wild at a LeMons race.



'nuff said.


The kilts did get one of the guys onto "The Car Show", that Speed channel show with Adam Corolla (sp.?)
.


Oops! I just shot the wiper stalk last week. The gauges swap comes later in the narrative. Ignore that for now.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 02-04-2013).]

katatak FEB 04, 07:27 PM
Nomex Kilts - LMAO!

I have a few questions about the steering column. I beleive the stock colapsable part is the lower end that you used?

Did you use a bearing support at the fierwall? Something like this:

or is it a straight shot from the second Heim to the rack?

Did you consider using one of these for the support?

I'm thinking you went with the other bracket because it allowed you to set the wheel at the desired angle/distance for the driver(s). I'm thinking of using the one above with a Heim / u joint simialr to your setup. The support above is a little on the spendy side but I'm also going for a certain "look" as well. However, I really like the way you guys did yours - it's simple -functional and it looks good too!

I found this at Speedway too:


Did you consider using a "Quickener"? Something like this:


Thanks in advance!

Pat

[This message has been edited by katatak (edited 02-04-2013).]

DonP FEB 04, 08:29 PM
It's not the kilts, it's all the extra stuff to make them work. Big bucks!

We did not use one of those bearing supports at the firewall. But we did use the stock plastic bellows piece to seal the hole around the shaft. That bearing is probably a good idea in that it allows for a greater distance between supports. That should minimize the leverage that the driver can exert on the whole assembly. We did tweak the brackets at our first race and subsequently boxed the support for strength.

Our choices were more driven by cost than aesthetics on this point. The brace and heim joint that we used cos $20. The nicer support that you show is $80 from Speedway. We are to cheap to go that route. And welding to the dash bar just seems right to us.

We just did a straight shot from the second heim, through the firewall and to the steering rack, We did weld in the collapsible portion of the column. This, combined with the angle from the rack to the first/lower heim should provide some safety in the case of a crash.





I would definitely like to use a steering quickener. Rich uses one on his IMCA and Doug and I have used them on our stock stub car. Loved it. The debate we have had is if one would work in this application without also adding a power steering rack. I know that a quickener would really be an asset when going through the chicane at Infineon. Rich is also concerned that the car may become too twitchy at speed on other parts of the track. I've driven at serious speeds with a quickener, and honestly it's presence just disappeared from thought when driving. We adapted very quickly and never thought of it again.

However I can tell you about a night that Rich was out of town several years (two decades?) ago. He let a friend drive his car during a race. It was enormously funny when the guy fishtailed down both straights trying to catch up with the steering quickener. Funny right until he backed into the concrete wall. But I chalk that up to a driver trying to prove something.

Your mileage may vary. But I like the steering quickeners.
katatak FEB 04, 10:04 PM
Thanks Don,

The quickener is just a thought - I really would have no real use for it as this car may see a couple of trips around the local track at a "track day" event. I was just curious. Was not sure if it had to be used in conjunction with power steering or if it could be used with a manual rack (as in our Fiero's). I'm a newb at this twisty stuff!
DonP FEB 05, 12:20 PM
I cannot state with any certainty that the quickener would require power steering in a Fiero. But I've read a couple threads here about needing power steering if you had a quicker rack. I do not know if the physical effort with a quickener is comparable to that using a faster rack. In our case, I would still like to add one to the car.

Don