89 Cutlass Ciera Race Car Build

[lemons bob]

So, for the front suspension, y'all prefer the coilovers to a stiffer spring from a van?

The uvan springs I think will raise the car a few inches which probably isn't what you want, coil overs will give you more options long term, want stiffere springs switch out to stiffer ones, and you can raise and lower each corner with them.

Anything we should plan to upgrade, or at least plan to fail on a somewhat regular basis (other than the general 'everything will fail all the time' mindset)?

Mostly you want to keep everything you can cool, so oil and trans coolers are a must if you don't have them, also finding a way to get some air to move over the disks can help make them last.

For the gaskets,

For the gen 3 60 degree engines the lim seems to be the weak point, so if its out I would definetly change it out with the updated heavy duty one, and might as well do the head gasket too while its easy to do.

What seat do y'all use, and how do you have it mounted?

We have a corbeau fx1. THey've gone up a bit since we got ours, but they are still on the cheaper end of seats and since its a composit seat you don't have to worry about the bracing like the metal seats, plus its really comfy. That being said I know a lot of builds are moving to containment seats which are safer. we have some some square mounted to the cage that it sits in. It isn't adjustable which could be a problem but so far it hasn't been an issue to us.

[mthew_m]

Hey all, so, good news - the parts car runs! We got it started Sunday afternoon after working on it all day. Fun story, none of us had ever worked on a car with multiple crank position sensors before, and we went through all the work of replacing the one on the end of the block, just to turn around and have it be the one on the side of the block that was broken. Oh well, live and learn. We also did a cold compression test, which came back a lot better than we were expecting - most were 180 or 185, one 190, and one 210, which seemed off. But, they're relatively consistent, which is good. We went ahead and put new spark plugs in it while we had them out. The car doesn't run well - we drove it around the block, and it had very little power, was missing a lot, and cut off a few times - P0300 code (it's a '96 so it has an OBD2 system), so we'll be swapping over the coil packs and maybe ignition control module (even though it's new) from the race car, since we know those make that car run well. What little shifting it would do seemed to be smooth, so hopefully the transmission works, but we'll have to get the engine sorted before we can really tell.

Is there anywhere other than the dash placard that has the VIN on these? The plate on the racecar is missing (the dash looks like it's been out of the car before, but, sometimes cars are super cheap because they've had a sketchy past...) No license or registration, but it did come with a Texas license plate in the trunk. Would be neat to put the VIN through a decoder and see what it started out life as (base, Custom, Limited, special options, etc).

To Bob, I've read that usually people will cut a coil or two out of the U-van springs to bring the ride height back down to stock (or lower), but, I'm thinking this would then remove some of the stiffness back out. We'll have to see, at least one of my teammates is really into suspension modifications, so he will probably want to move to coilovers just so we can have some tuning options.

For the failure areas, I meant more A-body specific stuff - I am rather shocked that this car doesn't seem to have any sort of an oil cooler on it, and only has a pretty average sized secondary transmission cooler, but, I guess it worked! We'll definitely be adding an oil cooler, baffling the pan (if it isn't already - haven't had it off yet), and a much larger transmission fluid cooler. They were only using the stock gauges until their last race, where they added a tachometer (would not have been my first choice for a guage on an automatic car). We'll be adding gauges for oil, coolant, and transmission fluid temperatures, oil pressure, and perhaps voltage - maybe not before our first race (we're doing Barber 31Jan-02Feb, so it should be pretty chilly), but definitely after that. So, stuff like wheel bearings, axles, CV joints, tie rods - anything that's not standard racecar stuff that tends to go bad on these? Any fixes? What spares do y'all usually carry with you that come in handy? Luckily, we probably have one of the cars with the easiest parts sourceability, but it's still nice to not have to stop everything and run to the parts store if it can be avoided. Weirdly, they did add some brake ducting for the front wheels - there's some metal dryer hose running from the front of the car around, they said it really did help keeping the fade at bay. But these things have such tiny brakes - my roommate noticed that his Chevy Trax (company car) has noticeably larger front rotors than the Buick does. But, that's top of the list if we have extra time before the first race.

I was afraid you'd say LIM - I don't want to add too much to our list, but, if it's likely to go out at some point while racing, I'd rather take time out of an evening at home than time off of the track to replace it. We'll look at doing that and the head gasket, although I bet my teammates won't want to since it has good compression (maybe I'll tackle that on my own).
And seat, I've seen a lot of teams using the FX1, and I guess y'all must like it if you've been running it all this time. You're right though, we are looking towards the containment seat side of things - figure we may as well, since we're running an automatic transmission (and I don't see any reason for that to change).

