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| Building our Lemons/Chumpcar (Page 20/29) |
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DonP
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JAN 19, 12:24 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by aaronkoch:
I'll take a pic for ya at lunch.. had to drive the boring car today as we have frozen white crap falling from the sky.  |
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Hoping to see a photo or two. Come on, don't let that snow discourage you!
BTW, we're working to race at The Ridge this summer with the Lemons traveling show.
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DonP
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JAN 29, 11:42 PM
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So our engine got hot and screamed in protested. I ran the damaged engine back to Oregon for Doug to check out. Of course I brought the second, spare engine back to Reno. Once Doug had the engine tore down, he found the extent of the damage. What showed up was a couple of collapsed piston rings. Or at least now suspect rings. The bores and actual pistons checked out as okay. He looked at both main and rod bearings, all of which looked okay. But of course he replaced them as a precaution. The crank checked out as good. It looked as though a couple valves had started to seize. That resulted in two bent push rods. And of course meant a complete tear down of the heads. I'm not sure on my recollection, but I believe one valve had very minor contact with a piston. The pistons were okay and we kept those intact. He may or may not have decided to replace the valve springs. I try not to ask too many questions so it's easy to say "it's all stock, as far as I know."
Our next race was scheduled for 3 months down the road, June 29-30 2013 at Buttonwillow Raceway near Bakersfield, CA. http://buttonwillowraceway.com/ This would be our first time at that track and would be the furthest haul to date. It is right at 400 miles and about 7 hours away.
Prior to going to Buttonwillow, however, we had the opportunity once again to run at Reno-Fernley with the SCCA Folks. We took the opportunity which also allowed us to put a few laps on our spare engine.
Running at Sears Point, even for the relatively few laps we did run, re-ignited our discussion concerning a steering quickener. You might have read this post which I made in May of 2013 http://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...L/090867-4.html#p138 Well Rich finally agreed with the rest of us that the bus stop at Sears Point would be soo much easier with a quicker steering rack. Look 5 posts back, at the end of the post for a picture of the chicane. http://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...L/090867-5.html#p186
But in truth, we know that a steering quickener would require the addition of power steering. And just the inclusion of a power steering rack would alter the stock steering ratio, probably making it faster. So I started by researching power steering here on the forum. Rickady88GT started looking for a power steering option as far back as '04. Or at least he wrote about it as far back as that. One of his first posts started with trying to adapt an "f" body rack to his '88 Fiero http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...050410-1-044587.html
and a follow-up at http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...040710-2-044334.html
He then switched to a corvette rack here. http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum3/HTML/000124.html
I was amazed at the number of folks who gave him grief. He stated clearly, his whole reason for doing this was to get a faster steering ratio. He wasn't all that concerned with the actual ease of steering EFFORT from the power steering unit. I understand that. Our purpose was the same. But magnified because in addition to having the inherently faster steering rack, we were going to add an additional 1.5:1 steering quickener.
I'll cut to the chase. We didn't actually finish the project before heading to Buttonwillow, almost three months later. We finished building it the week after that race. But these pictures will show what we actually built.
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It's possible that we allowed the project to get away from us. Rich agreed to the power steering and steering quickener but he also wanted to change the spring diameter to allow us to change spring rates. The odd spring diameter in the Fiero gave us only two spring rates, stock or the rate available through West Coast Fiero. He also wanted more camber. The 1.8 degrees of negative camber in the stock front end just didn’t get it.
After several discussions the decision was made. If we were going to work on the front end, we were really going to work on the front end. We had two complete stock front cradles so we decided to leave the cradle in the car stock. We would take the backup cradle and design all new geometry around the steering quickener, Camaro power rack, and the stock spindle and rotor.
