89 Cutlass Ciera Race Car Build

[lemons bob]

Back in late September a few friends and I picked up an 89 Cutlass Ciera with the 2.8 in itcheap that we are planning to run in the 24 hours of LeMons an endurance race series for sub $500 cars.

Here are some pics of it when we first brought it home




Got to love how rain makes a car look nice and shiny

The things we knew we need to when we purchased it was a new battery and that the exhaust had a whole in it. On the way home we found out that it had a power steering leak and the one driving decided to floor it at a light and he disconnected the cat from the rest of the exhaust system.

The exhaust we didn't care much about since in the rules its safety and we were probably going to get rid of the cat and replace it anyway.

So after getting a battery and some power steering fluid we found the leak

As it sprayed power steering fluid all over my driveway.

We also believed we discovered why the cat disconnected itself.


To be continued...

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

looks to be a interesting build..

[Duke George V]

I've got a solid mount dogbone I can send you if you want. Would something like that go toward the budget cap or is it listed under safety?

[lemons bob]

already picked one up and installed it, it was $10 at orielly, so not to much a dent in the budget. Just need more time to write so I can get to the point in the build we are now. But thanks for the offer.

[razoredge]

WTF ?

If ya had a 3.8 or 3.3 powered car you would be onto something.

Sounded pretty interesting at first but I read the rules as far as when it got to if your car is elected for destrucion by the other teams. So if your winning they are going to destroy your car... garanteed ! So now your out all the entry fee which if anyone read is alot, plus your out the traveling expences, plus your out the expence of the car.... sorry thats not my idea of racing. Sounds more like demolition derby horse shit.

I'd rather see something like that taken more serious for amature drivers with a budget closer to two thousand and no moron rules.

[lemons bob]

That only almost happened once, but the organizer shamed the crowd to not do that. The last 2 races they haven't crushed anyone. Typically the ones crushed either are running people off the track, or are clearly cheating, possibly both.

The early ones were pretty much demolition derby but has since evolved. It actually has turned cleaner that some of the SCCA races, and while the entry does seem a bit high if you compare seat time to pretty much any other amateur racing its cheap. which is also where the $500 comes in. Keeping it that low keeps things actually amazingly fair, and seeing what some people do with the $500 it would be scary what would happen if you gave them and extra $2500.

[Prospeeder]

Get a Quad 4 HO 5 speed equipped Grand Am or Cutlass Cialis that would be freakin bad ass out there!

[lemons bob]

This is the point we stopped braking stuff and actually fixing things.

We started with some rustolium rust inhibitor and some gray primer to try stop the rust and save as much sheet metal as possible. The curse of buying a 20 year old car in the rust belt.

After that wE headed off to the junkyard, picked up a sway bar from an old eurosport wagon, and some rear shocks that looked pretty much brand new from a ciera, and a gauge cluster with a temp gauge, sadly we couldn't find one with a tach.

We also picked up a new power steering return hose with cooler, since the cooler was where the line had rusted out at. a temp sender, and the replacement dogbone.

One of my teammates took off the old powersteer line and went to work cleaning up the rust on the frame before installing the new one.

While he did that I went to work on cleaning up the junkyard sway bar.

After some sanding and a bit of the left over spray paint it didn't look to bad

And here is a comparison to the original fe1 that came with the car


After it finished drying we installed it.

We also stripped out the back seats and cleared out the trunk to make it easier to replace the shocks.
Here is a comparison of the ones on there and the one we got from the junkyard

The black rusty one was what was on there and the red one with the mud was 6 bucks at the junkyard

Of course swapping them has shown us how badly we need to replace the front.

Also we have this lovely picture from the junkyard of two of my teammates of what shall become our engine oiler cooler to go along with anoter transcooler that we will use novelly as a trans cooler from a caddy that I believe is still draining fluid from the caddy to this day.


That pretty much sums up where we are at this point. We still have about $200 to spend and we haven't sold anything yet so even with the parts we still know we need to spend for what we originally planned for the first race we probably will be well under budget.

[lemons bob]

I did consider looking at a turboed grand am and a calais but they were normally in pretty rough shape for the price we were looking at and it was really hard to pass up the deal on this car which was mechanically sound minus the power steering line(which I actually think gave way on the ride home, and the dogbone). Oddly I don't recall seing any calais's in the race a couple grand ams have been in it though.

[razoredge]

Cool !

I think you bought a good car for the job as far as endurance, not that I know much about the 2.8, I have never even driven a car with one. But it is a shame its not a 3.3 powered car they will get up and go and are durable, I have seen 3.3's with shot rod bearings though so that depends on whos owned it.

Im going to look into taking one of my old FE1 rear bars from H body and I believe I still have a Riviera rear bar too, and see if I can adapt them to the rear. You might want to look into this, maybe that will further help your cornering. Maybe even consider the rear springs from the same eurosport, fronts too as far as that goes if you have a spring compressor.

Is that sway bar skinnier at the control arm end due to rust or are they machined that way ?

Like your wheels BTW, they looked like fancy stamped steel like what GM used back in the 70's.

[razoredge]

Get a Quad 4 HO 5 speed equipped Grand Am or Cutlass Cialis that would be freakin bad ass out there!

Acheiva SC !

[Prospeeder]

^Those are bad ass

[razoredge]

At $22,000 I think this went over budget but might have done well otherwise

[LordDurock]

love it!!!! cheap races is what im about.

[lemons bob]

Here are some older updates that the server crash ate that I never got around to reposting, and since the weather is nice enough to get back to work I figure I should post these before we go back to work.

This work happened in the beginning of December.

The main work we did was to replace the front struts. For the donor we found an old Celebrity wagon in the junkyard.



With a bit of work and a little work with a hammer we were able to get them off, and with a little work a lot of WD40 (since it seems everything we have to work seems to be rusted solid even though the floor pan looks like new still) and more hammerwork we got the old off.



After that it was time for my counterpart to take a nap on the engine



Well ok he didn't take a nap, he actually was trying to get to this



I'm guessing most people still can't see it, but back there is the temperature sensor, which is just really not conveniently located on the 2.8L. But eventually we got it out and swapped it with a sender and it even worked.



Well after that is snowed and was really cold, but the car seemed happy.



But the weather is nice so its getting time to get back to work So far all I got is the free Harness that someone gave me which look awesome but not really count as working on the car since I just layed them on the seat.



Hopefully soon I will have more to show.