[tlc1976]

Some have swapped to 92-96 u-van front brakes which are bigger. There was some discussion on it last year, which parts need swapped to accomplish this. You do need 15 inch wheels to clear those brakes.

[mthew_m]

Some have swapped to 92-96 u-van front brakes which are bigger. There was some discussion on it last year, which parts need swapped to accomplish this. You do need 15 inch wheels to clear those brakes.

I think we're just going to go ahead and try and fit some really good brakes on it, and skip the half-step of going with U-body brakes. I do need to see if there's anything relatively simple we can do to improve the rear drums (I don't think we'll get to a disk brake conversion by our first race), and how dire the need for a proportioning adjustment is.

[Keiths1976]

One thing I would do is pull the cranks position wire that runs up to the Ignition control module . Make sure no cracks splits hot spots cause it runs and usually always hits the iron block and wears the casing off to expose bare wire and create a miss fire or cut off while driving . Best spares I carry with my 95 is a few ignition. Control modules from junk yards . Grabbed 5 for 20 bucks threw them in a box for spares . Still driving with a junk yard one for 3 years lol . From 1988 Chevy 2.8 v6 all the way to the 2004 3400 Chevy motors all use the same Icm . You could throw some 1996 -2004 3.8 sc (l67) coils to run little hotter of a coil for smooth idle and little more pick up off the line . All junk yard parts btw . Grab a ohm meter and test the coils at the yard 5.5-6.5 your are good to go By touch each post where the spark wires attach . To lower the 94-6 is kinda hard with the spring cause the bottom perch design is different you have to cut what ever coil length off and shape it to exacly the bottom of the old end . Was the higher number of the compression in the back head ? I feel the rear head tends to blow the head gasket first before the front .

[mthew_m]

One thing I would do is pull the cranks position wire that runs up to the Ignition control module . Make sure no cracks splits hot spots cause it runs and usually always hits the iron block and wears the casing off to expose bare wire and create a miss fire or cut off while driving . Best spares I carry with my 95 is a few ignition. Control modules from junk yards . Grabbed 5 for 20 bucks threw them in a box for spares . Still driving with a junk yard one for 3 years lol . From 1988 Chevy 2.8 v6 all the way to the 2004 3400 Chevy motors all use the same Icm . You could throw some 1996 -2004 3.8 sc (l67) coils to run little hotter of a coil for smooth idle and little more pick up off the line . All junk yard parts btw . Grab a ohm meter and test the coils at the yard 5.5-6.5 your are good to go By touch each post where the spark wires attach . To lower the 94-6 is kinda hard with the spring cause the bottom perch design is different you have to cut what ever coil length off and shape it to exacly the bottom of the old end . Was the higher number of the compression in the back head ? I feel the rear head tends to blow the head gasket first before the front .

Keith, good stuff! Luckily we have a spare ICM - they tried replacing that to see if it was the problem, so we'll keep that and see if we can find one or two more from the junkyard. Will keep that in mind about the coils - smooth idle and off-the-line isn't really important for us, but, if we happen upon a good set for cheap, may as well grab them as a backup! And, your intuition is correct - the 210psi is the back middle (against the firewall), and I believe the one that read 190 was the back passenger side - all the others were 180 or 185. So, does that tell us that it would be even more important to go ahead and do a LIM & head gasket before we try to stuff it into the racecar? I'm not hopeless at working on cars, but, I've got a lot to learn about cause-and-effect type stuff.

But, I have good news! We pulled the car into the garage again last night to try and figure out what was wrong, and my teammate noticed he'd plugged two of the spark plug wires into the wrong holes. After we fixed that, it runs great! Lucky it didn't do any damage or anything. We took it out, it idles good, drives good, has good power, and the transmission seems to shift fine. Not bad for a $330 car! Was a really good feeling, because I was not looking forward to having to chase down the cause of a misfire.

[lemons bob]

To Bob, I've read that usually people will cut a coil or two out of the U-van springs to bring the ride height back down to stock (or lower), but, I'm thinking this would then remove some of the stiffness back out.

Cutting springs actually make them stiffer. Seems a bit counter intuitive but plenty of sites will do the math for you.

