Barn find.... today

Ya Think?! There is a reason why I leave all of my cars apart in pieces. The day they are all together and running and their net value is enough for One person to live fairly comfortable..... Payback is expected! I remember a race where two cars mid pack touched tires, one going ballistic, up and over the back fence and cart wheeling out of view. Her finger nails sunk into my arm, knuckle deep, "We are OUT of here!". "No dear, we cant leave yet, the girls are up in the next two sessions".... blood squirted from that arm a split second later

I wanted to put the girls into Karts but without a roll cage..... nope. Just before I retired from the sport I had a very serious track accident at a Pro-Am race at Donnybrooke. It was the first race I had done after building a serious and proper roll cage, one that would actually work if needed. It was the first time I had raced without the fear of needing a good cage and my lap times went down by seconds because of the mental relief. Exiting the track backwards, because some plastic Lotus took out my outside rear tire on turn 1, a high bank turn, done at terminal velocity at the end of a mile long straight, for 1/4 mile sliding through the dirt towards a row of trees... I am still able to count in my minds eye picture how many times the car was up on two wheels ready to roll... at 150 MPH... while cutting off steel T Posts holding up Busch Beer banners with the drivers door. From that day forward I made a lot of peoples lives in the racing scene, hell, if they didn't have a good cage. No, it had to be a Midget for the girls, only because of the roll cage and the required safety gear.

Those little cars were so very cool, a very real race car just built to scale. As any parent of a kid in summer sports knows... some of the parents get a bit carried away. OK... sure, I had my moments when building one engine.... I bet I had 120 hours into building that lawn Mower Briggs. Minnesota winters were made for just this type of thing. Months of sub zero weather is when we would study the rule books for what they DIDNT say..... because going against a written rule is "Cheating"..... going against something Not directly spoken about (yes, we debated double and triple negatives in a sentence to see if they would cancel each other out) would be "Innovative". Lets just say the intake manifold alone took 30 hours to build and you could hold a half dozen of them in the palm of your hand. I had to enlarge the fuel tank because I would jet that fool thing using a std drill bit set, no tiny jet drills required, and pour fuel in it just to keep it from going Chernobyl and melting into a blob. The girls lapped the whole field near twice, not grasping or understanding the fine art of sand bagging, they could actually steer with the throttle and leave a corner with smoke on the rear tires.... they did on the other hand, learn throttle on over steer quite well. Guilt of messing with the kids made me take that engine out, I just wanted to see what a lawn mower engine could Really do if you didnt mind using a full tank of fuel for just a small front yard.

Yes, by the rules it was a legal engine but that rule book was not written by an SCCA or IMSA committee used to bored and frozen mechanics seated next to a raging fireplace for a whole winter... That engine was only run in a race once and that was the race where new rules were written for inverted field starts with the pole position started last row outside. This then made the girls work a bit harder to wind their way through the whole field to get out front when running a boring engine... it actually made them better drivers yet.

There was a point in time where rule books for these racing organizations would fit in your hip pocket. It was a great source of pride of those from the frozen Tundra, that those rule books are now approaching 3.5" thick. Oddly enough, the next years Track Queen was chosen in the Fall and the amount of new "Innovations" contrived through that winter seemed to directly correlate with how pretty she was... lots of grab ass going on when trophy's were handed out! I remember dyno testing engines over the winter, running only Stoddard Solvent (parts washer solvent) as a lubricant, knowing it would scrap itself in the course of a race... because she was drop dead Beautiful on that given year!

Ya Right! I am already on the FNA Lawyers Christmas Card List.... and if they knew which special old Ferrari race car it came off of... they would be peeing blood!

Actually, that badge made it on many of my old race cars. It was used as an excuse that a given car of mine should be allowed to run in a FCA sponsored event. Back in the 80's when some degree of sanity still prevailed and owners got together just for the fun of the company and to share a passion.... it worked. It worked because the meet was mostly just an excuse to see old friends and swap new lies. Today, without Certified paperwork with an embossed Leaping Lizard on the letterhead, you would be laughed away at the gate. That was then, this is now... it is what it is.

 

We lived in both St Paul and Burnsville. I was born in Spring Park, on Lake Minnetonka... Kris is one of those East side of St Paul girls..... but her whole family is Western edge Graceville, Dumont, Wheaton, Ortonville... My Gawd could those Unzen and Fischer folks Party!

... and one day we will even get back to working on a white, red car! There is a story developing from that show we attended, one that even I find hard to fathom. I have become quite calloused in what to expect from this car and events surrounding it, from day one it has handed me my backside in predictions and made a liar out of me on more than one occasion! This, if it proves true and factual, is so far out there it defies reason.... falling right in line with Truth being stranger than Fiction... we will see, just makes it all the more fun.

 

The garage was for race cars, project cars and the Midget. Oh yes, well familure to the working in the Norweigen Rivera

 

Yah, OK..... back to the printing press as that will be required to make the purchase. Key word here is "I".

 

Rest assured.... both Kris and Jen Did!

