Car Aerodynamics Simplfied

Found a very simplified and informative write up on vehicle aerodynamics that would benefit a lot of the average joe's so take a few minuets to better inform yourself.


Aerodynamics Simplfied

Mehh, New Starter is In... thats all folks

My new starter came in yesterday which is way lighter and smaller, allowing clearance of the exhaust header and shaving a few pounds (20lbs vs 10lbs) off the car at the same time.

Oh, and a more current pic of the E30

BMW E30

Teaser Pics

CCW Fail

Saw this browsing some corvette threads.

Couldn't handle the 335mm slick on this 18x13" wheel

First Stretch and Poke Meet of 2011

Wasn't at this one but next one hopefully.. Enjoy

Stretch N Poke 2011 from Matt Berenz on Vimeo.

Updates

 Well after headaches with the passenger side header install I opted to purchase a mini-starter. Simply waiting on the mini-starter and AIR delete bracket to arrive now, and sadly neither company gave me the option to expedite the shipping even after clarifying shipping price is not an issue and one company couldn't even get back to me on approx arrival date. Based on my experience I do not recommend www.tpis.com for Canadian buyers however they may get a second chance and Ultimate Corvette Parts didn't fair better especially for being based in Ontario Canada.

In my spare time I've been helping my buddy Calvin with his E30 project. Lets just say this thing will be insane!!!! Key words to describe it: Slammed/Stretched/Turbo M30/Work's/Art

Picked up some tires for the vette, and for Cal's beast courtesy Samson at GB Tires

And the silvia is chilling

Weather is getting better and so is the Corvette

Finally got the oil pan off the other day and after removing the oil pump, a 5lb hammer did the trick and knocked the POS dipstick tube out. I ordered a Felpro gasket which looks amazing by a quality and engineering view point but hopefully it fits as good as it looks.

Underside with the oil pan removed

Oil Pan. Little bit of sludge but nothing to worry about.

Up-skirt shot

Looking better, but I still hate GM

Well I've been slowly working away on the corvette spending about an hour a night. My biggest problem right now is that the oil dipstick is stuck inside the block and requires removal for the passenger side header install. I have no choice but to drop the oil pan and hammer it out but I'm not going to start that till the new gasket comes in which I'm ordering tonight along with a new dipstick but that may require a stop at the stealership.

Today I installed the O2 sensor with shortened harness and routed the new Taylor 8mm spark plug wires on the driver side. I'm not a fan of the wire lengths and apparently they are supposed to be custom tailored to my engine. Next time I'll probably go with over the top header wires and hopefully they just copy OEM lengths.

 Updated pic

Bings Meet

Lots of People, cool cars, great people, crappy weather but all and all a good time. Thanks Bing

hopefully you can see the pics without reg

Bings Meet

More

Awesome Pics (thanks Tim S.)
wilwmak's Flicker: Bings Meet



Video (my car is first in vid)

YouTube video of the cars parked

Busy Busy Busy no time to Post

But hey look ZR1 wheels finally on the back. Yippe!

2 Cars at Once?

Well tonight I finally finished the front sway bar on the vette so I'll do the write up Good Friday while I'm recovering from the previous party night in Toronto. Also managed to pop the hood on Megan (silvia/240), checked the turbo elbow for cracks, and just refreshed my memory on things to do. 

May 1st is the big annual "Bing's Meet" where the true 240 and Nissan owners congregate. Last year I won the award for People's Choice and I don't plan on a repeat, once is good enough. Its time for the car to build more character then style if you know what I mean. I do plan to fix Megan up prior to the meet with the basic TLC and probably redo the cracked front lip, and maybe I can find a shop to cut and weld my fenders and mount the flares. I don't have the tools to do the flares on my own so I'll bite the bullet and hope they do it right but still need to find a shop in short notice

Corvettes Suck, Extended Studs Install Process(venting on my progress)

 Boring post, reader beware...... I'm posting simply so people don't think I've abandoned blogging.

So...... I started this weekend with the thought of possibly getting the vette on the road. Yeah that's not happening now. I planned to do the simple things first such as front sway bar install and new extended studs in the rear.

