It moves!

After the total failure of a second Harbor Freight spring compressor, Greg and I finagled (yes, finagled) the modified front shocks back into the car.

To recap, we took the front springs and cut them and installed them in the rear. This took the stock 170# springs and replaced them with 380# springs. We then replaced the front springs with 800# circle track springs from eBay. This required a modified spring perch on the shock, but lowered the car and stiffened it up significantly. Total cost: $30 for used springs, $0.50 in steel for the perches.

We were then able to drop the car onto it's new LS400 wheels for the first time. It's been on jack stands since December. With the lower suspension and sitting on it's wheels, it seems really low.

The stance looks great! The car drove out of the garage and then back in. It was a great evening.













Video of the car moving:

Cage is in!

First item of the day was getting the wiring harness out of the way, and the cage in its final position. So when Jeff showed up he got busy on the cage. Of course he started off with the easy welds.


For the front we used some mini plinth boxes we made out of 2"x2"x0.25" box steel that we had leftover from making the bender. Welding behind and on the outside of these looked to be a HUGE pain. Good job Jeff! Maybe next time we'll make the cage easier to weld.


Just another shot of the cage in its final resting spot. Last item on the list is the rear down tubes. Which we got started making, but aren't quite done. But at least the cage is in place and won't move when we go to the Open Track day next Monday.


We did get finished with the modified driver seat brackets. Braced them a little extra, and should be good to go. I mean it should at least be as good as Lexus quality. Not like our car is going to accelerate away on its own.


Got some more done on the front bumper. The main section and the wings have been welded in. A couple spots need touch up, because this is right when we ran out of argon for the welder. It almost makes me not want to put the bumper cover back on.


The exhaust is cut and ready to be welded, but as mentioned above, we ran out of gas. I think this is the first time in history when a Brawley has ever "run out of gas".


Soren and finished cutting the adapters for his suspension. We have out own home engineered suspension kit to allow us to run stiffer springs. I sure hope they work well.


Just about ready to install. Can't wait to see the car on the ground.


Soren and Matt test fitted a wheel. I'm not sure why. We had to take it off when bled the brakes and replaced the old fluid with some nice DOT 4 Super Blue. Maybe it was to the test fit the stupid style lug nuts we had to get. I don't know, but they fit.

No good deed goes unpunished...

Another weekend closer to the goal, and we're a few baby steps closer. Seemed like we did a lot this weekend, but don't have as much to show for it. Saturday we "fixed" the taillights. Apparently this car is picky about its grounding, and not having the fuel tank grounded (we had unbolted to attempt to take it out a couple weeks ago) made the difference. We jumpered the stupid "Lamp Failure Sensor" for good measure though.

This week I stopped by our buddy Caz's place, and he TIG welded up our stainless wye pipe with some aluminized steel adapters to start putting our exhaust back together. Below you can see his handy work, and the front of the glasspack we're currently running. Putting the wye pipe bace in was a bit of a trick though, as the welding had pulled the two legs closer together and things took some pulling on to line up. But we got it together.


And of course, we couldn't put in the new exhaust and NOT hear it. Duh... Its quieter, I think...

And Sunday Jeff stopped by to get some more welding done. And as you can see, we got the driver side door bars in, the plinthe boxes welded, and dash bar in. Not bad. Its all ready to weld to the car some night this week.



Jeff also fixed up the holes I blew through the sheetmetal and finished welding up the new, lowered, seat mount brackets. Might add a couple more braces, but I think we're good to go.

Saturday we got the beginnings of the new bumper fit together. Its about ready weld on. Soren also protected our new Cold Air intake (through the headlight hole) with some chicken wire. Looks a lot tougher now at least.

And last but not least, as a co-worker is fond of saying, no good deed goes unpunished. And sure enough, we put in some extra time Sunday welding things up, and the dash bar slips while being fitted, and pop, we have a cracked windshield. *sigh*


CORRECTION: Like Erik said, the front shocks are out now. But there's still some work to be done on the adapters for the new springs. Soren picked up some pre-cut pieces, and we got holes in two of them to fit over the shock, but need to cut at least two more to get closer to the expected height. So they're almost ready to go back on.

Another weekend closer

Well Team Bear Patrol racing was at it again this weekend at Casa del Greg. It was a big week for Soren, as you can see below, he made the jump and bought a plasma cutter! So of course we cut a bunch of random stuff to test it out, but forgot to take pics of that. Below he's finishing up compressing a rear spring to get the last cut one back installed. To get some added spring stiffness he cut a junkyard set of front springs, to fit on the back. It should sit a little lower, and complement our front springs once we get them on. Now if only we had the tires on the wheels, we could see how it sits.


Erik stopped by to help finish wiring the new tail lights. He had to bring over his soldering iron because my Harbor Freight special is so awful. But what do I need a soldering iron for, I'm a metal banger?


Here are the cheapo tail-lights we bought so we could sell our stockers. A nice little pick-up on eBay got us some brighter LEDs, and we mounted them inset, so in case someone rear-end's us the lights shouldn't be damaged. Unfortunately our fancy Lexus has a "light failure sensor" and the lower resistance LEDs seem to be triggering it and not working. Stupid technology.


