Building our Lemons/Chumpcar (Page 6/29)
DonP JAN 03, 12:15 PM
We really were running out of time, but, you know you have to look for an advantage. I know that the Mustang II suspension is used in a lot of different applications from street rods to track cars. Would it fit a Fiero? The driving reason we considered this type of change was the horror stories we had read concerning the '88 front spindles not holding up to the demands of a track car. The '88 hubs that are available reportedly give out after as little as a few hours on the track (The new Rodney Dickman hubs were not available and may only be available shortly after writing this.) Our concern was that we had one hub that didn't feel right.

We kicked the issue around a bit. And I found a post here on the forum from 2000 where member Will casually mentioned that he was working on a kit to change over to a Mustang II front suspension. The second post in this thread http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...010706-2-006580.html I pm'd Will and found that he had stopped work on this change after encountering a few issues. I'm still of the opinion that we can engineer a way to add the Mustang II suspension in the future. But the geometry will have to be worked out in our suspension modeling program. Here on the forum, there's been a lot of discussion on creating accurate models of the '88 Fiero. I believe Bloozberry and FieroGuru have done a lot of this work and I'm hoping that they will allow us access to their technical drawings in the future. I think there's a lot of potential to change the front suspension for track day use.

In the short term, we found a couple of used '88 hubs out of a yard in Oregon. We replaced the suspect hub assembly and had a spare to take to the track.

We also managed to round up a couple wheels. The car was purchased with a set of 14" wheels, and we located some 15" replacements. Unfortunately, under our budget, we had to settle for 3 wheels that matched and 1 that was totally different. But what can you say about a $55 purchase. We learned about "tuner" lug nuts. Not a desirable thing .



We purchased new upper ball joints from Rodney Dickman, as well as his shifter rebuild kit for the Getrag. If I remember correctly, we purchased the lower ball joints at Napa because Dickman was out of the lower ball joints. Ultimately that was a mistake that we didn't realize until the first race. More on that later. After a visual inspection, we decided to leave the tie-rod ends alone.

Luckily, the hubs that we purchased from the wrecking yard in Oregon had the uprights still attached. One of our original uprights needed to have the lower ball joint taper cleaned up. Rich had the proper tapered reamers to do this. Unfortunately I reamed out the hole to fit the wrong ball joint. Once it's reamed out too large, well you're out of luck. I was able to save some pride by doing the replacement correctly.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 01-03-2013).]

wftb JAN 03, 03:09 PM
this thread gets better all the time .its like a favourite tv show , cant wait for the next episode .
DonP JAN 03, 09:13 PM
Well thank you. I hope it's better than watching re-runs of Gilligan's Island. My favorite show oh so long ago.
DonP JAN 04, 12:42 PM
The race was fast approaching, and one of the most challenging job was still ahead of us. The wiring. We spent quite a bit of time researching wiring diagrams and direction. But how hard could it be once we bought a Chiltons manual?

We had put it off far too long, so Rich started work on the harness. We wanted to trim out any extra circuits and isolate all those we really needed.





Rich did make the choice early on to keep the original fuse panel. But that didn't mean he wouldn't be changing stuff around.



Thankfully we had marked as many of the connectors as possible when we were taking everything apart.





Here he's hooked back into the stock steering column trying to confirm what circuits would be necessary. Our plan of attack was to install the engine back into the car. Start the engine and make sure everything worked. And eliminate circuits that were no longer necessary while still having a working car. Hey, this wasn't our first wiring rodeo!



All I can say is I'm glad Rich is a certified electrician. The down side is that his work is too , ahem, immaculate. By actual count, we have 4,012 tie wraps holding the wiring harness together. And I'm positive we used at least half as many that were cut off and discarded as the harness was built. Once the actual wiring started, Rich opened a previously never opened drawer on his tool box and pulled out a set of dykes Robert and I had never seen. He tried to hide which drawer he opened, but we did peek. We were not allowed to touch them. Okay, I hope most of you are at least smiling, but I'm sure some of you electricians or even machinists know exactly what I'm talking about here. I'm sure Phonedawgs, FieroFlyer and Nosrac have their special tools.



Rich also sharpened the blades on his wire tie gun. Talk to any electrician and they will have a tie wrap gun. Most of us just pull the tie wrap tight (maybe too tight) and whack the end off with a pair of dykes. The reasons the electrician folks use a tie wrap gun is to get a consistent tension, save their fingers from pulling all those ties tight and to avoid leaving sharp ends. If you cut a tie with a pair of dykes, the end of the strap will be sharp and likely to scratch you when working with the harness. The gun leaves a duller end, not likely to scratch. Remember, we have 4,012 possible points trying to scratch us on our harness.

Tie wrap gun

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 01-06-2013).]

Fierofreak00 JAN 04, 03:34 PM
I too have a hidden set of flush cuts for just that reason...Being an autotech by trade, I know what those little buggers can do...
DonP JAN 05, 02:34 PM
Yeah, the boss isn't usually too open to leaving work because of blood loss caused by tie wraps. I picked up on the statement that you too have some tools hidden away. So you understand!

Rich saw the picture above of the tie wrap gun and decided he needs to upgrade his old one. I cannot believe how expensive the really good ones are.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 01-05-2013).]

DonP JAN 05, 04:58 PM
Okay, lets get down to the really important stuff.

A roll cage may help prevent bodily injury and death.

A fire extinguisher, within reach of the driver, may be helpful in preventing 2nd and 3rd degree burns, long burn rehabilitation exercises and scars.

Brakes may be helpful in keeping us from answering the ages long question regarding immovable objects and irresistible forces.

And a proper helmet can help once again help prevent death and disfigurement.


But what's the really important question about a new race car?
What is it going to look like, that's what!

Because of the way the Fiero is constructed and can be disassembled it's easy enough to start the job of painting the car even before the mechanicals are done. So while Rich was busy with the wiring, and I had my hands full with sweeping the floor, Robert drew the task of painting the car.

But where do you draw inspiration from. You gotta remember, this is the 24 hours of LeMons. That means the options are unending. Let me give you a few examples. Check closely in the upper right of the first picture. The 444 car has a star trek theme going. And the farther car has Wiley E. Coyote on a rocket.





And what I consider to be one of the most inspired LeMons car of the modern age.


I invite you to check out a short Youtube video of this car in action at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAgZktgNANk.

On the Fiero side, several have been entered in the Lemons and Chumpcar events. I've referenced the great looking Chariot of fire car out of Oregon who set the bar for looks and theme. http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/083726.html The Team is KissMyTaillightsRacing comes close http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/090000.html. As a side note, the third post on that thread (by me) shows the drivers of the FieroLibre car in the next photo.

Please excuse my taking a slight detour on the build, but I've collected images of a few other participants.



Do a Google search on Fiero 24 hours of LeMons and you'll find a bunch more.

I don't want to give the impression that the races are a joke. We all take them seriously. But the "themes" are a way to try to keep things in perspective. Be serious, be safe, have fun. You're probably not going to win anyway.

To be honest, we don't have enough imagination or balls to attempt some of the more imaginative stuff. But we did see a US flag motif on a Fiero that we could live with. Our LeMons theme would be "American Iron... uh, Plastic"
I started a thread trying to find that original flag inspired theme and saw some really beautiful work http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/087054.html But we ultimately were referred to our original inspiration.



Robert had to get real busy with less than two weeks until the first race.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 01-05-2013).]

DonP JAN 05, 08:30 PM
We wanted to make sure that we had good brake lights on the car. Using the stock lights didn't strike us as a great idea. They are just too exposed to contact damages. So we decided to adapt some LED lights. The mounting choice that appealed to us was high and at the top of cage. We bent up some sheet metal to fit the area between the top of the main hoop and the top of the passenger compartment. And we cut (and filed and filed and filed) the appropriate opening to accomodate a pair of rectangular LED brake/tail lights.