I started with the extended studs because I wanted to mount my fat ass wheels with sapcers and see how pretty she looks. The moment I took off the brake disc I realized this may be bad. I've never ever taken a look longer then 2 seconds at drum brakes or my rears on the vette before today.
The problem is the corvette has a drum ebrake that sits behind the hub preventing me from knocking out studs or installing new ones. Well there was enough space in places so buy rotating the hub I had enough back space that i felt comfortable hammering away at the stud. Holy crap!!!! the studs were in there good. Someone must have torqued the wheels to some ridiculous amount at some point. I managed to knock out one with a sledge hammer but that was no easy task and I really didn't want to do it again as everything is taking the impact and the car was shaking pretty good even with the frame on stands. Shitty part is that there wasn't enough space for the stud to slip out from between the drum and hub.
OK, time to remove the hub. Run to Crappy tire, grab a 36mm socket, remove big f'n nut and it comes right off. Not the case as GM puts 3 massive torx bolts behind the hub holding everything together. I go on the net to find out that i have to remove the entire half shaft just to make space to undo the bolts. FML, this sucks, I take a nap.
I start taking apart the rusted half shaft telling my self how much this sucks, I want to meet the genius that decided to put the bolts on the back and possibly kill him, and so on..... Then i stop half way and determine that i will remove the three bolts without removing the shaft which happened. With the help of different extensions in combination with more different extensions all different for each bolt and in-between all the suspension arms, I was finally able to remove the hub. Pic of hub off and the drum brake remaining.

But now its time to get those pesky studs out. After trying the sledge hammer with a socket to no avail I decided to stop monkeying around and use a vice. I still couldn't pop them but the "just a little more" mentality was saying "just a little bit more torque should do it". A 15mm socket, a short extension and placed on the end of the vices' handle should suffice. 20deg of rotation later and this is what happens.....

 ... I'll stop there but still have all these items to install

Slow Progress

Well nothing exciting to post. I planned on completing the corvette come thursday/friday but I've run into an issue with the air pump so I have to replace the pump with a pulley. They sell setups for $200 which is ridiculous when it probably costs no more then $40. I'll post up what I do by weeks end.

What also sucks is the front sway bar install. I'm going to do a write up when i finish because the 4 line instructions that came with it are useless. I should seriously post them up because all the say is "remove sway bar from chassis. remove endlinks from chassis. install in reverse order using supplied parts." I'm not impressed with VB&P but the sway bar should perform to expectation making all things good and bad equal.

Some status pics

Something about a car on jack stands is hot! (fyi I'm crazy)

All the A.I.R parts removed. Tin snips helped alot but bolt cutters would have been better. Probably 20-30lbs of junk.

Engine bay during removal

I know... BORING!!!!!
hopefully parts come in and things move faster

-Jaz

Project Kira Underway

Spent the majority of my time in the garage this weekend but things were rough going. So, here is a quick post with only a portion of what was done over the weekend.

Vette Brakes and Performance Rear Sway Bar Install:
Quick comparison shot below shows that the rear sway bar (26mm) is noticeably bigger then the stock. The largest oem rear bar found on C4s is 24mm mind you there is a 25mm in existence but good luck finding that as I believe it wasn't a typical factory offering. Depending on the options when purchased the car can have a bar as small as19mm.

Install is straight forward and the only difficult part was installing the mid mount bushings as they are thick plastic which required work with a heat gun to soften them up, allowing them to separate enough to fit around the bar.
I painted the the mounts with some anti-rust paint to add some "bling" factor and hopefully deter rust for some time. I also found some new hardware as the kit did not include any (-1 for VB&P sway bars).
Pic below of the sway bar mounted.

-Jaz

Corvette Goodies

Last night I went for a little 8 hour road trip to Brockville where I met a cool dude who sold me his C4 Corvette ZR1 wheels that came off his GMC typhoon.
Fact of the night: Apparently only 3500 typhoons still remain on the roads today.


Quick teaser pic to give you a size reference

630mm combined of rubber... =)

-Jaz