Archives

Archives
aka old news

May 13th
Today we put a off road H on Dusty's car took some work for a very easy job (tight fit on passenger side flange) but the new sound of Dusty's car was well worth the hassle. (Off road H and Spintechs ohh sound nice)

High flow catted H we took off car now sounds better, little bit better performance, and shave some weight too.

Jack stand racing? My Cobra has been on jack stands for a few weeks now hopefully getting some parts for it soon but Dusty's car too?

Reason I am going through so much hell with my car is the clutch fork is grinding on these headers. I guess it is because these are FOX headers so I should be getting some long tubes for 94-95's within the next few days unfortunately I'm going to have to drop the transmission to replace the clutch fork now. (Got a little carried away with the Dremel) Guess that is Okay because there is some other stuff I can do while the transmission is out. Most of which will be replacing the T/O bearing, pivot ball, clutch cable, and firewall adjuster.

April 24th
I helped a friend of ours (original owner of the bug) pull his engine today he had threw a rod a few months ago and had parked the car.

Engine already out of the car and on the engine stand at his shop.

Took a long time for all the coolant to drain out it made a huge mess. Once we got the heads/intake and oil pan off we got to see most of the extend of the damage.

Extend of the damage was 2 bad rods/pistons, busted oil pan, block that is missing a few chunks, crank that is now trashed, 4 valves that met the pistons (only slight wear probably be useable still), a bent pushrod, and somewhat unknown condition of the cam (doesn't look good).

April 22nd
I picked up some longtubes from dfwstangs to replace my crappy MAC shortie headers which turned out to be cracked on 2 primaries and also had 3 pinhole size leaks on the collector. So I got some BBK longtubes which will sound better, flow better, last longer, and sound a hell of a lot better. :D Thanks to Dusty for the help. We need to do his next haha.

Used a tow strap to tweak the engine to get a bit more clearance to get the flange to clear worked like a charm.

Passenger side one went in easy from the bottom with the steering shaft undone, but we got it all bolted up and realized the steering shaft wouldn't clear with the header installed so we had to unbolt it again then bolt the steering shaft up again then reinstall ughh. The clutch fork won't clear the driver side by a tiny bit. So right now the clutch is stuck down. :O I'm going to take a dremel to it, one of the 02 sensors won't reach so I'm going to have to figure that out, and the mid pipe ordeal too.

On jackstands. AGAIN!

April 13th

Lightning Concept

Ferrari 430 ohhh want to touch the heiny. Probably the best looking Ferrari made at this point next to the 360's.

C6R

TT Saleen S7! 750HP!

Shopping cart wing on the Cobalt SS (thats me pushing the cart and shopping *que cheezy shopping cart dance*) and a funny warning on a dodge truck.

April 10th
Made it out to another Autox. Made it out with primer, no rear sway bar, and no ABS. haha Makes for a very interesting drive that is for sure. The car is very prone to snap Oversteer if you try and late brake not to mention got to be careful to not lock up the tires. Overall thou I drove very smooth today. My best time of the day was a 109.8 just being very smooth with the car since I couldn't push it as much as I would have liked too but that worked out to my benefit really (made me "drive slow and go fast" like I should be doing). In the afternoon session the course was rained on and my best was a 113.2. Chris also rode along with me for all my runs and he did a few fun runs in my car needless to say he is hooked he wished it had brought out his Lightning. :D

A few of those long black lines are mine. Took awhile to learn the brakes without the ABS but I got it down now.

April 8th
Spent most of the day trying to get the car ready for this weekend. It had a CEL because of the EGR being off and was stalling on me so I put the EGR back on and also did new plugs, wires, fuel filter, cleaned up some sensors, set the timing etc. Man car is running sweet now! Pulls much better. I just need to track down a rear sway bar and figure out why they ABS isn't working now. Thanks to Chris and Dusty for helping out.

Me, Chris, and Dusty playing around. Ghetto Lean!

Car in the garage, me trying to get a bolt on the back of the valve cover off.

Seafoam does wonders for carbon build up.

March 30th
Spent some time at Slims this morning and pulled the carpet from the car and otherwise gutted the interior for the install of the sub frames. I then came home and spent 4-5 hours cleaning the carpet and floor mats. The floor mats look much better as does the trunk carpet (had oil stains thanks to a PO) the carpet while clean sucks it has a lot of sand in it! (Thank you Florida grrrr...) Which doesn't want to come out I took a brush, power washer, steam cleaner, and vacuum to it O well its cleaner then most peoples cars so it will work. Next step is to get the seats home and do some leather treatment/steam cleaning on them and the plastic stuff.

Stupid thing I learned today.
If a power washer on its highest setting tends to tear up the concrete probably not a good idea to use that on the carpet at such a high setting. Hmm 1500psi isn't much right? Nahh go for it...hehe damn the sand man!

March 27th
Me and Dusty put on a Mach 1 chin spoiler on his car. Looks nice just hope he doesn't ram it up on any curbs anytime soon. :P

March 10th
Car isn't going to be totaled. Took off the hood and cleaned it up and drove it out to Slim's (slowly) to get it worked on.

March 2nd
My car was stolen Saturday morning. I got it back today after limping it home from a Rowlett impound it ended up there even thou it was recovered in Highland Park. Looks like it was taken out by some joy riders judging by the fact no parts are missing. (but all my belongings are) The car and the underside of the car are covered in mud and it looks to have seen a good amount of off road action. It was also driven a quart low on oil for some amount of time and there is a rubbing sound coming from the suspension so the overall condition of the motor and suspension have yet to be seen. Hopefully the insurance company decides to not total it out and I can get it back put together and in good working order. Thanks to everybody for there help and concern!

Car is now home did some minor work on it today but mostly going to be waiting to hear from the insurance company.

February 15th

Some night shots of Dusty's GT and the Cobra this is after we left autorama.

Snapped some pictures of the Cobra with the new hood and lights.

February 12th
Autorama pictures

January 31st
Brit got a bug. It needs a paint job and a interior but has new almost everything else. It will more then likely be sporting some flames soon.

January 12th
Me and Dusty helped a friend install Eibach springs on his Integra. Hopefully now that it rides a lot nicer with new shocks and springs we can talk him into coming to a Autox or two with us.

Stock struts are crappy and have a cheap allen key on top which is a major pain.

Few pictures with the front apart.

Trying to figure out how much to cut off the bump stop just a few Millimeters but how many inches......

EEEYYY

Joe W doing the typical pose if you are taking pictures with a import (and you happen to be a import model Joe seems to have forgotten he isn't a import model thou)

December 14th
Well here are some pictures I've been needing to post.

Look both fog lights work now and it has a new Steeda tri ax too woot (Dusty's car that is).

Betsy outside with the GT hood on just thru it on to keep the water out of the engine bay.

No more engine as of today last things to get off the car are, power steering rack, dash, front sway bar, wiring harness, and tank and fuel lines then its off to the yard for this one.

Look crappy 2nd gen back seats are good for something after all.

Dusty undoing a last few of the lines on the rear of the engine before it came out.

Don't turn you back on him when he is using a hammer.

Dusty really shouldn't be allowed to play with hammers. The caveman comes out and its just scary.

Stupid Thing Brian learned today.
No matter how late or tired you are generally speaking letting Dusty play with a sledge and or hammer is a bad idea. (See brake booster and windshield) Slightly related quote that somehow fits this instance.
"With no knowledge of cars. He, armed only with the skills of an 18th century blacksmith, removed the front axles and wheel bearings, damaging both in the process "

November 21st
Well Dusty has him self a new car a 2002 GT Silver check out the pictures below it has a few mods also. We went to the last autox of the season Dusty wasn't going to race so he followed me out there but once we got there the temptation to race became to much for him so of course he had to join in the fun. The course was a very fast course 2 very long straits into hard braking sections (top of 3rd for me on the 2nd strait) no slaloms or anything overly technical on this one I guess maybe the BMW club was trying to keep it simple because of the rain. Regardless it was a blast in the rain!
The results where:
771 Dusty 2002 Mustang GT 109.186 2.719 16.979
333 Brian 1995 Ford Mustang 109.810 0.624 17.603
Dusty got me by .624 very close. Wish I had some traction control and rain treads :P. As for our times vs. the field well we still suck compared to everybody else but we continue to not care and have a great time racing each other. (I think we are really only competing with each other LOL)

Overall great day I can' wait for next season. Planning on working on tweaking the brakes a little bit (they work great now but I'm hoping a bias controller will make the backs bite a bit more helping the nose dive) along with the install of some sub frames, and a shift light. Dusty is doing the same in a slightly different order he's already got a shifter on order (stock shifters suck hardcore) and planning on gears after that.

