Monday, October 19, 2009

More progress

T-minus 1 weekend until the first ChumpCar event in our backyard!

Background: Remember our motor blew up at Buttonwillow? The block is toast. Fail. So we set out searching for a replacement motor, since our spare motor that we limped in on burned about a qt an hour. We found 2 4AGE's growing weeds at a dude's house in Clatskanie (read: BFE). For $300 we got 2 motors in "ran when pulled = who the hell knows" condition, and a spare transmission which I shortly thereafter needed a tetnis shot just to get the thing out of the truck. Who cares, this is crap-can racing!

2 ebay gasket sets later, we had 2 "rebuilt" motors. We had a die-grinder party with the two heads and made some low cost, high value performance upgrades! (port match, valve grind). Nothing professional, just sticking with the budget. A Makita cylinder hone, and a Makita valve lapping rounded out the remaining work on the two motors. Luckily, the internals were salvagable out of the two motors, so we didn't need to buy anything except the gasket sets. I wish I could tell you all this took place in a weekend, but with my travel schedule.. it took Erik and I about 3 weekends to do the poor-mans-rebuild.

Here we sit with 2 motors, 0 miles, and NO idea if they are going to work.

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