I can definitely report that the placement of the lights as well as the selection of LEDS was a great choice. In fact, we could pick out our brake lights the full length of Sears Point raceway. Very effective.

On the subject of brakes, we spent a lot of time following threads here on PFF concerning brakes. I believe in brakes, and am willing to spend money on them. Brakes are not calculated into the $500 value of the car. There's definitely a dearth of aftermarket brake components available for the Fiero. I spent time at Summit trying to find something to work with, and went away empty handed. The only thing we could find was a set of EBC brake pads, and they were advertised as street pads. Finally, with time running short, we followed the most common recommendation here on the PFF.

We purchased the Wagner Thermo-quiet MX-378 brake pads. Yes they are standard street brake pads. I can testify that they work great under race conditions. We could out-brake many other cars with no fears. Today, with 4 race weekends, a couple open track days and a couple auto-crosses in the bank, we are still running the same set and will just be taking a new set to the next race as back-ups.

We did remove the parking brake hardware off the rear disc setup. I was totally lost and thought I had ruined the calipers when I could not retract the pistons. Luckily, harbor freight is just down the street and they had the solution. http://www.harborfreight.co...ston-tool-68972.html

We did go with hi temp brake fluid as well. We purchased DOT 5.1 glycol based brake fluid (not DOT 5 Silicone based) with a 518 degree (dry) boiling point and 190 degree wet boiling point. It's expensive, but we flushed the whole system and it seems to work well. Obviously we replaced all the hoses as well. We elected to go with quality standard rubber hoses, not the braided stuff. The braided hoses scream "race-car" a little too loudly and promote a tighter scrutiny of the rest of the car.

As things progress, we may want to change our brake system. But only after problems start to manifest themselves. The stock brakes are great.
ManMadeChickens JAN 06, 04:14 AM
Holy smokes! I've been too darn busy to be on the forum much lately, but boy did I drop in at a great time. This thread is awesome! Takes me back to building our car. One of my favorite things about having these race car build threads on here is that everyone can pick and choose different little things they want from each build, and contribute a few ideas of their own. I'm glad our build was inspirational in ways. There's a couple things you've done that would improve our car... I might be making some improvements myself. Having read through everything up to this point, I have a few thoughts.

Your base plates and flat floor strategy look great. We built little platforms for flatten out the floor, and spread the load. We took the "Drop the cage" method, so we also had some holes to cover up. The way we built our cage meant there was no way we could have worked it in and out of the door openings like you did. That's pretty spectacular that you were able to do that.

We left the stock bumper bars, egg crate and everything inside the facias. I think the Chariot of Fire guys may have done what you referenced. We eventually modified the rear bumper guts, but not after a bit of on-track modification necessitated it. I like your rail-type bumper bars. If we ever get around to rethinking our bumpers, I will be inclined to do it that way.

Words cannot describe how difficult it is to get a racing seat mounted in a Fiero to accomodate tall vs. regular drivers, AND get the helmet height right. We've got a modified regular seat for the time being, but we're looking for a replacement. Using some measurements we've taken, I think we might have come to the same conclusion as you, and the Kirkey 17" width looks like a winner.

You oil pan is so trick. I like that a lot. Putting some trap doors in is a real smart idea. We've yet to find any oil starvation issues, but you can't be too cautious. The extra capacity looks good too. We always fill ours a tad more than "full" so maybe that's a benefit.

We have scored many a deal during the half-priced yard sales here. We built our 3.1L replacement motor using a low-miles shortblock sourced during one of those sales. Can't argue with a $94 shortblock in as good condition as we found. Some crafty work here and there netted us a strong running motor put together on the cheap. When we were there grabbing that engine, I saw a couple other crapcan teams from both ChumpCar and LeMons sourcing parts. It's an addiction alright.

