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do you have any experience with reman steering racks? i have mine up on jackstands and was thinking of swapping out my 170k mile steering rack for a reman one. There is a slight weeping of fluid near the adjuster bolt. no leaks in the inner tie rods tho.
I just had the engine and trans out over the winter, I should have upgraded the engine mounts then! oh well. they are still in great shape so I will keep rolling.
Did the solid shifter bushings and upgraded trans mount today. I couldn't believe how soft the oem trans mount is, I could move it around with one hand. Now all the movement in the shifter is gone, feels nice and solid. Also attempted to do engine mounts but had to stop and wait for another day, Didn't quite have the right flexible head flat 14mm to get to the engine mount bracket bolts on the pass side. Time to order more tools. Also I think once I delete the unnecessary coolant lines on the pass side there'll be more room. to access the mounts.
Yes, the stock ones are super soft. I ended up using an extra large C clamp in a vice with a couple properly sized sockets to push old bushings out and push new bushings in. I tried using a press but the shape of the cage made it next to impossible to get it to align with the press.
Went thru the cooling system and deleted a bunch of stuff. The coolant lines to the throttle body, the coolant lines to the oil cooler, the front cross pipe, the driver side hard pipe and most of the passenger side hard pipe.
The driver side hard pipe was replaced by a ZammyMFG block-off plate, one of the ports connects to a new silicone hose that runs to the back of the engine where the throttle body line used to plug in to provide proper coolant circulation so that the thermostat can open correctly, the other port I used to relocated my coolant temp sensor that used to be on the cross pipe.
The passenger side hard pipe was cut beyond all the nipples and I used a long silicone hose to connect it directly to the radiator
The oem oil cooler plate I left in place for now, next time I do an oil change it will be removed. I'm hoping I can simply swap the external oil cooler adapter plate in its place, but if not I did order a threaded pipe for engines without oem oil cooler (part number 15213-31U00 available at Z1 offroad).
As a result of all this I did end up with two ports open, one on the thermostat housing where the oil cooler line attached, which I plugged for now, however I will order the HR thermostat housing that doesn't have this port.
The other is on the back of the engine where a small bypass hose attached.
Since one end of the hose was attached to the heater core nipple that was cut off, I had to plug the other port. In the future I plan to reuse this port to do an additional cooling line to the engine block under the intake. A modified plate for this is available from ZammyMFG, but I'll save this for when I replace the intake manifold.
looks like a fun project. thanks for the photos.. simplifying and increasing efficiency, it's very satisfying. did you already remove the heater core and a/c?
The fan went out in mine and I'm wondering if I even need to replace it or just remove all of that equipment. there is never going to be a time when I drive this car to the track again or drive it in the rain. but the question is just whether the defroster is needed.
when I delete the AC I'm just going to swap in a lightweight dampener at the same time.
Yeah, the A/C and heater core have been gone for several years now, I just plugged the heater core ports and left it as it was. At the last event the plug started leaking so I figured it was a good time to simplify. BTW, you have to remove the a/c compressor to get the oil cooler hard line out, it runs behind the compressor before attaching to the thermostat housing in the front. Kinda dumb design but what do I know...
In all my time tracking I never needed the heater or defroster, maybe if I was doing actual racing in rain conditions it would be an issue, but since I don't even have wipers anymore the car is not seeing much rain. If you really want defrost all you have to do is mount a small fan by the trans tunnel where it's nice and hot and pipe it to the vents, that's what most racers do.
Not sure what you mean by lightweight dampener, if you're talking about a lightweight crank pulley I have a word of warning. I did this in my Audi and the extra vibration resulting from the decreased rotation mass actually destroyed the front main crank bearing. I was able to replace it before it did any other damage but imo it's not worth the 1/2 hp gain you might get from it.
what I meant to say before the forum went bananas a few minutes ago, I don't see why the new crank pulley would cause vibration unless Audi uses it as a harmonic dampener. which is case on a lot of Ford engines.That's not the case with a VQ as far as I know.
Last edited by Aeneas137; Aug 28, 2023 at 08:04 AM.
Long story there re: Mustang engines, just showing my age.
Z1 advertises their lightweight crank pulley as a way to reduce alternator RPMs. seems like a marketing fib there. I'll give it a try when I remove the AC compressor since a new belt is needed anyway.
So there is lightweight and there is underdrive. Sounds like the Z1 pulley has a different diameter than oem, thus slowing down the belt speed.
And yes, the Audi engines were using the pulley as a balancer, not sure about these engines, maybe it's safe, I'm just speaking from previous experience.
Follow up to the coolant piping mods. I ran the car a few times and I wasn't happy with the results. Despite what I've read that adding a single line from the back of the engine to the block-off plate that replaces the hard pipe on the driver's side is enough to supply hot coolant to the thermostat, it wasn't opening correctly. The temps were over 200 deg and the thermostat would not stay open, the temps would fluctuate wildly. I ended up adding a second line from the back of the engine, the one nipple I had left over that I plugged, to the port right on the thermostat housing that was also plugged. This supplies the hot coolant directly around the thermostat and it was a good fix, the temps now stay right around 180 deg, dropping to 170 when the fans kick in. I'm happy with the result and they car should now be ready for Summit open track in 2 weeks. Still waiting for Tire Rack to come and install 2 new goodyears, but otherwise it's good to go.
Back from open track event at Summit, we got one good day, the second day got rained out. I'm happy with the results, the cooling is working great, no leaks no issues, the shifter is much improved although I did manage to screw up a shift once, but that's on me, I was running long 30+ minute sessions and towards the end I was starting to lose focus a bit. The new camera mount I installed is much more rigid so the video is much smoother. With a new set of Goodyear 3Rs the handling is back to optimal, I'm constantly impressed by the grip these tires provide considering the 200 thread wear. They are hard to find in stock, I had to order one from TireRack and one from Discount Tire, since each had just one in stock in my size with no more expected for 60 days.
The only minor hiccup was the rubber trim above the windshield coming loose and flopping around, I had to tape it down temporarily. When the installer put in the polycarbonate windshield they refused to use the oem rubber strips I bought and put in a generic seal up there. Well, seems they didn't use enough adhesive because parts of it got separated from the windshield. Looking into the grove there wasn't much if any adhesive in there so I think I can inject some more and reseal the rubber. Of course this is purely cosmetic since the windshield itself is glued to the frame.
Some high class company
It was a low attendance event, with total of less than 50 cars and track open all day, so I spent a lot of time driving basically by myself, which is all good and provides an opportunity to test and try things, but for me doesn't provide the motivation to push the car hard. I prefer to have some traffic and someone to chase. With conditions close to optimal the lap times were steady in the 1:24-1:25 range, which is not far off from my personal best. I'm not gonna bother uploading all the videos, since most of it is just me lapping round and round with no much going on, but if you're bored here's one session, towards the end I keep seeing the GT4 in my rear view lap after lap about the same distance back and when I screw up turn 1 I use the opportunity to slow down, let him catch up and give him a chase. As expected, he pulls away on the straights but I reel him in in the corners.
I posted about these a while back, it's something I custom designed and printed based on the space between hood supports and the size of my 3d printer. The design is available on my thingiverse account https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5013931
living vicariously through you....
And I've missed so many great track events in NorCal this year.
paying off the Cayman loan. next year I will have a lot more fun.
