I know that I have said this to myself before I finish a motor but then it fires up and I get it on the street and all commonsense escapes me.
I am not trying to scare you or anything like that I just want you to be aware. trust me my car will definitely get f’d up in any sort of collision but I will still race it like I stole it cause that’s what I made it for.
oh and in my original post I forgot to mention that if you were going to go through the entire chassis with the welds then you should invest in a cage.
It just sucks when you add that kind of additional reinforcement and all of a sudden the smallest little mistakes (curb hits, fender benders, pot holes) break things or bend things that you would never even think of.
I do love your build it keeps my hopes up for mine which is 1800 miles away from me until may 22nd.
so the only thing that is keeping me sane is talking to others about their builds.
I am planning to get a roll bar and do some other reinforcing (miracle X-bar, etc). I definitely do plan to have fun with it though. The more racing I see, the more I want to get into some aspect of it. Road courses look like they’d be a blast. There’s not too much around me though.
Don’t let it get to you, that’s only 4 months away. I feel the same way sometimes and mine is at my house… Lol. Between a hectic work schedule and 3 kids it can be hard to make time to get anything at all done. It’ll happen though, don’t stress about it!
Roll bars and roll cages don’t belong in street cars. I wouldn’t install one in a car that I only tracked occasionally. If I started tracking more and/or getting a lot faster then I’d install one, but then I wouldn’t want to drive the car on the street much, if at all.
I guess I see where you’re coming from but this car might see the road a couple times a month, during the nice part of the year. It will never be driven anywhere like the store or work, I’ll only take it out to drive it. Kinda like the old guys in their classic cars. I guess I just don’t see the harm in it. :shrug:
It’s a safety thing, often installing a roll bar actually makes the car MORE dangerous, not less.
If the car sees the majority of it’s time on the track and you drive it hard enough where a roll bar provides needed rollover protection, then by all means install a roll bar. At that point the protection while on track will outweigh the risk of danger when off track. This is assuming you are using a fixed back seat and harnesses at all times. DO NOT use a recline-able seat with a roll bar. Ever.
If you want a roll cage, then you should be trailering the car and it should never be driven on the street OR in any instance where you are not wearing a helmet and using a race bucket seat and 5/6 pt harness. Additionally, the cage should be fully padded in the area of the driver with rollbar padding (not cheap foam, it must be made specifically for padding roll bars).
If you are only going to go to the track once or twice a year but you’re going to drive the car once or twice a month then don’t bother with the roll bar. The added danger of using it on the street far outweighs the protection you’re adding while on track. If you really want the roll bar then just install it before you go to the track. They’re fairly quick and easy to install.
I do agree with that 100%
only have a cage with the appropriate accompanying safety gear
and you are right its a little over four months before I get home but I literally gave up what I do coming out here lol
I am a mechanic and now being out here for school I have to start over building my customer base and its just frustrating.
I currently have a 2005 fx45 which I am contemplating selling so I can buy a db1 out here and have a little 4 month project that I can take home and flip keep and sell my ek.
I have a couple updates for you guys. It’s been a while.
First of all a huge thank you to redrocket for hooking me up with a great deal on a jdm/cdm armrest!
I got the rest of my suspension ready to go to powdercoating. I made a few phone calls and have a couple shops lined up to get me quotes once I get a chance to take everything down to Chico. It’ll be a little more expensive than I thought because I’m going to have it all media blasted first but it’ll be worth it. Here’s my completely naked trailing arms
Also finally made time to pick up a gsr upper alternator bracket from a local.
My next update will be Saturday and its gonna be a big one!
Are you talking about the upper alternator bracket? If so its not so much the contour. It’s more the fact that the ls one has more material before the “lip” that was interfering with the IM studs. I’ll get you a pic, its hard to describe
Ohh, just less material… that makes sense… I wasn’t sure if it was contoured or just ‘thinner’.
No worries on the pic, I understand… I felt my setup ny hand, and my brothers b16… I can definitely see how a millimeter or two can make certain setups hell lol. Regardless, nice to see it sorted!
Well I took a pic but its still hard to see what the issue is. :shrug:
Basically though, the bolt holes on the LS bracket are higher off the workbench than the GSR bracket which makes it stick up too far and interfere with the intake manifold.
Good tech & discussion in this thread.
Glad to see people not rushing into stuff & thinking everything through.
Solid work thus far.
What is the practical ETA when she’ll be back on the road? 2015?
Carlos is awsome… I’ve had him do 3-4 harness for local buddies including the one on my EF.
He’s going to be doing my brothers DA too.
I didn’t know he sells the pin/boost seperately… i’ll have to have him ship me some for my next chassis wire tuck.
If you can find a powder coat place that does their own prep then you’ll likely save some $$. Generally they’re used to having to prep materials so that should be included in the cost. If you’re shopping blasting companies though you should also take your trans case to see if you can get it blasted or tumbled. I’m sorta kicking myself for not doing this. Same goes for the block/head but I think you already have the engine together, right?
Thanks! It has turned into quite a discussion filled thread! I wish I had more updates to make but that’s life. I would really like to say that she’ll be back on the road by the end of this summer but at this rate I would say that 2015 is probably more of a practical ETA. In order to be where I want to be with the project I’ll need to have the bay ready to spray by April.
Yeah Carlos sells a bunch of stuff actually besides just harnesses. He sells pins, connectors, wire, terminals, and I’m sure lots more. Anything you can think of wiring/tuck related I think he stocks.