Also the engine is out of the parts car left the camera at home so will have to get some pictures next time I'm there, we will be done with the parts car after another day or 2 of work on it.

Waiting in the Grid.

Dusty running his car only had it 4 days and already flogging it shame shame. (No Mustangs where harmed in today's activities some tires where badly burned however.)

Me running the Car.

Some shots of our cars after everybody had cleared out.

1st and 2nd place points leaders for the BMW club this season. (Meaning these guys know how to drive)

October 26th
PROGRESS WE HAVE PROGRESS ON THE PROJECT!

For the first time in about 11 months we are working on the project for a change! Started stripping the parts car Sunday. Sunday we got off the hood, right front fender, part of the front bumper, tail lights, and started disconnecting stuff under the hood. We left the garage with the car looking like this.

Today we hit it even harder. Got the back bumper, rear springs, rear shocks, rear brake lines, gas tank, complete front bumper, left fender, and mostly finished up disconnecting stuff under the hood and we put the donut 14's on the back (we intend to roll it out on 2 wheels since it should be really light).

Almost down to a shell. Are stack of blue sunbird parts is starting to make us look like a chop shop!

Car up in the air as we are getting the gas tank out really dirty under there car has had a oil leak for awhile it would seem.

Got a few things left to take care of under the hood mostly stuff that involves getting under the car which we where too tired to do late in the day.

Here the car is slammed tucking some 14's yo looks kind of cool actually. Car is just sitting on the bump stops now no springs or shocks.

Here me and Dusty are very dirty and semi tired. I think that is my mad scientist look I'm given the thumbs up but my thumb is so black you can't see it.

Stupid things we learned today:
A 5ft extension is handy if you are lazy and want to sit on your ass while turning a bolt 5ft away.

A Sunbird Vert sitting on the rear bump stops is actually near perfect angle for a comfy sit in the "recliner" front seats.
When removing springs, shocks, and bump stops. Make sure you are completely done getting anything else you may want from that side of the car such as a gas tank or brake lines or sway bars they are now impossible to get out ohh yah that jack you had gonna have to pry that out too.

October 13th

Me, and Mason @ redline. Got the Cobra to Redline its a 1/8 mile track.
My best run in the car was a 9.26 @ 77.79 with a my best 60ft of the night being 2.10. Still some improvement to be done from me mostly on burning out (who knew it took some practice), launching (I didn't want too go to hard on it without SFC), and shift points (time for that shift light I've been wanting). Mason ran his 89 Coupe with bolt ons and some other stuff, his best of the night was 9.09 or so on street tires. Overall it was a fun and night and thanks to Chris and Mason for helping me out.

September 25th

This was a fun course very fast with a lot of sweepers (I almost hit the top of 3rd at one point). The Nittos on my car actually stuck very well once they where warmed up. Did ok the Cobra is very quick out there and handles a lot better then my Sunfire. Unfortunately I was driving very sloppy late braking, braking mid turn, wrong gears, etc. But hey it was my first time out and it was a blast. I need to look into some things before the next time I take it out the overflow puked coolant for awhile but the stock gauge showed the temps where fine?, 4th gear is gone time for a rebuild, and the tach spun past 7k in 2nd so I'm wondering just how much the stock tach is off or if the car has a chip. Overall I'm happy with the car and I think I can be pretty fast out there if I just learn how to drive it right. We tried to make a car show in Grapevine but weren't able to find it so just had some dinner that night somewhere else, shortly there after dusty's car got some kind of miss under acceleration going to have to look into that hopefully its cleared itself up.

Dusty's Camaro in race trim. His best of the day was 1:24.

