C4 challenge car

In reply to Crazier :

With no drags this year you can run it without a top if you want. 

I thought Scca requires roll cage or bolt on factory top.

May just be for rallycross

In reply to Crazier :

Correct for rallyx, autox is fine without it. 

Still up in the air about my top.

Finally have an answer for my unrelenting valve train noise.

Bad pushrod guide plates.

Got new ones coming for $20. Will post pics if the old ones after we get them swapped.

Thanks for sticking it out with me Pete, I know it has not been a thrill ride, and you have been lot of help.

In reply to Crazier :

Well I figured I couldn’t talk you out of it, so the next best thing is to give you guidance when I can!

SO THIS VALVE TRAIN NOISE, pushrod should not touch the guides, NEED A PIC

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In addition to those guide plates that allowed the push rods to be off center, one of the intake bolts was in the wrong spot, making it to long and the pushrod was hitting it.

Replaces the off brand guide plates with a crane set and swapped that bolt.

Have to double check the clearance on the rest of the bolts, clean up the threads on the rocker studs and then reset the valve lash, and just maybe I will have it running.

Noise is all gone.

Next up is brakes, more weight reduction, and moving computer under the dash.

In reply to Crazier :

Awesome, congrats!

SO Sorry i didn't get back. looks like the damage was from mis bored slots, sometimes I have seen scraping to one side meaning a bad install, throw a towel down and run it without valve covers to make sure of the alignment.I prefer cleaning up oil to replacing parts.

Its been a long couple weeks. The thing refuses to idle unless i take out the chip with the tune in it.

Waiting on pcmforless to call me back.

Not much progress. Pcmforless won't call me back. I would not expect them to cover it under any kind of warranty being 3 years old and on its third owner, but some tech support may have been nice.

Drove to detroit last night and spent the rest of my budget. Picked up a stand alone harness and two more intakes, 2 computers a radiator a couple of fans some sensors a couple brackets and block off plates. An electric water pump andsome odds and ends for $450

I am going to try and pull my stock harness this weekend. Then i will try to use the new harness as a guide for cutting down and rewiring the old one.

While doing so i can repair any damage clean all conections and swap out the computers. Hopefully this will be the end of my idle problem as i have it narrowed down to bad wires/grounds a bad ecm or a bad memcal.

I only needed a couple of the things that he had but he wanted it all to go at once so...

Hmm i curently have 3 stock intakes, 2 stealth ram intakes and an lt1 intake modified for a distributor/old school small block.

Spent a large part of the day ripping apart my dashboard.

Anouther large part of the day removing wires and switches from a scrap motor home.  

I think i have enough parts to make a batery relocation kit. All I need are some conectors and terminal ends.

I am confused about where i have to put the master kill switch though. I have one i think will work that was used as a shut off for the generator in the motor home.

Seems like nhra wants it near the rear bumper and scca wants it on the cowl or the roll cage near the drivers window?

Anyone know?

Well.  All the wireing has been removed from the car. I am essentially rewireing it from scratch with junkyard wires.

I've never been much for wiring, this is a big challenge and slow going.

[URL=http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/rbates74/media/20180928_133713_zpsqr3wguef.jpg.html][/URL]

[URL=http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/rbates74/media/20180928_133700_zpsp2a7j1ot.jpg.html][/URL]

In reply to Crazier :

The good news is you only really need a few circuits for it to run & drive. 

Well... Wiring Is NOT my thing. I sort of hate it.

I drove to Indiana this morning to buy a set of c6 z06 rims tires and spacers that were supposedly sound but cosmetically flawed. With good rear tires and bald fronts. $300

Price was too low, i knew there had to be problems... But i had him send me a bunch of pics and everything looked kosher.

I make the drive and find one of the rears has a "fender slash" from coming off the car but it still looks like it will work the cut is in the tread part of the tire but as i look closer i see a bunch of scrapes around the inside of the rim and gouges out of the "mounting surface" from the lugnuts breaking off.

I told him to get ****** and thanks for wasting my whole morning.

I ended up buying them anyhow. He pointed out that the rear 325 40 19 tires are like $400 each new, and a nice set of those rims go for a grand.

I offered him $100 for the non gouged rim and $100 for the rear tires.

He took it.

I think if i knock down the highspots of those gouges that they will still hold just fine as long as it balances out ok.

I have 1 damaged but useable 7×11 rim from a c4 zr1 and now these two. Id like ti get one more zr1 rim from somewhere and run 17×11 tires on the fronts and 19×12.8 on the rear for autox and put the 18×8.5 on the front fir thw drags.

So. Not a lot of progress on the wireing, the engine harness is on, the battery is relocated to the rear with a master shut off and i have a plan "sort of" for the rest of the wireing, as soon as i get thw stearing wheel off to rewire the ignition. What a PAIN!

Oh and my new rear tires have a 12.75 inch contact patch!

I made him give me bills of sale, and i saved all our negotiation texts. Of all my travel deals this is the one im worried about looking bad.

