John Lane's Fire Breathing Monster info & pics

Hello all! I've been lurking for awhile but finally have something to contribute. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dave Clark. You can think of me as John Lane's "Enabler". I'm a friend of John's and I'm the guy that did most of the fabrication work on the Fire Breathing Monster, also known as the Swedish Penis Enlarger or SPE for short. I'm the guy that did most of the stuff that John likes to take credit for. Oh yeah, that's the other reason I'm here, to bust John's balls. You guys aren't doing a good enough job of it! Don't worry, he can take it, John and I are well known on the Specialstage forum.

Anyway, there seems to be a lot of interest in the Fire Breathing Monster, people are always asking for info and pictures so I posted up a bunch. John is so humble on here it makes me sick! He's really not this modest in real life! (Ha ha, told you I was going to get you ) Like any project like this the has really been a collaborative effort. I did the original car prep: rollcage, seam welding, Lexan windows, seat mounting, exhaust system, etc. John handled the mechanical stuff. It turned into the Monster after the last rollover when John handed me a big honkin' turbo and a wad of hundred dollar bills and said, "Make it work."
I built the turbo manifold all the oil, water, and intercooler plumbing, mounted the intercooler, built the upper motor mounts, etc. John built the engine and did all the programming of the Electramotive injection. We were expecting maybe 250-300hp at the flywheel. We were all surprised when John tuned the car on a chassis dyno and ended up with 504 ft/lbs of torque at the rear wheels at 4000rpm, at only 11psi boost! Needless to say, everything downstream started breaking after that. First the splines started twisting off the axles. We went through several axles in a period of weeks. We changed axles shafts at every service at that first event. So the next step was a 9 inch Ford rearend. I found this drag racer guy near my shop that shortens axles and such. Turns out this guy has a machine shop in his garage and does all kinds of stuff. His name is Bill Scribner and the guy is a true artist. He built a 9" Ford rearend to bolt right into the Volvo, complete with 3.50 ratio gears on a spool, Moser 35 spline axles (an inch and a half in diameter!) and caliper mounts for Porsche Brembo 4 pot calipers. We ended up using Bill to make all kinds of stuff for us.
Well, once the rear end was bulletproof now the tranny started blowing up. Even with a Quaife straight cut close ratio gearset the M46 wouldn't live. Even with cryo treated Quaife gears they broke. We went through two Quaife gearsets. Back to the Amerikanski stuff. A Jerico 4 speed dogbox out of a Winston Cup stockcar was procured, along with a Quartermaster triple disc clutch. Again, John handed me all this stuff along with a wad of hundred dollar bills and said, "Make it fit." You see before we got the stuff I did some research and found that a super T-10 tranny from a Ford (which what the Jerico is based on) has some amazingly similar dimensions to the Volvo tranny. Overall length is very close, input shaft length and pilot bearing is identical. Bill Scribner performaed more artistry and modified the Volvo bellhousing to fit. Amazingly, the standard Volvo clutch fork and throwout bearing work perfectly on the Quartermaster clutch. Because the Jerico is bigger and the shift linkage is external I had to make the tranny tunnel bigger. This required some creative sheetmetal work. I also had to extend the external shift linkage further back, which was a pain in the ass. Oh, but was it worth it! Now we have a bulletproof drive train. Oh yeah, I also had to install a Ford F150 driveshaft. Anyway, it's fun to slam the gears in the dogbox.
Another friend of ours, John Vanlandingham, also has a hand in this car. He has supplied some engine parts, as well as the Ford Escort Cosworth Group A front suspension and brake pieces, and the RS200 Group B wheels to fit them. I supplied the DMS front struts and rear shocks. The car is always evolving.
On the cosmetic side, John's former victim, I mean codriver, always used to take care of the paint work with spray cans. It looked better than it sounds. After the last roll John had one of his sponsors, C&S Autobody, replace damn near the whole body. They cut it off behind the front seats and put on a whole rear half of the body and full roof from a 1980 240, right over the rollcage. The only original body part is the valance panel below the windshield. We ran a couple rallies and then they painted it blue. I painted the yellow flames after that, inspiring the name "The Fire Breathing Monster."

