zoomlog

Do you ever get so busy with everything that you don’t have time to do the things you think you want to do?

Me too.

So this blog thing I am writing, is so stinkin hit and miss that it is almost non-existant.

I have so much that I want to write about, and yet, nothing gets written. wouldn’t it be nice if we had our own personal “ghost writer” that could just read our thoughts and put it in writing? With proper spelling and punctuation, of course.

I have let this go unattended for so long that I don’t think I am even going to try to get you up to date.
Lets just suffice it to say that I have been busy making a living, working on race cars, racing race cars, forging metal and playing on the metal lathe, and doing some home improvement work. Really a bunch of stuff that is time eaters. During that time I had arthriscopic knee surgery, went to a high school reunion, helped my son and his friends build their first race car (they did good last season) and spent as much time as I could with my granddaughter.

I of course am working on other plans for other projects that will be HUGE time consumers, not to mention money consumers.

Some of the other things I have been up to -

designing/prototyping an antitheft trailer locking device.
Moved the race shop
constructing a sand muller
shopping for land

Oh, and I am now going to “crew chief” a friend of mines super stock car for him. that means I get to build motors, fix damage, etc.

Not to make excuses, but I am a tad busy, I try to stay that way because at the end of my life I want to be able to look back and be satisfied that I did as much with my time as I could and didn’t waste that precious God given resource on foolishnes like watching the damn TV.

c’ya

What??  An update?   Is it snowing?

Yessir, it has been awhile.  I have no excuse.  Just pure busy.  We have done a lot of work on the cars over the winter.  Spent way too much money, and had a whale of a good time doing it.

Let me bring you up to speed.  This may be long, which if I would ever get it through my thick head and keep this up to date, it would be short.  ANYWAY, here goes.

On the El Camino, we had to get the frame straightened AGAIN.  Terry Tschoerner of Terry’s body shop in Taylor Texas did his usual masterful job of pulling it out and putting it where we needed it.  Man I sure appreciate his skill.  Once we got that back to the shop, we pulled the engine and transmission.  I tore the engine down and took pieces to the machine shop.  Crank – good.  Block – good.  Heads – cracked, both of them.

I ordered the parts needed, ordered some heads, ordered the machine work needed done.  Meanwhile we re-seal the transmission and service it.  We decide to see how long this piece will last.  We check the rear end, axles, gears, suspension etc.  We disassemble the whole front end and inspect all the pieces.  We lift the body off the frame and remove all the rubber body mounts, drop the body down, and move the body as far back and to the left as we can, then bolted that bad boy down.  Next we got new fenders, they are nice and pretty and the rest of the body is wrinkled.  Oh well.  I also worked on the steering shaft, welded on a quick release hub, so now  we can get in and out of the car easier.

On the cobalt, I fabricated a header, so now I am rid of the stock cast iron exhaust manifold.  That was a lot of hours there.  I fabbed in a new ignition system using a distributor and an msd module.  Now we can actually adjust the timing.  Then for my next trick, I totally reworked and rerouted the steering shaft.  New u-joints in the shaft, new shaft, new hanger.  Much better than before.  The driver is now more comfortable, thank you.  Also did some super secret stuff (small stuff) that should help the car get around the track better.  We sanded and primered the car.  New lexan front and rear.

So all this work and where does that leave us?  Well the cobalt is breathing better and now has a carburetor problem. I have vacuum pullover where it is sucking the fuel right out the nozzles of the accelerator pump circuit.  So when I pick up the throttle coming out of the turns, it is super rich and stumbles pretty bad until it clears up.  We have 2 races on it so far this year already and I can sure see room for improvement in the performance dept.  In the handling dept, the car goes through the corners real well.  I can drive it in real deep and it sticks, so I just need to go faster to see how good it does handle.

