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My race season finished up in October, so I made my list and made a target date of "The weekend" of Thanksgiving to have this car started and the fresh new motor "run in". What that meant was a lot of time in the shop with a long list (literally printed out and checked as time permitted) to meet the schedule. When I bought this car, it was a "roller". The motor and transmission were gone but everything else remained. So I sourced a chevy motor, a 4 speed transmission and opted for a Holley Sniper EFI system (sold to me cheap by a fellow racer). I'm "all in" at $12K and I have a source for inexpensive race tires new at $158 each, mounted, or "free" take-offs. Because I'm wired the way I am, and likely some of you can relate. I have to have self imposed deadlines and lists, and things in their place to keep me on track. So yesterday, after some fiddling with firmware and software updates, I threw fire to this thing and it roared to life!
The goal now is to de-bug a handful of things and move it under its own power around my property. I have a 1/10th mile ring road that essentially circles the house, so I'll get to atleast test out the stopping/going/shifting, once the motor has been properly tuned and all sensors are happy. Then it's "off" to the guy who originally built it in Richmond Va for a "once over" to make sure I'm not missing anything or put something wrong. After that we'll dyno it and I'll prepare for a test day or two before the season opener with NASA MidAtlantic. I'll be entering this car in either SuperTouring 3 or Supertouring 2, based on what the scale and dyno numbers end up at.
ALSO, I'll be researching hearing aids, because I'm certain I'll be going deaf really soon. God this thing is LOUD under revving!
My race season finished up in October, so I made my list and made a target date of "The weekend" of Thanksgiving to have this car started and the fresh new motor "run in". What that meant was a lot of time in the shop with a long list (literally printed out and checked as time permitted) to meet the schedule. When I bought this car, it was a "roller". The motor and transmission were gone but everything else remained. So I sourced a chevy motor, a 4 speed transmission and opted for a Holley Sniper EFI system (sold to me cheap by a fellow racer). I'm "all in" at $12K and I have a source for inexpensive race tires new at $158 each, mounted, or "free" take-offs. Because I'm wired the way I am, and likely some of you can relate. I have to have self imposed deadlines and lists, and things in their place to keep me on track. So yesterday, after some fiddling with firmware and software updates, I threw fire to this thing and it roared to life!
The goal now is to de-bug a handful of things and move it under its own power around my property. I have a 1/10th mile ring road that essentially circles the house, so I'll get to atleast test out the stopping/going/shifting, once the motor has been properly tuned and all sensors are happy. Then it's "off" to the guy who originally built it in Richmond Va for a "once over" to make sure I'm not missing anything or put something wrong. After that we'll dyno it and I'll prepare for a test day or two before the season opener with NASA MidAtlantic. I'll be entering this car in either SuperTouring 3 or Supertouring 2, based on what the scale and dyno numbers end up at.
ALSO, I'll be researching hearing aids, because I'm certain I'll be going deaf really soon. God this thing is LOUD under revving!
Everything changes with the numbers, right? Well I finally sat down with the packet of information I got when I bought the $2000 truck motor from the machine shop. I knew it wasn't going to be a mega HP machine, but if Porsches have taught me nothing but this, It's not just about HP.
So the 350 Chevy V8 has a roller cam with relative low lift, and factory steel vortex heads. According to the comp-cams website this motor will make somewhere around 311 peak HP and 400#ft of torque. So at the wheels, I'm assuming a 15% drivetrain loss and that will put me somewhere around 265WHP. This sounded a little dismal to me until yesterday when I weighed the car, the ballast that was in the car, and me and the ballast in the car.
The car sans ballast is approximately 2590#. I say approximately because I don't have 6 point harnesses, the cool suit or 3 quarts of oil in the accusump yet. With the ballast the car came with, the car is 2700, so lets add another 10 to that for what's missing. With me and all safety gear (minus what I listed) she looks a lot like this:
Finally got all the wiring done, the catatyst mounted to the dash and wired in, then accusump electronic pressure switch mounted and wired in, and the airbox adjusted for the position of this motor in the chassis. The previous motor must have had fore-aft adjustable mounts, something I'll be investigating late on. Would be really nice to move that motor further back in the chassis. The list to get this car moving under its own power is growing so very short.
Fine-tune the shifter.
Sort out seat mounting.
Sort out harness mounting.
Sort out fire suppression system “stuff”.
Dial in the sensors and break in the motor.
Then... Dyno. Need to book some time on a dynojet.
Pics below with the air box mounted and the hood in place.
Getting closer! Had a dyno tuning session on Tuesday and managed to get the target HP and lots more torque than I'd have thought I could. More importantly, the car survived the session (4 hours) with no issues. She's going to fit in quite well with Super Touring 3 in NASA MA! Next up is corner balancing and then finishing off the graphics and compliance stuff. She'll be at the NASA March event at VIR!
11-29-2020, 07:43 AM
2021 Race Season - It's coming together