I've got a photo album up at Printroom.com to put images to all the talk about this crazy car. Here's the link:
http://www.printroom.com/ViewAlbum.asp?userid=oppositelock&album_id=124351

-Dave Clark
(John Lane's Enabler)

Hmm, dunno why it says "guest". I registered so it should say oppositelock for my user name. Maybe it timed out?

Edit: yeah, there we go. Dunno what happened

-Dave Clark

I finally have a reason to use the:

smiley!

Thanks for the info! That site with pics and captions is awesome.
The life you guys live is the life I enter every night when my eyelids slam shut after washing the gravel and fiberglass resin out of my hair.

Why Dave you wascal you!!! Now people on this board won't be able to just think that I am some wanker making up tall tales of my car and the adventures that go along with it. I will get you for this!! Seriously though folks, I cannot thank Dave enough (or perhaps blame him for) for the efforts that he has put into my project. It has been evolving for a long time (yikes!! in it's sixth year!!), and just continues to get wierder. Just the way we like it.
A couple of notes: The Jerico case is now aluminum after having it redone due to my blowing up reverse on a stage. I now know that reverse in the Jerico is so that one CAN back up, not to do so with verve. So lesson learned (another). Heehee. The driveshaft was made up for me by Driveline Service here in Seattle with all new bits, and those guys did a great job of getting it just so right out of the box.
Dave, you may even be proud of my install of the rear DMS shocks. yup, even YOU (Virgo) may just like it. Guys....Dave is the utter perfectionist. I trust his rollcage with my life as it has saved my life twice now. :shock:
I'll get you Dave. That is a promise. When you least expect it. Heehee
Thanks for your efforts Dave, you know that I won't ever do as you have here.
JohnLane.

ya John, on high end gearsets they make reverse gear really thin, so there's more room on the mainshaft to make the forward gears as thick as possible.

Oh an ya Dave the T10 (and even the T5) are very close in dinemsion to the m46. The T5 inout shaft is 0.9" longer, but that works out great sinc eyou can use the volvo bellhousing with a 0.9" thick adapter. The shifter position is within 0.1" of the M46. :shock:

:shock:

Awesome work. Nice to see some pics. I liked the whole mystery behind it before. You two should write up a nice article up on V6 performance for the main site....then again, don't waste time writing articles...just keep modding, your doing a stellar job. Your machinist sounds excellent. It'd be nice to do a tranny swap soon....cough (T5) cough (kenny)... but anyhow. It's always good to have a john lane related post. Cheers.
-Pete

>>A couple of notes: The Jerico case is now aluminum after having it redone due to my blowing up reverse on a stage. I now know that reverse in the Jerico is so that one CAN back up, not to do so with verve. So lesson learned (another). Heehee.<<

So John, would you like to share with the rest of the group just how you got yourself into a situation where you felt compelled to use reverse with such verve that it resembled the smoothness of the rear tires that you successfully removed about 99.9% of the rubber from while sitting still? Nah, didn't think so...



>>Dave, you may even be proud of my install of the rear DMS shocks. <<

Well, we'll just see about that!:wink:



>> I trust his rollcage with my life as it has saved my life twice now. :shock: <<


I always get nervous when John walks up to me at a rally without his car and shakes my hand and says, "Thank you for saving my life."
Oh no, not again. What did you do this time?....




I'll have to come by with a camera and take some pictures of the more recent "evolutions" so I can update the picture album. I need to put up some pictures of the new front suspension and stuff.

-Dave Clark

i'm with kenny. i aspire to do that type of work one day.

what organization (SCCA?), event, and class do you run again?

since at some point you realized you'd have to custom fab a completely new rear end, what kept you from trying AWD? i dont know if audi quattro stuff can hold 500+ ft/lbs, but im sure some 'amerikanski' ford 4x4 truck stuff could.

