The show goes on

To end the whining about no one else updating the blog, I'll jump in and give this a shot. We've had some good progress since our last update:

Motor going back in, Z-car practicing wheelie stance

The Studcruiser has roared back to life with the installation of it's freshened up mean green powerplant

RAWR!!

The wiring harness was completely reworked removing all unnecessary circuits and repairing all of the previous owner's 'repairs' we shall say. The engine requires only a handful of sensors to run and the 6 injectors plugged in (it runs batchfire so it really doesn't even matter which injector you plug in to each wire lol) All the usual maintenance items replaced; fuel injectors and rail cleaned, new intake manifold gaskets, valve cover gaskets, throttle body gasket, oil pan gasket, water pump, timing belt, front main seal, rear main seal, and probably some other stuff I forgot. The vacuum system has been whittled down to a meager 4 hoses. One from the FPR to intake manifold, one from intake manifold to brake booster, and two crankcase vacuum lines pulling vacuum from the intake manifold and intake pipe. Transmission was cleaned up and reinstalled with the motor and a new factory clutch assembly as well. Of course it wasn't complete without a personal touch of flare compliments of some Autozone engine enamel ;)

We managed to pick up a schwanky set of wheels, dare I say these may be too nice for chump duty, but damn they look good on the Z

Factory evo BBS 17" @ 17lbs a piece shod in a Tiawan special, Federal 595's in 245/40/17.  These will serve auto-x and track day duty. May go with some sticky star specs for competition.......everyone knows how much I love some sticky rubber....mmmmmm....sticky......

As always, something's gotta provide some woah for all the go that 3.0's gonna put out

Z32 brakes! All aluminum 4-piston calipers gripping on 11" rotors, add a set of race pads with good fluid and we'll be stopping this beast on a dime.

Front suspension has been rebuilt with new bushings and oem kyb shocks. Rear suspension is awaiting reassembly onto the car, but we are certainly close to putting the studcruiser back on the road for her maiden voyage and hopefully soon an auto-x!! Right now the plan is to put her through an auto-x and some covert 'tests' in Mexico with a stock seat and belt. (we had to take out the restrictor plate to let the green dragon breathe a little more, she's not exactly street legal)  Once we're happy with the performance and have proven she's road worthy we'll move on to getting her chump ready with all the necessary safety additions.

Hopefully more to come in the near future.....

-Sam

A Bit of Progress

Okay, obviously I take the burden of updating the gibberish entirely upon myself.

Here's the engine, mostly ready to go back in.  Just some basic maintenance stuff, no rebuilds.  I cannot explain the green stuff.  I think Sam had a cold, and sneezed all over it?

The incredible (3.0L) Hulk

Lots of the interior has been stripped.  You can see where part of the driver's side floorboard has been patched.  Rust holes there and in the passenger side.  Door glass has been removed and doors gutted.

A special kind of termite (rust) has been here

Side glass has been removed.  Front suspension is apart.  Attempt was made to replace rear shocks, but we got a little crazy with the Zip6Racing credit card and ordered 4 front shocks instead of 2 front/ 2 rear.

She's a sexy beast eh?

Some top secret weight reduction activities have occurred in an attempt to reduce the chances any of our massive power will launch a deadly Z projectile at onlookers.  Ignore the fact that the RH side mirror is held on by tape, and the fact we haven't yet found any wheels/tires.  We could beat most of the teams driving in reverse on bare hubs.

Wrenching

I tried mightily to push update duties off on Sam and Jason.  But here we are, no updates.  So I'll throw something together.

Parts car was purchased.

Front suspension is torn apart.  Most of the stuff we need for front brake rebuild/upgrade has been ordered.  We are in hot pursuit of some wheels, and will then buy some tires.

Engine was removed and partially torn down.  Bad oil leak was fixed.  Bunch of semi-common maintenance and repair work was done.  Fuel injectors were checked and cleaned.  Some ummmm wacky green paint was sprayed here and there.  Engine will will probably go back in soon, with a little help from the wiring harness from the parts car.

Interior has been partially stripped.  Some boys from NCSU lasso'd the driver's seat and yanked it out with a big pickup truck.  I have no explanation, let's just leave it alone.  There's more rust in the floorboards than we like, so some patches are in process.  All carpeting and interior panels from the dash back were removed.  Driver's door glass, window motor, and interior door shell removed.