Our goals for the new front end were simple. Stay within the spirit of Lemons: “Don’t buy it, build it.” We wanted a front end with infinite spring rates available, a 4 inch front roll center, 3 1/5 degrees negative camber, very little loss of camber on chassis roll, up to 6 degrees of negative caster, no caster change on bump or rebound, 10 percent anti dive, and no more than .030 bump steer through 3 inches of suspension travel in compression. Very lofty goals, and we came extremely close to achieving each one.
Of course it's not as pretty as qwikgta's setup http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/093380.html But it is maybe a bit stealthier.
I'll be starting a new thread shortly documenting what we did on the front end.[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 01-30-2014).]
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DonP
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FEB 07, 12:53 PM
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We all worked real hard trying to finish that new front cradle for the Buttonwillow race. And honestly, we could have finished it up and installed it in the car with maybe a day to spare before the race. But in an unusual fit of sanity we decided not to do so. It really made no sense to take a completely untested suspension system directly to a race situation. Particularly one that was so far away. I know that doesn't make sense. If the track is 100 miles away or 400 miles shouldn't make a difference. Breaking down is breaking down. But it does seem much worse after hauling 400 miles.
Between Sears Point and Buttonwillow, we had the opportunity to run with the Reno-SCCA (http://www.renoscca.org/ ) guys at Reno-Fernley Raceway. Obviously we wanted to have the opportunity to run out the spare engine while our primary engine was getting some much needed attention. But we also had enough time to actually work on improving the handling of the car.
To this point we have done quite a bit of work on the suspension. Up front, we had lowered the car by installing the WCF 400# 1 1/2" lowering springs, replacing the stock 205# springs. . Doing that meant the stock shocks no longer were within their designed compress/decompress range. So we modified the front shock pick up points. http://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...ML/090867-3.html#p96 While the WCF springs didn't measure up to the advertised 400# rating, they were kinda close and obviously much stiffer than stock.
At the back, we had changed the stock 142# springs for a set of 300# units when we did the coil-over conversion process. If you've read the thread, you know that we had also done the full-on poly bushings on both the front and rear suspension. All of the ball joints and tie-rods were installed new. The suspension was tight. Probably the only real problem was that the shocks were probably overmatched by the springs. Konis aren't available.
So, with time available, we decided to actually work on refining our suspension settings. Given our (then) inability to effect spring rate changes up front, and the knowledge that we had a much better front design in the works, we decided to really work on the rear. The first step was to scale the car, taking note of ride heights. Our next step was to get another full alignment job on the car. At our last alignment session at Tires Plus, we had purchased a 3-year alignment service plan. We could get an alignment, free of charge, anytime we wanted for three years. Better yet, they had an older hot-rodder guy on staff who actually understood what alignment settings did and could deal with our out of the box setup requirements.
We then went through a setup exercise back at Race Central (aka Rich's Garage.) We again scaled the car, confirming ride heights. We then changed springs in the rear and noted the number of turns required using the rear coil-overs to re-establish the proper ride heights with different rated springs. With that all charted, we could make at-track spring changes with reasonable confidence that the alignment, ride height and weight distribution were not affected.
It's always a blast going to an SCCA track day event. Heck, it's a blast anytime you can get on the track. This time, in addition to the obvious goal of getting more seat time, we planned on actually working on improving the car. Or at least seeing if our changes at the track were positive or negative changes. But you have to follow the protocol the SCCA has established. Ideally we would have liked to participate in the RFR track's once a month open track day. We could pull on and off the track at will, making changes as desired.
With the SCCA structure, Rich and I were each assigned a separate run group. So we had to each drive the car as it was originally set up. That gave us a baseline "feel" for the car. Remember, since we weren't officially "racing" we couldn't use the timing system, even though we had our own ABM transponder on the car. So, once we each had run a 20 minute session, we got together, compared notes and tried to settle on a course of action. We agreed that the car "feel" was negatively effected by excessive body roll. It felt as though the rear end rolled over too much onto the outside tire. Our choice to deal with this came down to figuring out how much of a change we wanted to make. We were running 300# springs. We had available (because of Rich's long racing history) 350 and 375# replacement springs. So the question was how far to go. Subtlety is either of our strong suit, so we naturally chose to take the biggest swing and go to the 375# springs.
If you have converted your car to coil-overs, you probably have an idea of how RELATIVELY easy it is to change springs. So I dove into making the spring change. I really had no idea what a spectacle we were creating because I was deep into the rear wheel wells with the air wrenches. But Rich estimates fully 75% of the attendees dropped by over the next 25 minutes as we made the change. Most at least asked Rich what we were doing. Had we broken something? Evidently, at the track spring and suspension changes are fairly rare at most SCCA PDX events. Even Dave DeBorde, who is the Reno-SCCA track event coordinator and John Wood, the track manager dropped in to see what was happening. Of course John, who was a driver in IMSA, CART, USAC and SCCA as well as a development driver here in America for Porsche, understood what we were doing. Here's a link to some of his drives http://www.racingsportscars...o/John-Wood-USA.html But I think most of the rest of the participants were a bit surprised. And, honestly, I think it was the first time many realized that these LeMons drivers might actually be somewhat serious. Despite the skeleton on the rear decklid.
I was the first one to take the car back onto the track. And Rich dropped into the timing and scoring trailer. As he was entering, one of the guys was talking to another official, "yeah, they were actually making a spring change in the paddock."
For the record, the spring change was to the positive. The car felt much more planted and stable. That's not to say that the over-steer was gone, but it felt better. Less twitchy. That also left us wondering if we should be purchasing heavier springs, and if so how much heavier. Since we had a much better feel to the car, we decided to not order anything stouter until we had the new front suspension installed. We would be going to Buttonwillow with the 375# springs.
We got our primary engine back early enough to reinstall it into the car. So we were pretty confident as we headed to the next race.
Let me give you a hint of what the weekend was like
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Bridgetown
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AUG 24, 11:35 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by DonP:
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Very interested to hear more about this
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DonP
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AUG 26, 01:17 AM
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I'm in the process of moving my business office AND getting a new track car prepped for this coming weekend. I can most realistically start a follow-up on our front suspension re-design next week. We had fun building it and it does work really nicely.
Don
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DonP
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OCT 01, 11:28 AM
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I'll make an effort to move this story along. And I'll try to discuss some of the changes we made to the car.
Robert was unable to make the race at Buttonwillow. He wasn't able to get the time off and didn't really want to do the seven hour drive Friday night and return Sunday for work. Okay, it sucks when that happens. We considered going with just three drivers but decided to seek a fourth. Our go-to guys couldn't make it on short notice, so I gave brother number two, David, a call.
David lives in Phoenix, about seven hours from the track coming from the other direction. He has actually driven Buttonwillow, which none of the rest of us has done, so that was a bonus. Unfortunately he raced it on a motorcycle. That didn't say too much for his decision making process. On the positive side, he had read this thread, so he figured how hard could it be? Rather than buying a full safety package, he rented a helmet, suit, gloves shoes, the whole thing. There are a couple outfits that cater to the LeMons and Chumpcar crowd and rent full approved packages. http://www.racesuitrental.com/ Because David's helmets are all for use on bikes, they aren't approved for car races.
So Rich was feeling a little apprehensive about running with three Alexander boys. Rich's Momma didn't go to just one rodeo. Or some folksy saying like that..... Forget I said that.
We of course were not the only Fiero team to show up. Peter and the rest of his Fiero Libre Team showed up. They were ready and capable of competing for at least a class win.
Peter's brother (I'm sorry I don't have his name) pulled out all the stops and escorted his teams Fiero to the Judges for tech and BS inspections. What else would you use to escort your Fiero to the race with?
 [/UR L]
The star of the show, however, was "The Homer." I'm not a follower of "The Simpsons," but evidently every other LeMons competitor was.
