Friday, December 24, 2010

Out with the old

Closing down to the end of the year here, so it's time for a progress update.

New rollers and belts added. Balance belt and Timing belt adjusted and set up.


Wiring harness and vacuum lines in progress.


Can't completely finish up the motor yet as I plan to use various bits from the 2.5 currently in the car. Like the 1 year old clutch, fuel rail, headers, reference sensors and the like. They were on the original 2.7 motor and got moved to the 2.5 as they are new or relatively new.

So here's the motor as it stands. The next phase is pulling the 2.5 out of the race car.


The last motor I pulled came out of the top. That was the 89 with auto tranny with the scored block walls. That went reasonably well, so I thought I'd try coming out the top this time.

The advantage of coming out the top means I don't have to do a bunch of work dropping the cross frame, disconnecting the shocks and brake calipers. Off with the hood and start disconnecting everything.


And through the magic of internet time, the end result.



Well that was not so much fun. I can tell you that the new motor is going in from the bottom this time.

The next few days I'll move parts from the 2.5 to the new motor and prepare it for installation. But for now, it's time for ibuprofen and beer. Happy holidays!

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Build Progress

Time for another update.

A fair amount of progress has been done in the last couple of weeks even though I've been taking it slowly. Let's review.

Here's a look at the Lindsey Racing oil pan modification. The hinged door prevents the oil from sloshing all to one side of the pan during hard cornering, leaving the oil pickup tube uncovered and sucking air. This, the cross drilling of the crankshaft and 3 sacrificed squirrels in the back yard are to guard against the dreaded 944 #2 spun bearing issue. When that happens, a frequent outcome is a connecting rod and piston thru the block if you don't catch it in time. My last big boom was something completely different, but you do what you can.





Now the bottom end of the engine is done, so add the oil pan and seal it up.





Oil cooler and engine mounts now attached.





Head with the priceless 2.7 valves now securely bolted down. The bolting sequence is kind of unique. Instead of bolting to a specified torque value, you use degrees. The bolting sequence is in 3 steps. All steps are done using a specific pattern. The first step is a light torque to settle everything. Wait 15 minutes, then turn the nut 60 degrees. Wait another 15 minutes and then again turn each nut 60 degrees. Sounds weird but that's what the factory manual calls for.





Bolted various bits to the front of motor. Attached the balance shaft pulleys, making sure they were aligned correctly using the obscure Porsche marks as they need to be 180 degrees out of phase with each other when running. Added the spring tensioner device which will be used to tension the timing belt later. The main crank pulley was added. The bit of red tape is to remind me I need to torque the bolt to 150 ft/lbs later. With it on the engine stand there's nothing to stop it from spinning when I start to tighten it down. I'll get to it later.





Later came today. I had to use my engine hoist and pull the motor off the stand so I could add the rear main seal and attach the flywheel. The spot of yellow paint allows me to see the timing mark through a little inspection hole when the motor is all buttoned back up in the car.



Once that was done, I hoisted it back into the air and back onto the engine stand. With the flywheel attached I could use my little homemade tool and lock the motor and keep it from spinning. I made short work of torquing down the crank bolt and that red tape is now gone.

But just because I threw that red tape into the trash doesn't mean we are done with the color red. Meet Ms. Camtower, all prettied up in her holiday fashion.



Getting close to the end of the mechanical work now. It's starting to look like a real motor now.

Friday, December 3, 2010

2.7 Build starts

Well the motor in the car I bought thru ebay turned out to be toast, head warped, cylinders scored, etc. But at least there were a good full set of the unobtainium 2.7 valves, so I got most of my money's worth out of it. A fellow racer, Big Joe (aka Chef Joe of 944 Cup) sold me a good block. I had already taken the various bits from multiple dead engines to my machine shop guy, so he could pick out the best of the lot, plus do some other tasks. A call to the shop revealed that, of course, they weren't done yet.

