Race Car Repair and Upgrade

eugene13

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My Son and Driver spun in turn two at Sheridan (Wyo) Speedway to avoid T-Boning the knothead who spun in front of him. We just clipped the turn 2 wall and were able to finish the race, 5th place, and the knothead didn't. It dosn't look too bad...until you get the sheet metal pulled off, the car was built as an experiment with an under slung rear clip, racing is about following the fads, now everyone is going to over rail rear clips, so we will cut it off and rebuild. If we had been running for points I would have just heated it up and straightened it out

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Here's the first upgrade, an easier adjustable J-bar mount, we had to move the 2" sq tubing it mounts on outboard about 2 1/2". Laying out and tack welding the first replacement parts, and a shot of the whiz-bang J-bar mount, lowering the J-bar raises the roll center and loosens up the car, raising it lowers the roll center and tightens it. One might lower it for a heat race with a heavy wet track, then raise it for the Main with a dry track.

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looks like you are moving along on it nicely.
 
looks like you are moving along on it nicely.
Tthank you, the job is going quickly, considering we are only working on weekends, The over rail is now installed, it needs to be square plumb and level as it holds the top attachment points for the shock and spring slide as well as the fuel cell. A better view of the J-bar slider and it's attachment. The upper brace is now installed, the next pic shows how the over rail is tied in. The fuel cell cage on the bench for a straightening out. The car is actually finished and we have raced it, finishing 3rd, a personal best, We've been in this class since 2006 and have not won a race since, very steep learning curve and a very competitive class. I was just too busy last summer to post it.

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Once the upper braces are on the only things left to do are install the fuel cell cage and the body mounts, we used the laser level to to make sure the end of the body mount is flush with body, we could have used a string line, but the laser gives a better picture. Here's a pic of the finished product, we used the same sheet metal but had to build a new bumper, I suppose this should be the end of the thread but I am going to keep it going with a couple of projects that will use the amputated race car parts. I kept this old Pickup truck seat from another project with the intention of making it into a couch, I found some used 1 1/4" square tubing in my steel mess, this will give me a good solid foundation to start with. The X axis needed a spreader so I dragged the amputated parts out of my scrap trailer, and I had just enough 1 1/4 square tube for the legs. It's really confortable and all it needs is some better upholstry.

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After finishing my couch and doing a thorough clean up I realized I had enough material in all the amputated race car structure to build an outdoor propane burner for canning and home brewing. I could have coped all the joints with "The Old Joint Jigger" , but opted for doing them on the milling machine instead, I run the hole saw on my lowest speed and slowest feed, the chips come off like powder and you get a really nice cope, I also drilled all the holes fore the grate. The green pieces are for the legs, they'll be coped on one end and mitered 4 degrees on the other. back in the day it was said that a green race car was bad luck,as you can see, I'm not superstitious. Here's the three legged version

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My burner showed up at the same time as I am figuring out the X brace for the legs. I love doing compound angles with my mill, this is actually a compound angle with an 8 degree roll, the part clamped on the tubing is used with a level to keep track of the plane of cut, or bend. I got the length and the angles right the first time, and ended up with a near perfect joint on both ends, notice the hose clamps holding it in place. I ended up using The O'l Joint Jigger for the second operation of the short sections, you can see how the plane of cut tool allows me to move the part from one machine to another and maintain proper orientation.

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Her'e's the burner mocked up for welding, I keep a lot of heavy steel pieces, 1" and thicker, around for this purpose, two of the mounts went straight down to the cross member and the other two went on an angle, but I got the burner centered up within 1/64 and as level as possible.

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Nice work on the car, seat, and burner setup. I did some hole saw work on the mill just yesterday. Makes for a nice solid setup. I just hand fed it at 60rpm on 2 3/8" drill pipe. I have an "Old joint jigger" also, but because of the size of the pipe I decided to do it on the mill. As you said, works really well. Mike
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