We took the el camino out for the first race of the season this last Saturday.  The motor sounded good, car felt good, took it out for practice and the driver was having so much fun he didn’t want to come off the track when he saw that the temp was at 240 degrees.  So when he did finally come off the track, the temp guage was buried somewhere above 280 degrees.  Water and steam was blowin. 

So about 15 minutes later we get it cooled down, add more water, and when I crank it up, - - well, it wasn’t nice.  It sounded like a diesel engine sitting there idling.  So no racing today.  We are now going to the back up motor which is old, slow, and tired.  But that’s the way it goes.  I guess we will have to build a new motor now.

Till next time.

The hardest thing to write about is stuff that I think will bore the socks off you. But I guess that I will give it a try here. We are making our winter changes/repairs and upgrades to the fleet (2 cars) that we will be racing this coming season. Here is the plan. Steve and Jerry will switch off on the racing the el camino and I will chase points in the Texas Pro Sedan Cobalt. In order to accomplish all of this we have to do some things to the cars. I will start with the shop. We moved the cars and most equipment to the new race shop. We now have room to actually work on the cars and not bump into each other. It was very difficult last year to work on 2 cars in a double car garage. Not to mention all the time consuming actions like putting things away to get something else out because you need more room. So now we have basically a large 3 car work area plus some limited storage. Really really nice. Thanks Jerry. The el camino is actually the car in the worst shape. All 3 of us raced it last year and it suffered more than its fair share of bumps, scrapes and all out crashes. It was actually doing good until a car spun in front of Steve and we center punched him. Man, that was a hit. We caved the side of his car in, ours received a lot of damage and a bent frame but didn’t bust the radiator so steve finished the race. That even bent the solid motor mounts when the engine shifted forward. Hell of a hit. Plus the engine started to run pretty hot in the races so I figured the head(s) were cracked. And the report from the machine shop the other day confirms that suspision. So we pulled the motor and I tore it down, we are going to rebuild it and get another set of heads on it. The engine has 20 over cast pistons in it now. A couple of them look like they started galling up a bit, so we are going to replace them. We are debating on how much money we are going to spend on it. I would like to bore it to 30 over, balance it and change the cam. Of course the cam profile is a whole nother bag of worms. We are supposed to run stock but listening to some of the cars we ran against last year, maybe we can get away with a little more. We have to replace the transmission, it slips a bunch and has been raced for 2 years now. It is surprising to me how much money people want for an old used TH350 transmission. Some of these people act like they want to be debt free off of what we would pay for it. We took the car to Terry Tschoerner at Terry’s body shop in Taylor Texas. (Go there for body and frame work, the man can work miracles) and he straightened the pretzel we called a frame out and it is now straighter than when it came from the factory. That part is done, although I am going to plate the tops of the frame horns with some ¼ inch plate to help beef it up a bit. It is a little weak up there. No other major changes to the el camino. Since the el camino races in the lowest division at our home track, they have really limited you on what you can do to the suspension. I have a couple of different ideas that I want to try to help the car turn through the corners better. Mainly to get some of the push out of it. So I have to do that as well. For the cobalt there really isn’t much we need to do. There are some tasks that I will be doing to improve the car. The first is to finish fabricating a header. This engine didn’t come in a rear wheel drive configuration so there is not a header offered in the market. I could get one made for about 350 dollars but I am way too cheap for that so I got a header off a front wheel drive cavalier since this engine is the 2.2 liter cavalier motor. Then I cut the pipes about 4 inches up from the collector, then cut 4 inches out of the tubes, then weld it all back together with the collector facing back for a rear wheel drive configuration. Sounds simple but it is a lot of work and figuring and measuring to make sure you miss the starter and steering shaft and other things. I have a couple of hours left to finish this up but it will make a huge difference over the stock manifold we were running. On a 4 cylinder, every ½ horsepower you can gain is huge. I am also collecting parts to change over the ignition. It is currently crank triggered coil pack. Very bad for our racing application. There is no facility on it to advance the timing as the engine RPM gets higher so we were giving away horsepower there also since the timing was too retarded for the high rpm that we ran at. I have a distributor from an older 2.0 liter engine that has been cut down to clear the intake. We have an MSD fixed curve timing computer and are getting the MSD 6AL module to go with it. With these things we will be able to dial in our timing so much better. Should pick up some significant horsepower there. The last thing to change has to do with driver comfort. Everyone knows if the driver is comfortable he can drive better. Well, I aint comfortable the way the car is now. The gas pedal is way too close so that my leg cramps by the end of a 30 lap race and the accelerator control just isn’t there and the steering wheel is at an angle. Whoever built the steering shaft put it at an angle for some unknown reason. So I am rebuilding the steering shaft from scratch so that the shaft will be straight thereby making the steering wheel straight. Should make a big difference in car control. So there you have it, for the cobalt. Except for the fact that I want to spend about 2 weeks with it on the scales playing with setup, air pressure, suspension changes, lead location changes all to make notes so I can have a much better idea at the track what is happening to the weight when I make a change on the car. I will let you know the progress as it goes. Since it is the end of Novermber, I gotta get busy