I've learned that machine shops, like mechanics, need to be lied to when they ask the question "When do you want/need it?" If it's anything other than 2 or 3 days, all they hear is "Sometime in the future". So if you say, my first race is on X, they hear "Oh, I can start working on it on 2 weeks before X". It's not really their fault, they can't help it. So just lie. Need it for Road Atlanta in April, tell them "my first race is Sebring in February". Chances are you'll get it done in March. Everybody happy. But I digress.

The machine shop hears "by Thursday" and by Friday, I have my bits back and it's time to start.

First order of business is to clean up the block and paint it. My pal Joel gives me grief about it, says it retains heat, but I believe the benefits outweigh any downside. The only time my car came close to overheating in the last 5 years is when I had to bypass the external oil cooler and race in the high 90s temperature. A clean engine not only looks good, but makes it easy to spot minor leaks and other issues before they become major. Plus I like the juxtaposition of the flat black stealth car and having a nicely detailed motor hidden inside.


I bought some engine paint from Eastwood and got to work. This is a race motor not a concours queen so I applied it with a foam brush. It makes the block, smooth and clean and much nicer looking than that mottled, oxided aluminum.





Cross-drilled crank and crank girdle attached. Oil pickup has the Lindsey Racing adapter welded to it.




Pistons going in ...




Upper Balance shaft mounted using the high dollar Locktite orange goop. All new bearings of course.





Oil pump and new water pump




Lower balance shaft, and power steering mount attached. If you look real close you'll notice a helping of Hi-Temp permatex gasket sealer on the end seal. Porsche just put a rubber donut around the plug and after a few seasons, this shinks and you get a good leak from back there. This is a huge pain in the ass to fix in the car due to it's position. So a little dab right now will nip that right in the bud.



The Lower balance shaft covered was the first minor bump in the road. When I got the block it was missing the cover. These blocks are aluminum and cast as one piece. The covers to the balance shafts are then sawn off, so the covers are unique and matched to the block. When I went back to get the cover from Joe, he handed me a box of covers, and said try these, these are all I got from Steve. "Don't worry, just goop it up good". I've been down this road before so I was dubious. And I proved prescient.

I picked what I thought was the best and possible match for the missing cover. After torquing the approximately 135 bolts in the approved pattern for the 1st step, the balance shaft is binding. Not good.

Take it all apart and redo. Still binding, this isn't going to work. Pull it all apart and clean all the hi-dollar orange locktite I just wasted, plus the permatex sealer. I sort through my collection of balance shaft covers and try them until eventually I was able to find one that worked. It was a long process, but I trimphed in the end.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Goodbye 2010, Onward to 2011

I gave the 2.5 motor a final spin at the NASA NJMP Thunderbolt track on Halloween weekend. I just went for Saturday. The goal for the day was to just have some fun at the track. I was reasonably quick a couple weekends ago at the Delaware PCA DE but as we shall see, a DE is not a race. I headed to the track nice and early with the temps a frosty 38 degrees when I got there. My battery wasn't holding a charge so I had to jump start the racecar to get it out of the trailer, and for every session after that. We had about 5 or so who showed up in 944Cup, and a couple more in SuperCup so there was somebody to race with. Practice session I was surprisenly on top in class, probably because I had just been there. Qualifying I was 3rd I believe - I'm too lazy to look it up. By the afternoon, the temps were moderate and it was time to go racing. There was a split start with the slower cars like us, in the 2nd group. Got a good start, held my own for a bit. After a few laps the faster GTS cars from the first group started coming through the pack and lapping cars.

Here's where the weekend starting sucking for me. I didn't contest those cars, would give them the inside, wouldn't block them. But just because they were fast doesn't mean they were good drivers. Since my car was still way down on power, it dyno'd at a blistering 120 hp at the rear wheels before the event, and I was still running 2.7 sized weight - a 150 lb handicap, my only way to a good lap was making time thru the corners. If I lifted I was dead, there was no "go" when I pressed the go pedal. So anyhow, bombing down into turn 1 or 2, I'd courteously give the inside corner to the much faster cars. And courteously in return they should do the pass, tuck to the inside and let me be on my way. But lap after lap, they would dive in, not hold the line and drift out up against me pushing me wide, or making me lift to avoid hitting them. Dickheads!

