Dadson Racing: 2010 Revival

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

Whittie's been out playing in his 370 2+2 again having great fun and punching well above his weight.

 

First time on a real track with the new coilovers and alignment in the Q60s for the inaugural LSRPCA Texas World Speedway autocross, built along the short track.

The day was HUGE fun. This was my fastest raw time, I hit the second to last cone. Run would have been good for 4th outright, ahead of all Porsche drivers. I ran a second best time of 89.69 for 6th outright, behind a Cayman.

 

 

Cheers

Dad

Edited April 5, 2017 by Dad

[260DET]

Good to see him owning Porkers.

[Whittie]

Wow, I just caught up with this thread and what a difference a set of coil-overs makes!

 

The Porsche day was also 70-odd cars, so a jump from 16-4 is huge.

 

Before and After coilover pictures attached. Otherwise same setup.

 

Before:

 

After:

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

Without really knowing what I was doing I had a go at port matching the inlet manifold when the motor went back in after the rebuild following the blown head gasket and thought I'd done a half good ammeter job, turns out the job was half good with three ports not requiring any further work but the others were pretty crook.

 

I relied on the mounting studs to line the manifold up but the professionals do it a little more accurately.

 

 

 

Cheers

Dad

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

When I looked at the inlet manifold next to the head recently I realized just how crap it looks compared to the head and that's before looking at the rusty carby linkages that are welded in place.

 

 

 

 

In putting this car back together I can honestly say there has only been one cheat and that is a bolt I couldn't remove to have plated so I painted it, here comes cheat no two.

 

I asked Headtorque how they achieved the bright finish on the repaired head and to my surprise it is a cheat so I've copied it, first was a thorough solvent wash.

 

 

 

Then the cheat or rather cheats.

 

 

 

I'm not unhappy for a moment with the result.

 

 

 

Cheers

Dad

[Whittie]

I guess that's what you get for relying on a 3rd party photo hosting website for 10 years. That's one lesson I won't be forgetting in a hurry.

 

I apologise folks, but we're not the only ones impacted. I'm not sure what we'll do, but personally I will not be going through all the individual posts to update the broken photo links. I will investigate a more secure photo hosting option and provide a link to that location in the future, I will update the first post when I do.

 

What a mess.

[luvemfast]

What a shame! 

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

Spare a thought for Whittie in Houston, Hurricane Harvey has caused massive damage and is dumping record amounts of rain, so far so good, no wind damage and the house remains dry so far but it's not over yet and just to spice things up a little Mrs Whittie is due to give birth in a couple of weeks...I know where I want to be right now, I've never felt so helpless.

 

Dad

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

It's looking like the worst has passed for Whittie at least for the time being, the Hurricane warnings have stopped and the rain appears to be easing, to put things into perspective in the last 24 hour recording period Whittie's area received 408mm of rain which is almost half the annual for Perth.

 

Cheers

Dad

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

For anyone interested enough to have had a look at the Houston weather radar Whittie lives in Katy (funny suburb name) which is west of the city so provided the storm keeps moving east the worst is finally over.

 

Whittie advised that his shed went under and his neighbor had 1.1/2" through the house fortunately Whittie retained a couple of inches free board which is plenty close enough so I guess it's back to normal waiting for the Whittie's new family to arrive.

 

Just received this from Whittie and now can't wait for some pics.

 

Storm is moving east, radar has cleared considerably and water levels have gone down for the past 12 hours.

 

970mm of rain in 4 days. I never want to see rain again.

 

Cheers

Dad

[Cozza]

Yep 1 metre of rain in 4 days is pretty solid.

Good to hear they made it through reasonably unscathed and Bub hung on till the storm was over.

Mother Nature is getting rough these days. It seems like it's one after the other that a catastrophic weather event is happening somewhere round the world.

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

Just received the latest pics from Whittie taken a few days before the hurricane, still there due in about ten days.

 

 

 

Cheers

Dad

[CBR Jeff]

Are you going to change from dad to grandpa? And is Whittie taking over the dad moniker?

 

Jeff

[Whittie]

Are you going to change from dad to grandpa? And is Whittie taking over the dad moniker?

 

Jeff

 

Made my day!

 

Not sure. Need a new logo first, something like this comes to mind. Current Logo attached for reference

Edited September 6, 2017 by Whittie

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

Team DADSON Racing has a new member she arrived a healthy 8lb2oz at 14:18 local Houston time Sept 9, Mother and Daughter doing well Dad and Grandad over the moon.

 

 

 

Cheers  Grandad

[Grandad]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZed Team Bonding

 

 

 

Cheers

Grandad

[PeterAllen]

Well done, all round

 

Have a read of this, you may be able to reestablish the Photobucket images:

http://www.viczcar.com/forum/topic/16377-photobucket-want-400-odd-dollars-for-3rd-party-hosting/

[Grandad]

Hi PeterAllen

 

Thanks for that it looks like a good fix but the time involved in identifying all the pics would be immense.

 

Whittie and I understand that the Photobucket free business model wasn't working for them and they had to introduce a paid model but the way they went about it in disconnecting all pics and demanding a $400.00pa subscription to reconnect them infuriated us and left us with three options, do nothing and hope things will change, pay the ransom or leave. 

 

We hung in for a while in the hope they would revert back to the old model but when it became clear that wasn't going to happen I decided that the only way I could show them how I felt was to remove all my albums which with the exception of Zed pics I did, Whittie removed all his soon after and closed the account so now there's nothing there to reconnect.

 

I'm currently using a different free hosting platform and Whittie is looking into setting up his own site.

 

Cheers

Grandad

[CBR Jeff]

Welcome Grandad!

Love it.

 

Jeff

[Grandad]

Welcome Grandad!

Love it.

