Hot Street Project....

[Crawlin]

PLEASE KEEP ALL DISCUSSION IN DEDICATED THREAD

Everyone on here pretty much knows me. Maybe not so much on a personal level, but more on a sticking with a decision level. Some may have seen my old F-bodies. Normally, I would have liked to just keep a secret and come out next year. Well, this thing isn't gonna be blazing fast to keep up with the Ford boys, so fuck it. There are two reasons for this post

1.) I wanted to show off the new toy

2.) More importantly I wanted to show what you can do with good friends, some ingenuity, and a LOOOOOOOOW budget. And hopefully if the rules are broad enough, gets you to come out to participate in this class/event.

Most of you have seen the posts in the GLD section about the new heads up class to run with True Street Drag Racing Association. GLD and it's staff have been a great track to us as racers, and as a website. Scotty and Becky do tremendous job running those events. I've talked with Scotty and others at length about this class. It's gone from trying to be specific, to very wide open to gather as many cars as possible. I think it is going to be a GREAT entry level class for those that don't want to break the bank. $100 membership, $50 to race. A payout of $25 just for qualifying? If you qualify, that makes it cheaper to race than if it was just a normal test and tune night, and ESPECIALLY cheaper than an RSD event.

I had been looking for a car for a long time. Most of you guys have seen the posts in chat and my constant rambling. Well I got beat to the punch on a car I would have really liked, and would have been more of an old classic. Pissed me off so much that I found this new car within minutes and started watching the auction on ebay. It got down to the final minute and I just said fuck it, and bid and got it. It was right over in Clinton, WI. BIG thanks to Mikey(MuddRunner) for borrowing the dolly and for waking up early as hell to go pull it back the other weekend.

I've had a ton of valuable input by ALOT of good friends and people that are around. I'll be the first to admit that I know WAAAAY less than even half of what there is to know about racing consistantly in a heads up class, and maintaining the vehicle to do so. This class is a great spring board to that education.

Plans -

Carb'd engine (looking at $ wise now on buildups to figure out LT1/LS1/SBC/BBC)
TH400 or Glide for consistency
12 bolt or Dana

Following some advice from friends, it looks like a new Dana setup would actually come out cheaper than a 9", as well as come with the 35spline setup.

Particulars right now will be hard to specify as it's mostly going to be a buy things as they come around and if they fit the rules/etc....

Final Rules are supposed to be posted by Nov. 3rd, so it alteast gives me a month to work through things and wait before deciding down a path.

Other stuff seems to be simple to attain. Suspension pieces, K-members, shocks/springs, wheels/tires, etc... are all widely available on all the sites for these cars.

[Crawlin]

Well, just a tiny little update since it's more of a planning stage at this point. Wanted to make sure I knew exactly what the forward goal was so I wasn't wasting money, and then doing research to make sure it fit the parameters.

So here will be the powerplant.

6.0L truck long block - $400 w/ coils to manifolds to pan

We just stripped it down to inspect. Everything looked good. Not bad for a 100k mile engine, haha. With how cheap you can find some of these truck longblocks, especially in the 5.3L variety, decision was made to just toss it back together with some new gaskets and maybe some ARP head bolts at the most. Save $100 over the studs and we aren't going to be pushing this thing with the stock pistons. Manifolds I can sell for about 65-75 to guys who are wanting to do turbo setups in their f-bodys.









More pics tonight. These were from earlier this week. It is completely stripped down now that I got the balancer off. Got all the covers off. Going to take it to be hot tanked to clean it up a bit and then just get the hone going on the drill. Ron already used the light stones to see if it'd clean up and it looks fine. Just stuffing the stock stuff back in there. Found a new in box set of arp rod bolts for the stock cracked rods so just gonna toss those in. Since the crank is out, and it seems as if most machine shops are slow as hell right now, might take it in to polish up. Can't be more than $50 for that? Who knows....

[Crawlin]

Some more pics since I forgot to take them the other night.

Want to thank big Mike from Fast Times for showing me a couple key things to take care of and to look into doing so we can keep this thing living with the cheap stuff in there. All the main/rod bearings looked great. Cam bearings were wore down a bit, but from what Mike said, his didn't look any better so I'm not too worried about that. Will be getting new ones though since they are only like $30.





Just cleaned it up roughly with the hone real quick. We'll see if it's workable without having to overbore it. Don't want to buy new pistons since I have all intentions of this blowing up, haha. It looks pretty bad in the photo, but I think it's just the lighting. It's still a smooth bore, haha.



Stock Piston:



Stock Rod:



Stock head after disassembly to take inventory of what's needed:



Little metal shavings are just cleaning up a lip that's right there on both intake/exhaust bowls.

