89 Cutlass Ciera Race Car Build

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

If you can, get me the outside diameter of the largest metal side of that air filter. You have it set up for a warm air intake right now. A cold air intake with some dryer vent line, or something simalar would make it have a bit more pep..

[jlattyak]

Depending on the amount of space there is we could maybe extend it to the opening where the headlights were.

[lemons bob]

Jlattyak wrote this up on the blog but guess he hasn't had a chance to rewrite it here.

So Saturday we went to the Pick n Pull for half price weekend, which did make it pretty busy. Had to park in an area that is normally a holding pen for cars before they get in the yard, and the line to get in was out the door. Of course once we got in the yard it didn't seem crowded. So we head off into the GM section. After reading lots of things from lots of people I came up with a plan to help the handling. To reduce understeer you need your cars suspension to be firmer in the rear. So stiffer springs and a bigger sway bar in the back is most people solution. So the rear sway is completely out of our budget after getting the engine running but half price fe3's would fit fine.

So we walked the yard looking for the spare tire cover on every a-body we saw, and when they were gone would look at the front sway bar and use that to guess the spring package, and pretty much everything there was fe1. We make our way to the very end of the yard(where the gm section ends) and in the corner we saw a white Celebrity with red striping on the rubber.



A 1990 wagon at that. Pretty well worn with 3 bald tires (and a donut on the fourth)



I could believe that the previous owner actually got rid of it because they didn't want to pay for another set of tires after see all the jury rigged fixes like a second turn signal stalk that was ziptied by the ashtray with a couple mystery red wires running under the dash, or the hold drilled in the fender with a washer tied to the hood release cable.







Well after a few minutes work, most of which was to get the bolt unstuck from inside my socket out they came.



(If you look at that rear tire notice that there is not tread at all on it.)



A little more work back at home and took the old out and the new went in. Its kind of odd that the fe3 is actually noticeably shorter when they aren't in the car, I guess it makes sense since its a lot stiffer that it would need to be shorter since it won't compress as much with the weight of the car.

Anyway after everything was put back together a simple push on the trunk showed what a big improvement it actually was and it seems shorter, although we didn't actually measure anything before hand so it could all be in my head.

[Duke George V]

That was probably the best thing you could have got. Wagons already have stiffer rear springs, since they're expected to carry heavy loads often. FE3 wagon? You should definitely see some improvement.

[lemons bob]

Replaced the front pads yesterday and the caliber that we couldn't get the bleeder to turn last year. Pretty uneventful with that, it all went pretty easy, the only problem was that I couldn't find the 8mm box wrench for the bleeder on the rear drums. The pads from last year we burned through about half of, so not really all that bad. They changed tracks this year so it will be a bit tougher on the brakes but not 2x as tough, we hope.

It did bring up another question though. Why does it seem that JA2 parts are cheaper than JA1 parts. The caliber seemed significantly cheaper. Logically the fact that the JA2 is the larger brake package you would thing material alone should make the JA2 more expensive. The caliber after I got the core charge back by returning the old one was 9.99. If we were really worried about the front brakes we could get a spare set of calibers preload them with the pads and swap those out at the race like they do in the LeMans series without it costing too much.

Other than that pretty much ready for the race. Just some little stuff to do like change the oil, get new tires, touch up the paint a bit, and try and figure out where the connector and wires for the cigarette lighter went. Found the fuse that I think stopped it from working but the connector is no where to be found. Probably ended up wrapping it up when cleaning up wires last year so I guess I'll have to unwrap the wires to find it.

[lemons bob]

The race is next weekend. Since the last update just been taking care of the little stuff like tires, putting the seatbelts back in,touch up the paint and stuff like that. We did find the cigerette lighter plug finally. We now have the radio plugged into it so we won't have the battery die halfway through the race. The only thing left to do is change the coolant over from antifreeze to water. As long as the weather forecast stays the same I'll do it Wednesday. Last I checked next weekends forecast is saying it should be in the mid 70s and partially cloudy, so nice weather for racing.

for anyone interested in stopping by here is the link for the race info http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/chicago2011.aspx

[Century7667]

That is true cool. Is there a video feed of the race? ...or is it up to the racers' to capture their own video?

Ken T.

[lemons bob]

Occassionally someone will figure a way to stream it but I haven't heard of anyone streaming it yet. We'll be doping some in car video this year so we should have some up a little while after the race.

[Century7667]

That would be cool. It's been years, but I remember attending an autocross once. Not quite the same thing, but fun.

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

I am still hoping to come up this weekend.. But I may have to work Saturday, and that would kill it..

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

Work killed it... Sorry man.. Was looking foward to it.. Hope you did well!!

[lemons bob]

We actually won the big prize, the IoE. So walked away with a trophy, and a check for $1501.

We ate up tires pretty well, and the brakes were not doing well at the end. Engine ran strong all weekend and we piled up laps without much problems. The old car even surprised a bunch of cars on the straights. Had to smile when after someone boxed me in on the turn on the long back straight, and they expected to easily pass me that they would slowly fall behind, well atleast up to about 80 when it would shift at shortly before we had to break.

Now I just need to get it ready for the winter and I will dread looking at the front right brakes cause I have a feeling it ain't going to be pretty.

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

Congrats man.. Wish I coulda been there.... What is the IoE?

[lemons bob]

"Recipient of the highest score in the Index of Effluency--as determined by a super-secret equation including vehicle age, general hooptieness, reliability of country of origin, unlikelihood of success, and the Organizers' whim--is the Winner on Index." - 24 Hours of Lemons, Rules, Section 1.5.

This is considered the highest award by the staff. And is basically which car they felt did the best from its starting point. Its their way to keep encourage a wide variety of cars and not just a bunch of miata's an old bmw e30s. to help this out we one $1 more than the winner on laps, although you probably will only win it once with a car. They leave it ope to win it twice but you would need to keep it basically the same as it is now and finish top five atleast.

[Duke George V]

Kick ass. When will you find out your residual?