Lamest Day coming up quick - who's still building? (Page 3 of 6)

I would think a CEL at Lemons would be a "bonus" in tech, not a method in which you might fail.

Am i wrong here?

CEL - would that be the little light on the dash that glowed for 24 hours in Toledo last year and still glows today?

I'm glad we aren't the only one! The fact that we will have a cage at all is a miracle of Biblical proportions.

just double up on head gaskets and give the head bolts a little extra love.  you'll be fine.  probably.

Magnum,

I can top that. Last year at Toledo, 90 minutes before the start of the race one of our drivers drilled a hole through the GAS TANK!!!

We still love him ,..... but we no longer let him near the car with power tools.

Spud

Good advice, David.  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Well lets see...

We just got the car back from the cage shop a few days ago, there's been zero work done on the theme, half our brakes haven't arrived yet and the other half haven't been bought, we only have two of our 4 wheels/tires ready to go, and none of us live within 5 hours of each other.

This next week is going to be mighty interesting...

Some teams get through a whole race on one set of tires- seen it happen plenty of times. That's not the way to bet, though.

So, have you ever had just a few days left before a race when you discover major damage to your engine?  So, with very few of those days available to work on it, you source a replacement engine?  Then, the junk yard dicks around and takes 24 of your productive hours to get the engine pulled and ready for you to pick up?  Then, you like spend an entire day swapping accessories, manual->auto mounts, hacks, wiring, connectors, hoses over, then spend hours lining the flywheel and torque converter up, then mount everything, then finally get it hooked up, then realize the engine is seized?  Realize that you wasted pretty much all the time you had left to get the car operational?

No?  Because yeah, that's what I just did!  Isn't that awesome?

A wise man might think, this is a junkyard engine, I should check it over before installing it.  A wise man might think, I should at least try to turn it over using the crank bolt before wasting a entire f'ing day swapping it into my car that I need to be ready, today.  A wise man would almost certainly not be running the 24 hours of Lemons.

Well, if I skip a funeral then I can try swapping our (mostly) good block back in and putting the (presumably) good head and cam towers on to that block.  If I don't, then I'm pretty well screwed.  I could just quit my job.  Who likes going to work anyway??

[crazy face] hee heeee!  hee heeeeee!  This is so much fun!

Oh, but one of our team members had a vintage 1989 set of KC High Lites to put in where the factory headlight wouldn't fit, and so if*it*ran, we have a full on rally pig front end with one sealed beam and one KC, it's beautiful.  We even have the smiley cover for it and another team mate's been working on the theme.

Is it too late to find a surplus Power Wheel and do a motor swap??

I have been busting my ass on this car for weeks, seeing as the other half of the team lives in North Carolina, the 12 hour span is a little much to do on a weekly basis.   As mentioned above - We had an incident the other night while wiring, we drilled into the brake booster. (duh!) It was dark and nobody was watching.
So we swapped the brake booster, and then we attempted to bleed the brakes, after swapping out a siezed caliper for a really well rusted spare.  The bleeders were all blocked up.  We then found the master to be bad, as only half of it was working, (only front brakes)   So after swapping that, we finally got the brake system bled.   

We still are waiting for our brake parts, but everything is in good shape to just throw some pads on and go.  Hopefully they are here monday, I am aiming to have the car on the trailer wednesday night if possible.

Still no tires, they are somewhere,

Thermostat housing is leaking, so far no luck fixing it.  Argh!  I then broke a bolt off in the housing, had to remove the rad again and all the shroud, what a pain in the butt.

We also just lost our tow vehicle.  It was up for leasetakeover and someone snagged it.  So scrambling around now we have a 3500 GMC extended van that we will be towing our double car trailer with, should be interesting hahah -if it tows it.

Still have wiring to do, kill switch install, sort out some more loose wiring. 
Alignment is out, something rubbing in front end..

Need to change fluids, oil,rear end,tranny.

Hoping the rear section of our cage passes tech.. had a small issue with it.  Emailed Nick, so we will find out.

I have not even began to think about sleeping arrangements, and or food or spare parts or even tools.  Got a generator, compressor, lights etc, cherry picker.

All and all its been a tough go getting things prepped and still spending time with my wife and our 3 young children, and not getting divorced.  My wife has been very understanding, and thank god! 

Anywho - cannot wait until the race, I am sure it will all pan out.  It looks like other are dealing with much more significant issues then what we have, I wish you all best of luck and hope to meet everyone at the races and share a beer after the checkered flag has flown.

Cheers,

Joe

Our car ran for the first time last night. Woohoo!!

Of course, there is a fuel line to be dealt with, and I have no idea where our other tyres are.