bummer

Nice.  The day after bonuses are announced I have this waiting for me in the parking lot at work.  No note left.  I will check with the office, but it looks like this will be my responsibility to pay for and deal with.

I guess parking in the back of the lot puts you among two types of people.  Those who care about their cars, and those who are late for work...

yep. More chopping

I connected the engine to the trans and lifted them into place so I could see where everything will sit and what the new ground cleance is.  I was disappointed to see that all that effort got me only 3/16 in more clearance.  I also noticed that the shifter shaft tube was hard agains the top of the tunnel most of the way. 

I was worried that cutting this deep into the tunnel may cause the chassis to move.  Before cutting I used a centerpunch mark two points on either side of the tunnel a known distance apart.  Once I chopped that, everything started to come together.  I got 7/8 inch more ground clearance which makes a lot of things start to line up better.  My centerpunch marks moved only 1/32 and could be flexed back by hand, so no big deal.

 

more trans tunnel chopping

Finished rough cutting the hole for the shifter tonight.  Now I can get the transmission higher and see the next thing that will hit.  I am definitely heading down the right track.  The transmission is already nearly an inch higher than it was.

 

I am still here

I lost last week to putting up some crown molding around the house.  Today I went to an autocross.  It was the first time I ran the ST.  It is a totally different car than my 01 Focus was.  The 01 had to really be tossed into things to combat the understeer.  It also had great feel, and a great chassis, but no power.  Getting used to using the throttle at positions other than 0 or 100% was weird.  I kept forgetting, and would floor it, and either spin tires so hard that the car wouldn't speed up, or it would just unsettle everything.

That was the other weird change.  The ST is loose.  I had one run where my toss it into turns instinct from before caused me to be out of control for the whole run.  Once used to it, I appreciate the looseness, however there was one place where I wanted it to stay loose through a 180° sweeper.  The stability control seemed to get freaked out since I was turning with the spin instead of against it.  It did some weird nonlinear stuff and it killed a lot of my runs trying to help me there.  Probably should have just been brave and run in race mode.

I felt like I was still getting used to it at the end of the day.  I know there were multiple seconds that could still come out of my time even without perfect driving.  I hope to run again this year.  Might be bold enough to bring the Lotus next time...

Is this your homework, Larry?

Went to the annual open house this weekend at Ragtops and Roadsters.  Always some beautiful work on display there.  Makes me feel like a hack:

See what happens Larry?

Whenever I am tearing into a car and stuff is getting messed up because I am moving too quickly, not thinking and getting emotional, I always think of that scene in the Big Lebowski with John Goodman reasons badly and goes to work on the Corvette.  In fact I usually yell that when I break something.

I got the transmission into place and decided I need to move the tunnel a little too far for crisp hammer whacking and need to cut and weld the tunnel a bit.  Which means the interior needs to come out ahead of schedule:

(See what happens, Larry?)

There were a couple ridiculous items.  The passenger airbag is really really hard to get out unless you know a trick that I figured out after (there are two hidden screws near the fire wall that release the cover).  Without that knowledge you end up mangling the cover as you fish a 10mm wrench inside the compartment to remove 3 nuts 1/6 of a turn at a time.

Also, There are three clips hidden way down in the air vent.  You have to thread a screw into them, and then pry the screw out:

looking for clearance around the transmission

Losing a little more ground clearance due to the header being too low sort of crosses the line.  I remember once I lowered my mustang it got to be a pain.  I had to think about my route in advance because a parking lot entrance, some pot holes, etc could ruin your day.  It hit the ground all the time going over bumps in the road, and I once ripped a muffler clean off.

The good news is if the header goes up 2.5 inches it will be against the bottom of the car and block access to the subframe bolt which is equally unacceptable.  So I think I am looking for at most an inch up, which will put ground clearance back at 4.25 in. I think I want to increase clearance on the driver's side about an inch.

To get a good view of what collides and help me decide my plan I removed the engine and the bell housing:

Passenger side header fit

The good news is that I have solved my header problem (Patriot headers H8426).  $165 for the pair.  Cheap enough you can plan to bang, hack and weld on them and still be able to sleep the night before you start.  These give a surprising amount of clearance.  I expect a little subframe modification before I am all done, but it will be very mild.

The header on the passenger side comes out much further to get around the starter motor.

After trimming the subframe it became clear that the engine is not centered.  This was driven by fit of the transmission in the tunnel which is tight.

I am thinking about options:
1) Leave the engine where it is.  Cut the subframe some more to get clearance.
2) Chop some relief into the tunnel to get some more movement and clearance
3) cut out the tunnel in this area, bend up a new one and weld it in giving loads of clearance to put everything in ideal position

2 and 3 get me more engine height which will fix my ground clearance issue.  This will give more tranny clearance too.  3 is epic, and is what I have seen other builds do.

new headers + fit check

I got the left side header on to check fit today:

 

Awesome!  It looks like no subframe mod needed on this side.  But, the height looks a little low:

Stock ride height puts the ground at 5 inches above the garage floor, so if I maintain ride height my ground clearance is down to 2.5 inches.  I need to see if I can get any more height without doing something drastic...

I installed the Right side header, and chopped the subframe for that side tonight:

 

I will dress it up these cuts a bit and see how clearances are on that side next.

the five lb bag

I hate having stuff everywhere.  Every step has to be into a clear little spot, or around something, and you can't even clean because ever space is occupied.  We got 6 inches of rain yesterday, so there was no putting items outside while working.  I didn't appreciate how hard it would be to add something this large into an already full space.

It was a late night last night trying to rearrange the shop to accommodate the lathe.  I modified the table that came with it and bolted it to the wall.  I also got the lathe up on it and started reassembling everything.  I pulled the plug on all this at 12:00a.  My new headers came, and I didn’t even have time to hold them up to see how they fit.

 

 

I think I imagined and measured for every permutation of positions out there.  It payed off because I found a combo that by some miracle left me with more space, and made the things I used most, easiest to get to while working.  I still have a lot of tidying up to do, but you can squint and imagine it organized: