Timing Belt Repair

On Wednesday this week, Greg and I worked on the the car a little more and got the new timing belt installed. The old belt is in atrocious condition, being very cracked, and clearly stretched. The new belt went on much tighter, and looks so new and clean.

Since this is a budget build, we bought an eBay timing belt that was a bargain but turned up one minor issue. There are three marks on the belt. One is supposed to be marked CL for the center (crankshaft) pulley, but it wasn't. That was pretty easy to figure out, but the bigger problem was that the marks for the camshaft pulleys was slightly off. There is a mark on a tooth on the pulley, and a mark that lined up with a tooth on the belt. If you think about that the belt mark would either end up on one side or the other of the pulley tooth. Crap. There was a paint mark on the pulley, and we decided to align the belt with that. Hopefully it's aligned properly and the car will run well, but if it's running poorly, we'll have to open this back up.

We put the engine back together right up until the point where we needed to install the fan hydraulic pump and it's idler pulley. Since we're removing the hydraulic fan system, we need to remove the pump, but at the same time, we need to keep the idler. So, we need to modify this part. Probably with a grinder. We'll save that as a side project for the next major build day.

BD-2 and Team Meeting

So we had a fairly successful build day numero dos. That's spanish for the dos. Due to Soren's "eBay and PayPal" issue, the water pump didn't show up in time. Conveniently it was at Soren's house when we got back from the team meeting though. Speaking of the team meeting, that was a huge success. Thanks to Caz and the crew at Caztek for hosting and providing pizza. It was great to meet everyone and put names to faces.



Above is a new pile with 10 some pounds of sound deadening material. Strategically placed in plastic bags for easy weighing. There's a little left in trouble spots of the interior, but we'll need to get Ben's experienced "Dry Ice" technique to remove the rest of it. Unfortunately now our Lexus won't be as quite, so if we have a hard time hearing any of you while we're on our cell phones during the race, driving with cruise control and sipping our Starbucks, we apologize.

There was some debate on whether to leave the e-brake in or not. That debate is to be continued. We left the glass in doors for now, in case we get it running before Spring and want to test drive in the less then warm Minnesota weather.



We did get the moonroof out, which reduces weight and helps add head room. We'll probably rivot in or weld in a panel to close it off. Though I think we should put in plexiglass, for that open roof feeling. Maybe we should put in one of those sweet rally scoops. Those add like 50hp, right? Also note the picture on the right with the in-trunk fuel tank. At least there's plenty of room between the back of the car and it.

Well next up is Day 3 (Feb 6th), where we plan to do some seat fitment for the various sized drivers. Hopefully our two statistical outliers, Ben and Jason can show up. Soren and I may get the water pump in before then. Luckily Thor's cousin Uncle Louie was able to break the bolt loose for the harmonic dampener. Now we just need to pull that, and finish the disassembly. And now that we have the parts, we'll get it all buttoned up.

Build Day 2 Approaches

Tomorrow's a big day! Build Day number 2 and the "mandatory" team meeting at Caztek. It'll be the first time some of the people meet, and serve as the kick-off for the season. The new timing belt and tensioner pulley's are here and ready to rock. As you can see, the new belt looks quite a bit better.



Hopefully the parts Soren ordered get here. His PayPal mix up with an eCheck could postpone some assembly. But there's no shortage of other work to do.

Build Day 1

On our first build day, we wanted to get most of the interior pulled and replace the radiator. Danielle and Charles joined Greg and I to work on the car. Charles and Danielle worked on stripping the interior while Greg and I worked on the engine. We discovered pretty early on that the timing belt was severely cracked an in desperate need of replacement.


The interior came apart well with about 80% of the work complete in less than a day!

Bumper Repair

This is crap-can racing, so replacing mangled body panels is not appropriate. But I can't stand the idea of an ugly car, so I decided to put the front bumper cover back together, Frankenstein style, with pop rivets. I think it's coming along fairly well.

Assessing the Damage

I decided to pull off the bumper cover and assess the front end damage. One of the first fun discoveries was the hair still stuck to the bumper.

After I decided to ignore that I pulled the bumper and start disassembly. The aluminum bumper was destroyed, which really showed how hard this hit was, but the only real damage otherwise was the broken radiator. Turns out there was a big hole in the radiator, so it was clearly driven dry. Hmm, that's not good. Hopefully it wasn't overheated and damaged.

Finding the car

The night before Thanksgiving 2009 I found a craigslist ad for a 1992 Lexus SC400 that had hit a bear for $700. The SC400 is a V8 powered luxury coupe. I had been looking at cars like the Lincoln Mark VII as a car with good power and a lot of weight reduction opportunities. The SC400 met those needs, plus it was a top of the line Toyota, so I figured it would be a well built and reliable car. I had resigned myself to finding a safe Honda, but still wanted a V8 and rear wheel drive. So, on Friday, I called the owner and took a look at the car.

It ran well, but had a broken radiator and was leaking coolant, so it was a brief test drive. In talking to the owner, he claimed his girlfriend was driving at highway speeds in Northern Minnesota when she hit a small bear. The damage looked like mostly cosmetic damage, which is pretty amazing for a bear hit. Even a small bear. I decided to consult with the team about purchasing the car and after discussing it, they agreed that they would support purchasing this car.

So, Saturday morning I called the owner back and made an offer. He had a second set of wheels with decent tires on them, and I offered him $550 for the car and $150 for the wheels and we made a deal. I came buy with my trailer and found the owner a bit upset at having to sell his car, but the deal was completed and I took the car home.

Welcome to Team Bear Patrol

Last year I was introduced to ChumpCar as an alternative to the popular 24 Hours of LeMons series. The LeMons Series seemed like a really cool idea: Buy a $500 car, add a roll cage, and drive it in a 24 hour endurance race with a team of drivers. It's affectionately known as crap-can racing, and I think it's a grand idea!

The problem was there were no LeMons races nearby. Then ChumpCar came along with two races within 4 hours drive of the Twin Cities. Woo Hoo!

After talking with friends, we decided to pool our resources and start a team. Initially it was Greg, Erik, Jeremy and I, and we've since added Ben, Jason, Danielle, Caz, and Matt along with several support folks to help us along. We plan to race at Brainerd and Iowa in June 2010, and if things go well, we'll road trip down to Florida for the Chumpcar race at Sebring, home of the 12 Hours of Sebring, in September.

This blog will chronicle our team's adventures in crap can racing.