The car sustained damage in the last outing.  It wasn’t too bad, although, it sure felt like it.  We had to replace the rack and pinion steering, the tie rod end, The upper and lower control arm on the left front, the left rear swing arm. 3 wheels were bent.  Had to straighten the front and rear frame ends.  Broke some welds around some of the cage tubing.  Had to repair the broken fiberglass on the left rear quarter and left front fender.  The front nose is tore up a bit and the tail cover is caved in.  Those will need replacing later.  Also, our battery got caved in a bit.  Still have to check the rear axle, to see if it is bent.

A whole lot of work, but we should be out this weekend.  If it will stop raining.  If not, we will have a weekend off.  It is the end of July and I am beginning to look forward to the off season.  I have a ton of stuff to do around the house.  A bunch of projects that I am anxious to get started on, and I want to regroup the racing and get things more organized.

So, that pretty much brings everything up to date.  I know I skipped a load of stuff and many details, but I can fill in the blanks later.

Till then, later

To update on all that has been going on with our stock car racing.  Oh man, where do I begin?  At the beginning of our season, my buddies and I purchased a new (to us) race car.  Now this car is in a different series and it is a 4 cylinder series as well.  I am used to the big ole V8 American iron, so this is definitely something new for me.  Here is a quick rundown on the car.  The front “clip” or frame section is from an old Chevy chevette.  So is the basic front suspension.  The rest of the car is fabricated.  The body is a fiberglass late model Monte Carlo body.  The engine is a 2.2 liter 4 cylinder pushrod motor out of a 92 cavalier.  Lots of “hand made” parts on this car.  The transmission (we have 2) is a Saginaw 3 speed and a Muncie 4 speed.  We have some of the usual spare parts.  But we got it for a good price.

We had to make some changes, basically because we are much larger people than the fellow that drove it previously.  We had to put a bigger seat, move it back and lower.  Shorten the steering shaft, reposition the gas pedal, move weight around.  And of course, the all important – repaint the car.

Now we were ready to go racing.  So we did.  No idea how the car would do, what it drove like, how it handled, etc.  I was pegged to drive it first.  I think Steve and Jerry wanted me to be the one to blame when things went wrong.

We go out, run the car in practice a few times, I like it.  Car feels good, handles good, nice and stable.  I wanted more speed, but when doesn’t a racer want more speed?

Since we have no points, we have to start scratch in the 8 lap heat (qualifier) race.  So I started 8^th.  I passed 2 cars in the first lap.  I was going into turn 4 on the second lap when the motor stumbled real badly.  On turn 3-4 on the next lap the darn motor drops a cylinder.  Since I only had 4 to begin with, this drops me to 3 which is a 25% reduction in power.  I watch the oil pressure and water temp but don’t see anything unusual.  So I am thinking I burnt a plug wire or one came off.  So I finish the race.  I finally make it up to 3^rd with about 2 laps to go and by that time the two cars ahead of me are too far and I don’t have time to catch up.  So I finish in 3^rd.  We come off the track and weigh.  I take it to the pits and tell the guys it’s sick.