After the 3rd time of being pushed off the track and onto the outside nasty rumble strips in turn 2, which really, really vibrate the car, my inside Wink mirror mount cracked and broke. And since I could not longer see shit it was time to call it a day. I came in, rolled into the trailer and turned off the motor. As I stepped out of the trailer, I noticed the track had gone full course yellow, with a pile up in turn 1. The pack circled the track for several laps and finished under yellow.

But I was happy, car in the trailer, no body work to do, got as much racing there was to get, it was a brilliant fall day, and I was home and munching on pizza and beer by 5pm. Time to build the 2.7L motor for 2011.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Nuts & Bolts

The racing season is drawing to a close here in the Northeast. This weekend will be the last 944 Cup race for the NE region over at NJMP. Since my car, dyno'd a couple of weeks with a blistering 120 hp at the wheel, did ok at the Delaware Porsche region DE - ie, actually posted some respectable times - I'm going to take the car out to race for one day. Win, lose or just mosey around the track, it should be a nice fall day at the track. Once back, the gutless 2.5 motor is coming out of the car and a 2.7L is going in. But first, I have to actually build the motor....

And as part of that process, I cranked up my new home plating kit. I plan to re-plate most of the hardware that come off the various broken 2.7 motors in the stockpile. Porsche engineers go their own way and specify exactly what bolt they need: "Ze bolt here should be 42 mm, not 40mm or 45 mm, but exactly 42mm and nothing else." So that 8x40 or 8x45 standard metric hardware bolt that costs 29 cents? No can use, you must use the special OEM bolt, available at your favorite Porsche parts store for $8.45. And you need how many? 20? Yikes!  So the plan to re-use the hardware, but tart it up a bit.

Here's part of my plating process, the main zinc plating bucket.


A two gallon bucket with a heater (approx 90 degrees), pump/agitator and that big flat sheet of metal is the zinc anode. Zinc atoms will migrate to my items suspended in the solution when I apply an electrical charge to the system.

More buckets galore: Water rinse, and a degreaser solution heated to 190 degrees.


The reason I'm doing this is to match the yellow cadmium finish you see on fancy bolts. Why bolts are coated with cadmium is because it is a soft metal and it's job is gracefully sacrifice itself and keep the underlying hardware from rusting. Well unfortunately the cadmium is quite hazardous (carcinogenic) and not really something to play around with. It's something only professional plating shops should be messing around with. In fact if you clean your bolts (doesn't everybody?) with a wire wheel, you should be wearing a respirator while doing so. But don't dispare folks, Caswell has this cool kit.It will plate the hardware with a nice zinc finish and then I can apply a yellow zinc dichromate finish which matches the cadmium finish and it can be done safely in the garage. So lets get to work.

Test Subject 1: a pile of rusted, tarnished, corroded bolts and nuts from an oil pump on the 944 engine block




First step is off to the wire wheel - or blast cabinet if you got one, I don't.


They cleaned up nice. Now if you were refinishing nice visible pieces, you probably want to bead blast them, followed by a touch up with the wire wheel. Like most jobs, the better the starting point, the better the end result. But in this case, this is for a race motor, and it's only nuts and bolts, so we're good here.

Now we need to wire them up so we can juice them. I'm using brass wire here.


The parts get suspended in the plating bucket from copper pipe, aka the cathode, that is connected to the negative side of the power supply.




Here's the power source, a constant voltage, constant current lab power supply. For these nuts and bolts we only need about 1.5-2 Volts at about 1/2 amp.  The power supply is turned on and the parts are in the solution for about 20-30 minutes. The zinc atoms from the positive anode plate migrate through the solution to the negative charged bolts and stick.

Here's the power supply, bought off Ebay.



After 30 mins being plated, here's the result. Everything coated in zinc. If I wanted bright shiny zinc, I could have added a brightener to my plating solution, but we have another step.