What does a couple of women do when they fall in love with a car, or anything for that matter, and then are left alone to hatch a plan with no male presence to hold reality in check? Read their minds and take a wild guess.....
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Aint it so! Even in the Midget pics she has slippers on... its always been this way! At the shop, MY rules apply and are met with a scorn.

Yup... workin overtime for the next 36 months! The statement was "Girls rule, men drool" and that is all the discusion on the topic there was.

 

Yup, just started again for the first time in a number of weeks away from it. Life and work... both got in the way for a time. In the time away from the 330 I was able to do extra credit work and actually got a Gold Star on 2 pages of the HoneyDO! novel, something that should help move this project along a bit as the days go by.

In the days following the MA Show, the Devils fork Maserati handed me my backside when the Lucas FI decided to inhale all of its now melted rubber components and turn #2 cylinder into something to power wash the exhaust system with fuel. Lets just say that one workbench is not large enough to handle a completely stripped down DCZ AND a completely stripped down set of 6 Lucas fuel injectors, lines and a metering unit. The DCZ lost out to the paying job (fingers crossed), and got boxed up and shelved.

Correcting once round, but now oval throttle shaft bores... that is a job not to be done when rushed, interrupted OR frustrated, and I was all three, having to tell good friends that I still had not finished the job that was supposed to go away this spring! I tried in vane to blame Jen for ordering (6) secondary O/S throttle shafts and when that didn't work I tried to put it off on Kris... Fail! Their time together with the cars at the MA Show, albeit a short time before Adult Male supervision was reinstated to regain some degree of sanity, proved to be a little too long (and costly), with them now supporting one another on any blasted subject. A quick call to Pierce proved only to add insult to injury..... "One of the doorknobs here saw fit to order 6 secondary shafts rather than 3 primary and 3 secondary"..... "Yes, I remember talking to You, wondering why You were doing that...", its a conspiracy! Divide and conquer is my only hope left now that Kris convinced Jenni that the toilet brush scepter really does have magical powers.... I swear if she points that brush at me again and say's "Poof !"... I'm just going to go Bull Goose Looney!

A little quite time last evening allowed me to get the first of 3 DCZ's set up in the mill and start the grunty process to determine what the true center of the throttle shaft bores once was. Tough enough when faced with just the top hole, then one needs to take into account the same with the hole 40MM below it where single Minutes of a degree in the mounting of the body make all the difference in the world and final shimming of the carb body is left to steel shim stock a fraction the thickness of notebook paper. Is it worth it? YES, you would have to actually feel the difference to understand it. When every one of the transition holes are uncovered at Exactly the same moment.... it's hard to put to words and the clearances in the shafts when these carbs were new never allowed for that, its always safer and quicker to throw a little extra clearance in those during production. I like to fit them with an absolute minimum of clearance because the carb body grows when they get hot, increasing the clearance to the new o/s steel shaft, which doesn't grow any with the temp increase. With only a thousandth or two of overall clearance I have found it required that I counter bore the outside of the holes to insert a felt washer that gets soaked in oil to lubricate the bores and maintain these clearances while preventing binding. This is where the trade off argument comes in with using needle roller bearings on the new shafts but the bosses on the DCZ's are small enough that doing that requires even more set up time to get them right. Waste of time? Most would say yes BUT, in this case I say No and on this project I don't have to ask permission to do it... the game changer. In this case I will forego the bearings and just fit the shafts with the oil soaked felt washers as no difference can be felt with that if it is done properly... and 30K miles from now... it will be Jen's problem, not mine.

On other fronts:

The repaired shifter housing is back together where gear selection should no longer be a roll of the dice. Gaskets have been obtained to put the head back on where we can put some miles on it in hopes to give it a proper check over and accurately determine the health of the engine. I held off on getting Rich down to reopen the debate on replacing the drivers seat bolster with the center tunnel leather. I recently dropped a bomb on him when I sent him a 355 Spider for a new top.... and didn't tell him the owner forgot to set the safety latches on his hoist.... with the 355 under it.... and I had to piece together a whole new 'used' top frame on it. A normal top replacement isn't terrible... this one..... I was on page 6 of a Google search before I found most of the words he used. No, the seat discussion is best to wait on for a little bit until he comes down off the ceiling from that.
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It is something of a 'water tight moment' when one feeds the reamer down.

I practiced a Lot on old rat crap throw away DGV's from the MG conversions before I ever worked up the nerve to do this to a Z. It was the steel shafts that made this effort even worth trying, and those available now are beautiful pieces!

It's like the difference between a DCOE and a DCO3.... one is consistant, finely tuneable and extremely responsive, the other when at the peak of its game, is acceptable. On the 330's, the DCZ with its smaller aux and main venturi's, makes a good deal more torque than that of the DFI's, which I believe were more apply sized for the 365's displacement. The advantage goes to the larger DFI's above 6000 RPM but.... how many times do we find ourselves in an outright trophy dash in a S1 330? The day I find myself mounting forearm sized sway bars on the car, maybe then but Torque and instant responce is what rules the game in these cars.

PS... she doesnt know there is also size "O" precision ground rod coming, that is .001 larger than 8MM.... there has to be an easier way to jig these up and I intend to find it!

 

THAT will have us laughing for the entire morning!