I doubt 4 wheel american truck stuff would work, plus you would lose the handling of the volvo. As an example most of the cyclone/typhoon trucks remove their 4wheel drive stuff because they have problems with it breaking, their engines are doubtfully putting out more power (although they undoubtably weigh more. (if I were to use a system the 325ix system seems inviting (similar front suspension))
Just some food for thought.

sean

quattro parts should handle it they had some moster power quattro's in the 80's espesh for hill climbing.

how you get the porshe calipers to fit and with what size disk

Ah grasshoppas, it's all cosworth stuff already.
A transfer case and halfshafts from a 4x4 Sierra would be 1000x easier and handle 1000x better. :?

i have a sneaking suspicion they went that route to allow that option in the future

Awsome, just plain awsome to see finally!

Loving the humor too, those posts (and Johns ussualy) crack me up!

John, did I hear you say somewhere (probably not, but I swear I did) that your rally car was still a street car? What the hell does your insurance company think of that? LOL

Oh, what proffesion do you put down when you fill out insurance app?

"Hmmm, Rally Driver???....naw, how about Cake Maker"

Doug

Hi Dave and John,
Do you think Mr Bill Scribner would be interested in building another one of those Ford 9" rear ends? Not so much worried about the internals, but a bolt in housing sure does sound nice. Would save me some work and looking for a competant human around here.

Just curious, the distance might be cost prohibitive.

By the way, thought any more about coming down to Thunderhill? Been a long time since I was schooled.

Thanks,
Patrick D.

Wow. John Vanlandingham. It's a small world after all. A friend and I bought our JT-Superflow exhausts from him after meeting him in a junkyard in Massachusetts like 4-5 years ago... (Hard name/guy to forget)

It was worth the money just to check out his rally car at the time... (Some Cosworth-y thing...)

doug242ti said:

Awsome, just plain awsome to see finally!

Loving the humor too, those posts (and Johns ussualy) crack me up!

John, did I hear you say somewhere (probably not, but I swear I did) that your rally car was still a street car? What the hell does your insurance company think of that? LOL

Oh, what proffesion do you put down when you fill out insurance app?

"Hmmm, Rally Driver???....naw, how about Cake Maker"

Doug

Click to expand...

Thanks Doug. We aim to please. The rallycar must be liscensed and fully street legal as we drive "transits" from one "Special stage" to the service area and to the next stage on public roads, and must obey all traffic laws or get a good spanking if we don't. :booty:
My insurance guy has no issue with my rallycar, as the car is insured by SCCA anytime that we are on a stage; therefore no real concerns for that. It helps that in the six years that I have insured that car (same insurance carrier) I have filed zero claims. JL.

is nice to finally understand the Sig. i guess tractions just a pipe dream on stage to you. 504 LB/ft at the wheel LOL

"Now people on this board won't be able to just think that I am some wanker making up tall tales of my car and the adventures that go along with it. "

Don't worry about it Tiger, there are those of us who have actually met you, and will continue to keep that perspective.....but the car still rocks.

Seriously though, Welcome aboard Dave, and thanks for taking the time to put together such a great overview and series of pictures, fantastic - true archives matterial.

John heading down for Thunderhill?

.....looking forward to the next SIR outing.

Best

JB
da KTP

When is Thunderhill? I'm up for a tarmac adventure.
JL.

chris said:

since at some point you realized you'd have to custom fab a completely new rear end, what kept you from trying AWD?

Click to expand...

Oh, now don't think for a minute that John hasn't suggested just that. Several times. Remember his signature?

But seriously, it's just not practical. (No it's not, John, no it's not! Settle down! Back in your corner! Be quiet! For the last time, it's not going to happen! )

First of all, there are certain rules we have to adhere to in SCCA ProRally. In Open class, all turbocharged 4wd cars over 4000cc adjusted are required to use a 36mm restrictor. That would seriously cut down on power, which is not in keeping with the spirit of this car. Lucky for us we run in Group 5 (2wd class) where there is no turbo restrictor requirement and the adjusted displacement limit is 5100cc, which we are right at.

But really, the biggest hurdle is there is just no place to put a front diff!

-Dave Clark