[URL=http://s1222.photobucket.com/user/DonP87/media/Build%20Lemons%20Car/TheHomer_zps7b20e964.jpg.html]
Back to the race report.
When we initially pulled into Buttonwillow, I was a bit disappointed. It looked flat and a bit uninteresting. We had been driving on tracks with significant elevation changes such at Thunder Hill and Sonoma. I think the biggest elevation change here was maybe 15 foot? By mid day on Saturday, that perception had changed as everyone thoroughly enjoyed their time on the track. It was fast and really suited the Fiero.
This was our first race weekend with a fully functional 3800 SC in the back. Our last engine was smoked at Sonoma a few months earlier. I gotta say, the L67 is a great fit for the Fiero. We had gobs of torque to pull off the corners. And that's where we felt best. The spring changes that we had made at Reno Fernley (see a couple posts back) really were a step in the right direction. It was a real revelation once you gained enough confidence in the now much more manageable and predictable handling to actually drive through a corner. If you look at a map of Buttonwillow http://buttonwillowraceway....df/brp-track-map.pdf you will see an area titled the bus stop. A couple of laps in, we all felt comfortable with pretty much stomping on the throttle and letting the engine assist in powering through the corner. Previously, we would have been coasting gently through the transition. David's motorcycling experience on this track helped with that discovery. At this point we were at the point that we could seriously start talking about tuning with better shocks. No. we were not the fastest car, but we had made significant progress.
Just by looking, I can tell that this next photo was taken on the back straight/drag strip. Notice the headlight door open? It was a real shock the first time I got onto that straight with some speed. Bang! Up popped the headlights maybe 3/4 of the way down the straight away. We got used to it, but I'm sure it startled some other drivers. You could tell how well you were progressing by how soon the headlight doors popped up after entering the straight.
So, how come we didn't win with all the progress we had made? Several reasons come to mind. I don't want to sound like we are whining here... but I guess we are. A little.
The heat. We lost radio communications. With the loss of radio communications, we also lost our time keeping function. I recall being on track, having a ball and being concerned that I was overstaying my hour and a half time limit. I pulled in and was told that I had been out for 32 minutes and was wasting on-track time pulling in. Before the next race, I found the answer to that problem.
Walmart. Under $10. Timer and clock. Get one if you're going to do this.
The heat was unbearable. Ever been in Bakersfield in the Summer? The agriculture makes the humidity skyrocket.
Without the radio, you could not get the next driver ready for an efficient driver change. And nobody was willing to sit around in their driver suit in case the current driver came in. Remember, we were essentially wearing quilts when suited up.
When pushed, the fresh engine would hit 235 degrees. It's sooo hard to back down and not continue pushing it.
It was so hot that the LeMons organizers wisely called the race at 2:00 for a 2 hour siesta and mandatory cooling off period. They extended the race into the evening. The track surface registered in the 140 degree range.
We declared this as our most valuable team member
If you didn't have a cool shirt, you weren't going anywhere. We actually decided to make a cool shirt cooler for the trailer before the next race. The next driver could be suited up and stay cool and ready for a quick driver change.
David spun off track trying to avoid the Fiero Libre driver who made a sudden lane change. Both Doug and I agreed, thank goodness he spun, he was making both of his older brothers look even worse. He was actually stuck out on the track for nearly 1/2 hour. He didn't know for sure that he was allowed to re-enter a hot track and stayed put for safety reasons. The tow truck eventually came out and got him. The good thing is that the corner workers evidently decided he must have broke to end out in the dirt. Otherwise he would have driven back onto the track. If he broke, he probably didn't deserve a black flag. When he got back, we just found a water hose and crawled into the car to wash it out. Big time dust. His off can be found here. http://youtu.be/ujKcWL6g26U
Our race officially ended 10 minutes before the checker flag flew. I received a final black flag for spinning while trying to pass a VW Bug. I think it had an Audi engine in it. But it was still a VW Bug and I was too eager to pass on the final turn onto the main straight. Had I waited, he would have been dead meat on the front straight. As it was.... Well check out my less than optimal entry into the corner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy9vVMv3YqA
The saving point for the weekend was that we beat the Mustang boys from Reno. We both completed the same number of laps. And though we were sitting on the sidelines, and out of the race, we finished that lap before they did. We beat them. (insert Rocky theme here)
Of course our cause was helped when their fuel started boiling and the engine stopped. And when they had to replace a clutch. But hey, we were in front
The thermometer in the tow truck registered 108 as we drove away.