 

Jeff

 

Thanks Jeff,

 

I'm loving it too, we're heading over there for Xmas so should be great, interestingly Whittie has requested I get an international drivers license and bring my CAMS one as well, he's not letting on but I get the feeling there's more than a family get together planned.

 

 

Hi All

 

The motor came out of the Zed last December for a bit of a tickle up and some head work I made the mistake of telling Tuss that with Whittie absent it wasn't urgent but that's now almost a year ago so there is a bit of pressure to get it going again so the motor should go back in tomorrow.

 

A few weeks ago I noticed a pool of fluid by the drivers side rear wheel which looked like brake fluid and a quick check of the master cylinders confirmed it, my first thought was that it was a bit weird as I clearly recall reconditioning the rear calipers not all that long ago, turns out not long ago was actually ten years ago.

 

This is the offending caliper

 

Here's the proof

 

This treatment wouldn't have helped

 

Fixed

 

 

The last time Whittie was here we did a couple of night events and had some trouble blowing fuses in the HID headlights with them ultimately dying at the night drags and Whittie driving home with parkers only, turns out the HID drivers died we suspect from over heating as they were mounted in the engine bay so we sourced a new set and I mounted them today on the opposite side of the inner guard so they are now under the guards just below the lights, hopefully that will fix them.

 

The original mounting point in the engine bay.

 

The new under guard mount.

 

 

Cheers

Grandad

[Whittie]

Time to fix that brake bias. It's been so long since I bought the brake pedal kit that Jon Coffey (Beta Motorsports) has not only gone out of business but sadly passed away.

 

We've only used them in anger a handful of times too

Edited October 19, 2017 by Whittie

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

Well it's almost a year since the engine was removed for a tickle up and it's finally back in, that plywood box next to the car is a caravan build that has occupied my time for the last couple of years and is finally approaching completion, it has removed much of the urgency from the Zed.

 

Not sure the colour matched block was intentional but it looks good.

 

These things look so good it's a real pity to have to protect them from the leaky Webers.

 

I'm on a roll the van can wait I need to hear this making it's crisp L28 noise again soon.

 

 

Cheers

Grandad

[Grandad]

Hi All

 

I'm being a bit self indulgent here but I'm really enjoying being a new first time Grandad and just received some pics of my new born grand daughter that clearly show some of the influences she will have in her life.

 

Will I be an equestrian?

 

 

Will I do motorsport?

 

 

Hmm, horses and horsepower!

 

 

Enough of my self indulgence, I had another break from the van today to focus on the Zed and fitted the carbies and ancillaries to get it going but from my experience last time of the oil pump/distributor drive being incorrectly installed I decided to check it before installing the radiator and sure enough with the crank on no1 tdc it was one tooth out so would have been delivering spark to no5 when it was required by no1 which is clearly not going to work.

 

Fortunately with good access it was relatively simple to drop the front sway bar to remove the oil pump and correctly position the drive.

 

 

All that's left for tomorrow is to fit the exhaust and battery and fire it up.

 

 

When I removed the oil pump I noticed the oil galleys were filled with a white grease that looked and smelt like Vaseline Petroleum Jelly, I've never seen that before and considered to be odd so I removed what I could without taking the pump apart.

 

A google search revealed that it's an old school way of priming oil pumps in new dry engines to prevent cavitation and is actually recommended by some engine manufacturers, personally I prefer to crank the motor without load to get oil pressure before firing, looks like this time there will be a bit of both.

 

 

Cheers

Grandad

[Enzo]

Definitely old school but still relevant. I used to use STP on all my engines during assembly back when I was a mechanic in the late 70's and early 80's. Nice and tacky. Especially great in oil pumps. I still use it today on the rare occasion of engine assemblies.

David.

[Grandad]

Hi Enzo

 

We are clearly the same generation I remember STP only too well, in my youth when I was destroying FJ to FC Holdens at about the same rate as they were produced they all had STP added and as to prove STP's worth the engines all outlasted the cars.

 

Let's not forget the STP acronyms.

Still Thoroughly Pissed.  There was a period in my life that applied.

Stamp Out Teenage Pregnancy.  A few of my friends tripped up on that one.

 

I find it rather curious that STP still exists in our current hi tech world.

 

 

Hi All

 

Not being familiar with the Vaseline option I decided to crank the engine with spark plugs removed until I achieved oil pressure and as expected the engine spun noticeably faster once everything was fully lubricated.

 

I was now ready to fire it up but unknowingly the damage was already done, I hadn't drained the year old fuel and the carbies were now full of it and the engine wouldn't fire even with half a can of Start Ya Bastard, that stuff is so appropriately named.

 

I eventually decided to pump the tank dry and replace the fuel but not wanting to remove the carbies I removed the tops and sucked all the fuel out of the bowls, that possibly left some in the accelerator pump chambers but I decided that it would clear with a few stabs of the accelerator pedal.

 

With basically a brand new engine I decided to back the timing of a touch so not to overly stress the engine on fire up, but because I haven't played with this thing for so long I had completely forgotten that to allow for hi comp engines the MSD Digital Ignition System automatically retards the spark on start up so it effectively had double retard and that's before you include me.

 

After a few days of flattening and recharging the battery, walking away for sanity sake, calling out the name of the product that didn't want to work, I finally twigged and set the timing back to normal, next try was met with a huge backfire which I took as a sign of success with unburnt fuel being cleared from the exhaust, next try was successful and oh what a beautiful noise.

 

I have always considered the 98ron fuel we use to have a green tinge to it so I was shocked to see the color of the syrup that came out of the tank, for comparison I later put some fresh fuel in the same container for comparison.

 

Syringe to the rescue.

 

 

Hopefully I won't get caught with old fuel again.

 

 

Cheers

Grandad

Edited November 10, 2017 by Grandad