A quick water rinse, and then a 30 second dip in my yellow chromate solution - the only really toxic part of this process, gloves, shields and respirator for this step - and the final result.


Not bad for the first time. I'm sure I can get them shinier with more practice. Only 3 hours for 6 bolts, 4 nuts and 6 washers. I think I can improve on that time in the future... Motor Bling, here we come!

Friday, September 17, 2010

944 Cup Nationals - some pics

Just got my CD of pics from the Nationals. Here's some that I like. (I'm in the pink car if you couldn't guess).










Wednesday, September 15, 2010

944 Cup Nationals - continued

The cute stewardess handed me a drink as I thundered along at 50,000 feet in the Alpine Motorsports private jet. "We should be landing at Danville in a couple hours. Do you want your usual sushi lunch?" As I stretched and started to drift off to sleep in the comfortable leather seats I thought I could really get used to this. As I sleep, the flight started to get a bit bumpy, with several sharp jolts.

"Hey Wake Up!" Bam! Wha? What? "Aren't you leaving for VIR?" asked my wife as she leaned over me in the driveway. "I thought you wanted to get there early for registration. Isn't it a 6+ hour drive?" So maybe Arrive & Drive racing came in several flavors, and I can only afford vanilla. But even so, for the first time in about 10 years I was heading to the track without my giant safety blanket, my trailer. Tools, spare parts, even A/C, all abandoned as I hustled down I-95.

I make good time and am at the track, through registration and wandering the paddock by 4 pm. No big pink trailer. Well, it's nothing that I can control, so I grab myself a beer and start visiting.


Spoiled Boys Racing - The Crowell Brothers


Mid Atlantic racer Glen Evans

Early next morning, the pink trailer is waiting in the paddock and starts disgorging it's cargo of racecars.



 
#356 - My race car for the weekend

 First up is the driver's meeting. The SCCA Pro Racing representative welcomes us to the event and goes over some of the weekend's rules. Next is chief 944 honcho Dave Derecola (DD).



After the meeting was the first practice session. This was to be my first time in the rental pink car. We got the seat, belts and mirrors adjusted. A quick lesson on the controls and I headed out onto the track. The session was basically a throw-away. The car was a handful to drive with the rear stepping out under braking and impossible to trail brake. I had no confidence at all in the car. After debrief with Nick, we concluded the used tires on the car were dead and we would put on fresh Hoosiers for the next session. The front shocks were firmed up to put some more weight on the rear to help with the stability.

Bill Repass - Mid Atlantic racer

Second session saw the car totally transformed, it became predictable and I settled down and started to relearn the track. I don't know about you, but as I get older, it's getting harder to just jump in a car and go fast. I need to sneak up on it. I wasn't a threat for the title but I was improving. After the session, it was time for drinking beer and some dinner from our 944 Racing Chef Joe


The Real Racing Chef - Joe Boschulte's #08




Joe's Tools of the Trade

Tomorrow morning started off with our Qualifying session. I continued to improve, knocking a few more seconds off my time and ended up mid-pack. The last Saturday session was the Qualifying race. This would set the grid for the Championship race on Sunday. I started ok, gained a bunch of spots on the start, then slowly over the 45 min race lost those spots . I wasn't as aggressive with somebody else's car as I would have been with mine. I was self insured so any dings/bang/booms were at my cost. Discretion is the better part of a lower MasterCard bill.

My "teammates", sharing the other 2 pink cars were Karl Troy, a 944 SuperCup champion from South Carolina, and Nick Esayian, a pro driver on the Realtime Acura World Challenge team. Karl is a very fast driver and once the car was setup for him, quickly left me in the dust by a couple of seconds. Nick on the other hand, was handicapped by jumping from his front wheel drive Acura with sequential shifter into a (new to him) rear-wheel drive Porsche 944 with a manual H pattern. For a couple of sessions, we ran nose to tail, swapping leads with equal times. However by the Qualifying Race, Nick started to figure out the car and started going fast. I guess that's why he's a Pro driver and I write code.


