Grassroots Motorsports Test Day, and Abject Failure...
05-06-2003, 12:59 PM
#1
Drifting
Thread Starter
Grassroots Motorsports Test Day, and Abject Failure...
Today Grassroots Motorsports Magazine is performing a test on several 1980's-era Budget Supercars. This testing is being held as I type, at a Tire Manufacturer's testing grounds about an hour from here. The results of this test are going to be used in an upcoming Shootout article comparing the performance limits and bang-for-buck of the select cars, and will feature each of the cars in print. This sort of apples-to-apples comparison is a great way to state in bold print, underlined, the significant abilities of a sound and healthy 951. In fact, top of the heap status is probably in the bag, going up against same era RX-7s and the like, except -
- the 951 is not represented.
(as far as I know)
Two weeks ago, I was contacted by phone by Grassroots, after a friend's referral, and asked to bring my car to the Shootout. After a discussion with my boss about the shop schedule, I jumped at the opportunity. I don't know about you guys, but having my car tested by a magazine really turns me on.
The only hitch was, I've only recently gotten into this car, and I haven't had an opportunity to shake it down properly and sort it out. - for the uninformed, do a search for CHASSIS SWAP threads. I already had a list of items to renew, as preventative maintenance, including rod bearings and what-not (I try to do a lot of autocrossing and abuse the car properly), and a dyno test had already shown that the car was ~40hp down (at the wheels) from healthy levels. A compression test found a low cylinder, and I'd been been finding evidence of a headgasket leak for the couple of months I've owned the car, leading to an overheating issue. Suddenly however, almost synchronous with my verbal acceptance of the opportunity to be involved in the Shootout, the clutch started rattling, clunking, then shrieking as if a spring had broken and was wreaking havoc in there.
So it was decided that the pre-Shootout maintenance items would be: rod bearings, rings, cylinder head (I had another one ready to go with with new valves, springs, stem seals, and a three-angle job), head studs/washers/nuts, injectors, and a clutch disc. Before it was all over, the list had grown to include a pressure plate, throw-out bearing, pilot bearing, clutch fork pivot and bearings, rear main oil seal, updated oil pan/dipstick and dipstick tube/oil pickup, various hoses and lines below the intake, cycling valve, lower-temp thermostat and fan switch, and having the headers and crossover pipe stripped of their heatsheilds, welded, and wrapped.
Big list, eh? Well, last Tuesday we (Jim Burton and I) started tearing into the car after work. Within 4 or 5 hours, we'd discovered some significant scoring in #2 cylinder walls, and apparently irreperable damage to the torque tube drive shaft tip caused by a locked pilot bearing (the clutch disc was fine, albeit worn considerably).
Wednesday morning my Father was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, and I spent the rest of the week out of town.
When I returned (exhausted) Friday night, it was decided that I would use the spare torque tube from my Father's wrecked car to replace my ruined one. The small hitch was that it was IN my Father's wrecked car. So, Saturday, 3 DAYS before the event, I set out pulling and swapping torque tubes, which took me the entire day.
The next morning, I was joined by Rob Anders for another full day of pulling a installing headstuds for those that don't know, this is an extremely labor-intensive, hold-your-breath procedure that requires lots of heat - a broken headstud will ruin your day. During the headstud procedure, we managed to light (as in fire) some solvent in the water jacket around the cylinders. While we were discussing whether or not to go get the digital camera and take pictures of this for you guys, I casually doused the flames with water I was drinking, and spilled the flaming solvent out of the block and promptly caught the oil soaked cardboard below.
As you could guess, the following hour or so was spent cleaning the fire extinguisher remnants out of the engine compartment and engine.
We went on to prep the pistons, install the rings, rod bearings, pickup, oil pan, rear main seal, and clutch components. I finshed up late Sunday night by renewing the seals in the oil cooler housing and swapping the thermostat and fan switch. One day to go.
Monday morning (yesterday) I hit the car at 7:00 am. I reinstalled everything from the bellhousing back, repaired a broken stud in the wastegate, installed the head, and was sorting out the various heat-damaged vacuum hoses on top of the motor when we discovered that the ring gear was not in the bellhousing.
(Now, I must pause to tell you that there are 2 kinds of people in the world - those that have already assembled a clutch without the ring gear, and those who have not, YET. I only happens once, and it will NEVER happen again after that. - I think EVERYONE in the shop is covered at this point.)
So, I continued on the top side of the motor stuff as Rob and Jim furiously tore into the clutch job again.
