GTA Camaro to NASA ST1

In reply to jimgood :

Goes to show what I know!  Glad that will cure your issues. Good luck with that seat, Houdini!

jimgood said:

I wanted to get the car out of the trailer to do a little work on it but we're having another cold snap and I need to run a heater in there. But the next thing I want to do is see if the seat out of my BMW will fit better in this car. It's already a full containment seat and doesn't have as much of a lay-back. I'm hoping it will help with egress.

I have a bad feeling I'll need to remove the roof in order to get the seats swapped.

I was able to install mine, but I will say it wasn't fun.  Felt like a proctologist... 

Sometimes the halo and shoulder restraints unbolt on those seats so it makes it easier to pull it out. Also on the older stock car chassis's the seat brackets have multiple holes so you can set better lay back, I dont know if your chassis would be the same. Are you looking for scrubs or sticker Goodyears? If you want stickers the first place I woud call is Circle Track Warehouse. Sometimes they stock them.

jh36 said:

In reply to jimgood :

Goes to show what I know!  Glad that will cure your issues. Good luck with that seat, Houdini!

Honestly, I'm taking what they said with a grain of salt. That's why I ordered two of each belt.

HalfFast said:

jimgood said:

I wanted to get the car out of the trailer to do a little work on it but we're having another cold snap and I need to run a heater in there. But the next thing I want to do is see if the seat out of my BMW will fit better in this car. It's already a full containment seat and doesn't have as much of a lay-back. I'm hoping it will help with egress.

I have a bad feeling I'll need to remove the roof in order to get the seats swapped.

I was able to install mine, but I will say it wasn't fun.  Felt like a proctologist... 

I'm not looking forward to it.

BKO5 said:

Sometimes the halo and shoulder restraints unbolt on those seats so it makes it easier to pull it out. Also on the older stock car chassis's the seat brackets have multiple holes so you can set better lay back, I dont know if your chassis would be the same. Are you looking for scrubs or sticker Goodyears? If you want stickers the first place I woud call is Circle Track Warehouse. Sometimes they stock them.

 

The current seat does not have shoulder restraints or a halo, which is one of the reasons I need to change it. The halo the seller provided with the car is incomplete. It's only the halo bolsters; none of the bracketry that would attach it to the non-existent shoulder restraints.

With respect to "scrubs" vs. "sticker Goodyears", I don't know the difference. My definition of scrubs is lightly used tires that come with a used tire price.

DISCLAIMER: Don't try this at home. Don't do as I did. Shop managers and OSHA inspectors, look away!

As I posted earlier, my weekend at VIR started off with me twisting off a wheel stud. The Willwood Wide 5 hubs on this car are brand spanking new and I really don't want to replace one at north of $220 just because of a broken stud. I made a futile attempt at the track to see if I could drive out the broken stud in the hopes of finding one locally. It just would not budge.

Since I have a spare hub (also with a broken stud) that the seller gave me, I decided to try pressing out a good stud and if that was successful, I would try to press out the broken one. Pressing seems like a straightforward process but the shape of this hub does not lend itself to fixturing on a press easily. But I pressed on and found a way.

I had a short piece of 3" angle steel. In order to keep the hub level with the angle under the stud, I had to use a 2x4 as a riser. It was within an 1/8" of perfect. Pressing out a full stud was pretty easy as I could just use the stump under the press. But with the broken stud, I had to use a deep well socket and a prayer. Amazingly, it held and nothing shot across the room. I positioned myself to the side of the press to minimize the chance that the socket could hit me if it popped out.

Here's the "fixture", obviously after I've already pressed out the studs:

I was surprised by how little galling occurred where the angle was positioned, probably 1/64" deep. Apparently, Willwood really doesn't care if you can replace a broken stud or not as the surface surrounding the head of the stud is just not conducive to pressing. Maybe there's a special tool.

So now I feel confident that I can pull off the hub that's on the car and replace the broken stud. And I don't have to do my next event on 4 studs!

Well played sir!  Nice touch averting your eyes during the pressing. 

Haha I always have a hand over the crotch whenever I press anything. It will do absolutely nothing to help but In my mind I'm a lot safer. Well done Jim! Welcome back to the 5 lug nut club.

At this point, is there a reason you can't push a new stud into the "test" hub and install that one on the car, leaving the hub on the car as the spare?

PunchyWrench - Ed Higginbotham said:

Haha I always have a hand over the crotch whenever I press anything. It will do absolutely nothing to help but In my mind I'm a lot safer. Well done Jim! Welcome back to the 5 lug nut club.

Priorities, man! Priorities!

