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Rebirth - 83' 244Ti - aka Gallop Racing #411 Hornet Hi-Class race car

What a crazy weekend. A engine swap, an attempty to make a clutch cable out of bailing wire. And numerous vice grips holding things together. I'm sure pat will update this but man what a great weekend!
 
I'm just going to leave this here:

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Here's a summary on how the race went-

We got out for Friday practice and had a myriad of issues. Starting from the back of the car, the intank pump somehow fell off the pickup tube at some point the past two months and caused the it to bounce around at the bottom of the tank and disintegrate the sock filter which clogged up the pump partially. We changed out the fuel filter to be safe. We went through multiple sets of injectors until Scotty pulled his off of his T5R. There were two broken plug wires, and a broken insulator on the #4 plug [luckily did not fall into the cylinder]

We made it to the green on Saturday but got towed back in a few times. The car still was not running quite right, the boost was definitely not set right and something else was amiss but we were not totally sure what. The electrical system on the car was not quite running right, and it was due to my Odyssey battery having a ****ty ground terminal. So we ripped Erik's battery out of the Hilux, I dumped out one of my tool totes to use as a battery box, used lengths of wire from a power inverter to extend the cables and luckily Evil Genius Racing brought a metal shop to the track and fabbed a battery bracket. We were back in business, we sent Scotty out and he came back in later with the temp gauge pegged and the bottom end slightly knocking. We did a compression check and determined the car had a blown headgasket.

Instead of changing just the headgasket, we chose to swap engines to the backup I had brought which was from a 95' 940 I parted. Figured the head was warped on the motor in the car. The backup still needed more assembly but the crew was on it. We had it in the car and running a little past midnight.

In the morning we fine tuned things, including building a new WG bracket that did not flex and also buttoned everything up. Chris went out first and had a very solid stint. He said the car was absolutely awesome. After a stop for gas, we put my good friend Terry [the only non tbricker on the team] in the car for his first taste of road racing [he's a dirt tracker.] 45 minutes into his session the clutch cable snapped, and although we tried many fixes none of them worked and we ended up driving it without a clutch the rest of the day. I had never drove without a clutch before and I got to drive it but I really tried avoiding shifting to not damage the trans so I trundled around in 3rd gear most of the time.

I don't know where we finished and frankly I don't care, I wish we had spent more time on the track with a good car but as crazy as the weekend was we had a lot of fun and learned a lot of lessons. With the new engine the car runs SO good. I need to replace the clutch cable though, swap out the rear main and I might replace the clutch disc. I'm going to be way more thorough about upkeep on the car.

The only thing that sucked all weekend was the bottom end that was in the car is pretty toast. I sold my dirt track race car a year and a half ago to buy that thing and it was supposedly good and had been ran for 40 minutes at idle, before the seller decided to part the car out for whatever reason. Back than I was planning on actually using it for what it was build for [to handle lots of power with the GT3071R that used to be in the car.] When I decided to turn this thing into a Lemons car, I had yet to run the engine and I decided to sell it because it was overkill for a Lemons car with a 15g turbo. With a lack of interest, I said **** it and ran it anyways because I was under the impression it was nice and fresh. Since getting it running something with it never felt quite right, it always flirted with the danger zone in terms of oil pressure hot or cold and sounded very loose when cold, which I thought was typical of a race motor.

As much as having a $2500 paperweight sucks I'm glad I did not dump it on someone else who probably would have gotten pissed off at me. Junkyard motors only from now on because they rule and because Lemons

r/outoftheloop

What happens at Lemons usually stays at Lemons
 
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Pretty sure it's Tbricks lore to use original, low mile short blocks. Seems like once rebuilt they come apart. They are haunted. All of them.
 
We run ~150-180k B230F bottom ends. Stock T3 now, but I need to get the 60trim rebuilt and then we can rock 14psi again and make some good power. The F motor loves it. No need to get fancy. We're running a K cam, stock cam timing, stock LH computers, orange 850T injectors, and stock plugs/wires. Fuel cell now, so not stock pumps, but mostly stock plumbing and mostly stock Volvo parts from one car or another.

I hope to make it out for a race some day in the not too distant future. Maybe end of this calendar year...
 
We run ~150-180k B230F bottom ends. Stock T3 now, but I need to get the 60trim rebuilt and then we can rock 14psi again and make some good power. The F motor loves it. No need to get fancy. We're running a K cam, stock cam timing, stock LH computers, orange 850T injectors, and stock plugs/wires. Fuel cell now, so not stock pumps, but mostly stock plumbing and mostly stock Volvo parts from one car or another.

I hope to make it out for a race some day in the not too distant future. Maybe end of this calendar year...
 
I'm not convinced that was the (only) cause for low oil pressure. It seems it would still be able to draw oil up. With the piston-wall clearances in that motor, I can imagine the bearing clearances may be huge, which would cause low oil pressure as well.
 
What's this track? Looks very interesting!

As mentioned, it is Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, CA.

They added a west course to the facility last year, as well as a few spots that connect the east section to the west, which makes it a 5 mile track - longest in the United States.

Here is some video when I raced the event last year in a 90 hp Opel GT. Should be interesting with the 244 :)

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zpgvzUigO3w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
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