DCIEVE

Maybe give Kognition a try. 20% off at the moment as well.

The new engine is 95% complete Made up a drain that clears the manifold so I don't cook the braided line. Sadly I'm STILL waiting for Brad / Risking / ProFab to cough up a refund for the stuffed cylinder head I was sold. This has been a 2+ year saga.

Looks like a lot of people are biting their tongue in the hopes of a favorable resolution. I wonder how long that can last?

Thanks mate! The rb26 sump drilling doesn't suit the rb30 bottom end without an adaptor so I had to sell Toms sump The external pump kit came with a sump though, it's quite a nice design with external pick-up and plenty of capacity either side of the trapdoors which should help prevent starvation. Coincidentally I had a chat to Tom today about doing the alignment and suspension set-up!

Your comments about stretch to yield are very misleading. Broadly speaking the point of using higher grade fasteners is to increase pre-load. ARP are a very high grade fastener (up to 1500MPa UTS) so to hit the higher pre-load the torque is higher. Two bolts of differing grade will stretch the same amount for a given pre-load (assuming equivalent geometry), it's just that the higher grade fastener is capable of a higher pre-tension before you exceed the proof stress. A rule of thumb for stretch ignores the biggest factors driving elongation which are 1) length and 2) pre-load/stress.

How do you figure the ARP's stretch less? I would follow the ARP method as closely as possible including lube type etc. The relationship between pre-tension and torque is obviously very sensitive to friction but also things like tightening speed etc.

I think it's to avoid having to use a restrictor. The advice I had from Geoff at FullRace was to use a 3an feed and 10an drain - he mentioned if you use a 4an feed a restrictor might be required. I already have a 12an adapter for the block so I'm going to stick with that size - can't do any harm I s'pose! S400sx is a big turbo!! Thanks for the advice - I was worried that might be the case. A colleague has an evo track car running on e85 and he said a similar thing.

Missed this one - see the post immediately above yours Yeh they're a good group of guys. The door trims and rear firewall came back from flocking and have been bolted down. Came up pretty well. With the rear firewall done the cage could go back in with new gr8.8 hardware and steel backing plates. I picked up a low temp thermostat on the engine builders recommendation but I've since been told by a few people the engine will run a lot cooler on e85 so a standard thermostat is a better option. Any thoughts? Also made a start on oil feed/drain lines since I still have Brad's spare 26/30. FullRace recommend a tiny 3an feed line! While I was at it I took a few minutes to trial fit the EGT sensors. Ended up being lucky I did as no.1 interferes with a lug on the side of the head - will have to grind it down on the new engine.

More bit's and pieces The wiring is moving along, I should have a complete engine loom in the coming days and the body loom is pretty close as well. The firewall has been hole sawed for the engine and body loom bulkheads. I originally installed a flexible tow hook but soon realised there's a sizeable gap between the reo and f/glass bumper which wasn't going to work too well. In go's a rigid hook. Most of the hot side area has been covered in dei reflectagold. This is mainly because the manifold and wastegate pipes sit really close to the strut tower, and the cabin side firewall insulation has been removed. I had no idea how time consuming this was going to be....! And a new, new head has been re-built. This has been a massive set back to the engine build but I'll give the seller a few more days to do the right thing before I go into more detail. Basically the engine is ready for trial assembly.

Great pic

After Clint welded up the rear guards the car went to Owen at Melthams to repaint the rear quarters - Clint did a great job with the welding but we chose to cut the guards as high as possible due to the size of the wheels so there were a few small burns that went just past the flare line. Owen and his brother spent a lot of time matching the paint, overall very happy with the way the rear quarters have turned out. At this stage I'm using 285 and 315 r888's on the 10.5 front and 11.5 rear wheels respectively. Longer term I'm planning to move to the grooved Kumho/Hoosier tyres that are popular in the US. When trial fitting the new seats I found they foul on the factory door trims - I tossed up having the door trims modified but in the end making a flat door card seemed the simpler option. I made up a rear firewall while I was at it. Both are done in aluminium sheet (based on cardboard templates I gave to a local fabricator) and secured using nutserts. They're off being flocked at the moment.

I would put a steam pipe single scroll mani on it. Your putting in a lot of effort to make the event, would be a shame to have a thin wall ss manifold crack or old waste gate fail on the day. TS would be nice but it comes at a cost.

Looking good. Can't believe you were changing tyres on the same set of rims for every event! What's next to make it quicker or are you satisfied beating everyone as is

Clearances can be hard to find. I had a contact in JP have a look for me and he came up with the specs (Apexi in this case) pretty quickly. Might be worth a try if you know anyone over there - importers for example. My cams are quite large and the specs are pretty much identical to factory, whereas Jun specify much tighter numbers for cams with similar lift/duration.

