It's not really a build thread if it's already built, but here we go

phate

phate

Motorhead
This build has been ongoing since I bought the car in 2013. I won't rehash everything that's been done to it, but if you want some info, just ask.

I've built this car for SCCA's Street Prepared category in the sport of Solo (aka autocross). We have been very competitive over the years, and are planning to stay in the class for at least one more season. So this thread is about the changes occurring going into the 2025 season, and probably beyond that.

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I have a laundry list of maintenance items and improvements that I'm going after this winter. New shift cables, checking in on the dampers, a charging issue that plagued us this season. We'll get into a bunch of stuff. First, though, I want to get the dampers sent out to get dyno'd as a check-up. I had them reworked for the 2018 season, and they haven't been off of the car since then. I'm also converting the rubber bushings to sphericals, because why not:

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The eyelets had a small surprise in that the ID wasn't cylindrical. They are hourglass shaped where they get skinny in the center. Cool design, really. It makes the rubber bushings suck less. But we need to make them cylindrical and to size for some sphericals. Into the mill!

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I'm just using a boring head to cut these for some QA1 WPB9T sphericals.

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And done, now I'm just waiting on the sphericals to get here.
 

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I've been waiting on these sphericals for about a month, seems that everyone was sold out of this size. These are FK brand, 9/16" extra wide, stainless, with teflon race. Should last for a couple years in this environment. 3 of the 4 are a very light press fit, and one was a slip fit because I got a little overzealous on the mill. I used some Loctite 641 retaining compound on all of them and they're currently curing:

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I'm going to whip up some adapters so they fit the width of the stock mounts. I'll post those once they're done.


Most of my focus recently has been a not so directly car related project. It involves getting new electrical service pulled to my shop so I can run some much larger equipment :) Once I land the machine and get it commissioned I'll probably make a new thread about what's happening on that front.

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I might not be the smartest person but I'm pretty sure the voltage would be zero if there isn't a meter installed
 
The only people that like screwdrivers are alcoholics.
...And people that like to stab other people but don't want to get caught with a knife.
 
Yep, they haven't even pulled the wire yet. Waiting on the city for an inspection before the power company will run it.
 
Enki said:
They look like I'd never clean them myself.
Click to expand...

They're awful to clean. But man, they are incredibly light - just over 16lbs each for 18x12. That dropped 9lbs per wheel. We did some back to back testing with the rotas and litespeeds on the same course, and same day, and you can see the difference in the acceleration data.

The main reason I did it, though, was to reduce rotational mass to help the transfer case live longer. My thinking was that if we could spin tire off the line, the load on the transfer case would be significantly reduced. We were launching the car HARD all season, and the tcase held up fine (more on that below), but it took some serious commitment to launch it hard enough to get tire spin haha.


On the transfer case side of things, I had a couple more things done for the 2024 season in hopes of making the tcase live:

1) I reinforced the transfer case. I welded on a shit load of extra material in the spots that I've seen them explode. [I'll try to find some pics, I welded it in 2019, but didn't get to test it until this year.]

2) Clutch delay valve - slipping the clutch a bit softens the blow, but doing it consistently is hard. I installed a variable flow control valve - it varies flow in one direction and is open in the other direction. It took some adjusting, but got to the point where we could side step the clutch pedal and it would quickly but still gradually engage the clutch. [I'm currently running a clutchmaster's 725 twin disc.]
 
Gotta love physics. That pedal trick is kind of cheating though.
 
I assume that the engagement is still agressive enough to not be a problem in other gears or is there some kind of bypass
 
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