Results from Sunday!

Sunday's race went very well. I sucked as a driver, but the car performed perfectly.

Actual event results are over at KYR's website.

I didn't place very well, second from last in my class, but there's always an explanation. Mine is I couldn't drive yesterday. Every attempt to use the loud pedal resulted in large amounts of wheelspin and general uncontrollableness. I was also the only car in my class not on race rubber. I spun three times in my first run, and my best run didn't even crack the top 50% of raw times.

The next event is on the airfield at Fort Knox. I'll have the r-compounds on, and that place has a lot more grip. I should do better.

On the its-a-small-world-after-all front, I ran into the father of a very old, very good friend. Hadn't seen him or my friend since early 2000. Good to get connected again.

Anyway, I think this brings our detour into the land of Datsun to a close for a while. This weekend, I plan to replace the seats and carpet in the Grand Prix. Expect photos of really nasty things. There's a huge lump in the carpet under the passenger seat. That lump does not have a corresponding dent in the floorpan as seen from underneath the car. I have no earthly idea what could be in it. I will be wearing gloves and eye protection when I cut into it, though.

In other news, my Grand National was accepted into the Winged Warrior Challenge (Link), to be held May 12 at O'Reilly Raceway Park (formerly IRP). It's a combination Drag/AutoCross/Concourse event, with proceeds going to charity. Looking at last year's results and the cars in my class this year, I'll be firmly mid-pack on the quarter-mile, probably lower third in the Autocross. I'll just have to make sure the thing is very clean and make it all up during the concourse judging.

Here it is

Well, here it is. Dash back in the car, ready for tomorrow's Solo II event. The unsightly wiring you see hanging under the steering wheel is my fault. I cut two wires too short, and the bunch won't tuck up behind the dash. I'll have to lengthen those two wires later this week.

For the first time since I've owned the car, all of the heater controls work. I have a circuite left, which I'm going to use to put a radio back in the car.

I drove it to Lowe's and returned some stuff I hadn't used. I'd forgotten just how violently fast this car is. Driving the Grand Prix makes it even more apparent. Lights have also never been brighter on this car. I'm really, really happy right now.

Z's alive!

Got the dash back in tonight and started it.

All the lights work, the tach works, volt gauge works. Autometer lights work, but the speedometer's do not. Going to have to pull it back out and figure out what's up with the Speedometer lights, or maybe I just didn't ground the gauge housing well enough.

Anyway, it needs coolant, and I need to figure out how to get the water temp gauge sender installed. H&S actually has a good selection of metric pipe fittings, so hopefully I'll get lucky.

Fun times in Belmar

Big progress this week, I've completed all the wiring necessary to run the car. Here I have pictures of the back of the dash, the front of the dash with all the gauges (yes, I know the three little ones are crooked, I'll bend them straight once it's in). The last is the passenger floorpan near the MSD.

The only things left are:

1) Wire up the heater
2) Wire up the wipers
3) Hook up the heater core and refill the radiator
4) Put the dash in, and start the car.
5) Hammer

Complicated combination switches are teh debil

The car came apart way too easily. Saturday and Sunday were almost entirely taken by figuring out the five-thousand terminal, thirty position switch set that does the turn signals, brakes, and hazard flashers.

Finally finished those tonight. I also have the starter working and the fuel pump.

Left to do? The gauges, headlights, corner lamps, and the alternator.

Purty, purty

Lots done tonight before my 9:30pm soccer game. I managed to remove the heater box, pull the heater core, and flush it out. Lots of nasty rusty stuff inside. I flushed it until the water ran clean, so hopefully it'll be less crappy now.

This picture is the dash. I've removed all the stock gauges and the wiring, and so far have installed the new tach and the water temperature gauge. I'm making little mounting brackets from a piece of sheet steel left over from the ductwork on my furnace. The speedometer is still installed in this picture. I pulled it after I got home from my game, dismantled it, and cleaned it. It looks much better now.

A sideshow of sorts...

My 1970 Datsun 240Z is a classic. My example carries VIN HLS30-00303, the 303rd chassis built, finished sometime in November of 1969. It was among the very first two or three shipments of the now-famous Z car to the United States.
My example was uncovered by my good friend, Emohn, several years ago. We went in on the car together with bright hopes of turning it into a GRM $2003 challenge car. As we learned more of the history, and wrestled with some of the problems of it having sat for seven years, that hope was extinguised. I eventually bought out Emohn's half, and now this car is my full-time autocross car.