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DonP
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OCT 11, 01:04 AM
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DonP
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OCT 11, 02:38 AM
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To reiterate what I said before, we decided that adding a steering quickener was really the direction we wanted to go with the Fiero. That meant that power steering was now required to make it all manageable. We checked out several threads here on the forum. Let me re-quote some links I posted a few posts back
" Rickady88GT started looking for a power steering option as far back as '04. Or at least he wrote about it as far back as that. One of his first posts started with trying to adapt an "f" body rack to his '88 Fiero http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...050410-1-044587.html
and a follow-up at http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...040710-2-044334.html
He then switched to a corvette rack here. http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum3/HTML/000124.html
Our decision was to contact the guys at West Coast Fiero and purchase their kit.
http://www.westcoastfiero.c.../power_steering.html
http://www.westcoastfiero.c...ering_installed.html
http://www.westcoastfiero.c..._pinion_convert.html
This kits was designed to use a 2000 Camaro rack and came with some adapters to change the gender at the ends of the rack and interface with the stock Fiero inner tie rods. We went ahead and purchased new inner tie rods from Rodney Dickman. http://www.rodneydickman.co....php?products_id=156
We hit the wrecking yards for a couple steering racks out of 2000 Camaros. We already had another '88 front frame assembly to build the conversion onto. We didn't want to totally disable the car if we hit delays. That turned out to be a good move.
So here's the basic deal with the WCF kit. The plan is to replace the stock Fiero rack with the Camaro rack. The Camaro tie-rod is not, however useable in the conversion. You will end up using the Fiero inner tie rods.
So, the first problem comes in that the Fiero rack ends have male threads. The Camaro rack has female threads. And of course they are different thread size and pitch.
So, WCF creates a gender changing adapter.
Of course it wasn't that simple. And we actually built our own stuff and replaced everything that came with the kit to our own specs. But the concept was sound and started the process.
In case you haven't been paying attention, I want to say that Pennock's Fiero Forum is a dangerous place to hang out in. Inevitably you are going to run into a thread like this one. http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...130314-1-048610.html from way back in 2005. And that's what happened to us. Though we couldn't get away with building a full on tube frame Fiero, the thread was inspirational in just the amount of thought that went into the car. And if those guys could go that far, surely we could build a new front suspension for our '88. How hard could it be?
So, given that our decision to add a steering quickener inevitably led to the decision to add power steering, shouldn't that likely lead to a desire for different springs? And since, for all practical purposes, the stock suspension inherently limited our spring choices to a very small universe, isn't the next logical step to redesign and build our own suspension?
We were practically forced into the decision.
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DonP
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OCT 12, 12:11 PM
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Once we had the power steering conversion figured out (we thought,) it was time to turn to everything else. So here were a couple design considerations. We would give at least a token nod to the OEM deign parameters. But we would build in much more adjustability. We would utilize some sort of home-made (remember this is for LeMons racing) coil-over arrangement for a much larger spring size selection. And we had targets for increased caster and camber as well as corrections for bump steer.
