R82 Redux

[Gene]

Last year I bought Dune's Rorty R82 with the thought in mind that I always want to have a car that's running since I have another car that is hardly ever running.

I took the car out last October had had lots of fun and found a few things I wanted to change. This thread is about change and how one thing leads to another.

The car was fundamentally sound yet a few improvements were needed. Here's the initial list:
1. Mount rear portion of front A-arms in double shear.
2. Fix leaking gas tanks.
3. Limit rear suspension travel further or lower RPM unit to stop CV binding.

The changes got put on hold while I built my shop but I decided along the way to repower the car so I bought a 2007 Hayabusa engine from an organ donor's bad day. Finally the shop was finished and I unloaded the car from the trailer and started salivating.

Thinking I was going to make a simple fix to the gas tanks and limit rear travel so I could dune with the El Toro gang I removed the tanks and made them ready for welding. That plan turned south because although nicely made, the material was too thin and would never stop flexing and leaking.

Rather than build two new gas tanks (it had two 4 gallon tanks, one on each side of the car) I had a single, larger tank built at my local boat shop, L&J Marine. I took measurements and they filled the space with an 11 gallon beauty made from .12 material. It has an internal baffle, fuel return line and cool rollover vent that sticks through the bottom of the tank and rises into the fill neck. Leaking tank problem solved.

Next was the RPM being mounted too high in the frame making CV angles bad at full droop. Dune made a nice engine/RPM cradle but it sat too high. If I changed the RPM mounting location the entire cradle had to get modified. I want to drop the RPM at least 1.25 inches to relieve some angularity and allow the axles to plunge rather than bind and this is where one thing leads to another.

The radiator was mounted nice and high but I did not savor the fill neck up and over my head. Chances of a boil over are slim but boiling showers are not a good thing so I decided to change that.

I've had enough car problems to know that something bad was going to happen from gasoline leaking on the CBR 1000 header, the rear suspension binding and the radiator boiling over. So I had all these things needing changes and that leads me to the Hayabusa engine I bought for next winter.

I spent time gathering parts, asking for help and designing some new components. BTW - GK MACHINE ROCKS! At this point here is the plan at hand:

Repower with Hayabusa. Busasandrail helped me by tearing down and replacing the stock trans with a back-cut tranny while I learned. We finished that off by replecing camshafts with some nice performance grinds for more torque and a few ponies.

Remount the RPM so it sits lower in the frame. This provided a challenge and Protdie helped with this by giving me a CAD file with the RPM mounting points. My goal here was to build a cradle like Jody's that uses turnbuckles to tension chain and which also serves as rear engine mounts. That was a trip to make and needs to get mounted.

Remount radiator so it does not spew at my head.

Mount an oil cooler/RPM cooler.

Mount fuel distribution system.

Build left exit header pipe.

Rewire car, etc.

So a few pics are posted below. I'll post more in the coming weeks.

[Gene]

More pics

[Gene]

more

[busasandrail]

Nice work Gene....

[K-fab]

Good stuff!

Wanna buy a slightly used what used to be a class 10 desert racer and figure out how it fix all it's issues after you finish this project?

[Bullnerd]

Can you explain the header CAD drawing? Is that some type of program or just a cad drawing?

Nice looking stuff!

[El Toro]

Gene,
It never stops with you, But the work is always top shelf!

[Gene]

Bull,
I'm using MS Visio, a flow charting program that has objects I can size and shape. I design most parts using it then have someone make it in CAD if going to laser.

From having my other car's header built I knew how long each header tube is for a good torque profile. I bought a Speed Partz, S&S Tri-Y Merge Collector for mini sprints, modified midgets, dwarf cars, modified lites, tq midgets and more and quickly deduced that for everything to meet in the right place I needed to put the end of the collector between the cylinders.

Other constraints include the lower frame rail, the midrail behind the seats and also the oil filter on the front of the engine. The pipe has to clear all those and ideally will come out with the engine during removal.

Once I knew the constraints and where the collector should go I was able to create a respresentation of where the tubes should go and how long each piece of cut tube needed to be from beginning to end and where the bends were located.

After getting the Tri-Y collector I bought a used set of stock pipes and some prebent 1.5 diameter J bends and 180's. Then it came time to turn the 2 dimensional drawing into a 3d component.

For the most part it laid out exactly as planned. I cut the stock pipes apart to utilize the flanges and other pieces focusing mostly on bends. Then I used the new mandrel bent tubing to make everyhting fit.

Each tube is approximately the same length, plus or minus 3/4 inch. I'm having a professional TIG it together since I already know the outcome if I try doing the work. Eventually my skills will be there but this is not what I plan to learn on.

Making it was easier than I thought. Without the Jet horizontal/vertical hacksaw or Rigid 6" disc/belt sander in my shop it would have been very difficult.

[ProtoDie]

Looking real good Gene

I can't wait to see it together

[bdkw1]

Speaking of headers, came across this on another site. Pretty effing cool if you don't have the facility's for header fab.

YouTube - Custom Stainless Headers