With an overheating engine, it was time to go through the head and put in a new headgasket. With the head off I put a little work into porting:
We were also getting much too familiar with changing brake pads after every single race. We were using Hawk Blues and stock brakes with ducting, but we needed more mass. However going with bigger brakes, meant bigger wheels, bigger tires, which would all keep adding more weight to the car. Not to mention when we had spares of everything, it's an expensive changeover. So we keep changing brakes...
We had an S14 subframe (95-98), but with ChumpCar rules we would have to take points for installing it. Cutting/welding the S13 subframe to match the geometry however was free. The S14 subframe has less antisquat, which gives a little better grip under power. Here you can see my very scientific measuring..
Here you can see how raised the front of the control arm is on the S13:
Compared to the mostly flat LCA on the S14:
This was my solution:
When putting the engine together we tried to use an S14 front cover.. and discovered that it causes an oil leak..
We had some room in points, so we put on a header that had come with an engine:
Then fit the factory heatshield over it:
We had seat sliders, but they were stiff to adjust and we never moved them. So in order to drop the seat a little more, I made some custom seat mounts:
We also used an Airbake cookie sheet where the exhaust goes near our heel. This worked fantastically! I kept melting the glue on the heel of my shoe previously.. and it would get quite toasty and uncomfortable.
We also installed some more lights for our next race which would have some night running:
With the engine together and running and car cleaned up, we were ready for the next race!