Nick Esayian being interviewed on TV in front of the Pink Porsches

Nick was very friendly and personable and I enjoyed meeting him. The two Nicks (Esayian and Riefer) were interviewed by SpeedTv announcer Greg Creamer about the Pink Porsches. Another interviewee was our own DD about the 944Cup series, it's history and future. Coming to a TV screen near you!

Dave Derecola - have we created a media monster?


Sunday was for all the marbles. One session, the Championship race. Instead of our usual rolling starts, we were doing it World Challenge/Formula One style: a standing start and when the red lights go out, off we go. All very exciting but in actuality, a bit confusing. We were supposed to go onto the main straight into our assigned grid spots. Hang out for about 5 minutes and then do a sighting lap of the track and then back to our spots and wait for the red lights. However all of a sudden the red lights come on. Wait a minute, we haven't done our outlap! Everybody's tires are stone cold at 9:30 in the morning with paddock gravel bits still on them. Oh shit, the lights go out. Along with everybody else, it's time to go!


Sunday's race was more of the same. Gained some spots, lost some spots, ended up about where I started. Had some good battles. It was all good. Car made it back to the paddock with no damage to it or my MasterCard.

Battling with Canadian Rod Herrera

Canadian Chris Green took the win and Championship trophy. That's the 3rd year in a row the Canadians have taken the Cup. Must be something about those donuts, eh?

 It was nice being a pretend pro driver, having wet towels and bottles of chilled water handed to me before getting out of the car, not working on the car, having lunch prepared, etc. All I had to do was just drive. Nick and his family were great, the cars were well prepared. If you are in the south east, you can't go wrong with the Pink Porsches. Economically it makes sense if you don't already have the infrastructure to go racing. However, I already have the trailer, the tools, the lift, the F250, the spare parts cars and all the rest. So I climbed back into the Subie and pointed it north, back to where the stealth car awaited me on the lift. But it was a fun weekend.

2010 944 Cup Nationals

Time for a break. All summer long I've been working in the garage and not racing. Now's it's September and that means it's time for the 44Cup National Championships. Once again it's at the great track VIR just outside of Danville Virginia. This year, there's a change to the structure of the event. The weekend is a Pro Racing event, the SCCA Pro Racing World Challenge. If you watch any racing at all on the US telly, World Challenge - formally known as SpeedVision World Challenge - was one of the most exciting racing series around. It featured real production cars such as Porsche 911s, Corvettes, Vipers and the like in the GT class and Mazda, Acura and other small bore machines in the Touring Class. Cars that look and are pretty much close to what you can buy down at the car stores. The series, like most racing series over the last several years has lagged abit, but seem to be in the rise again with great car battles.



This year 944 Cup was invited to be part of the weekend to run as a support race. I was psyched to be part of the event. I always love to go to Nationals - I've done badly and also done very well - but it's great to be with all the top 944 drivers battling it out on the track. I've been preparing since spring, I got my car inspected and got a SCCA log book at the Glen event. I joined SCCA and applied for my Pro license. I was ready, all except for one minor detail:

You can't go racing if you don't have a race car that works.

Now my car works, but as we saw at the Glen, not really. The dyno told the tale after the Glen, a blistering 126 hp at the rear wheels. Bringing the Stealth machine to VIR was just taking a knife to a gun fight. Just wasn't going to do it. But a ray of (pink) sunshine is peaking over the horizon. Nick Reifer of N-Tech Racing was bringing his rental posse of pink 944's to Nationals.



A call to Nick revealed that 2 of the 3 cars were being held for some of the WC pros to race with us, but one was available. However, last years Nat's Champion Bill Comat had dibs on the ride. After some gentle baderging of Bill, he decided he needed to not divert his energies from supporting his son's bid for the Championship and passed. So after a signed contract and a few checks, I became an Arrive & Drive racer. Time to see how the other 10% live.

My (Premature) Obiturary

Lots of news organizations maintain pre-written obits so that when a celebrity passes, they open up the file and need to just update a few l...