The rallynuts guys are really good to deal with so you can't really go wrong. Just need to factor in shipping when comparing with local gear.

Not to be argumentative, but the TRS magnum 4pt is 92quid on rally nuts and 138 at your link. The sparco is 112 versus 149.

Have a look at the rally nuts site for good pricing. Apparently all the FIA harnesses can have the shoulders loop mounted, but some have the eyelets stitched in.

The rear guards have been welded up (thanks to Clint/Panik for a pro job ) and with the arrival of the tyres I've been able to do a trial fit. Everything fits/clears so I'm pretty damn pleased. The rear needs a bit more camber dialled in (currently a touch positive which makes it look odd) and there's way too much castor up front. Evan at Garage7 has continued to be a great help locating various parts I need - most interesting is the Ross crank trigger set-up (& cam trigger for sync) and custom balancer which deletes the a/c & ps pulley's giving me a heap more radiator clearance (making it possible to change pump belts without removing the radiator!). Motor is in the build and wiring should be happening in the next week or two so it's starting to come together at last

So, as far as bypassing the heater hoses & whole silver circular thing there are no special considerations for plumbing from the thermo housing to the back of the block? I've connected the thermostat housing to the rear of the block rather than just plugging them.

Thanks Michael! More so concerned they might sit out too far with the camber zeroed out. There aren't many tyre options at these widths so there wasn't a 'safe' option I made some mods to the shafts so they would be properly retained in the non hr cusco mech centre I run, rebuilt one pair and partly rebuilt a second set for ~400 I think. The problem is if the CV's are worn there's nothing you can do to save them since no one sells spares, the shafts themselves aren't really an issue. So I've got three sets of shafts but only 2 sets of good cv's to go on them. It should be possible to adapt non hr cv's but it's a matter of finding someone who can point you in the right direction - most places only have experience with fwd cv's. The camber kit is from: www.swmotorsport.com.au

Neat solution! Also interested in the template if you have time

Shiite - impressive times! I was hoping to see it run in anger that day but boredom won out Guessing that makes you one of the fastest guys around Barb's now (excluding the dedicated race cars that is)?

They're Work Meisters, 10.5 +12 and 11.5 -1. A little bit apprehensive about how they will fit once the rubber go's on tbh. You missed the trailing arm mod's by a couple of pages They're camber & toe adjustable now (well they always had a small amount toe adjustment) - still using nolothane type bushes though which might be the weak point. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the accusump set-up, actually have the EPC sitting on the shelf but chose not to use it. Location was largely set by a lack of suitable spots in the engine bay, at one stage it was bolted to the top of the intercooler

It's been a while but here's an update for the last three or so months. I finally bit the bullet on some wheels - I need fairly unique wheel offsets/widths which ruled out the usual super lightweight one piece forged options unfortunately. Tyres are due to arrive in the next couple weeks so I'll soon find out if they fit - fingers crossed. I've been told the weldon fuel pumps are extremely noisy so I grabbed some vibration isolation mounts. They're on the big side so I cut some cf sheet so they would seat cleanly on the pump. The pump was then bolted down on the base plate Brad Stacy fabricated for the previous fuel system based around the Aeromotive pump. There's three filters now, 100micron magnafuel before the lift pump, 40micron before the main pump and 10micron after. Worked out pretty well considering the surge tank and bulkheads were all located based on the aeromotive pump and one less filter. The in line fuel pressure sensor is now mounted directly to the bulkhead to the left in the pic below. Having seen a few plastic fuel cells deform pretty badly I thought a breather on the tank might be a good idea - ended up finding a rollover type valve which saves me running the breather hose in loops and to the far extremes of the tank to prevent fuel spilling in a roll. All the undercar lines are done now with the return line diverting to the fuel cooler before continuing to the surge tank. The accusump is also on vibration isolation mounts, largely just to get it off the floor and keep the mounting 'soft'. Going to have to make a cover and vent it outside the cabin at some stage. Spent some time carefully notching the flares for the front bumper. Still waiting for the rear to get welded up so I can paint the exposed metal and get the flares on for good. I've spent a fair bit of time plugging all the old loom/ac and heater line holes in and around the firewall in an attempt to keep fumes out of the cabin. I'm planning to use bulkhead fittings for the wiring loom to the same effect (also have bulkhead fittings for the battery cable, accusump oil line etc). Also used the same carbon sheet to fill holes in the dash left by the old fan controls, radio etc and to plug the big hole in the boot used by the standard fuel pump. Trying to get on top the wiring situation now, ordering the bulkhead connectors etc.

Thoughts on a WJ Cherokee? We have a daily so this would be the spare car for carrying stuff the daily can't and for towing the track car.