At 2:00am this morning, Tuesday, the day of the Shootout, Jim and I fired up the car, checked it over and bled the brakes and clutch while it warmed up. By this point, we knew I needed to replace the clutch master/slave/line due to age and poor condition, but the line was back-ordered until Tuesday. I was figuring out how much time I had before the 8:00 arrival time at the Shootout, and how manyy break-in miles I could put on the car before then when we discovered that it wouldn't shift gears while running. Our immediate concern was the clutch disc. I'd ordered the 930S disc, which is thicker, as a replacement/upgrade, and we assumed that there was simply not enough travel in the throw-out fork to completely disengage it.
A quirky test drive at 2:45am in the pouring rain confirmed that the problem was primarily first and reverse, while the other gears were considerably notchier than usual. We pulled the car back into the shop, threw her up on the lift and began furiously making, installing and testing longer pushrods for the slave cylinder.
At 3:45 am, we ran out of travel in the bellhousing (clutch fork touching the other side of the housing when fully depressed) and the car still would not shift into first of reverse.
At 4:00 am, four hours before I had to arrive at the track for the testing event, I threw in the towel. We were out of resources, energy, and time. I'd personally put in every available minute, 51 hours worth, over the past three days, with 21 of those hours passing on Monday alone. I was seeing tracers and random colors in my vison from exhaustion as I drove home this morning.
As I type, the event is going on without the 951. Tonight, after work (I'm headed there in a moment), I have to pull the clutch back apart and look for a bent clutch fork, another bad pilot bearing, or barring that, simply replace the disk for my old stock one. I'll be doing the clutch hydraulic system at that time, and probably replacing the speed and reference sensors, which were on their last leg when we started all this work.
I have an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and failure, as if I fumbled the ball just short of the goal line (is that a correct metaphor?).
In any event, when the article comes out in Grassroots Motorsports about the Shootout, copy this post and clip it to the end as an addendum explaining why the 944s weren't represented.
Sorry guys... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />
- the 951 is not represented.
(as far as I know)
Two weeks ago, I was contacted by phone by Grassroots, after a friend's referral, and asked to bring my car to the Shootout. After a discussion with my boss about the shop schedule, I jumped at the opportunity. I don't know about you guys, but having my car tested by a magazine really turns me on.
The only hitch was, I've only recently gotten into this car, and I haven't had an opportunity to shake it down properly and sort it out. - for the uninformed, do a search for CHASSIS SWAP threads. I already had a list of items to renew, as preventative maintenance, including rod bearings and what-not (I try to do a lot of autocrossing and abuse the car properly), and a dyno test had already shown that the car was ~40hp down (at the wheels) from healthy levels. A compression test found a low cylinder, and I'd been been finding evidence of a headgasket leak for the couple of months I've owned the car, leading to an overheating issue. Suddenly however, almost synchronous with my verbal acceptance of the opportunity to be involved in the Shootout, the clutch started rattling, clunking, then shrieking as if a spring had broken and was wreaking havoc in there.
So it was decided that the pre-Shootout maintenance items would be: rod bearings, rings, cylinder head (I had another one ready to go with with new valves, springs, stem seals, and a three-angle job), head studs/washers/nuts, injectors, and a clutch disc. Before it was all over, the list had grown to include a pressure plate, throw-out bearing, pilot bearing, clutch fork pivot and bearings, rear main oil seal, updated oil pan/dipstick and dipstick tube/oil pickup, various hoses and lines below the intake, cycling valve, lower-temp thermostat and fan switch, and having the headers and crossover pipe stripped of their heatsheilds, welded, and wrapped.
Big list, eh? Well, last Tuesday we (Jim Burton and I) started tearing into the car after work. Within 4 or 5 hours, we'd discovered some significant scoring in #2 cylinder walls, and apparently irreperable damage to the torque tube drive shaft tip caused by a locked pilot bearing (the clutch disc was fine, albeit worn considerably).
Wednesday morning my Father was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, and I spent the rest of the week out of town.
When I returned (exhausted) Friday night, it was decided that I would use the spare torque tube from my Father's wrecked car to replace my ruined one. The small hitch was that it was IN my Father's wrecked car. So, Saturday, 3 DAYS before the event, I set out pulling and swapping torque tubes, which took me the entire day.
The next morning, I was joined by Rob Anders for another full day of pulling a installing headstuds for those that don't know, this is an extremely labor-intensive, hold-your-breath procedure that requires lots of heat - a broken headstud will ruin your day. During the headstud procedure, we managed to light (as in fire) some solvent in the water jacket around the cylinders. While we were discussing whether or not to go get the digital camera and take pictures of this for you guys, I casually doused the flames with water I was drinking, and spilled the flaming solvent out of the block and promptly caught the oil soaked cardboard below.
As you could guess, the following hour or so was spent cleaning the fire extinguisher remnants out of the engine compartment and engine.
We went on to prep the pistons, install the rings, rod bearings, pickup, oil pan, rear main seal, and clutch components. I finshed up late Sunday night by renewing the seals in the oil cooler housing and swapping the thermostat and fan switch. One day to go.
