Betty White, the now not so neglected race car

[HRH]

Yeah, it sits below the mounts quite a bit. I ended up cutting the middle out of the factory mounts and then bolting up the middle square tube to the bottom of the mount, then tacked on the side tubes to the side pieces of the original mount. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it in the car. I thought I did, but apparently not. It fits perfectly.

[HRH]

Yeah I forgot. I assure you, it's solid and it works. Oddly I backed the car out today, the new driveshaft fit perfectly, and I noticed a fuel smell and a trail. Somehow, the number one injector has developed a little tiny hole in the brass cup that holds/crimps the fuel line rubber into the top of the injector. It's pissing a miniscule stream down onto the top of the injector body. I can't imagine the 55 psi is overpowering it because it's supposed to be 38 psi from the factory. I know the line is rated to 100+ psi, brass should be too. Anyway, it's only one, so I ordered another FJ23 fuel injector from rockauto (only place I could find them quickly) and it should be here Friday. I'll replace the one and see if we have a repeat. Rather interesting. I hope it's just a fluke bad injector.

Also all other projects besides the race car and the box van are now on hold. To get to the freeze out hill climb, it's going to take a whole lot of money. Which means race car has priority. And the box van for towing said race car. June 26th is the date!

[HRH]

Ok, change of plans. I calculated how much the race weekend was going to cost me and after ordering $900 worth of box van springs, I decided I have too many things going on and I need to pay down some expenses before I go racing. Not to mention, I have next to zero seat time in the car. New plan is to go to the hillclimb at Maryhill in September, or the one in Beaver, OR in August. In the meantime I'll get some autocross in and maybe a track day. Apparently the track is going to be open for that now that the tribe is running it. Either way, it'll be a lot easier on the pocketbook, particularly with gas being so annoyingly high right now.

And dammit, my injector didn't come as promised!

[Taterhead]

That sounds like a solid plan. Get used to running it first.

[HRH]

So I found out the reason for the leak was a crappy crimp. Figured that out when I was fiddling with the injector rail. Consequently I removed them all, carefully cut off the collars and reattached new hose to them with hose clamps.

[HRH]

Been slow at work, so I got the rear hatch prepped for a lexan window. Painted it, I'll secure the thin lexan in tomorrow. They actually make a repro composite back glass that fits in like the original glass, but it's 500 bucks. This is much cheaper and only increases weight but about 7 pounds or so.

I also found out the numbers were vinyl on vinyl. So it'll be easier to renumber it without removing the main vinyl which would peel all the paint off.

[HRH]

Finally got the wiring tidyed up around the throttle pedal and got the lexan secured to the back hatch today. Getting closer! Need to find a better shift boot though. The old shifter was much closer to the front of the opening. The ka short shifter is not.

[HRH]

I ran Betty up the road today at lunch. Fast and loud, feels good to make some noise! I probably need to quiet the exhaust. Had a blast though, got her up to 5500 in 4th pretty damn quick. First and second are done in about 5 seconds.

[HRH]

Alright, attempting to get going here. Going to take the race car up to work for some more tuning and the passenger seat install. Might get an oil change and the new tires on too. We shall see.

[HRH]

I got a lot of work done today! Yes the seat rails are two adjuster sides. It's what I had, lol. Only took some minor fiddling. You have to yank both levers to adjust.

[HRH]

https://youtube.com/shorts/engeSlMQQpo?feature=share

Here you go fellas.

[Taterhead]

Nice, thanks again for the video

[HRH]

You are quite welcome sir! Eventually I'll get the new system wired in and we'll tune it on Chris' dyno. I don't know if there's a ton more power to be made, but I'll be happy if it's reliable enough to start racing. Still need to get a shifter tunnel boot on it though, that heat comes right up the tunnel and makes it super hot. Might even put some heat tape under the floor pans too.

[HRH]

So I've been updating Instagram and Facebook, been neglecting NWD. I have the race car tuned and ready for a track day this Saturday at QRP! (Formerly SCR) We fixed a huge problem of a factory overboost can on the intake manifold that I didn't even think about. No one else did either. Until we started getting boost flutter during testing and 7 psi. Lopped it off, welded a bolt in it, and now we have 11 psi and all sorts of acceleration! It's quite nice. I have some testing videos uploading but they're way too long. Still need to figure out how to use the Corel software I got to edit them. But I have about 8 million other things to do. I'll try and get some good footage at the track day.

[HRH]

So the track day was awesome! The first 16 minutes of it anyway. Started watering the track, the radiator overflow hose popped off. I came back into the pits and zip tied it and thought, oh, easy fix! Forgetting that it's a no pressure hose to the overflow reservoir. Started back up for the second session and turned it into a steam engine. Did some basic checking last night. #5 is puking water badly. Got it drained and run a bit to clear the cylinder. Next step is getting the head off to see what went wrong. Cracked head or head gasket. Piston looks okay.

[HRH]

[Taterhead]

Oh man that looks like a blast! I’m no professional by no means but to my untrained eye it looks like you have good turn in and exit points.

[HRH]

Looks like lean detonation unfortunately. Or head gasket failure for some other reason, but I'm betting it's that.

[HRH]

So Joe fixed the original good P90A head, which has now been converted to solid lifter. Should hold together we think. Spent $600 on a fuel rail package with new high impedence EV6 injectors from www.protunerz.com in Canada. They make some really nice L products. They make a manifold for about a grand, which is super awesome. I'm going to make due with my current one though.

Then I had to address the tire issue. I have the race slicks on there and they can't get below 15 degrees, otherwise the tires crack. You also have to store them at half the normal pressure and wait 24 hours at 68 degrees before using them again. All the other wheels I have are wrong offset and you have to use a shitload of wheel spacers to make them work. So I figured I need another set of wheels in case I botch the rims on there. Got some XXR 531s coming for "winter" wheels so I can store the race tires in the basement. I would have done some 14" leftovers but with the big turbo II Mazda RX7 brakes up front and the 280zx front brakes out back, I'm like .030" from clearing the caliper with 15 inch wheels. If I got to 16s, I can't get the tire size I want. So fuck it. I bought another set of wheels. I wish I could have found the flat outs again. I really like that style, but they don't make them anymore.

Currently feeling slightly meh from my covid booster since I'm going to Hawaii in a few weeks. Listening to Riggs on headphones on the couch while doing wheel research and updating NWD which is about as hopping as a no-legged frog.

Here are some fuel rail pics since I didn't post those here:








And some Riggs! 80s rule!!

[Taterhead]

Never heard of Riggs before now. Not bad.