Cheers mate. Can get them cheap enough

f**k yeah, nice run!
Congrats!
That was on the hoosier DOT radials again?
How are you launching on them out of interest?

I really like this thread, you had alot of drama at the start, and managed to keep your patience and eventually get it all sorted, and now getting some f**k great results out of the car.
I would go as far as to call it an inspiration!!!
Congrats again mate.

Thanks mate. Yeah, I was on the hoosiers again. I was launching at around 4 - 4500 and riding the clutch to get the power/grip balance.

The dramas seem so distant now, but a lot of lessons have been learnt along the way. Mind you, it's far from done! So much more to do, but what to do first?

Well done Chad.
As Jared said, its good to see where this thread has come from to where its at now.
The times you are running now are awesome mate, you should be proud, and im sure your feeling better about the whole build.

Yeah mate, the days of wanting to take her out to burn are well and truly over.

Didn't think we'd see you til next week. Hopefully it's all going well over there.

be nice to see your dyno print out. thats some killer power your packing. nice ride mate

Nice work dude, I'd say it's inspirational as well!

Cheers

ToranaGuy

Geeze, it's been a while, hasn't it!? Only today I was thinking that I should get off my a*** and update my build thread here, as so much has happened since I last came in here and there's a lot about to happen.

Since I last updated, my diff started single spinning again. I didn't want to go spending another $700 or so, only to have to get it rebuilt in another 12 months, or less, so I did a bit of research. The options I came up with was the Lokka, Mini-spool, KAAZ and TrueTrac. After lots of reading and hearing from people who've used each, my decision was to get the Truetrac. When I purchased it, I had Harrop modify the centre to 31 spline and I purchased a pair of billet 31 spline axles. I love that the TrueTrac behaves just like an LSD, but will cop any power that I'm going to be able to throw at it without needing to be rebuilt. Personally, I don't like the idea of the Lokka or Minispool for daily driving duties.

In this time, I also dabbled with nitrous. I purchased a Trick Flow kit from Summit. This is a rebranded Nitrous Express spray bar kit which mounts between the upper and lower of the Trick Flow intake. I set it up with the 100hp jets and it was running real rich (no bottle blanket), so rather than drop a size in the fuel jet, I went up a size on the nitrous side. This had things where I wanted them and took her down to the strip. The first night out with the kit installed saw a best of 12.4@116mph. Keep in mind I was still running the stock T5, so I was shifting like a grandpa and the clutch was slipping from 3rd to 4th.

The next time I took it down, I was hoping to better the ET, as I was stoked with the MPH. The only problem is, I was running the same clutch as last time and the T5 was still stock as a rock. On this night, I did better my ET with a 12.375@116.73. This was the last time I ran the nitrous...

The reason for not running nitrous anymore is this...

And this...


The front two spark plugs, 1 and 5, were melted the most. 2 and 6 were less melted, but melted none-the-less and the back 4 were fine. We think what happened is that with my fuel level below a quarter by the end of the night, on one of the last runs it's not picked up fuel at some stage and leaned right out. I didn't notice anything untoward until the following weekend when I gave her a service before having to drive 200-odd km each way every week down to Worsley for work. It still ran perfectly with those plugs in it without even a hint of a miss. Number 5 spark plug was stuck in the head as well, it would just spin in there, so I just had to hit it back in and hope for the best. It ran like a dream for ages like this.

I just realised I missed my brake upgrade. I'll have to save that one for next time, as I need to get to bed now. I was supposed to be off here over an hour ago! Argh... Anyway, here's a sneak peak of what's to come...

I think it's on the last page or the page before. She's making all of 0rwkw at the moment, though.

Back in October of 2009, there was a guy over here who had a white EL XR8 for sale. It had a stroker, T5z gearbox, EL GT brakes and original EL GT rims. I bought this with the intention of pulling the stroker out, putting my top end on it and running that, swapping gearboxes, swapping brakes and putting a set of track tyres on the EL GT rims. The first thing we (XH5LWEPN and myself) did was swap the brakes over. As you can see in the pics above, they fill the 18s much nicer than stock. The pads that came on the white car were like solid steel and were noisy as. I did a bit of research and a lot of guys were running the QFM A1RMs in the PBR C4 calipers, so I thought I would give them a go. These pads are awesome, to say the least. When cold they pull up really well and when you get on them and get them hot, they hold up really well. Such a huge improvement over the stock brakes, even with the slotted rotors and Ferodo pads.

Once I get on top of the upgrades that are currently in the pipeline, I'll be working on sourcing a set of 4 piston calipers for the fronts. If I get really adventurous, I may even try for 6 piston...

Here are a few comparison pics of stock vs EL GT

Calipers...

Rotors...

Last edited by Scaffy on Mon May 02, 2011 12:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

man love those brakes man wish i had a set
pretty lucky with those spark plugs tho

The next thing we swapped over was the T5z gearbox. This wasn't such a good swap. After 200km of normal driving around town, one day slowing down through the gears, coming to a red light, 3rd gear on the cluster gear decided to spit a few teeth. The original 'box went back in, after my mate shimmed the input shaft, after driving around for a few weeks with no third. It wasn't so bad, to tell you the truth.

With Jeff's help, the engine came out of the white car and was stripped down to the short block. BBK SSI-R intake and ported GT40p heads came off and were sold off. The block had been bored to 40 thou over, but I was told it'd only done about 13,000km. I thought to be safe, I should tear it down and check the condition of the internals. I'm glad I did. Number 2 bore had a deep score down it...


As a result, the internals were put away for a rainy day and the block was ditched. YEAH NAH was to wait even longer for that stroker...

I found a couple of pics of the TrueTrac and 31 spline billet axles. I suppose they don't look much, but I figured I'd throw them in anyways.

TrueTrac



Axles

So, this is about where the big girl was up to prior to Powercruise, here in Perth.

Three of us, Jeff in his Kenne Bell blown XH XR8, Marty in his 363ci Dart block, 9" EL XR8 and myself, represented Streetbuilt over the Powercruise 26 weekend from 30th September to 3rd October. I didn't get to participate until Saturday, as I couldn't get up to the track until late Friday. On the first Powercruise of the day around the track, I got a few good laps in and the big girl did pretty well for a 302 against some of the bigger guys down the main straight. On the final hard run down the straight on the final lap of that cruise, disaster struck. When applying power into turn one after slowing down after the run down the straight, I had very little power. I thought I might've popped a lead or 2 off somehow, but when I got back into the pits and was idling, I saw all the white smoke bellowing out of the exhaust. Jeff was behind me and reckons she was blowing perfect smoke rings. A pity we didn't get any pics of that. For the rest of the weekend, she just got to sit there and look pretty...



All that was left to do now, was get her back to Jeff's, pull the engine out and have a look and see what kind of damage I'd done. And work out where to go from here... Stick another stock short block in there and throw the top end back on, or do a rebuild with the crank and rods I have sitting on my shelf? Decisions, decisions...