Monday morning (yesterday) I hit the car at 7:00 am. I reinstalled everything from the bellhousing back, repaired a broken stud in the wastegate, installed the head, and was sorting out the various heat-damaged vacuum hoses on top of the motor when we discovered that the ring gear was not in the bellhousing.
(Now, I must pause to tell you that there are 2 kinds of people in the world - those that have already assembled a clutch without the ring gear, and those who have not, YET. I only happens once, and it will NEVER happen again after that. - I think EVERYONE in the shop is covered at this point.)
So, I continued on the top side of the motor stuff as Rob and Jim furiously tore into the clutch job again.
At 2:00am this morning, Tuesday, the day of the Shootout, Jim and I fired up the car, checked it over and bled the brakes and clutch while it warmed up. By this point, we knew I needed to replace the clutch master/slave/line due to age and poor condition, but the line was back-ordered until Tuesday. I was figuring out how much time I had before the 8:00 arrival time at the Shootout, and how manyy break-in miles I could put on the car before then when we discovered that it wouldn't shift gears while running. Our immediate concern was the clutch disc. I'd ordered the 930S disc, which is thicker, as a replacement/upgrade, and we assumed that there was simply not enough travel in the throw-out fork to completely disengage it.
A quirky test drive at 2:45am in the pouring rain confirmed that the problem was primarily first and reverse, while the other gears were considerably notchier than usual. We pulled the car back into the shop, threw her up on the lift and began furiously making, installing and testing longer pushrods for the slave cylinder.
At 3:45 am, we ran out of travel in the bellhousing (clutch fork touching the other side of the housing when fully depressed) and the car still would not shift into first of reverse.
At 4:00 am, four hours before I had to arrive at the track for the testing event, I threw in the towel. We were out of resources, energy, and time. I'd personally put in every available minute, 51 hours worth, over the past three days, with 21 of those hours passing on Monday alone. I was seeing tracers and random colors in my vison from exhaustion as I drove home this morning.
As I type, the event is going on without the 951. Tonight, after work (I'm headed there in a moment), I have to pull the clutch back apart and look for a bent clutch fork, another bad pilot bearing, or barring that, simply replace the disk for my old stock one. I'll be doing the clutch hydraulic system at that time, and probably replacing the speed and reference sensors, which were on their last leg when we started all this work.
I have an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and failure, as if I fumbled the ball just short of the goal line (is that a correct metaphor?).
In any event, when the article comes out in Grassroots Motorsports about the Shootout, copy this post and clip it to the end as an addendum explaining why the 944s weren't represented.
Sorry guys... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />
05-06-2003, 01:05 PM
#2
Drifting
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Sorry to hear about your troubles. It would have been nice to see that kind of comparison with the 944s represented. Last year when Grassroots did the article on my brother's car vs the 911 (and a short clip on mine as well) it was a lot of fun. It was cool being able to see how they did their tests and how they put the articles together. It's surprising how much different it really is than the impressions you get by reading the articles!
Hopefully you'll get another shot at making the magazine in the future.
Hopefully you'll get another shot at making the magazine in the future.
05-06-2003, 01:39 PM
#5
Rennlist Member
Keith,
Great effort on your part to even get close to preparing your car for that shootout. You get a serious round of applause from all of us. Too bad we couldn't arrange for someones elses car to fill in as a substitute. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> Oh, well, we don't want to drive the price of 951s up to much anyway with a favorable article.
Great effort on your part to even get close to preparing your car for that shootout. You get a serious round of applause from all of us. Too bad we couldn't arrange for someones elses car to fill in as a substitute. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> Oh, well, we don't want to drive the price of 951s up to much anyway with a favorable article.
05-06-2003, 01:41 PM
#6
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Keith,
Sorry about all of the set backs that you ran into with this. I feel bad now that I am the one that got you started down that road.
But do you have a phone number for the people down at the track and I will see if it is too late for me to make it. I can drop what I am doing and go.
Sorry about all of the set backs that you ran into with this. I feel bad now that I am the one that got you started down that road.
But do you have a phone number for the people down at the track and I will see if it is too late for me to make it. I can drop what I am doing and go.
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05-06-2003, 01:51 PM
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Bill the problem with getting another person to go was finding someone with a mostly stock car. I was the one that had the spot and gave it to Keith because my car just does not look good enough for a magazine.
05-06-2003, 02:07 PM
#9
Nordschleife Master
Great effort keith, it is a shame that the car will not be able to make it.
If you need a hand with anything on the car I'm always available after work, or on weekends. Any parts you need, or anything I may have just let me know.
And good luck to your father, I hope all is going well with him.
If you need a hand with anything on the car I'm always available after work, or on weekends. Any parts you need, or anything I may have just let me know.
