Our own personal/shop projects have been moving along last few months.

The 64 turbocharged Fairlane has logged quite a few miles as the summer came to an end. Its racked up around 9K as of recently with no issues thus far. Drivabilty is good, power is great and economy on road trips seems to be settling out to around 16MPG or so. NICE!

Recent trip to the coast and we grabbed this picture.

Camping in the hot rod!

Had a ton of fun this trip.

Marks turbo truck is getting Swapped over to LS power so out with the old “we have no idea what you are small block Chevy” and in with the new 5.3 engine (that we still don’t know a lot about). Swap mounting plates and most likely a car manifold will make the swap pretty strait forward. It will of course stay turbocharged.

The turbo van is moving along as well. We killed the mitsu turbo and came up with a good gt3076 garrett ball bearing unit. We pulled the head, lapped the valves, replaced the head gasket, bolts and timing belt, bolted on the turbo manifold and started making the turbo fit the van.

We had to build a new waste gate actuator bracket for the bigger compressor and also to relocate it for intake manifold clearance.

Summer might not be here, but it might as well be. lots of stuff going on.

Gt500’s start to break drive shafts at 600+rwhp if they run any kind of tire at the track. To get ahead of that problem, a new aluminum 4″ shaft is the ticket, also eliminating the carrier bearing cuts down on the number of drive shaft loops you need and the number of places a broken shaft can pole vault you. This shaft from Stage3 is a nice piece. It uses the factory rear flange and a machined steel locate/adapter for the rear of the shaft.

New TVS blower for the buggy showed up. ready to start mocking up on the engine. Really cool unit. Stock rods and pistons on the ls6 though, so were gonna run it pretty low boost till we get the rest of the rig sorted. I suspect a fully built 6.0 will be in the future, so we spec’d the blower we can grow with.

Starting a new LQ4 swap in a 69 Camaro. Got the engine stripped down for a new set of lq9 rods and pistons for the engine. Also purchased is a set of ls9 head gaskets, arp bolts, LQ9 camshaft and Microsquirt engine management. One of the cool parts of the swap is the simplicity of the motor mounts. Edelbrock supplied the ones we are going to use so we can use the factory style SBC mounts. We are also going to be running a carb style single plane manifold for the cathedral port 317 heads.

This engine will end up turbo charged when its installed, so the final compression with the thicker gaskets puts us at about 9.6 with the 317 heads. Pretty good for a turbo LS motor.

Another side project for the summer is a BBQ trailer. Mark had an old trailer chassis laying around and it was decided that we need to stack a few BBQ’s on it and give it a new life. So the old body was stripped, and the work got started on the frame. Figure it will be great for the car show season. Now we need something cool to tow it with!

Marks truck FINALLY got an exhaust last week. The neighbors can sleep easier now. We used a left over magnaflow muff and some 3″ tube we had left over. Added welder and BAM, we got a truck that only looks nasty now. Sure does run great. Mark has been using it to commute from washougal lately with no hiccups to speak of. At least new ones. I’m pretty sure the rear main fell out years ago, but aside from the leaks, runs hard. We ordered the parts and pieces to inter-cool it this week as well. Spent a whopping 125$. At the rate we are going, this 125$ needs to return 45HP or the HP per dollar is gonna start to slip a bit. I figure 14PSI will get us there. At some point our fuel system is definitely going to need addressing. 

We dumped the exhaust before the axle to keep it quick and simple. And we ran out of 3″ pipe and don’t feel like buying any more. So this is were it stops. With the exhaust on the truck, the turbo wistle is super promenant. This truck really shouldn’t sound  this good.

Well we got Marks turbo truck pretty well sorted out. We finished the rear axle mods and got the back of the truck down where it belongs, so with the new wheels and tires it looks great. Complete with wad of bubble gum Bondo patch. I really dig it. Looks really “right”

We also finally got the boost control sorted out, figured out our fuel supply issue and dyno flogged the thing. On 8 PSI it made 301rwhp and 383rwtq corrected. Really not to bad. Its what we were going for, 300hp for a super small investment. Considering a “good” running small block chevy makes about 260 rwhp AFTER it gets sorted out, I think this is a pretty good win. Normally $3-4000 dollars would have been needed to put a motor together that would run this well NA, and this one does it for a whole lot less, just look at the ZZ4 crate engine. Not to mention it has all kinds of under the hood cool factor. During one pull, we screwed up and ended up making about 12-13PSI where we actually saw 345HP, but being non inter-cooled and being completely ignorant of the engines internals we wanted to stay at about 8 PSi and 300whp. At least until we get enough miles on it to where we feel like turning it up. But on a good note, the afr was still solid, so its in the future I’m sure.

Dyno graph below.

AR-M350_20130426_130808 

We ended up with a mechanical fuel pump that was boost referenced to the charge pipe, 23* of total timing, 68 jets in the primary, 82’s in the secondary with the power valve channels cut out to .083. If you look on the graph, that yielded a solid 11.2 afr pretty steady with good distribution according to the plugs. The carb also had a few other mods done to the vents, choke horn, floats ect to work properly in this boosted blow-through application. A quick rip around the block was pretty fun, wheel spin, good torque, easy to drive and a bed to haul stuff.

It still leaks oil like a big dog, and I still have no idea what engine it is, but who cares, it does rolling burnouts.

TW

More new action here at fast.

Nice newer super duty got a set of headlights repaired. HID’s Install on these rigs sometimes run into problems with grounding due to the way the front radiator support is built and the routing of the factory harness. A new proper ground fixed the issue.

This second hand hotrod truck needs brakes, problem is what parts were used 20 years ago when it was put together? Getting the old brakes apart, cataloged and researched as to what they are, where they came from and most importantly, how do we get new ones can turn into a real time consuming issue. We were able to source everything we need new, now its just waiting on shipping.

This lightning came in with a no start concern. Initially thinking a simple fix we quickly figured out the motor would not turn over. We wheeled it into the shop and got it on a lift where we could try to bar it over and get a better idea of what was wrong. We were unable to turn the motor over by hand so we drained the oil to get an idea of engine condition. With no plug in the pan, no oil drained. It wasn’t until a screw driver was jammed in the hole that we were able to get any oil out of the engine and what came out looked like half dried asphalt.

Moral of the story, CHANGE YOUR OIL!

this truck ended up with a new long block and a lot of new parts that were simply not usable due to the oil sludge ruining them. This was a $10,000 repair that could have been avoided for about a hundred bucks worth of oil changes.

More carnage due to neglect and abuse. This car actually drove in on this “tire”. TPMS light flashing and the tire guts flopping all over the fender.

So next time the tpms light comes on, check the tire pressure, look for leaks, or bust out the wallet for a new tire. This tire would have been saved for about 10 bucks.

This shelby GT got gears and a tune. 4.10’s and a good tune can really wake these cars up. Especially the auto cars.

Started lowering the truck yesterday, new springs, new wheels, new tires, sectioned the contol arms to keep the camber in check, installed new prothane bushings in the upper and lower cross shafts and repacked the bearings. Still need to do the rear of course as it looks very goofy, but the front came together nicely. Hoping to install the flip kit and the new rear spring bushings tonight or tomorrow. This will get the axle up on the springs where it belongs and should give the truck a good look.

So our pal Doug brought his car in with a new street small block engine for some break in and dyno time. Car runs really well, making 430 at the tires on pump gas. We are hoping for some solid mid to low 10 second passes at the track in the near future. After being parked for a bit due to a move, its good to see the green car out and running again.

The big swap meet was last weekend and us guys at the shop took advantage to find some abandoned parts some new homes. All in all we sold a fair amount of parts and equipment over the weak end, in fact the spare bay we call the “Catch-All” is actually looking empty. 60-70 tires, shop equipment, wheels, turbo chargers, the old FJ chassis and even a car or two, pretty much anything not nailed down. So if we saw you there, thanks for stopping by.

We have a beautiful 65 Chevelle in the shop for the next few days getting a intake manifold fixed and some general service work performed. Its awesome that its a 4 speed car, a true low mileage survivor. After seeing so many of these cars modified with big wheels, engines, wide tires, big brakes, tinted windows ect. its cool to see a stock car. I have hot rod envy.

Here is the kit all finished up and installed on the truck. Runs pretty good so far. We are looking to get some good dyno results pretty soon and then get some fun street miles. Again, all we’re trying to do is build a super affordable kit that will easily out perform a normal naturally aspirated performance engine build. So far so good.

As a bit of a side project here at Fast, us guys in the shop decided to turbo another random engine. This one a SBC in Marks 77 swb chevy truck. Its almost done as of right now, with 90% of the fab finished. We cheated and used a block hugger for the drivers side so we only had to build the passenger manifold, cross over, and down pipe for the hot side. We still have to scrounge up a decent carb for this thing and finish the down pipe, but its pretty close. We plan to run a low 6-7 PSi non intercooled. We know nothing about this engine other than it leaks alot and is a small block chevy of some size. We hope to break 325WHP and have a bunch of fun doing it. Marks got some cool X-Nascar wheels and some lowering parts for it already, so it should turn out cheap, cool and fun. Plus, it will haul parts!

Here are the pics. Not much of any order, but you get the idea.