POR update

Finished POR on cradle today, did top bottom and insides, also got the rear frame rails POR'd as well, also got the piece welded in for the left rear cradle bolt.

Returning to the blog...

I'll have at least weekly, in some cases daily blog entries once again now!  I've got a guy helping out real regular, we'll call him Nate.  He'll be providing updates as they come now. 

This is for the build log of the flagship car of 100 MPG Motors.  It is an early 90's Lambo Diablo kit car.  A D&R Replicar to be exact.  With a mid 90's interior package.  I will also have him doing a copy/paste of the entries from here, to the other build log (kitcentral.com) for progress as it goes.

Once the car is in a drivable chassis state, we will then work on the ability to have the car run on normal fuel injection or switch to fumes only mode.  Then we'll test the automation of cold starts on normal FI and it moving to fumes on its own.  This will test the controls where we leave it on Fumes mode but it uses the sensors to know to start under cold conditions on FI and watch for water temp to rise to switch and how smoothly it can handle that.  It will be computer controlled so this would be a good time to get that ironed out.

Of course in parallel I'll have other guys helping out on the body/door builds/etc.  So we can try to get this car done this calendar year if at all possible.  My goal is a drivable chassis in 3 months.  We'll see.  From there it will depend on scheduling the car into other places for other pieces to be finished off.  Interior.  Body.  Doors.  Paint.

We recently (and will show this in pics tomorrow) got some rust took care of in the tail end on the DS of the car.  Right where the engine cradle bolts up to the tail end of the car, it was so rusted out, the weld nut you should bolt to had fallen thru.  We put fresh metal in it this past weekend so now we're getting the rust knocked out and making the cradle ready to take the engine/transmission work.

I've also got the wheels out getting powder coated for the centers.  I have real Lambo Murci wheels that I want to give the SV look to.  Black centers with silver surrounds.  They should be back by this coming Friday.

So I'm getting ahead of myself with what all is coming this week, but giving folks who used to watch this blog from time to time something to look forward to. 

Appreciate all the well wishes for getting it done.  I'm so glad to be working on making it happen right now.  I can't tell you.  It's been a long time coming.  I've been collecting car parts for about 13 years.  So It's about time to begin the assembly... don't ya think?  :-) 

Lost both of my parents this past year and it was a really bad year personally on a lot of fronts.  What did do well was my business, and I'm thankful for that.  I'm looking forward to not wasting any more time on this thing as these things can go.  For folks with forever projects, you know what I'm talking about.

Thanks,
Coop

The cam specs

Here's a shot of the page that has the can details. Gotta have a blower cam if you want to run fumes and not back fire.

More updates coming again soon

You can see from the picture, good things are coming to the fumes business soon. Stay tuned. :)

Major setback

Or is it an opportunity? While running the 78 Trans Am on fumes once again today, I made a horrible discovery of water in the oil.

Yeah.  That's what I said too!  At least that much.

But why do I say that it very well may be an opportunity?

Because that LT1 that came out of the 95 Trans Am maybe getting swapped in place of it.

The 95 TA motor is the end game for what I'm working on anyway, I might as well dive right in.  I'll get it out of the shop and into my garage do I can do the motor swap, then move forward from there.

That gives me plenty of down time on the 400 motor, to figure out what's going on there. If it's a blown head gasket, I hope, or if it's a crack somewhere, I hope not.

I didn't realize the motor was almost bone dry on coolant. So it's another case of there ya have it.

Wish me luck on the swap. I've already found out how easy it is to get a TH350 mounted to the LT1, so that'll be cool.

Take care y'all, it's a jungle out there.

Coop

78TA on fumes again

Got the TA to fire right up this time.

I didn't let the car fully warm up. But I did get to crank it and rev it a little bit and the transmission did not smoke. I added about one and a half quarts of oil to the transmission so I'm sure that helped.

If it was warm, I think it would idle a little smoother.

Long time since last post

But there has been a lot of progress.

There was the go-kart going through all of it's updates:

Running on fumes in the shop.

Then I got it out onto the road and had a little more progress.

Then I removed the bubbler and got it running using the on-board fuel tank.

Next I added a heater and then this thing really came alive!  I had so rich a mixture it was killing the motor!  And I had to turn the fumes down.  It was running like a bat out of hell then!

________________________________________________


So then I moved on to the 78  Trans Am. . . .  :-o

I have had this car off and on, forever.  It was my first car and I've got it back again.  It's been through hell and back already a couple of times over.  It is in the process of getting fixed up again (I'd say for the 3rd time)  my first time of fixing it up was in 1986, then mother took it for a cleanup in the interior last time she had it (fresh motor build and tranny build too then), but now it's back to basics and body work again.  Anyhow.  I had some buddies come over and help me get it out of the trailer and into the shop.

Here's some pics from that night.

Had a blow out in earlier 2000's and the tread cleaned the right front spoiler and center spoiler out from under the car.  I recovered the center and it could be reused with some repairs but that right front, we never could find it.  I'm sure it was in a thousand pieces after it left the car.

 Not the proper bird for the hood but was all I could afford when I was 18 and getting it done on E-1 pay.

Bill had to put some air in the tires.  We still scraped bottom letting it roll down into the shop.

_______________________________________________________

So then I got to thinking about some dual bubbler action like I've done in the 355 LT1 videos.  Where I've shown that V8 motor on the stand running.  Well.  I've went and done it now.  After some trial and error on the air/fuel mixture and ways of enclosing that chamber above the carb so it only gets fumes..... I've made it happen.

So I took a 2" high, 10" diameter air cleaner from Edlebrock.  I took an old kick panel (it used to be on our front door of our house) and I tossed out the air filter.  Sandwiched the kick panel in between the top and bottom cover pieces from Edlebrock.  Drilled and pop-riveted that piece together. Used electrical tape to cover all the screw holes that originally came in the kick panel.  Taped up the top and bottom and join locations so I didn't get any air leaks.  Then I used my unibit to drill out holes to pass the bubbler tubes into the chamber (which is way too big and filled with nothing).

I tried to get the car to start but there was too much vacuum in the big black bubbler and it was imploding.  I unscrewed the drain cap at the one end of that bubbler and this relieved the negative pressure in that tank.  Damn that 400 is hungry.

So there you go it's another case of there you have it.  The car ran for a little over a minute as it was running before I started the video.  But as it was warming up there was smoke coming out from under the car.  Then I remembered that I didn't have hardly any tranny fluid in that TH350.  So I quickly ended the video and will be replacing the tail shaft seal and putting fluid in there this weekend (hopefully).

Y'all take care and stay tuned for more updates.  Thanks for your support.  :-)

Coop