My car after the day is up track rims already off at this point. Cool picture of the Cobra even thou I've got some water spots going on (5 min car wash because we thought we where late for tech but the autox started 1.5 hours late or so) And Ashley helping out with changing rims. My best of the day was 1:20.

Aggie97's car before he headed home. Man this car sounds wonderful (H/C/I+ more) and sticks to the turns nicely too!
You can see his site here also.
www.aggie97.com

September 15th
Small update:
Updated the site a bit also redid the to do list a bit. (but not nearly enough)

In other news Dusty was rear ended by a girl who can't drive the other day! Less then 3 weeks after getting his car back from a paint shop with a new rear bumper it needs another one! So expect to see some more rental car action! (AutoX plans are in the works for this one!)

Also great news some retard was trying to break into our garage again. Luckily this time some of Garlands Finest got the guy in the act and he is currently in jail for B&E. Hopefully we can get charges pressed on him and maybe a search warrant issued for our stuff missing from last time!

August 23rd
Back to school for me should mean me and Dusty can get back to working on the project after I dump one of my 2 jobs. Also updated the site with a little better format should make it load quicker since I had a lot off pictures on the main page would look better if tripod didn't suck and I cared more. :)

August 11th
A few updates here. First and foremost we now have a turbo for the Sunbird. It's a T3 and should make for a quicker spool, less heat, and more room to grow then the stock size turbo.

Also I got some track rims for my Cobra. They are stock 95 Cobra Rims with 275 Nitto 555R's for the back and 245 Falken's in the front. Not sure how well they will do on the AutoX course seeing as the Nitto's are a drag radial and designed to be ran at a lower pressure with a lot of sidewall flex. Either way I doubt they could be much worse then plain street tires.

As for the garage we are still needing to continue cleaning fortunately that is almost done. We also haven't been there in almost a month guess we are waiting to get some new tools to work with. :) Also got my speed cal on my Mustang installed today speedo is about 99% correct from what I gather by a quick mile marker test really happy with that, found out the car has a aluminum driveshaft while it was up in the air today, also while I had the center console apart I found out the cars shifter wasn't in the lowest position so I adjusted it and it is so much nicer now! With those mods I'm getting even happier with the car maybe I will get lucky and find some more aftermarket parts the PO hadn't mentioned. (hey it could happen?)

August 5th (The Day as a Ricer)
Well Dusty's car got into a little accident which I won't go into, so he ended up with a rental car. Thursday night before the car show Dusty decided to dress up the rental and get it ready for the show (ricer meet at starbucks he met me at the Hotrod show) so he got a mad tyte exhaust system (Maxwell house coffee can because its good to the last drop) installed before he left work. After he got to the show me and him decided to put on some custom vinyl (duct tape Type R = 15hp to the wheels)), needing that special touch a friend helped us out and we really made it stand out buy doing a custom euro wiper (cuts down the wind resistance car can easily do 180+ now) now it was really pimping. Later the car being dirty enough after several off-road adventures and more E-braking then we can discuss got some nice custom flames also.

Highlights of the night/week where:
Reving the engine at the hotrod show sky high and the fart can went FLYING OFF! It was a classic Stupid Corner Moment.
Standing behind the car while it was wound out bouncing off the limiter and the fart can actually putting out a lot of air oddly, enough to make your pants blow in the wind.
Seeing groups of riceboys around it laughing car got alot of attention.
This tiny 1.8 motor getting worse gas mileage then my Cobra with 3.73's! He was getting probably 9mpg! IF THAT!

July 18th
Well missing the updates again.... Good news is the junk pile is gone! Driveway is so empty it is begging for another parts car or something! On the down side some jerk asses saw the trash dumpster in the front of the house and decided to see what was going on in the back I guess. Broke in the garage and stole a large amount of our tools (had to be a truck full seeing as they got a top chest weighing in at at least 450lbs). Its somewhat of a set back and a turn off to the project for us hopefully the insurance company will cover what was taken from us thou. It is sad people can't work for there stuff (as we feel we have after taking on the challenge of cleaning this garage up!) Anyhow so as to not leave on a sour note I got a new car. It's a 95 Mustang Cobra Rio Red with Black leather about 64k on the clock. Just some boltons for now first big mod is going to be fixing some stuff the last owner neglected then getting myself a set of 17inch track rims and junk tires to put on and get some seat time out on the autox course!