Just that one rim and tire (if you could find someone looking for just one) is worth more (even with scratches in the paint) than what i paid for all of it, but like i told him,  its winter and besides how many people are looking for a single rim and tire?

I will try to get a bunch of pics for the next update. I find it to be quite awkward and time consuming to put pics on photobucket and then copy the links on here, i only have my phone and boost mobile internet, no comuter or wifi...

I have a dilemma. I've been trying to trade my engine for an l82 out of an old stingray or a short block from an 84 or 85 vette. The right deal has not presented itself as it would have to be an "installed deal" as in i let them have my motor and they put theirs in covering unforseen exapences themselves.

The engine i have is not suitible for boost, the above mentioned stock "junkyard" motors came with forged pistons that will take a couple "boost mistakes" where my hyperutectics will just grenade.

My buddy Chuck has a buddy Charlie, Charlie runs an engine shop as a side hustle as a side hustle to his side hustle for $50 an hour he will let you drag your engine in and teach you how to rebuild it with his equipment (pretty cool huh? He calls it "mybadengines" and can be found on facebook)

Charlie just did a rebuild on a turbo 383 and has a set of usable pistons for free/scrap. For $100 he will help me disasemble my engine and install the pistons. I only have to buy rings (maybe maybe not) and any gaskets we cant reuse.

My projected budget cant take much more than a 50 to $100 hit and even then im likely to have to cut something else.

Do i have to count his instruction fee into my budget? I know i will have to count the pistons as at least scrap and im not sure what rings and a hedgasket will cost.

It is funny how i thought "I've got a corvette, this will be easy, ive got it all sewn up"

I spend an hour and some times two hours almost every day on Craigslist, ebay and some car forums.

I have scoured the internet for info on building wireing planning designing and repairing corvette race cars.

Ive spent countless hours struggling to put things together I KNOW I am going to have to take apart again and a lot of it wont end up in the final project at all.

I am currently hung up on getting the stearing wheel off, so that i can pull the key cylinder so i can rewire the ignition system with parts and wires i spent hours removing from scrap vehicles...

Ive been offered a stripped corvette chasis for scrap, chuck is getting it off craigslist for the frame. Now i plan to spend a couple of days (meaning weeks becouse i only get 1 or 2 days a week to actually pick up tools) doing some weird stuff to this chassis on parts that will never make it anywhere near my car... Just to test some theory of things i think should be possible before i try it on my car.

I am still contemplating removing my engine for a piston swap that will entail disassembly of everything but the cam.

I already have a rear end calipers brake ines sway bars and a spring i am supposed to swap. I need to swap in an sfi approved flex plate.

Ive swapped out the computer and engine harness (and i may be replacing the "new" harness with a different new one before it is over) ive strippes out the entire interior and the dash and am in process of re wireing the chassis.

 I will have removed replaced or rehabbed virtually every peice of this car. And when i am done it is likely to look like a rolling wreck escaped from a filming of a bad remake of mad max. And I'm doing it just for fun? I may be buding this car for $2019.00 but i bet i end up with $50,000.00 worth of time in it.

In reply to Crazier :

You really need the proper steering wheel puller, and there’s a spring compressor tool to get the lock cylinder out. They should both be available for rental at the auto parts stores, though they’re not very expensive if you want to buy them. 

You're completely correct about the $$$ worth of “free” labor you put into a Challenge car. In some ways it’s really the main point of the event. 

Do you want to be on a list with all the other challenge crazies?

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/please-link-your-2000-challenge-build-here/144111/page1/

So. I went over to inspect the 383 "forged" dish pistons. They are Keith black hyperutectic. Same crap i already have.

However. The budget race captured charlies imagination and he wants in, sort of.

What has been proposed is that we build an entire shortblock useing used parts (except bearings and gaskets and the like)

He is willing to let me scrounge all the parts i can use from his piles of rebuild rejects. Supply the "rebuild kit" and show me how to use all the machines to do the machinework and assembly myself at his shop.

In exchange he wants all the turbo parts that i have. 

So far there is a forged 383 crank that we would have to turn.

Two 400 blocks(we would have to use bearing spacers) one 4 bolt that needs a sleeve and one two bolt that doesn't.

The lowest "dome" i have found forged is on a set of 400 pistons and those would still have me at 12.6 to 1. So its either a high compresion 406 forged or a higher compresion 350 or hyperutectic or oldscool cast.

Going with 12.6 to 1 would require me to run race gas or e85 but it may be worth that sacrifice.

Id get to build it myself over the winter. Pick out and touch every part that goes in it, balance and check every tolerance.

My curent heads wont work with this set up. But that is a problem for later.

I am going to jump further down the rabbit hole that is the GRM challenge. And more specifically the rabbit hole of rebuilding a totaled c4 corvette with scrap/salvage or otherwise broken and discarded parts.

Crazier said:

I am going to jump further down the rabbit hole that is the GRM challenge. And more specifically the rabbit hole of rebuilding a totaled c4 corvette with scrap/salvage or otherwise broken and discarded parts.

Somewhere, Mr Burns can be heard exclaiming, "excellent".