I start it up to idle to investigate and I hear a knock. NOT GOOD!   So I quickly shut down.  We talk and cuss and discuss the situation.  I go to start it again; it turns over about 2 times and locks up.  DADGUMM.

We pull the valve cover, no springs have dropped down.  Nothing we can readily see.  So we withdraw from the feature.  Load up, watch the other races.  Feeling really bad.  Go home.  Isn’t racing exciting?

At home, we pull the engine, pull it apart.   Broken Valve.  Ate up the head a bit, and beat the heck out of the piston.  I decide I will build the motor this time so I know what is in it.

So, another head, machine work, new parts, gaskets, bunch of work and the miracle of throwing money at a race car, we have a running car again!

So we go out for our next race.  The guys tell me it is still my turn to drive since I didn’t drive the feature.  I argue, but I loose and so I will race it.  We go out to the track.  I practice once.  I like it, motor felt good.  Some small air pressure adjustments, a spring adjustment, we are ready for the qualifying heat.  I have to start 7^th. 

The race starts.  Somehow, by the second lap, I am leading.  I win the heat.  The guys are super excited.  So am I!  This is beginning to look very promising.  I get to start the feature on the pole.  Also, the motor sounds pretty good still.

So the feature starts and I have a real fast car outside of me and he pulls me down the back straight and takes the lead.  I am in second.  We have 20 laps so I settle in to start working on the leader.  Don’t recall what lap it happens on.  Coming out of 4 onto the front straight, a car behind and outside of me cuts a tire and gets out of shape.  He hits my right rear, spins me around.  Next thing I know, I am going backwards toward the wall.  YUP, you guessed it.  We met the wall.  I hit my head on something and was loopy for about a half hour.  (some say I still am and always have been) but the car has some pretty good structural damage.  Not to mention fiberglass damage.  We are done for the race.

Now we have to fix it.

I will detail that in the next post.

Keep the dirty side down.

I haven’t been writing much to the blog. The reason I guess is because no one is reading it. Or if they are, they aren’t telling me they are. I get an extraordinary amount of blog spam. So much so that I am seriously thinking of shutting down the blog. Let’s do the math. People I know are reading it (good) = 0 Blog spam that I am getting (bad) = 743 Ok, that looks like the bad outweighs the good. So – do I keep this thing up and write to it more often? I guess that is what I will try to do, for awhile anyway. Please let me know if you are actually reading this and if you want it shut down or what. Thanks

Last weekend, my two racin buddies and I traveled to a different track to race.  It was my turn to drive whooo hoooo.  We unloaded and one of our nemesis from San Antonio Speedway was there.  This is the guy that thinks you have to turn right before you turn left.  EVERYONE in stock car racing knows you only have to do 3 things.  They are:

1   Go Fast

2   Turn Left

3   Repeat step 1&2

Anyway.  I take the car on the track for practice.  Feels pretty good.  This is a track that is half the size of our old home track, so we definately did not have the correct gear in the rear end.  Oh well.  Run whatcha brung.  I run 2 practices and then Steve goes to get a practice in to see how the track feels.  Good experience for when he goes back and it’s his turn to drive. 

