Rebuilding suspension & motor mounts

I took out both motor mounts, and they had both sheared completely. I was planning on replacing them with hockey puck s, but i dont think the hockey pucks will be thick enough. Plus hockey pucks are $8 at Sports authority, and I need 4, 2 for engine and 2 for the trans. If anyone has some old pucks they'd like to get rid of, please let me know.

While I was at it yesterday, I decided to go ahead and redo the front suspension. I was never very happy with how it turned out. The top screw of the bilstein doesn't reach the strut housing and wont hold it in securely. I kept the front suspension from the parts car, and i'll be using it to cut and weld the new strut housing.

Today should be a busy day

Houston, we have a problem.

Today, after trying to chase a no-start issue, I spotted something very disturbing, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...


The motor is already an inch out of place in these shots.... That means that it needed to move a total of 2 inches over, towards the passenger side to make these dents.



It turns out that at the last autox, I broke the motor mounts. Probably because of the cold front we had. It was in the 40's that morning.


...not good.

Soul

The DirtE30Originally uploaded by Ocell

We're rich and famous!

Well, in all honesty, we haven't exactly won the lottery, or through a stroke of good luck, become famous, but our hard work has paid off, and we've got what we've never thought was possible, Grassroots Motorsports Magazine (www.grassrootsmotorsports.com) has an article about our car in their latest issue! Its actually about the car as it appeared in the 2008 GRM challenge. I've uploaded the low resolution proof for those of you too cheap to go out and buy the real thing! Enjoy, and go out and tell alll your friends!

Last autox event of the Year!

After all the issues we had at the Bank Atlantic autox, we wanted to finish the year off with a bang, and that's just what we did. Jimmy and I signed up for the Homestead autox. After our spectacular radiator failure at the last event, we made sure the car was running "tip top" at this event. Jimmy spent some time the week before replacing the busted radiator and hose, he tightened up the shifter with some o-rings our friend Bartley gave us, and when Sunday morning arrived, we hooked the car to the back of the truck, and were off to Homestead.


Christy, like always was at home helping us swap wheels.


We had lots of good help when my sister and her family showed up!


Our newest pit crew member hard at work.




A drive-by video I shot of Jimmy driving using my phone.



A better quality in car video of one run.

We had some stiff competition in our class, a Mitsu Evo IX, Subaru STI, and a Corvette Z06!


When the dust settled, we had the best results to date an an autox.

Back in the saddle again.

We heard that the Porsche club was holding an autox a few miles from where we live. We signed up and were ready to go at 8 am.... not without the usual few glitches, like getting to the event and realizing the keys to the car were still at home! Christy was nice enough to go pick them up for us while we prepared the car for the tech inspection.


We both signed up, so we had a total of 8 runs each. 4 in the morning set, and 4 in the afternoon set. Jimmy's first 4 runs went without any issues other than the car running very hot due to a broken fan clutch.


Little by little he chipped away at his times, and between both the morning session and the afternoon session, he ended running a best time of 54.486.


Because of the broken fan clutch, we were running on borrowed time... with coolant temps in the 230's.


My runs were after Jimmy's and unfortunately the car had no time to cool down.


I spun on my first run, running a 60.081. On the second run I ran a 52.991, but hit a cone, so a second was added. My best time came on my 3rd run, a 52.451, good enough to put us in 14th position.


On my final run of the morning session, I cracked the hose connector off the radiator


We thought that was the end of our day, but fortunately Bartley and his son Sven were kind enough to lend us a spare radiator they had in their garage down the street. We swapped radiators, filled up the coolant, and made it just in time for Jimmy to go out and do his second session.



On Jimmy's final run, the car burst the lower radiator hose. With no spare, that was the end of our day and I wasn't able to do my last 4 runs. Even with the cooling issues, we had a blast, and were able to hang out with some really cool people, while giving the car a good shakedown. We know what we need to improve on, and what needs to be replaced/repaired before our next autox on December the 13th in Homestead. Our fastest time was good enough for 14th out of 52 cars in our class.


A bunch of our buddies came out to the event to support us and take some pictures(thanks Rolando). Christy fired the grill up and cooked some chicken, It was a nice day in the parking lot ;)

Parts cars are never boring!

After a hard days work, actually only 3 hours , we decided to have a bit of fun... as if completely dismantling a car isn't fun ;)



If you look at the second bounce, the tire left the ground, before the spring popped out!