I'm glad you kept count of your zip-ties. We may be over that number, but it's gotta be close. My mother made the team a "Certified Zip-tie Mechanics" banner we hang in our pit stall. Anything and everything can be somehow fixed with 'em. I'm really jealous of the tie wrap trimmer gun. I may have to invest in one of those. Snagging my skin or race suit on sharp ends is a PAIN.

I had not seen some of those Fiero crapcan racers prior to reading this thread. That's great to see the different ideas some folks have come up with.

If you have the chance to make it up to Portland for a race, you've got a huge group of loyal fans up here who would be willing to help. My team is based in the Portland area, and my buddy Damian (thedrue here on the forum) is in the middle of building his car for ChumpCar as well. He's in Vancouver, Washington. I've raced with another local team called "Team PontiHack" that has quite a well built car. Our plan is to race Both Portland ChumpCar events, and also The Ridge Motorsports Park this season. From the looks of it, there will be two Fieros in both the Ridge event in August, and two in the October Portland event. Convince your team a little harder and come race with us! It would be a blast to get a few Fiero teams together for once.

I've enjoyed reading it this far, and look forward to the rest of the story. Sharing your build is much appreciated... I'm having off-season withdrawls!

[This message has been edited by ManMadeChickens (edited 01-06-2013).]

DonP JAN 06, 03:27 PM

quote
Originally posted by ManMadeChickens:

there was no way we could have worked it in and out of the door openings like you did. That's pretty spectacular that you were able to do that.



That came as a real surprise to us as well. We were resigned to welding the cage in the traditional "in the car" method. As you saw in the photos, Rich had enough experience to have a plan of attack and was moving the cage within the shell in such a way as to get the most exposure. About an hour in, I commented that we had most of the cage jacked out of the car. Might it just be possible.... Sooo much easier. In a way it's too bad Damian's prebuilt cage is already welded. Cutting the top off is likely to be difficult and getting the base metal clean enough to weld back together will be a chore.


quote
If we ever get around to rethinking our bumpers, I will be inclined to do it that way.



I tried finding the photo of the bumper build here on the forum. But I just couldn't locate it again. I thought it was your build. But we've trimmed down a lot of the build files we had amassed. We are happy with the Kirkey seat. It fits well enough. I would change how we made the adjustable back brace. But it does work.

Overall, the oil pan was a success. But we do still see some oil starvation issues. The light has come on in turn 6 at Sears Point/Infineon/Sonoma raceway. That a long left turn. But I guess we might see the same light in the Portland Raceway turn 12, though thats a rigt hander. Your PIR turn 6 isn't as severe and sustained at Sonoma turn 6.
The wrap tie gun is a real winner. Yet another one of those specialty "tools of the trade" the rest of us never hear about. As an electrician since... well for awhile, Rich had a bunch of tools. They were stolen a few years back and he still laments the loss of a ton of tools that he'll never replace at this point.


I started racing on the Eugene asphalt oval in the mid '80s. But we made several trips to PIR, usually in conjunction with the Shelby American club. So PIR is my home road race course. I have great feelings for the track. I'm of mixed feelings about the chicane, but have memories of going way too fast without it. Excuse the memory here. Rich and I took an SCCA class there in the early '90s. We showed up with our full tube-frame chassis car that had been modified for road racing. Got a lot of attitude from the instructors for showing up with what (they thought) was strictly a roundy-round car. Pulled in from a run and they were giving us some good natured ribbing when my instructor asked if the realized I had lapped at 1.5 seconds off the trans-am race speeds. We were clocked at 162 mph on the front straight. Rich, unfortunately was limited to a Mustang we rented from Enterprise. A six cylinder Mustang. Oh well.

So yes, we like PIR. It's hard to drive that far with for an April or October race that is so likely to be a rain event. But, one of our drivers is out of Eugene. Good luck this year.

Don