1. | Home | 11. | April 25th |
2. | Motor Installation | 12. | May 2nd |
3. | Painting the Interior | 13. | June 2nd |
4. | Rewiring the Gauges | 14. | July 10th |
5. | Test Drive! | 15. | Aug 5th (almost done!) |
6. | Intercooler Fabrication | 16. | October 2nd |
7. | June 18th | 17. | November 4th |
8. | June 23rd | 18. | January 1st |
9. | January 26th | 19. | February 15th |
10. | February 6th | 20. | Junk Page |
It's now November and this car has never run better. Most of my
work on FourBanger has been tuning and cleaning last month. But the work has
paid off in a big way. I still have interior clean up to do, like zip tie some
wires out of the way. Still, I have to say that I'm extremely pleased with the
performance of this car. It's the rainy season here and it seems like every day
it's wet out. I really gota fix the windshield wipers. LOL When it wasn't
raining, I busted out the trusty high speed single direction buffer and went to
work on the paint with a foam buffing pad and some Zymol wax. Big Difference! I
then sprayed the rims with a little cleaner and scrubbed them with a brillo pad.
Who says you can't polish a turd? LOL
A few days ago I decided to finally put on the rear sway bar on
which I bought from the junkyard for seven dollars. Since the car already had
the stock sway bar on the front, I decided to leave it on AND have a rear, which
the car never had before. What a difference! The car handled very well. It
didn't lean at all going into corners. It stayed very flat and responsive.
Here's a pic of my rear bar and it's new home. Next month I'm gona clean up all
that surface rust and paint it with some black undercoating. Here you can see my
2 1/2 exhaust and my Terminator muffler. Soon to be upgraded to 3" all the way
out the back.
With that done, I decided to remove the front sway bar completely to help the nose come up during launch. Once I had all the bolts out I noticed how heavy the bar was. It weighs roughly 15-18 lbs! After it was out, I tried a few hard launches to see if I was heading in the right direction. Well, I can say that having no front sway bar definitely helps the nose come up and having the new/old rear sway bar on, it definitely hooks better out of the hole! Now it squats evenly in the back instead of dipping the right rear like it used to.
After I got done with the suspension, I tried to clean up the
engine compartment a little. The best way I do this is with Zip Ties! I don't
know where I'd be without them. hehe. I also put on my new shifter that I bought
at Fun Ford weekend at the track. Take a look. All the wires that were hanging
down in the interior are now cleaned up and out of view.
Now that I'm pretty much done with the interior, I then devoted my time to tuning the engine to make the most HP and performance. I went to the store and bought some new spark plugs. I went with a colder heat range plug just to assure myself that it wouldn't ping while on high boost levels and pump gas. The plugs are Autolite #103. I have "touched up" the ground electrode on the plug. What I did was, I took a file and filed back the ground electrode to help "unshroud" the spark kernel. Then I polished up any burrs that were left behind from my work. The new plugs are great. I don't have a pic of them because they're in my engine right now. LOL Maybe later I'll take one out and snap a pic of what I did. But you should get the idea anyway.
I just had a birthday and received a nice present. It's a Ford
Motorsport Boost Gauge!!! I couldn't believe it! Thanks a bunch to my fine, fine
woman! Now I can finally get an exact measurement of how much boost I'm actually
running. I hooked that thing up and was stunned by the reading. It took me 4
tries to get a picture of the gauge! It's kinda hard to drive and hold the
camera straight at the same time. hehe. If you can't notice from the picture
here, Yes That's 24 Pounds Of BOOST! Let me tell ya, this car flies!!!
Well, I promised to get some action shots of my car but it's
hard to find someone who can take a clear pic of it. LOL But here's a pic of me
just messing around on my street. My pops took this pic so don't blame me. J/K
Pops! This car has gobs of power. It is hard to control the amount of power when
I have the boost cranked up. The engine just want's to scream!
And finally, here's a view of my gauge cluster. I changed all
the light bulbs in it and it works great. The new wheel is pretty cool too. All
I have to do is paint the steering colom's plastic covering and I'm done with
the interior..... yea right. LOL
After driving FourBanger all over town, I've gotten into a
couple of races. Most of the people I've raced don't know me or my car and what
it's capable of. Put it this way, I haven't lost yet. hehe. Last week I pulled
up to the light and there was this '88 Trans Am sitting there. This thing
must've had a nice cam in it, cause it was thumping pretty nice at idle. Well
this guy looks over at me and gives me the "Your car's a piece of crap" look. So
I rev it a little. Just enough to make it rev like a regular 4 cylinder and so
he couldn't hear the turbo. When the light turned green, I destroyed that poor
TA.
Note to looser:
FourBanger
Don't Play!