And good luck to your father, I hope all is going well with him.
05-06-2003, 02:18 PM
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I am sorry to hear that you did not get the car working properly. I know that you and several others invested a great deal of effort and I share your disappointment. <img border="0" alt="[crying]" title="" src="graemlins/crying.gif" />
At least your car will be very well sorted when you get the clutch issue resolved – should prove for many many miles of driving bliss.
I hope that your dad is doing well.
Have a beer. <img border="0" alt="[cherrsagai]" title="" src="graemlins/drink.gif" />
Tell your dad to have one, too. <img border="0" alt="[cherrsagai]" title="" src="graemlins/drink.gif" />
At least your car will be very well sorted when you get the clutch issue resolved – should prove for many many miles of driving bliss.
I hope that your dad is doing well.
Have a beer. <img border="0" alt="[cherrsagai]" title="" src="graemlins/drink.gif" />
Tell your dad to have one, too. <img border="0" alt="[cherrsagai]" title="" src="graemlins/drink.gif" />
05-06-2003, 02:52 PM
#11
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Haven't had a chance to read all of the above (on a call right now - will when I get off the phone) but, I just talked to K-man and his dad is doing OK and they hope to release him on Friday. Keith was on 85-S en route to Lauren (as I believe they got a latish start due to weather) and he managed to get the gearbox shifting. Don't know many details but these.
Hoping a very speedy and full recovery for Pops!
Hoping a very speedy and full recovery for Pops!
05-06-2003, 03:19 PM
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Keith,
My Hat it is off to you, Jim Burton, and Rob Anders for attempting to complete such an enormous amount of work in such a short period of time. By the sounds of it, your efforts to complete the project before the deadline were nothing short of heroic.
If you ever need an extra set of hands, just say the word.
-Bryan
P.S. I truly hope your father's health is improving.
My Hat it is off to you, Jim Burton, and Rob Anders for attempting to complete such an enormous amount of work in such a short period of time. By the sounds of it, your efforts to complete the project before the deadline were nothing short of heroic.
If you ever need an extra set of hands, just say the word.
-Bryan
P.S. I truly hope your father's health is improving.
05-06-2003, 03:52 PM
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That was a great story and a great effort. Sorry you didn't get it completed for the event, but not for lack of trying.
Hope you enjoy your car when you get all the issues resolved. I have very limited mechanical ability so it's fun to read about projects like this. And I add good wishes for your father's recovery.
Hope you enjoy your car when you get all the issues resolved. I have very limited mechanical ability so it's fun to read about projects like this. And I add good wishes for your father's recovery.
05-06-2003, 06:27 PM
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I'm proud to be a client of these guys,(EuroWerks). They pretty much have a blank check when it comes to my car. I trust them & they have never let me down. You all should be so lucky.
Prayers for your Dad Keith...
Prayers for your Dad Keith...
05-06-2003, 06:45 PM
#15
Drifting
Thread Starter
OK, update!
We sorta got the shifting issue resolved (well enough to run the car, anyway) and I called Per @ Grassroots (he's the guy doing the test-driving), and he said to come on out. Apparently they got to a late start due to a bad wreck on I85.
When I arrived (driving triple digits in the rain) I had a little trouble getting past the security gate. Past that, I pulled up as Per was making a run in the next-to-last car. I told him I was there and ready to unload the car, he said to hang on a minute, ran the last car, pulled in, and called the event due to rain (it was beginning to sprinkle). About 20 min. later, it was raining heavily. I got a free magazine and a couple of handshakes, and was thanked for my effort. Then I was back on the rod, headed home.
Oh well, I needed the mileage to break in the rings, anyway.
Would've been nice to snap a shot of the car, and mention my effort to get to the test, or something similar, IMO.
Thanks for all the supportive posts! I'll let my Dad know that you all wish him well. There's something to be said for community!
We sorta got the shifting issue resolved (well enough to run the car, anyway) and I called Per @ Grassroots (he's the guy doing the test-driving), and he said to come on out. Apparently they got to a late start due to a bad wreck on I85.
When I arrived (driving triple digits in the rain) I had a little trouble getting past the security gate. Past that, I pulled up as Per was making a run in the next-to-last car. I told him I was there and ready to unload the car, he said to hang on a minute, ran the last car, pulled in, and called the event due to rain (it was beginning to sprinkle). About 20 min. later, it was raining heavily. I got a free magazine and a couple of handshakes, and was thanked for my effort. Then I was back on the rod, headed home.
Oh well, I needed the mileage to break in the rings, anyway.
Would've been nice to snap a shot of the car, and mention my effort to get to the test, or something similar, IMO.
Thanks for all the supportive posts! I'll let my Dad know that you all wish him well. There's something to be said for community!