May 24th
Spent all day cleaning the garage, Its almost done! Me and Dusty lugged a garbage can that had to weight about 400lbs to the curb! We have also got some fresh junk yard parts including a turbo manifold, 2 strut bars (one needs a bit of work), a passenger mirror delete, a very clean trunk with no holes in it, and a complete MPFI setup with a slightly larger TB. Hopefully we can get the turbo fuel rail to clear the larger TB otherwise we won't be bothering with swapping it on for awhile because it will mean us buying larger injectors from the get go so it will have to wait.

MPFI TB is roughly 2.25 inches.

Stock TB is roughly 2 inches.

May 23th
Well been long while since a update but we have be semi busy gathering needed stuff. Got another tool chest cleaned out. (this one only took 4 hours but at least it had air tools in it Woot!) Got us some nice peg board and huge shelves from a closing K*B toys for really cheap. Have acquired a nice red engine hoist. Also went to the Texas Pre bash and met some other jbods from surrounding states. No 2nd gens though.

Dusty's car. For sale btw!

In the morning at the lake.

Going to sonic for lunch. (way to go hands! :P )

On the way to speedzone.

March 13th
Well I’m finally back from spring break, time to get back to work! Over spring break I did some more research and also drew up a rough diagram for how we are going to plumb up our turbo system. Also refreshed our to do list and now the for sale section has something in it. (Note only stuff mentioned in the for sale section is for sale as of yet we do plan to mostly part out the Sunbird GT the Model A will NOT be sold so please don’t ask)

March 2nd
Well today we dropped the gas tank since this car has been sitting for 4 years we figured it would need some cleaning as well as the fuel lines. We where correct the gas tank had all kinds of junk in it and it was broken on the inside also, so hopefully the 89 GT's tank is in better shape if not we may look into a fuel cell. I went ahead and stripped most of the stupid granny rack leaving just the outside parts on for now. Dusty took some time and hand drew some very rough ideas for flame styles on the side of the car with a dry erase marker (yah we could care less about the paint at this point!) We also started cleaning the tool chests finally and as we thought it is going to take awhile we got one tool chest emptied out and cleaned after about 2 1/2ish hours (yes it took that long to dig through this junk). Anyway here are the pictures.

Feb. 27th
Well most of today was spend on installing a door on our garage LOL. It was a PITA because the door frame was bent to hell but we got it on after working on it for about 3 hours or more. We also charged the 89 and started the engine to hear it run it is nice and loud without an exhaust manifold. We also got the Betsy up on jack stands and ready for us to start getting ready for pulling the engine.

Feb. 17th
Well today we started by cleaning up our 88 SE "Betsy" by giving it a good scrub and getting all the dirt that had settled onto it after 4 years of sitting. We then started stripping the interior because it was easy and we knew it would go quick we got everything out short of the dash pretty much. Later in the day we went and picked up our parts car an 89 GT convertible.

Intro: (December)
Well where does it all start. Well me and my friend Dusty have been into autocross and racing for a few years now. Just recently in about the last 2 years we have started to become somewhat active in racing autocross. We both wanted to race but both knew we couldn't race our daily drivers regularly. We had been kicking around the idea for a project car for some time but never really decided on what kind of car we would want to work on. We eventually decided on Dusty's 1988 Sunbird SE "Betsy" it was free, it was his first car, but it hadn't run in about 4 years or so after some issues with the head then the main bearings. We now had the car at his grandfather’s unused garage. This garage is perfect for us because we finally have a place to tear stuff down and not worry about being rushed out at the end of the day or anything, and it also has every tool we could need basically. Bad thing was this garage was a wreck! It is about a 2 1/2 car garage but it was so unorganized and full of junk we couldn't work in it at all. Before we cleaned it, it just had a pathway to the work bench and the door that was about it. We spent about 36 hours or more cleaning this garage from top to bottom and we still aren't really done. After all this it is clean enough for us to get our 88 Bird, Model A and Go kart in with room left over to get to the work bench and all the tool boxes with no problem.