Tag: preparation

Categories
24 Hours of Lemons cars videos

Car Prep Day 3 – Its alive

Day three of car prep was all about getting the engine running. At this point we had had the car with us for several months but we hadn’t yet heard the damn thing run.

We started up by tightening up the head bolts and putting in a new timing belt. After that we adjusted the valve spacing (space between camshaft and valve stem) and began reconnecting that various fuel hoses and wires. We decided not to put the cooling system in until the engine was in running condition to give ourselves some work room in case we needed to replace any additional parts.… Read the rest

Categories
24 Hours of Lemons cars

Car Preparation – Day 2

Day 2 of preparation was all about fixing up the head. As you can see below the valves were in really bad shape and all of them had to be replaced. We cleaned the head and the block before putting on a new head gasket kit.

A very bent valve
Cleaning the underside of the head before putting it back on

The manifolds were bolted back onto the head and we put the head back onto the car. At this point we were feeling quite optimistic about getting the car done when we realized that we didn’t have the right tool to tighten the head bolts – seeing that it was already late we called it quits for day 2 with the head just sitting on the block.… Read the rest

Categories
24 Hours of Lemons cars

Car Preparation – Day 1

Now that we had the car at Dietsch Werks, we had to figure out what was wrong with. Day 1 would be all about stripping the car under Robs guidance. We started out by jacking it up and draining the coolant.

The next step was to remove the cylinder head. This was needed because the 325 is an interference engine and the broken timing belt guarantees that we have belt some valves. We disconnected all the hoses + wiring and used a forklift to lift the head out of the engine bay.

Lifting the head

Once we pulled the head off we made a surprising discovery – all the pistons had valve marks on them.… Read the rest

Categories
24 Hours of Lemons cars

Car Pickup

After a couple of weeks of frantic paper writing things have finally cooled down enough that I can go back to writing my blog. First on the list is a series of blog posts about our preparation for the 24 hours of Lemons. Sit back and enjoy the fun. 🙂

The first and most important thing we needed to run in the Lemons was a car, not just any car, but a car that we’d be able to buy AND prep for for under $500. Looking through the results of the first race we decided that an older japanese econobox would probably be the best car to run with.… Read the rest

Categories
24 Hours of Lemons cars

It’s alive

On Monday we finally got our Lemons car started for the first time – still need to put the cooling system on buts its a relief to finally get it running. I promise I’ll have a series of posts about the actual prep work.

It’s Alive from rnair and Vimeo.

P.S.: The smoke is just oil smoke and the unbolted exhaust – the video got cut off because my phone died on me 🙁… Read the rest