Turns out Rich had been thinking about the whole redesign for some time. The car had been a hand-full and we needed to step it up. I think the first decision was to retain the stock lower control arm geometry. We were not looking to widen the track of the car. But we wanted to set up the lower arms to accept some sort of coil-over. A couple of threads here on the forum had concerns about altering the shock pick up points on the lower arm because of additional stresses involved. We did find some inspiration in a couple threads here on the forum http://www.fiero.nl/forum/F.../HTML/000029-15.html http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...060206-2-063742.html In the end, we decided to stick with the stock length and offsets, but make our own tubular arms. Had we just gone out and bought something Like these http://www.arrautmotorsports.com/parts/suspensions I think we would have broken the spirit of LeMons racing. Building it yourself is held in higher regard. To be honest, had we seen a picture from that last link, our final design might have been different.
So we set off to Lowes to purchase a new surface plate (AKA 3/4" plywood) for the project. Rich carefully plotted the pick-up points from the original arms and worked to recreate them.
That last picture has the outline of the stock lower control arm drawn in with a red marker. This gave us a quick visual reference as to how we could lay out the new arms. The two Heim joints were positioned to work with the stock lower control arm pick-up points on the subframe.
From this point, it came to measuring, cutting, bending, re-measuring and assembling the lower arms.
One of the local SCCA members had a band saw. Something we did not have access to. He let us use the saw to cut a couple smaller pieces of tubing, sized to fit within the actual arms and accept a 3/4" tap to accommodate the male thread of the heim joints.
The 3/4" heims then accepted sleeves to reduce the hole size to 5/8", the size bolts we would be using to fasten the arms to the sub-frame.
We drilled the frame tabs for the 5/8" bolts.
Rich took the opportunity to change out the ball joints, both upper and lower. Not only did he go with much more substantial ball joints, he elected to go with the low friction ball joints commonly used in NASCAR and other top tiers of racing. But there was no way we would spend over $100 each for these ball joints. So he called up Roush Yates who resell a lot of used stuff from the NASCAR boys. http://www.roushyatesparts....g-Products-s/108.htm To use the larger screw in ball joints, he got some weld on sleeves from UB Machine. http://ubmachine.com/index.html
This particular ball joint was used for a test session at Bristol.
Rich used the tubing notcher to mate the sleeve to the arm.
Once he nailed down the ball joint end of the arm, Rich slid the threaded tube into the main arm to the point that the heim was properly located.
You'll notice he drilled the arm in order to do a plug weld on the threaded sleeve,
Bracing Added.
And a perch for the coil-over which will get it's own write-up.
And the finished lower control arms with additional brackets and braces as needed. I'll get to what they are in later posts.
 [This message has been edited by DonP (edited 10-16-2014).]
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KurtAKX
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OCT 13, 01:45 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by DonP:
Once we had the power steering conversion figured out (we thought,) it was time to turn to everything else. So here were a couple design considerations. We would give at least a token nod to the OEM design parameters. But we would build in much more adjustability. We would utilize some sort of home-made (remember this is for LeMons racing) coil-over arrangement for a much larger spring size selection. And we had targets for increased caster and camber as well as corrections for bump steer.
Turns out Rich had been thinking about the whole redesign for some time. The car had been a hand-full and we needed to step it up. I think the first decision was to retain the stock lower control arm geometry. We were not looking to widen the track of the car. But we wanted to set up the lower arms to accept some sort of coil-over. A couple of threads here on the forum had concerns about altering the shock pick up points on the lower arm because of additional stresses involved. We did find some inspiration in a couple threads here on the forum http://www.fiero.nl/forum/F.../HTML/000029-15.html http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...060206-2-063742.html In the end, we decided to stick with the stock length and offsets, but make our own tubular arms. Had we just gone out and bought something Like these http://www.arrautmotorsports.com/parts/suspensions I think we would have broken the spirit of LeMons racing. Building it yourself is held in higher regard. To be honest, had we seen a picture from that last link, our final design might have been different.
...
From this point, it came to measuring, cutting, bending, re-measuring and assembling the lower arms.
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Looks great!
What did you guys use to bend the small tube for the control arm?
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[/UR L]