So, stuff like wheel bearings, axles, CV joints, tie rods - anything that's not standard racecar stuff that tends to go bad on these? Any fixes? What spares do y'all usually carry with you that come in handy?

we haven't really run into too many problems. Can't remember the year of your car but if your wheels are the 5x115 you already have the heavy duty stuff for the car. We ran 3 races with all the original bearings axles and stuff. We had replace one of the wheel bearings and cv's but that was after some tom foolery behind us had a car ram us off the track on a straight away. (stupid a class cars. Probably 2 of the teams with most experience even since both raced scca and nasa). I'd be sure to have spare pads for the brake, maybe rotors but those tend to last a while. if you check out your ball joints and tie rod ends and stuff before you should be ok, but ours when we eventually replaced them were also all from the factory. I even had to drill out the ball joints because they were the factory ones that were riveted in. If you have any doubts about the ones in the car probably best to try and swap them before since they are budget exempt anyway and you can get better ones off Rock Auto then you will probably find at a parts store. Plus side is so many cars use the same parts you'll be able to find about anything close to the track.

But these things have such tiny brakes - my roommate noticed that his Chevy Trax (company car) has noticeably larger front rotors than the Buick does. But, that's top of the list if we have extra time before the first race.

The buick is also probably a good 1000lbs or so ligher than the trax. When we ran the stock brakes we could easily last 1 day, the race we tried going 2 we ran out the last hour, which was my stint and being the captain and stupid I figured I'd be fine, which I guess I was but was also pretty dumb thing to do, but we did win IOE so yeah. We also were running the stock 14" Steelies which didn't help. Since we updated to the uvan brakes and got some real nice and light alero 15" wheels we haven't had the problems. Still over half the pads were left after the 24 hour race and we haven't even been using real race pads, just hawk hps. I honestly wouldn't change the rear brakes. Under heavy braking the rear gets pretty light and easy to lock up, we've even had the rears with drums lock mildly. With the drums we have been able to brake as well as anyone, and keep it perfectly straight while braking heavily and they wear pretty slowly.

[lemons bob]

oh btw if you haven't I would suggest you get the factory service manual for your year. Easy to follow instructions on how to disassemble and reassemble everything, and even if you have an experienced mechanic its the best sort for the proper Torque specs for everything. should be available on ebay, mine was like $20 but that was a while back.

[Duke George V]

P0300 is random/multiple misfire. Only times I've had that code is when the wire from the 7x crank sensor (the one in the back of the block) was chafing on the passenger axle, and when I had #2 and #6 spark plug wires swapped on the coils. Gotta make sure the spark plug wires are on the correct coils.

[mthew_m]

Cutting springs actually make them stiffer. Seems a bit counter intuitive but plenty of sites will do the math for you.

I will take your (and the internet's) word for it! I think I can imagine the principle in my head, so, that's okay. We will probably stick with stock suspension for the first go-round (the springs are only a couple of years old, and we have new replacement struts, so, should be 'decent'), but I'll keep that in mind when we go looking for upgrades.

we haven't really run into too many problems. Can't remember the year of your car but if your wheels are the 5x115 you already have the heavy duty stuff for the car. We ran 3 races with all the original bearings axles and stuff. We had replace one of the wheel bearings and cv's but that was after some tom foolery behind us had a car ram us off the track on a straight away. (stupid a class cars. Probably 2 of the teams with most experience even since both raced scca and nasa). I'd be sure to have spare pads for the brake, maybe rotors but those tend to last a while. if you check out your ball joints and tie rod ends and stuff before you should be ok, but ours when we eventually replaced them were also all from the factory. I even had to drill out the ball joints because they were the factory ones that were riveted in. If you have any doubts about the ones in the car probably best to try and swap them before since they are budget exempt anyway and you can get better ones off Rock Auto then you will probably find at a parts store. Plus side is so many cars use the same parts you'll be able to find about anything close to the track.

Our racecar (and parts car) are both from 1996. Not sure about the racecar, no VIN (unless I can find it somewhere else on the car) and of course the trunk floor insert is long gone, but it's got the 5x115 lug pattern, so I guess that's the 'heavy-duty' stuff. Probably a good call on replacing all of that from the factory - we will also probably keep the spindles from the parts car and build a spare to quick-swap in, so we don't have to waste time pressing things in and out at the track. I can't imagine it'd be all that expensive (although, I was a little surprised how much camshaft sensors and things were for these at the parts store), and having a backup ready would make the main ones less likely to fail. We have a backup set of street pads, as a 'just-in-case' we use up all of our pads and have like an hour or two of racing left, but we'll be starting with fresh racing pads (or, as close as we can find) and a backup set.