And many have been consumed



Overall plans at this point are to get the block hot tanked and get the heads cleaned up as well. I will be getting the heads and the deck surfaced to make sure everything is flat. Then work out the bearing issue and maybe some new piston rings? Who knows, it's just a junk setup and stock stuff looks fine.

[Crawlin]

New toys for it!!! YAY!!! Kinda at a stand still with this weather. I hate working out in the cold, but at some point I gotta realize we have less than 90 days left to finish it and get it out testing to make sure I could even hit 11.00, hahaha



New fuel pressure regulator:


Top view of carb:


I really have no ******* clue what to do with this thing though, hahahaha

What the hell is a jet? Nitrous jets I got a ton of them!

[Crawlin]

So since some people wanted an update, I figured I'd post up some progress pictures. Back in early late September, talking with a couple people it was decided that maybe it would be better to start off with something that was a little bit easier to work on. And someone just so happened to have it sitting in their yard, haha. With what the plans were, and to be racing it consistantly(hopefully), I didn't want to be crawling under the cowl to fix anything. I've always wanted one of these since it's what I remember being carted around to elementary school in when I was going up. This was close enough, and the "dirtiness" and the color just make it that much better since it really is just all junk crap being tossed at it. Some might recognize it since Ron had it for sale.

[Crawlin]

So into the garage it went.... getting stripped down in the engine compartment as well as the interior for Ron to do the cage.





Dirty as hell....



This is how you get engine mounts off!!! Burn the shit, haha.







Getting the heater core and A/C box out...



Old gas tank area...

[Crawlin]

Then time to start stripping the interior... Suprisingly the floors were pretty damn solid.





Cutting holes for the cage



But of course, I had to pick this up only because I always thought a wagon with a cowl hood would be awesome, haha.

[Crawlin]

The fun toy...



First shot at a hoop, and it worked great... But Ron wanted to get it a bit tighter.





And then the second main hoop, and he definitely achieved that goal.









Then some more of the rear down bars. Best part about the down bars, is that cutting that first main hoop in half, made perfect rear bars, hahaha. No tubing was wasted in the making of this cage.

[Crawlin]

Now getting the the front halo since he was setting it up for the 10pt.



And the front down bars















Not quite fully welded in, but set up nicely...

[Crawlin]

Another HUUUUUGE thanks to Jim Plimpton for doing the paint match on the cage. Yes, this IS the color I wanted it, hahaha. It was hard to match the paint to the shitty, faded, crappy plastic interior panels, but he did his best and it's awesome!

Since it is such a crappy car, Ron and I didn't really take the time to mask everything off well. Obviously when looking at the pics of Mark's Malibu you can see great care was taken on that one and I would say the paint on the bar is 100x's better than the paint on the actual CAR, ahha.

[Crawlin]

Now on to the engine mock up. We are still doing the LS1 stuff since it's what I know and it's what I had available like the previous photos show.



Just getting it sat in there and mocked up for the motor plate and mid plate



It's ALL the way back up against the firewall, hahaha. Only a smidge of room













Starting the midplate







Stock truck pan clearance

[Crawlin]

I've always loved the artistic signatures some people have of their cars. So I had a guy make some up for mine. Had him do it two ways. One with a set of Pro Stars, and one with some stock Rally's since that is what will really be going on the car. Came out awesome. This is the overall indication of what I want the car to look like.



Then the Pro Star one



Then of course had to get this one in. Without Ron, Jim P, Little J, Big J, Jim R, etc... I just wouldn't have the knowledge or the talent or time to complete it myself. They are great friends. I'm a FAR way from being finished and I haven't touched it in awhile due to being a little busy with work and not having a heated garage(I get spoiled at Ron's, haha).

[Crawlin]

Funniest thing in the world...



Now you see it...



Now you don't....



Perfect fit, haha. Well had to trim a LITTLE bit

[Crawlin]

now for the fun stuff....

A HUGE thanks to Ron's cousin (little J) for making up the flanges









I do need to pick up another set of manifolds as one of them is actually cracked. Just have to run up by bad cutt to get them!

This is just some mock up stuff just to see if it'd fit and what bends would be needed and how many.







Always wanted it like this, but don't know if it's actually going to end up there. Only because of space constraints as well as cooling since it'll be a "street" car.

[Crawlin]

Just as an update... Got more parts!!! Thanks Mike and John over at Fast Times for getting the GM parts!!!



ARP stuff is race car stuff!!! That or it's $20 vs. the stock GM TTY crank bolt being $16, hahah



Stock GM headgaskets! The only way to fly!