I am going to be tucking the brakes too. I actually bought a brake tuck kit from a member here who was parting out his build but after looking at the length of the premade lines it doesn’t look like its going to work for me since I’m keeping the heater core. I’ll probably just end up making my own hard lines.
Colin- yeah one shop gave me a quote for just powder coating and no prep and it was significantly lower but the other places I called had prep included in the price. I just hadn’t taken it into consideration when I was thinking about it at first.
No, my engine is still disassembled. I mocked it up for my wiring but it still needs to be rebuilt. Still haven’t found a machine shop I want to use. Mainly I’ve just been waiting on my tax return so I could just have everything done at once without stretching myself too thin or cutting any corners. I’ll definitely look into blasting/tumbling everything though! Good advice
If the engine is still apart then you should for sure have it blasted, you’ll thank yourself later. I spent well over 4hrs trying to clean/refinish my block after the machine work was done and it’s still not as good as I’d wanted. It looks great in some pics I took but it’s not even and it’s not 100% bare metal as I used alumablast to touch up a lot of areas.
It sucks doing such a big project like this, at least if you’re a detail oriented person. For me it’s the little things that make a difference, anyone can do something that looks trendy in a highly edited picture, but look at that same car up close and you’ll see it’s really shit work. It takes serious time, dedication and $$ to do it right. I know I ended up going a lot deeper than I’d originally planned just because I couldn’t tolerate re-using certain parts or not cleaning things…etc.
Oh, and when you get into re-installing your HVAC stuff make a stop at the hardware store for some weather stripping, when you take a closer look at all of the components you’ll realize ALL of the foam seals need to be replaced. Everything under the dash gets really worn out quickly. All of the wire ties holding my wiring to the dash were amazingly brittle, way more brittle than even the engine bay ones.
Oh, and when you get into re-installing your HVAC stuff make a stop at the hardware store for some weather stripping, when you take a closer look at all of the components you’ll realize ALL of the foam seals need to be replaced. Everything under the dash gets really worn out quickly. All of the wire ties holding my wiring to the dash were amazingly brittle, way more brittle than even the engine bay ones.[/QUOTE]
Good advice. I’m wrestling with getting my block as clean as it can be too and wanted to do some kind of blasting but with the motor completely assembled I guess I’m stuck with tooth brushing the whole thing. Any suggestions on a more time effective method?
Oh, by your previous comment I thought it was apart and waiting to go to the machine shop. Pick up a bunch of brushes from Harbor freight, use the steel and plastic only, the brass will actually leave material on the block and turn it a little bit of a yellow color. Any good degreaser is basically as good as you’re going to get. I use simple green personally because it works well and is environmentally friendly. K&N filter cleaner is a surprisingly good degreaser too. The only problem is that you can clean all the grime off but if the aluminum is oxidized or tarnished you’re fucked. There’s no way to get a smooth even finish unless you media blast it. You can also try aluminum/mag wheel cleaner, specifically the ones that are acid based. These are supposed to clean aluminum really well, but they can turn the color dark and thats obviously not what you’re looking for. I tried some on my block and one area it cleaned up amazingly, but then didn’t do shit in other areas. I suspect this is because our blocks are made with pretty low quality aluminum - basically “pot metal”. This stuff is pretty harsh though, and after my experience I’d say it isn’t worth the money considering there’s likely nothing you’ll ever use it on again.
As you probably figured by now I hate painted blocks, I think they look cheap, they look painted, they look to me like the easy solution that everyone uses to make their car look good in photos but up close it looks painted. Personally heads, blocks, trans cases, and intake manifolds should never be painted. But obviously that’s an individual preference and mine is for it to look factory.
I do however use paint on these aluminum parts. Spray the paint on a paper towel then rub the paint onto the metal (this works for any cast aluminum pieces). Basically you’re filling in all the crevices that you couldn’t scrub clean or which had oxidation/stains that you couldn’t get rid of. Since you’re not spraying it on it won’t look like it’s painted - there’s no paint build up. If you do it right no one will know it’s painted. I used Alumablast recently because that’s what I had on hand, but I think a chrome spray paint is actually a better call. That’s what I used years ago on my b17a and the block turned out awesome! This time around it was much more difficult and I actually modified the method above to get the result I wanted. I’m not sure if I needed to modify the method because of the temp (it was pretty cold), the block itself, or the fact that I was using Alumablast instead of chrome paint.
Unfortunately the lighting was different so it’s hard to tell the difference but here was my block when I got it back from the machine shop:
Here’s after a shit ton of cleaning and a couple hours of messing with different application methods for the Alumablast
And the assembled drivetrain right before we dropped it in:
Simple green and/or baking soda work pretty dang well… Naturally it will be a time consuming process, but that you already know. It really is best to have it soda-blasted. Blocks look sooooo nice after a soda blast.
Colin brings up an excellent point with the HVAC foam seals… we recently put the dash back in my brothers EK and the OEM foam was so porous and caked with dirt… I imagine there was quite a bit of air loss going on in there. We yanked off all the old stuff and got new (more dense) foam tape from Lowe’s. The dash sits so much nicer on the vent openings now… I can only imagine how bad our even older cars are.
Since we’re sharing photos and such…
As much as it sucks to have your car under the knife, it’s cool to see you take your time and be methodical about it. You’ll enjoy it so much more when it’s finally on the road and you’re confident in the assembly of everything.