HalfFast said:

At this point, is there a reason you can't push a new stud into the "test" hub and install that one on the car, leaving the hub on the car as the spare?

There are a couple of reasons. The hub on the car is a slightly different model. I'd rather not mix at this point.

The hub on the car has a bearing spacer. I don't want to have to remeasure and adjust that with the spare hub as that process is more than my pea brain can take at the moment.

The hub on the car has to be removed to replace it with the spare, so that time is not going to change. But I would have to thoroughly clean the spare hub and re-grease everything in order to use it as it has been sitting around for a long time and has bits of who-knows-what stuck in the grease. I can change the stud in the other hub in the same time or less.

Last, the spare hub now has two studs removed because practice. I was just going to use the good stud I removed to put in the hub on the car. If I want the spare to have two studs, I would need to rob a stud from the hub on the car. I have studs on order but no telling when they'll get here and I only have one day I can work on this and that's today.

In reply to jimgood :

Here is a great resource for Dorman lug studs.   You can download and sort / filter via dimensions

https://qa.dormanproducts.com/pages/products/wheel-hardware/index.aspx

In reply to HotNotch :

Thanks. I'll bookmark that.

I pulled the LF hub to get the stud replaced. That's going well but I noticed something I missed last time I had the wheel off. The caliper piston is overhanging the pads by quite a bit. It's overhanging on both sides of the pad (see second pic). Is this a thing?

Got the stud replaced in the hub. That was easy. I also replaced all the screws that hold the rotor to the adapter plate with new ones that are pre-drilled for safety wire. And here's my first attempt at safety wire after watching a couple of vids. My first one is the one at 3 o'clock, second one at 6 o'clock, etc. Definitely got better with each one.

After seeing how much the caliper overhangs the pads, I need to make sure that these bolts and the pig tails clear the caliper.

Your brake pad to piston interface is per specification. Not super common across all racing , but "Merica......I would go back to 3 o'clock and re-do that one, All the others were as good as anything I sent on to the track. F5000 and Can-Am cars.

TurnerX19 said:

Your brake pad to piston interface is per specification. Not super common across all racing , but "Merica......I would go back to 3 o'clock and re-do that one, All the others were as good as anything I sent on to the track. F5000 and Can-Am cars.

Thanks! Just never seen that. And I'll rewire that one since the hub is still on the bench. I got rained out last evening. Barely had time to get a tarp over the car. Hopefully I'll get it back together this morning. Chance of rain again in the afternoon. The joys of working in the driveway.

Well, the allen head bolts I chose would not clear the caliper mount bolts. I had to run to Tractor Supply and get some regular grade 8 hex head bolts and reuse the locking nuts (these are the thread distorting kind). So the hub is all set and back where it belongs.

After that, I started trying to install the transponder from my previous car into this one. I found a good spot on the front bumper frame. I got it screwed in place and as I was running the wires back to the firewall, I noticed there was already a transponder in the car. It was zip tied awkwardly to the frame and was pointing at a bad angle. So I removed my old one and, since this one was already wired up, I moved it to the front where I had mounted the other.

After that I needed to clean up this mess.

This was about 2 hours of paper templating, cutting, bending and hammer/dolly bending to roll the edges. It ain't what I'd call pretty but I'm no tinsmith. Some adhesive backed heat shield, four rivet's and Bob's yer uncle!

Looking good Jim!

Thanks, jh!

I'm hoping I have time and energy to install a front tow hook. I was looking at the situation yesterday and the only place I can mount one would be on the round tube on the bumper frame. It's too close to the body work to weld anything to it and taking the nose off would be a big job as there are half a million rivets holding it in place. So I'm thinking something like this.

I could also just rig a strap around the tube but I can't think of a good way to limit it from sliding to the side if pulled at an angle. I might be able to weld tabs on the back side of the bumper, away from the body work but it would be dicey. It's hard to get two hands in there and I can't imagine a way to hold the piece in place while trying to weld it. I think I'd have to stitch weld it so as not to let the tube get too hot.

It would end up in this vicinity:

I went through this too...and ended up with the strap method. I cut the slot wide enough to accept a 30 degree pull. It's not the best and it is on my mulligan list, but that's it for the moment. 

Mine is equipped with the harder option. 
 

Mine has a threaded tube welded to the bumper bar and a hook inserted into that. 
 

Could you drill straight through the tube and slide all thread with nuts fore and aft?  Then do what Bill did. 

I had not thought of drilling straight through. That's a good idea. Plus, I just measured the tube and it's 1.75". Plenty big enough. I'll have to look at a different kind of hook.