Yesterday morning, I drove down to Rapp Racing, and Mark and I put the block in the back of his truck, and drove the couple miles over to Paul Pfaff Engines for the machine work. I had visited Pfaff earlier and was not only blown away by their quality of work, but the entire staff’s friendliness. It was like I had known them all forever, and I wasn’t even a customer yet.
Once we got the block out of the truck and over to the machining portion of their huge shop (they also have an engine building room, a balancing area and a dyno section) we got to work. By 2:30, we had the block back in the truck and were headed back to Rapp Racing. Full details of the block and machine work will appear in the December 2010 issue of Race Pages.
Got to work the NMCA Milan race this past weekend. While I don’t have a ton of non-Ford engine combination knowledge, it is still awesome to see some of the performances those guys throw up. Nice to take photos of something other than a Mustang.
Cool tool number two is decidedly low-tech and really not very flashy at all, but extremely helpful, as I discovered this weekend.
I was in my buddy’s garage working on my old Focus (I’ve worked on it more since I sold it than I did in the last two years I owned it. How does that work?) and we got to rewiring the Nology sequential shift light and a couple AutoMeter gauges. Well, if you’ve ever spoken with me about anything electrical, you know how much I dislike wiring. I asked him if he had a pen and paper so that I could map out all the splices and male/female connector relationships and such. He walked out of the garage, and came back with an 18″x 24″ whiteboard. What a help.
From mapping out wiring to building a reminder checklist, having such a large canvas that you can quickly refer to on the wall is simply invaluable. Plus, dry-erase boards are fairly inexpensive and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. There is even a version that comes as an adhesive roll that you can cut to shape (say, the side of a rolling toolbox) or paint that can turn everyday objects into whiteboards (an old hood, part of the toolbox, or even a whole wall of the shop). I currently have five whiteboards around the house that help me keep track of everything from bills to handload recipes to eBay wins and expected deliveries, but just now realized their usefulness in the garage.
If you’ve ever stopped in the media tower at a race, you’ve probably seen the vast amount of technology we utilize to get our jobs done. Like people who go camping to get away from the day to day grind, sometimes it’s nice to put away the badass digital SLR camera with multi-point autofocus, automatic light metering, hyper-zoom lenses, and two-gigabyte memory card and revert back to the way a lot of photographers got their feet wet:
This particular camera was recently given to me by my girlfriend. It’s a Ricoh Singlex TLS; a traditional 35mm SLR camera with Rikenon 55mm ƒ/2.8 lens, both of which are older than I am. It needs a little work, (I’ve ordered a parts camera off of eBay) but it still works. With full-manual controls, and only 24-36 shots on a single roll of film, spray-and-pray doesn’t fly and it really makes you think. Plus, film has a personality.
These are a few test photos I shot with it (on ISO-400 CVS-brand 35mm color film), and had developed and printed at the local CVS this afternoon. They are unmodified other than being scanned and resized:
The other half of our front suspension upgrades showed up today. It’s a set of Strange Engineering‘s brand-new, double-adjustable threaded-body struts. We first heard about these a little while back and realized that they would work great with the double-adjustable rear shocks we already have from Strange. Look for an in-depth tech review coming soon in the magazine.
With all the talk about the new 2011 GT and the new 5.0-Liter Coyote motor, it seems like the new aluminum-block’d, up-rated 2011 GT500 has kind of had some of its thunder stolen. We came across this dyno test comparing a stock ’11 GT500 to a stock ’10 GT500 in real-world conditions.
Advertised as a 10 horsepower increase, with the same torque as the 2010 model, the actual difference in this test shows a gain of 20 RWHP and 10 ft.-lbs. RWTQ. Add in the 120 pounds shed from the curb weight and the ’11 GT500 has a clear performance advantage over previous models.
More are starting to arrive. Racecraft Inc. just sent us a set of their 2″ drop spindles and a lightweight bumpsteer kit. There are some other parts scheduled to arrive in the next few days that will allow us to finally get this thing down on the ground and rolling.
Another big box of goodies showed up today, for Warhorse this time. Latemodel Restoration Supply sent us the parts needed to repair Warhorse’s damaged front end, along with some new weatherstripping for the doors. As soon as it starts cooling down some, and the new hood arrives, I’ll invite some extra hands over, toss all the parts in the bed of our Project F-350 and have a mini-thrashfest in my driveway.
We got an email today letting us know about the 2nd annual NJ Stanger and Downs Ford Lincoln Mercury Motorsport Car show this weekend August 21st from 10am- to 4Pm at Downs Ford in NJ.
All Proceeds Benefit the Susan G Komen for the Cure Foundation.
There will be a DJ, food, and a lot of fun. Rick Riccardi of Downs Ford asks that if you’re in the area that you come on out and support the cause!