So in the drivers meeting we draw numbers for starting position for the heat race.  I am so lucky that I pick numero uno.  Yep, I start on the pole.  I have no idea if I am fixing to get run over or what.  Mr. Nemesis is starting on the outside pole, right next to me.  My plan is to beat him into the turn and make him fall in behind me or run the outside of the turn.  He has other plans.  We take the green and BEFORE the turn, Mr. turn right before turning left, TURNS LEFT AND RUNS INTO ME!  Well son of a gun.  so now I am in second place.  He pulls me by about 2 car lengths.down the straight.  I keep up after that.  Then I got someone behind me givin me the chrome horn.  So I gotta giddyup.  Almost halfway into the race now and going into turn 3, I catch Mr. Nemesis.  I give him the chrome horn.  As a matter of fact I gave the gift that keeps givin, cause I don’t let out of his back bumper.  He slams the brakes on.  My bumper goes under his bumper and lifts his rear wheels.  We are coming out of turn 4.  He is a little sideways and steers into it, slides off towards the wall, I cut underneath, kinda sideswipe him a bit and off I go.  Yaahoooo I am in the lead.  Then I have to fend off the other challengers.  But I do, and win the heat.  Mr. Nemesis comes in 3rd.  I am worried cause I just knew I blew the radiator after he slammed the brakes.  In fact, I can hear the fan hitting it.  so I cut  off the motor and coast into the track.  Mr. Nemesis goes by me wagging his finger at me.  He aint a happy camper.

While we are waiting for the feature race, we work on the car.  I didn’t trash the radiator ( I have no idea how I kept from it) but pretty much destroyed the fan shroud.  Then the promoter comes over.  He says the other driver says there was something going on in San Antonio and it was now in Corpus.  He wasn’t going to have none of it.  Well, I tell him that I have no idea what he is talking about.  This is the first time I have raced this car.  (not a lie, steve raced it all year last year)  But if he was worried, start me scratch.  He says no, just start like we are placed.  (I get to start the feature on the pole)  Jerry is getting pissed that Mr. Nemesis went crying to the track about my use of the chrome horn.  Mr promoter said that I was driving borderline.  They would be watching with the black flag in hand for the feature.  OK. 

So the feature is gridding up.  I call out to Mr. Nemesis and tell him I am going to drive him clean.  He says good.  I don’t think he believed me.  So we go out.  I set the pace for the green flag real slow.  Take the green, I got the lead.  I hold the lead.  I hold the lead for about 8 or 9 laps.  Then the guy in second gets into my back bumper real hard in turn 2 and has me halfway spun around coming out.  I am able to save it, but I am inside of him down the back straight.  There is a lapped car ahead, and I get picked with it.   Crap, now I am in second.  I am having a hard time catching the #82 car.  He got a good gear or motor.  About 4 laps later, I drive into turn 1 too hard, push up in 2 and the second place is lost.  I am now in 3rd.  I get up on the wheel, I got 2 cars to catch.  The #82 and the #25.  Have no idea where mr. nemesis is.  so we are coming around.  Get the white flag, I am trying hard to catch 2nd.  Nope.  aint going to happen.  Coming around to get the checkered and LOOK.  We almost lapped mr. nemesis.  Another lap in the race and we woulda.  So I get 3rd.  Car is in 1 piece (sorta) and we drive it on the trailer.  We took our grill with us. So we grilled dogs and burgers.  Man there is nothing better than a double meat, triple cheese burger and a night of racin’ with your friends.

Just a short note here.  I am inundated with comment spam from the blog.  I am getting about 60 to 90 a day.  Very tedious.  I guess that the porn addicted sex fiends out there feel that everyone wants their crap.  So, in order to keep this blog open so that you, a legitimate reader, can comment if you find something worthy.  Hopefully this won’t take too much away from the content.  Even though the content isn’t much.  I am afraid that I just can’t get organised enough to post more often.  I will try though.

During the off season, I was so burned out on the time spent working on race cars and other projects that weren’t mine, that I made the decision not to run the camaro in the sportsman division.  Basically the car has been sitting all winter with the same wreck damage that it had sustained during the Octoberfast race.  The only thing I did was pull the engine, transmission, belts, seat , radiator and other safety gear and store them.  I have the 1978 donor camaro with near perfect skin that I need to put on it.  But that is a job and a half to reskin the car.  So, there she sits.  Lonely and dejected.  Sorry dimples, what can I say?