I've put most of my time and money into the engine and the suspension, to great benefit. The car is a rocket, handles well, and is an absolute blast to drive. While I can't compete for first in my class, I'm never last. In SM2, that's an accomplishment by itself considering the age.
However, all is not rosey. The wiring is original, and it sucks. I had two electrical fires inside the dash last season. Both times, I band-aided it, but no longer. I was finally forced to deal with the problem when the alternator could no longer keep the battery charged. The alternator is brand new, the voltage regulator is brand new. Something in the harness is drawing so much power, the puny 50 amp alternator simply can't keep up.

The first picture is the dash. Looks nice from here.

The second is after removing the heater controls and the dashplate against the window.

The third is the dash out of the car. In the center is the heater box. That's coming out next. The core is clogged, and the thirty year old hoses that feed it are cracked and leaking. Once I got the dash out, I spent an hour and a half wrestling the engine-side harness through the firewall and out of the engine bay. It sucked.

The plan now, after getting the heater core spiffed up, is to mock in the new fuse panel, and get a GM 90 amp alternator mounted. I'm going to keep the interior harness that feeds the dome and rear lights. Being inside the car, it's not in very bad shape. The engine side will be completely replaced with new wire all the way out to the front turn signals and headlights. The dash will also be getting new(er) Autometer gauges. I have a 5" tachometer, oil pressure, volt, and water temperature gauges to replace the intermittently working stockers.

It will be a very busy weekend. I have to have this thing back together and running by 8am on March 25.

Oh, and Louisville beat the snot out of Stanford today. Go Cards!

garage cleanout, a segue.

I considered starting another blog, but then I realized I really didn't feel like it. I'm lucky enough to actually have a few people that read this thing, and dividing their (and my) attention probably wouldn't do any good. So, 85gp.blogspot.com is temporarily becoming 240z.85gp.blogspot.com (no, I didn't register that, don't try to go there).

I made good use of this evening. I needed to get started on the rewiring the Datsun. Before I could start that, I needed to clean up the mess from the Grand Prix. You've seen the pictures of the scrap in the truck, now behold the pictures of the cleaned up garage. This first picture was taking from the man-door looking towards the back.

The second picture is right up the middle.

The third is from the right side, looking left along in front of the workbench.


This is a gigantic improvement. I'm very happy. Another post is coming shortly...

Small problem, don't you think?

What you see here is the reason for a lot of problems. A vibration caused by what I thought was a driveline imbalance; lower than expected power; crappy fuel mileage...

All from one bad plug wire.

 

What you see on the left if MY plug wire. On the right is a new plug wire. Notice a difference? It wasn't pushed all the way down on the plug, and melted against the header. The kicker was I have these little fiberglass things over the plug wire ends to protect them from the heat, so I couldn't see the melted plug wire end. My Dad found it, indirectly.

You see, I had a coloscopy today, so I wasn't supposed to drive. So, my Dad drove me home in my car. He noticed the vibration and since he's older and smarter than I am, he said, "That feels like a miss, do you have new plug wires on this thing?"

Of course I didn't. They were the plug wires that came with the car, which the previous owner had recently replaced.

"How do you find a bad plug wire?" I inquired.

"Start the engine in the dark and look for sparks." answered. Duh.

So I did, and there it was, bigger than shit. Ventured to the Autozone that doesn't close until midnight, got a new set of wires, and replaced the burned up wire. Car idles smooth as glass now, and I pulled it in first all the way to 5000 rpm on the way back home from the gas station.

The real kicker is gas milage. Adding the vacuum advance bumped it from 9.5 to 10.8 miles per gallon. Fixing a cylinder that isn't firing at all, into which gas is pouring and then simply being pushed out into the exhaust manifold, will have a HUGE impact on that.

I'm so happy, I could do a little dance or something... but I won't.

Spring cleaning...

Well, I didn't start on the Datsun today. I had an interesting morning. Not paying attention while moving the truck resulted in my hitting the steps to my porch, completely destroying said steps. So, I had to rebuild the steps. The process of getting my tools together to repair the steps, I decided the garage was too much of a mess to continue.

Five hours of work with the help of a good friend:

That's the spot in the garage that was cleared out. Before today, that section was completely full of crap.
Here's a shot of the crap.
Here's more of the crap. There was a lot of crap. I'm hoping to get at least $50 for this crap at the recycler.

Here's more of the crap. There was a lot of crap. I'm hoping to get at least $50 for this crap at the recycler.

Oh yeah!

New vacuum advance module, 12 degrees initial static advance, and holy moly. Mash the gas and there's no hesitation.

