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Chuck Johnson posted on January 31, 2012 00:00
There is also a softer, gooier type of sound deadening that Nissan places around the wheel wells and inside the quarter panels of the S13. This type of sound deadening is impervious to the dry ice method. Instead, we used a torch to heat it up and a putty knife to carefully scrape it off. Let me emphasize the word carefully here. Molten sound deadening on your skin is a painful thing and you can come up with some pretty creative strings of cuss words when this stuff gets on you. The thing is, it sticks to your skin like molten magma and when you attempt to remove it, you end up peeling off your own skin along with it. [Insert elaborate strings of cursing here.] Sounds painful, huh? It is. Please, don't ask me how I know this.
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Going back to that term "carefully" again, make sure you wear safety glasses as the steel bristles will fly off at high very high speed and stick into things like arms, legs and eyeballs. Since this website isn't available in braille, please wear your safety glasses.
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Once we removed the large pads of sound deadening, we used a wire wheel attached to an angle grinder to remove the residual sound deadening and also the adhesive seam filler in the joints of the interior. Many of the cars I've seen at the track neglect this step and also don't paint the interior. Honestly, that looks like crap. But hey, if you like driving a car that looks like a theft recovery, that's your business.
Speaking of doing it right, every time we build a racecar we learn something new. It's the small details that make a difference. This time we learned about spot weld drill bits, which allow you to drill out the weld without drilling a hole through the body. In the past, we used to remove unneeded brackets by drilling out their spot welds. The problem with this is the car ends up looking like Swiss cheese later on. This might not harm a car functionally in road racing, but when you race on a dirt lakebed like El Mirage, it's critical that every hole in the car is sealed to prevent the driver's compartment from filling up with dust and blinding the driver mid run. This might sound strange, but it happens in land speed racing.
With the interior prepped, we dropped off Project 240 LSR at Pierce Motorsports, located in Torrance, California. Jim Pierce's experience as a fabricator is wide in breadth having prepared vehicles for rally, off road, and road racing. What's more impressive is that Jim's driving resume mirrors that of his fabrication experience. Jim has seen seat time in everything from the Baja 1000 to Prescott Forest Rally and NASA and SCCA endurance and sprint racing. With experience in off road and rally racing, we knew that Jim was capable of building a cage to withstand the most common type of crash in land speed racing, the high speed flip.
At Bonneville, there are no other cars on course with you; however, there is one giant wall to hit. It's the giant white one made of salt below that you're racing on. At high speeds, the common crash in land speed racing begins with the car becoming unstable, the front end lifting off the ground, and then the car going airborne. The car becomes airborne sometimes by 10-20' and then comes down on its roof. Check out the video below, for a wicked example.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 1:09 AM
I find covering dry ice with a heavy cloth for a few minutes increased the effectiveness of cooling sound deadening. Resulting in much less dry ice usage and bigger pieces of sound deadening getting chunked off.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 7:10 AM
Hey, that wiring looks as ghetto rigged as my car! I wonder what it is about S13s and bad wiring that seem to go hand in hand? As always, MotoIQ brings us some of the coolest and well designed new race cars. Can't wait to see how this one turns out. I love my 240SX and it always brightens my day seeing someone do something different with one. Very tired of seeing poorly built "drift" cars all the time.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 8:10 AM
That is a sweet roll cage.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 9:34 AM
I miss my "Pig-nose"...(sniff) Died protecting me in a T-bone at an intersection. It's a shame that the Dorifto posers are sending these cars to the junkyard. Then, like dogs at the pound, they are on borrowed time until the crusher...
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 2:28 PM
High quality workmanship! Are you guys going with a custom simple aluminum dash?