We had our first race of the season on March 24^th.  Steve drove the first race.  Car handled like a dream.  Steve said it really likes the turns now.  So we go out in the heat.  Not to bad results, got a third place finish.  But we gave up about 3 to 4 car lengths on the start.  We didn’t do anything between races except check things out and grill some burgers in our pits.  Had a great time.  In the feature race we were running 4^th  when the battle for 1^st heated up and the leaders got together going into turn 1.  One guy ends up in the wall and is coming down track.  Steve didn’t have anywhere to go so, you guessed it.

CRASH.  He comes limping back to the pits.  I have to bend one fender up out of the way.  Oh, and I also had to run to the back and close the tailgate.  I send him on his way.  He is trying to catch back up to the pack during yellow, comes out of turn 4 and darned if his hood doesn’t fly off and go up about 35 feet in the air.  Mr. hood isn’t very straight anymore.  Well let me tell you.  Steve is up on the wheel and has to start in the back.  By the next lap he is in 3^rd place.  The trouble is he has about a straightaway to catch back up and about.5 laps to get there.  He does an outstanding job.  The lead changes and steve is realing them in.  When the checkers fell, steve was ½ a car back from catching second place.  A very nice race, even if we did have new crash damage.  Also we figure we have a pretty good car to run with.

All in all a great night at the races

have been negligent of posting lately. Sorry yall, but time just seems to slip away. Even though you are out there stroking away at stuff, you never seem to get all you want accomplished that you want to.

OK, so here is the lowdown.

After the Octoberfast race, I took the camaro to David’s shop. I stripped the engine and trans out and put them away for the winter. I also stripped out the seat and belts, etc to prepare the car for storage. I decided that unless I find a sponsor and really have the bug bad, I am not racing the camaro in 07. So that is done,

Steve and I also loaded up the el camino and hauled it up to taylor texas. We took it up there to Terry’s body shop, 1508 W. 2nd st. Taylor Texas. (512) 365-3614

We talked with Terry Tschoerner, who is a racer himself, about what we need to do. So we left that there the week before Thanksgiving. We picked it back up 2 weeks later. Can’t tell you what all was done to it because I am sure some of our competition reads this as well. Sorry.

So now we have the el camino back home and we are ready to begin the process of getting it all back into racing shape. Here is some of what we need to do.

Replace fuel cell (rules allowed use of a boat tank, we want something safer)

Pull engine and transmission to replace seals and fix leaks

Re-wire the electrical system

Replace shocks

Replace front springs

Replace motor mounts with solid mounts

Beef up rear frame to body mounting

Straighten the radiator saddle

Reinforce front bumper

Trim front and rear bumpers

Install new fenders

Sand and Paint car

Sticker and number the car

Not really too bad, some of it is time consuming. I don’t expect it to cost a bunch of money either. We are probably going to get a better quality of paint this year.

Looks like the tracks first race is March 3rd or right around there. The schedule looks like about 2 races a month. I think this will be good because it gets real draining on both energy and enthusiasm as well as the pocket book when you race every week. Plus this will open up the opportunity to go run another track on an off week if we want. We are hoping that someone worth their salt will purchase the local dirt track and actually promote it. We wouldn’t be opposed to going down there to run dirt on Friday night every once in a while. Heck, I am hoping that we can go run Corpus Christi a time or two. That is a kick butt track to race at, not to mention the history of the place.

So that is where we are at this point. Nothing real exciting or earth shattering. Much of it is stuff that has to be done but isn’t very interesting.

I want to note here that I don’t like winter. I really don’t appreciate the fact that the sun sets by 5:30 PM. Which is the time I get out of work. Really makes you think it is too late to do anything by the time supper is done, so a lot of the times, I don’t. Not a good thing.

C’ya