Folks, we have a car. I'm going to Dayton tomorrow with a friend to help him haul back a shitload of arcade equipment, but Sunday begins a new project: a complete re-wire of my 1970 Datsun. Racing season is coming up fast, and I need to get that done.

Once that's finished, we'll be back on the GP. New carpet. New Seats. New doors. Maybe even a booming stereo, since it's a hoopty and I already have a phat Alpine V12 amp and 12" Solobaric collecting dust.

More stuff...

Okay, quick five minutes after work today is all it took to re-set the timing. I added two degrees and took it for a spin. Incrementally better again.

Also in the mail was delivered another speedometer gear. Two more teeth. It'll help, but I'm not sure it's going to make the speedometer accurate. Hopefully it'll get close enough for horseshoes and/or hand grenades.

From the Speedometers suck department:

I replaced my speedometer driven gear last night. My speedometer is still wrong. Damnit.

First off, I jacked the car up, and I got the cable undone. Getting the housing that holds the gear out was a bitch. I finally had to just grab it with some channel locks and twist the bastard out.

Once I had it out, I peered in the hold. CRAP! Orange drive gear. Orange is 11 tooth. I had done all my math hoping it was a 10 tooth gear. My 29 tooth driven gear wasn't going to be right. It'll be closer than the 24 tooth gear that was in there, but it won't be right. I had it apart, and I decided to put it in anyway.

Except I have messed up the threads on the housing with the pliers. Off to H&S hardware to get a thread file. While I was there, I also grabbed some new bolts for the exhaust.

At home, I cleaned up the threads on the housing, and put it all back together. I also replaced three of the four exhaust bolts, and tightened them down. Less leaking now. If I keep this up, I might have a bug-free car in two years or so.

Off to order another speedometer gear...

Coil is fixed!

I had another ignition coil laying around the garage, so I swapped it in last night.

Big difference. Idle smoothed out, and the car pulled easily right on past 4000 rpm to 5000 in a second gear pull. Also got much less water vapor out of the exhaust when I started it this morning, which tells me I'm dumping much less unburnt fuel. Still need to do a third gear run, but that takes the car up around 90mph, and that's slightly illegal. I'll need to find a safe place to do that.

I'm going to replace the speedometer gear tonight, I hope.

Here it is...

 

This is it, my dyno sheet. Well, it's one of them. It's one with the highest horsepower number. That number is... 101. Yes. Just 101 horsepower. All this work, and 101 horsepower. Pretty shitty, but there's a silver lining. I'll get to that in a minute. First, I'm going to talk about my day at the dyno yesterday.

First, I get there. Get the car strapped down. Ask them to use the inductive pickup for RPM.

Blank stares. They've never done that. They always set the things to use roll speed. You drive the car in the test gear, hold the car at 2000 rpm, and the computer does some math and can infer the crank RPM from the wheel RPM. This works great with cars that have clutches. The crank is physically connected to the wheels.

Not so much with an automatic. Torque convertor slippage makes roll-speed derived readings inaccurate. I wanted accurate. So, I asked them to call Mustang and ask. Two hours later, we had a good answer, and the inductive pickup was working. So, we made a pull.

Negative horsepower and torque. Crap. Got good air/fuel numbers though, so we ran another part-throttle run. Again, negative torque, but good air/fuel. Amazingly, the air/fuel ratio is spot on at WOT and part throttle. I was quite happy.

So, we reset to use roll speed to get some better horsepower and torque numbers. The first pull yielded this sheet. 101 horsepower, 183 lb-ft of torque.

I added two degrees of timing, we pulled again. 98 horsepower. Subtracted four degrees, ran again, 96 horsepower. Mostly, power decreased due to the engine getting hot from the pulls. So, we packed it in for the day. Because of all the trouble, they didn't charge me full price, which was nice of them.

However, when I got home, I saw something amazing. On the second run, the run where I put two more degrees of timing in, the car picked up twenty three pound feet of torque. Secondly, the torque and horsepower are dropping off sharply above 3000 rpm. This points to two major problems: the engine wants more timing and the ignition is flaking out above 3000 rpm.

New HEI modules are $8. Fixing the timing is going to take a new vacuum advance module, and a few minutes with my dad's fancy timing light and my assortment of distributor springs and weights. I'll post the results as soon as I have them.

In other news, my speedometer gear showed up, and so did my carpet. The carpet is the wrong color, but screw it. It's still gray, it won't look too bad, I'm putting it in anyway.