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 2:57 PM
I need to get around to rescuing an S13. I saved a 1959 Ford retractable from the crushers last year, and need to get my "nice" car STi before the Summer, but with the number of poor little S13s I see dragging stuffed animals across the Walmart parking lot, spinning that one Riken Raptor down to the cords, I think I may need to put my Prelude's H22 swap on hold before they're all gone. I can stack it out back with the wife's Corvairs til I can get around to it.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 3:50 PM
I would have said the cage is just way too beefy...before i saw the video...so what no room for 2.5" x.250 DOM??? lol Looks good I love the fitment and the door bars and floor plates are pure sex PROTIP: use LN2 next time for the sound deadening, did my last S13 in 25 minutes...I told you on facebook to hit me up, could have saved you hours HAHAHA
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 5:53 PM
I've never had to use chemical assistance to remove sound deadening. A good chisel, hammer, good technique, and a proper Canadian winter worked for my SM and MR2. Even not in winter I find if it's below 25 (celcius) its not a big deal to chip out. Side note, on AW11 MR2s there are cast iron chunks bolted to into the chassis inside of the seat mounting portion. Vibration damping?
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 9:26 PM
I think the worst effect the Dorifto guys have is they drive the price for clean S-cars through the roof. They did it with Civics and then DSMs :(
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 10:55 PM
The roll cage looks bad a$$ Chuck!
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 11:56 PM
I've been building a 240sx for a few years with an eye to land speed racing and time attack. I origianlly started welding in the all of the rear braces to a large bar welded between the rear shock towers, just like your cage. But the more I think about it the more I regret it. The rear is not a strut design like the front. So the majority of the rear chassis forces are going through the four points that the rear subframe conects to, not the shock towers! If you're willing to extend the kickers through the floor, there is actually a decent lateral beam directly above where the rearmost rear-subframe mounting locations are. Then if you want to get real trick add that bottom x to just above the foremost rear-subframe mounting locations are. Here's my tower bar I'm considering cutting out. [IMG]http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i70/SicBastard/IMG_0319.jpg[/IMG] And here is Hot Lap Motorsport's (in Spain) latest. It is the closest attempt to what I'm thinking about, concentrating on having the kickers tie in directly above where the rear subframe ties into the chassis. [IMG]http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i70/SicBastard/s15hl19022011157.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i70/SicBastard/s15hl19022011149.jpg[/IMG]
Wednesday, February 01, 2012 7:41 PM
@dru - def on the right track there, triangulate the towers down to or even through the chassis. I'don't like holes in the car esp where your second pics show, that's sure source of dust and crap. The bolt-on solution I use in my Nissan works well for that same area - there is a top brace you cannot see here over the towers, welded tubular steel https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-wCywk5Ih520/TynovRFr1XI/AAAAAAAAKIM/1XFI80-NloY/w500-h376-k/RSTB_w_brace_5.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-jlFQ29xtxxc/TynouUkuDGI/AAAAAAAAKH8/rAAmJtOXDSs/w500-h333-k/RSTB_w_brace_07.JPG bottom bolts through the holes where the OEM gas tank goes. Not a bad setup at all for mixed use car.
Wednesday, February 01, 2012 7:44 PM
@Chuck - I also started using spot weld bits when I pulled the radiator support out of my U13, what PITA that would have been and the car would have had so many holes drilled in it - but the spot weld bit mostly ate the metal i was removing anyway. Nice tip!
Wednesday, February 08, 2012 5:25 PM
"A lighter color will reflect heat and ultimately lower cabin temperatures whereas a dark interior color like black can make life a bit more uncomfortable for the driver." In fact, color plays no role in radiation absorption, transmission and reflection. Surface finish though does. Please take a look at my thermo radiation notes from last semester, there is an interesting table in there too: http://www.mediafire.com/?9cuc5m9y6a7kbx0
Thursday, February 09, 2012 1:35 PM
Who are you planning to run with? I'm currently prepping my Impreza for ECTA to run at the Ohio Mile.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 3:49 AM
Freezing the sound deadening out of my Z32 was incredibly satisfying, but boy do I feel your pain about those sticky wheelarch tar mats. I eventually figured out that by slowly going over it with a heat gun, they could be softened to the point where you could peel them off the sheetmetal in one big piece. A lot of sticky gunk was left behind, but a turpentine-soaked rag cleaned it up real good. No damage done to the undercoating either.
 
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