Soren also got the last of the battery relocation done and hooked up. He also fab'd up a bracket for the battery cut-off switch to put right within reach in case of an emergency. We also switched to a dry cell battery since we moved it inside the driver compartment. I think there are a couple things left to get the hold down part of it finished though.


Jeff stopped by after a crazy workout at Crossfit St. Paul. I finished coping the passenger side doorbars so he could get them welded in. The bottom rear section of the bottom bar needed some creative bodywork to get access to. Wouldn't want any sections not funny welded.


Passenger side finished.


And then I even snuck some time to fab up part of a personal project. Its so fun having all these tools now. Cut and welded up a base for a sprayer for my mower. Boring, but I love having all this stuff around to fab things from scrap.


Only a few more weekends left before the track day for practice at Brainerd...um yeah that's May 24th, okay that's three weekends if we don't take the car up the weekend before the track day to show it off.

Commence the welding!

It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and what better to do then fire up the welder and begin fusing the metals with some gas metal arc welding. But in more important news, after weeks of being taunted for missing build days to transplant raspberry bushes, Danielle brought a delicious peace offering of mini raspberry cheesecakes. If you weren't here for them, you missed out. Just look how good they look!


Yeah I had eaten one already...anyways, back to the car. My big brother, and Chump, Jeff, came over to start the welding. We had tack welded the halo inside the car, and surprisingly, we were able to take them out together. So he started welding the Halo to the main hoop, then we started adding the diagonal cross bars. We decided to give our fat pig car some extra rollover protection with a second diagonal brace.


The el Jeffe had to hop in the car to weld some of the horizontal back braces. We could have pulled it all back out, but he wanted to see if he could weld himself into the car. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough on grabbing the camera to document his climb out the back window.


Another shot of the horizontal back bars. We're contemplating lowering the driver seat, which means we might need to add another bar for the seat belts, but we'll see.



Then we got to welding in the front down tubes. To get access to the top side of the weld, we had to plinthe box them, so we could remove the boxes and tip the cage down. Now I just need to build the finished versions of those plinthes, and we'll get those welded in, and the cage welded to the car. We also have a dash support bar ready, but decided to hold off on welding it in yet. But now that the down tubes are welded, we can finish cutting and fitting the door bars. They should be ready to weld in next weekend.


Soren climbed into the front wheel wells to get the new calipers, rotors and brake lines installed.


Don't they look hot? Nice aluminum, four pot calipers save us 4lbs per caliper, but it turns out the bigger LS400 rotors weigh 5lbs more. Doh! Oh well, we'll have some much improved stopping power, for basically the same cost as stock parts. Woot! We also picked up our first sponsor, Frozen Rotors, for a discount on cryogenically treated brake rotors, but we're saving those rotors until we get the race pads.


Next week we'll be back at some small projects, like putting in the braided brake lines in the rear, and flushing the brake system with new high temp fluid. Hopefully the tires will be installed by then and the car will be able to move under its own power. But the weekend of May 1st will be another big build day with lots of projects. We'll probably even start earlier then usual, so if you're a Chump, watch for that invite. Catch you Chumps on the flip-side!

Build Day 4/11 - More cage work

Another build day with a few more projects worked on. We started working on the battery relocation and mounted the remote battery terminals in the engine bay. The cooling fan wiring is complete as well.

We also cut some 4" holes in the trunk to mount the tail lights in. I was amazed how easily a new hole saw cut through the sheet metal.

We also tried removing the fuel tank and found that to be amazingly difficult. You'd think a fuel tank mounted in the trunk would be easy to remove, but no. We did come up with a way to mount the cage into the trunk without welding, which means we can do it with the tank in place. Basically we'll bolt plates in on the wheel well rather than weld it. Should work out well.

Matt also got the passenger door gutted, so they are ready to be reinstalled once the cage is complete.

Greg and Jeremy got a bunch more done on the cage as well. It's really starting to look look good. Since we discovered that the ChumpCar rules changed and we have heavier tubing than we need, we should be nice and safe, just like Lexus intended.

Build Day 4/3 - More cage, less glass

Saturday was a light build day. Most of the team was busy with Easter and other things so Jeff, Greg and I, with a little late help from Fritz, worked on the harder projects.

Fritz and I removed the trunk lid and rear window. The Harbor Freight windshield kit worked well, although the cable broke four times. The rear window was 17 lbs. All of the glass is now out except the windshield, which will stay. I'd like to install polycarbonate windows, but it's a low priority at the moment.





We started planning out the rest of the cage, and the rear down tubes look like they will be a little challenging. In this photo is the fuel tank, which is mounted in the trunk, over the axle. The rear down tube will come down to the front ofthe wheel arch, next to, and in front of the fuel tank. So, next week, we'll have to pull the tank out.


Jeff and Greg fitting the main hoop diagonal. Hey,this is starting to look like a real roll cage now! Next week we should be able to get the door bars done and start on the rear down tubes.






We have a track day in late May, which seems like a long way away, but is getting closer every day. I'm sure glad we started in November!