In the Garage

Since this is nominally titled 'the alpine garage', let's visit some garage modifications recently done. The racecar went off to Bodymotion in NJ for a general looking over before the start of the season. It's back and in the trailer for now. I'm just waiting for my new belts and other safety gear to show up and I'll be ready.

I've started working on the parts car, pulling bits off for sale or storage. Until the season is underway I'm going to leave it mobile, that is, keep the motor in the car. Once I pull the lump I'm committed to pulling it apart and hauling it away. I'm keeping my options open for a bit.

But meanwhile, what happened here?

Looks like a disaster befell the parts car. Looking skyward we spy this.

 Yikes! A giant hole in the ceiling

And now it's gone (and nicely framed in too)

Time to gain some altitude to see what's going on.

Observation confirmed, it's definitely a hole. So that brings to mind the question, why did the Siberian Huskies dig a hole in my garage ceiling? It had to be the dogs, they specialize in creating holes of all sizes, shapes and depths.


Ah, it seems the Sibes have located the nearest Harbor Freight and bought themselves a toy.

I see their plan now. They are going to store their stash of bones, small logs, and de-stuffed toy animals in the attic above the garage. Right above my nose! They're sneaky, little furry bastards.

Right now they're out down at the bottom of the hill, busy disemboweling a deer, or the neighbor's poodle or something. So I'm going to turn the tables on them and store MY stuff up there.

Let's start with a 944 motor. I can use the floor space in the garage, since there will be another 2.7L motor joining it shortly.

Mission accomplished, one 2.5L motor tucked away. Close the hatch and they'll never know ...

Compare and Contrast

The racecar is just about ready for the season. Next up for it is a corner balance and alignment. I can do the corner balancing, but alignment of 944's is an art, aka pain in the ass. That's one of the few things I'm happy to farm out to somebody else. I'm going to take it up to Bodymotion in Northern New Jersey. Mike, the owner, is a racer for many years, and it's a great race shop. They did a great job in pulling my bent frame back into spec a couple of years ago. To take it to the shop, I need to load it into my trailer. One small detail though. Remember that parts car I bought earlier. Its sleeping in the trailer.

Not a pretty sight



As long as I revved the motor up to about 4500 rpm, I was able to get the automatic tranny engage, so I could drive it out of the trailer and into the garage, where it's days are numbered.



A pair of 89's





The title of this post is Compare and Contrast. Let's take a look under the hood of a stock, street driven 89 NA with about 120K on the clock.



Bone Stock 2.7L motor



Not too bad, hoses look fresh, most of the rubber looks good, recent distributor cap. Pretty filthy though. All the motor parts are all oxidized and corroded. But all in all, not that bad. I'm sure a bunch of those fittings, screws and nuts will be a pain to work on.

Now let's look under the hood of my racecar.

A little happier 2.7L motor

Ahhh, much nicer. I like the look of a clean motor installation. Its a nice contrast to the flat black exterior.

Bring on the Fat Boys

An hour or so of detective work led me to the cause of the dropped cylinder. One of the fuel injectors was bad. The interesting thing about this, the injector was one of the batch I had sent out to be refurbished and tested. It tested as good. Luckily I didn't let that influence my working of the problem or I'll still be in the garage. Lesson to learn here is trust your own judgement or as Ronald Reagan put it, "Trust but Verify".

So with the motor now running smoothly, its time to start getting ready for the upcoming racing season. I have a good sized punch list and need to start ticking things off.

Last year I planned on moving up on my rear tire sizes. I had sent out my phone dials and got them widened to 9 inches. The fast guys in Cup are running Hoosier 275/35/15's on 9 inch rims and I needed to do the same to keep up. Well the 2010 season didn't go as I planned so I never got the chance to try the wider wheels. It's time to rectify that.

With the wider tires and wheels, the first order of business was replacing the wheel studs with longer ones. On the fronts that was pretty easy. Detach the brake caliper, pull off the rotor, and bang on the studs with a 2 lb sledge. They are a press-fit on the hub and they pound right out. Insert the new ones, add an amount of giant washers and screw on an open ended lug nut. As it tightens, it will draw the lug nice and snug. Easy, peasy.

The rear ones were more of a challenge. Up front its just naked hub on display. In the rear, the trailing arm and parking brakes were in the way. Well, more like parking brake assembly - single - in the way. When I crashed at the Glen 2 years ago, I mangled the parking brake on the right rear. To get the car ready for the next race in an hour, I just pulled the whole assembly and threw it in the trash. Who needs a parking brake on a race car!

Rear corner tastefully modified by the guardrail. Car is lighter with no parking brake!

So on that side, I just treated it like the fronts: suspended the caliper with a bungie cord, pulled the rotor. And with no brake assembly in the way, had just enough room to pound out the studs. The other side added the additional step of removing the parking brake shoes and assembly and then repeat. Put everything back together again and we were styling.

new wheel studs, sponsored by Viagra

A look from the rear:

Here's the difference between the 245's I have been running and the 275's.

Can't wait to try these fat boys out!