The buick is also probably a good 1000lbs or so ligher than the trax. When we ran the stock brakes we could easily last 1 day, the race we tried going 2 we ran out the last hour, which was my stint and being the captain and stupid I figured I'd be fine, which I guess I was but was also pretty dumb thing to do, but we did win IOE so yeah. We also were running the stock 14" Steelies which didn't help. Since we updated to the uvan brakes and got some real nice and light alero 15" wheels we haven't had the problems. Still over half the pads were left after the 24 hour race and we haven't even been using real race pads, just hawk hps. I honestly wouldn't change the rear brakes. Under heavy braking the rear gets pretty light and easy to lock up, we've even had the rears with drums lock mildly. With the drums we have been able to brake as well as anyone, and keep it perfectly straight while braking heavily and they wear pretty slowly.

Believe it or not, the Trax is only about 50 lbs heavier (3100 lbs). It's the Chevy twin to the Buick Encore, GMs little roller-skate looking 'SUVs'. Expectations have just advanced that much in the past 30 years, I guess. I thought I remembered reading about you locking the rear brakes up even with drums - we'll definitely be giving the drums a go, and will see how we fare. I'm guessing you could probably run some more brake with the stiffer suspension setup from the coilovers, but, probably smarter to spend time upgrading the front. We have a set of 16" alloys that are heeeeavvvvyyy, but they're wrapped in a set of brand new Dunlop Direzza's, so, they're gonna get used. Also have a set of ~2000+ LeSabre wheels with some generic 560 TW tires that are very chunked out - I need to throw the very spindly 17" wheels from my Civic on, and make sure they clear the hub (please, please fit, lol), because I'm not sure if the tires on the LeSabre wheels are even fit to be a backup. I may see if there is a larger pad for the drums (there's something like that that I can do for my Suburban, which desperately needs better brakes), but if not, not the end of the world.

We have a book - two, actually - about the car. GM "Authentic Technical Service Information" for the 1996 A-body. But, they're in kind of bad shape (pages disconnect when I open the book), but, I do need to sit down with it and see what information I can find. Didn't seem to be all that well laid out when I first paged through it, but, they're ginormous, so there must be some good information, right?

Gotta make sure the spark plug wires are on the correct coils.

Have a looksee at the end of my last post, right before the It was 2 & 4 backwards. Considering that, I guess it wasn't running all that badly!

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

At a recent lemons event I went to, a guy was racing a Pinto, that he had swapped over X-body spindles, and swapped onto those a set of Camaro 4 pot brakes. I wonder if those can swap onto the A-Body spindles. That would certainly be a BIG brake upgrade.

[tlc1976]

The x body spindles were the same as the ja1 a body spindles.

[mthew_m]

Hi all! We're probably going to get together and pull the engine next weekend (28th/29th), so, I need to go ahead and order some stuff so we can doctor it up before we shove it in the racecar. What is everyone's opinion on getting a gasket set? My teammate is hell-bent on getting one, so, we'll probably end up with one. Looking at this one from Mahle on RockAuto:https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo...016165&jsn=915

I am assuming that won't have the 'good' LIM gasket, so I'll also order the FelPro one, as well as new head bolts, but, while we've got the engine out of the car, I guess it couldn't hurt.

Also, wheel bearings: I was planning to just get AC Delco replacements for most of the stuff, but, umm, a set of 4 wheel bearings for the car is slightly over $800, which, hell, I just bought an entire running Mercedes S-Class for $800, so, even though we could (budget-exempt item), I don't really want to spend that much on a few bearings. Anyone have a preferred substitute? Didn't think they'd be quite so expensive - even bargain-basements are about $250, but, $300-$400 is a lot more palatable than $800.

Our fire suppression system came in, and I found a seat I'd like to purchase, so, with pulling the engine, it's really starting to feel like we're doing this! (Which is good, because I have to caugh up $1500 for the race fee in a few days). I'll try and spend some time here and research out a real post, rather than just constantly bothering y'all with little questions.

[Keiths1976]

I run timken bearings up front on my 95

[Duke George V]

Timkens are $32 on Rock Auto for the fronts.