We are hoping to have it autox ready within another 5-6 wks, at which time we will unleash the Zip6 team on some hapless course of cones.

The Fat Lady Sings

I borrowed a set of LongAcre cornerweight scales and went to weigh the unmodified Z.  Nic and Grayson were gone for the weekend, and nobody else showed up to help me except for Max.  Max's initial observations of Mr. Nic's garage:
1) Wow that's messy daddy.  Are there spiders in there?
2) Mr. Nic drinks out of Wolfpack cups? (One rolled out of the garage when I opened the door)

Max thinks all it needs is a good driver

Maybe I'm spoiled, but I'm used to having at least the bare minimum tools around.  Mr. Nic appears to be missing metric tools, which those smart Japanese didn't think of back in 1987.  I managed to find an oversized SAE socket that I could use to get the 8 lugnuts on with, but no ratchet or adapter that would fit it.  So, like a real tough guy, I used my hands.  And got a blister.  This ain't spreadsheets, yo.

Blister #1 Brad suffers for the Z car cause

The flat tires made it hard to get the correct chassis height or weight distribution.  I was not able to tweak the front/rear height to get a calculated CG.

LongAcre scales setup

 2926 lbs total, with 1548 front and 1378 rear.  That's 52% on the front, but the RF tire was completely flat, so let's ignore the distribution for now.

My prediction - the 1st 200 lbs will come off easily.  The next 200 lbs will be difficult.  The 200 lbs after that... very painful.

Work Day #1

Let's see here, what did we get done on our first work day?  We pulled the horribly old, dry-rotted tires/wheels off.  We changed the oil and filter.  We determined the last time any lubricant was in the valve covers, Carter was president.  We ensured no bugs were stuck to the air filterless MAF.  We started her up and made sure the valve cover gasket leaked enough oil to form a james bond smokescreen.

Travis, Duncan, Grayson, Sam, Nic - the 5 best looking of our 8 person crew

As you can see from the photo above, a tiny amount of beer was consumed to make sure we didn't panic when we found the black widow spiders.

Travis: hey ya'll, them wires don't look factory, anybody worried?

The master technician who saved our beast from the clutches of the scrapyard did a mighty fine job repairing the wiring hacks and getting it running.  It revs (almost) and belches like an old dog.  Also, there was a screeching noise coming from the front.  Duncan was in the process of spraying all the moving parts up there with some WD40 and/or windex when he caught his whiskers and nearly got whisked away like Mary Poppins.

Yearning for wheel-to-wheel inasniteee

She has nearly shiny paint, the odor of a fine racing heritage, and a stance that says "160 hp of fury."

I have another photo I took through the open hatch, but I have apparently managed to break blogger's upload tool.  Plus, it shows a little rust and we're shy about the very few imperfections this beauty has.

Welcome

Thank you for visiting Zip6Racing.

Why "zip6"?
Zip = the number of times we expect to drive a perfect race
6 = the number of cylinders we gotz
as an added bonus:
Z = our car


The team is composed of eight great-looking and incredibly talented guys.  It's probably best that our last names never be mentioned since we are about to get stupid on the internet, but here we are:
Duncan
Eric
Grayson
Jason
Nic
Sam
Travis
and yours truly - Brad
Hopefully a few other guys will show up and offer sage advice and gawk at our massive speed.  I'm especially hoping Bill will help at a few races because a) somebody has to keep the cooler from blowing away, b) that way I won't be the oldest one there.

Our team has cemented our place in the annals of history today by purchasing our race car.  We got it for the princely sum of $500.

Tha New Studcruiser

It is a Z car.  Z cars are way too cool to be $500.  There is a certain amount of photographic evidence that Sam had to ah do some weird things to get the car this cheap.

Sam, tied to a tree and trying not to cry

 Thanks, man, for taking one for the team.

We plan to race the Z in ChumpCar World Series.  We want our first race to be in Dec 2012.  We have a lot of work to do before then, and also a lot of beer to drink.

A bunch of us may post here to keep this thing updated.  Or maybe not.  Maybe you'll get lucky.