Project Car: VW Jetta Racecar (56k Go Away)

[rmicroys]

The morning update, looks like everything is set to have all the required cage components completed by end of the day and the car will return back to our neck of the woods for the final cleaning, painting, plumbing, wiring, new dashboard, and reassembly of all the other interior bits (seat) etc, etc... I'll have some new photos tonight of the finished door protection.

[ChuckPayne]

Looking good Rob! I especially like the new fuel cell!

Is that exhaust exiting from the rear? I though you were going with a side exit system?

[rmicroys]

The exhaust exits right in front of the passenger side rear wheel. In the photo with the tip visible, you can see the driver's side rear wheel, and the axle across the body where it is all nice clean and repainted, all the rusty stuff is from the floor forward. One of these days, I'll take some more labourious time and clean the rest of the floor and paint it. That's uber dirty insane work, especially with no hoist.

[rmicroys]

Okay... here's the photos from the weekend. These first photos are from Sunday morning.

Driver's side, cage, door protection...



Fuel cell frame, freshly painted.



Fuel cell frame, different angle...



Driver's door protection, inside angle...



Passenger side cross brace.



Another photo, driver's side, door protection again...



Phew... that was a lot of work, cleaning up from all the welding, and such. Then sanding down the bars, cleaning them off - they were pickled (like I am now!) from manufacturing so they don't rust, so they all had to be sanded and washed with paint thinner so the paint sticks. So, Saturday - that was pretty much it, the last of the sanding, grinding and prepping for paint. The cleaning and more cleaning... and then finally painting. Wow... lots of work...

Sunday... the work went on. Starting with the car as above, we installed the fuel cell, plumbing, fuel pump, assembled all the AN fittings and hose - that's a job and a half. Then fit the dash board and make some grovy CF dash plate, mount the dash gauges, cluster and switches. Then once we were done all that, cleaning, vacuuming and then touching up all the paint. Phew... all done and ready for wiring and putting the battery back in. Maybe on Monday night she'll fire alive!

The office, gauges. A new Momo Competione steering wheel is in the works.



Another picture of 'the office'.



The fuel cell, installed, and eurathaned in place. All the plumbing, except the vent line is in place.



Another picture of the fuel cell...



The interior from the rear, the seat has yet to be reinstalled, that's coming shortly.



The driver's side...



fuel line... err, not much to see really.



110 gph holley fuel pump, Earl's fittings and all... if this car has fuel delivery issues, then I have no idea what to do.



The fuel cell, and line, if you look carefully, you can see the inline fuel filter as the line goes in to the shadows over the axle.



Fuel cell, lines, filter, pump from the rear.



The lines coming out of the cell, one of the ports is just a plug. The fuel cell was once used on a car with FI, so it needed a return line - with the carbs it's not needed.




That's it for today... I've got a bit of work to do with putting together a wiring harness for the car now, wiring EVERYTHING up. There is not a single wire in the car right now. SOO... I think the next evening is going to be spent laying a lot of wire.

I have to say that we were really fortunate today to have the canopy. Working in the driveway with the weather the way it was - certainly would have provided challenges if we didn't have the shelter. No issues at all with the rain, or the sun - so we managed to get a lot accomplished. That was yet another day of hard work...

Stay tuned - tomorrow or tuesday, I suspect the beast will roar alive! Chances are that I'll probably wait until wednesday to fire her up though...

[Mr Black]

Out of curiosity, and if you don't mind divulging little secrets, what are you using for:

1) Suspension bushings (is anything spherical/poly, and if so where?)
2) Shift linkage (have you upgraded or redesigned any of it?)

Thanks

[rmicroys]

Shift linkage, just redrilled the stock stuff to change the ratio a bit. Likely to buy a better shift kit shortly.

Suspension bushings, very simple. A-arms, Stock in the front. In the rear, a big solid hunk of aluminum in the rear axle bushing locations - someday, I'll go splurge on the expensive spherical ones.

[rmicroys]

Update... fastest lap for the car set!

My best laptime is now 1m41.891s at Mosport, and there is more in it. Mike White could have likely beaten me, but had to 'hold back' to prevent from breaking out of class in his GTC races. 1m42.103 and 1m42.120 are his best times to date. It's just blind luck that he didn't break out yet.

Plans for new parts and goodies in the future?

- new wheels
- new LCA and rear swing arm bushings
- transmission oil cooler
- front splitter
- new harness - current camlock expires this year I think :(
- new seat - current one is just plain worn out now.
- new engine

on the dream list:
- data acquisition
- radio system
- new front and rear racing coil over shocks

[rmicroys]

Wow... I need to update all the URLs in this thread because I don't store my crap on a rogers webserver.

Needless to say. Got my new engine back today. 12.5:1 squeeze. I doubt I'll get it running in time for the Enduro, and broken in... but there is always a very remote chance.

[wrenchtime]

I'd love to see those pictures!

And 12.5:1 is awesome! That's an ABA block right? Are you planning on dyno'ing it any time soon?

[rmicroys]

The webserver is down right now, as the garagemahal work is impacting my basement... so I'll get on that later.

Yes, ABA block, 12.5 pistons from Germany. Probably going to look at going solid lifter over the winter. It may require me to take the head back off and rebucket the head. Maybe even reclearance the head for the lobes, etc. oh well.

[rmicroys]

Well... time to update this thread. lots of broken picture links. But this just came in!

Om nom nom!

[rmicroys]

Well, dropped off the busted lump to Ian. I'm not looking forward to hearing the damage report from the teardown of the engine. Considering that they didn't call me yesterday I'm thinking the list is going to be somewhat long and detailed. My fears are that pretty much everything needs to be replaced. At least I have a spare lump in the garage to build a fresh engine from, one good thing would come of that at least. I would stop stubbing my toes on the spare parts engine. I've got to get off my lazy bum and update the photos in this thread so it's not just a big pile of broken links.

[rmicroys]

Fixed the links to the missing photos... just setup a directory of the photos on my server at home, but didn't bother to resize them at all to be web friendly. Sorry.

[rmicroys]

Oh well. got the bad news back from Ian. New engine time. A new set of pistons are on the way. Ian has to get a new head for me. Though not really damaged, the head has seen a lot of use. Been using it since '05 at least. So, it owes me nothing.

[vwgolf2lwk]

Are you thinking of the same type of normally atmopheric power or something boosted?

[rmicroys]

We are going to rebuild the same 12.3:1 CR engine. The cam and most of the valve train survived. The block is fine. So Pierre is going to give me a head for a fantastic price. (anybody knows what he drinks ? ). And a new set of slugs is just shy of 600$. So it's not that bad.

To change from the carbs would get very costly. Though a mildly tuned 1.8T would make much more reliable power than any 2.0 8v bomb that I could build and run. To run EFI would mean all sorts of stuff like lines, ecu, lots of wiring, fuel pumps, new exhaust, blah blah blah. Ya. That would be a lot of work. Very tempting, but a lot of work.

[rmicroys]

Photos fixed to me more web friendly, and easier for my server's slow connection.

[CulRidr]

Everything looks much better except the 2nd half of the June 27, 2004 post.

[rmicroys]

Everything looks much better except the 2nd half of the June 27, 2004 post.

Reload the whole page on your browser. It looks just fine on my iPhone this morning.

[CulRidr]

Reload did nothing.
Clearing the cache did. Much better now