Day 4

Well a lot has happened between now and then, and well I’m not doing such a good of a job keeping up this blog. It helps to have an already running car, so lately we’ve been taking things slow and doing some artsy stuff. For those who don’t know, our theme this year is Space-Pirates!

You can watch our video application here: http://fatemobile.com/

The car was towed to another member’s house where it would receive it’s redecoration job, as well as a few other minor tweaks to make it pass tech (new door bars). So here’s what happened…

New crank pulley (our old one was wobbling like mad):

A bit of this:

And you get this:

Eyesore? mmmm, yeah maybe a bit. But it sure draws your attention. The interior was later painted silver to help give it a more space-ship-like appearance. The outside though… it looks like gobstoppers candy meet circus tent. More awesomeness to come, later.

Day 3

Sorry no pictures this time, but these work meetings are getting less and less exciting when it comes to content. The Z-car got yet another oil change and the ticking fully went away, but not the back fire (oh well!). The rear driver side caliper was replaced with a less rusty unit that looked like it was rebuilt by an idiot. The piston was rusted beyond belief and the dust boot was the wrong size and was forced on (the rubber was all deformed from being smashed on). I struggled with the silly caliper and in the end resorted to using a big C-clamp to smash it all together so we could re-attach it. I also ripped off the stupid dust boot, not that it matters since the piston is ruined anyways. At least now the brake doesn’t drag.

The old brake caliper is going to be rebuilt, and this time by us, not some dolt.

The trailer received the most work, it is now fully welded, sort of. The deck is welded in place and we primered it all. Actually that doesn’t sound like a lot of work, but it did take hours to complete the tasks.

More in store later, of course.

Day 2

Didn’t really do much. It was hot, not a lot of people came. We replaced the front springs, replaced the distributor cap, and fixed the timing. Not too much left that’s troubling this car… pretty good so far!

Day 0 and Day 1

Well, posts sure do fall behind when you don’t have too much of an incentive to keep posting. Anyways, to start it all off here’s a double post unexciting starting the 2009 season for Project-Fate Lemon’s Racing. First, we had our car appraised by Chief Jay Lamm and he gave us a very generous worth of $200. With that set in stone, we no longer have any need to try and sell off the random bits off our z-car, so in the trash it went. Also for amusement we stepped on the A/C condenser… It was a lot more entertaining in real life than in the pictures.

More minor progress

Yesterday we had another mini work day, mostly focused around the trailer. We took off all the aluminum diamond plating to asses the rust damage and what cross members have been removed. We took a trip to a local metal supplier but unfortunately they didn’t have what we needed and the other stuff we could have used wasn’t cheap.

Oh well. We went to the junkyard since we haven’t been to one in a while and it turns out the pick-n-pull foreign vehicle yard merged with their american vehicle yard. Not really good, since it really shrank the selection down. Oh well. We bought a few things but what really helped us was being able to take apart a similar year 300zx valve train. We went home with our new knowledge and decided to just run our 300zx for a few minutes to get the lifters primed.

What originally plagued our car was some horrible valve ticking and bad misfire. It turns out the two were related as the valve tick is caused by the lifters being full of air rather than oil. After running the car for about 20 minutes the lifters were re-primed and the ticking and misfire went away, magic! The car fixed itself again! So at the very least we are good to go to run another Lemon’s race.

We also did a bunch of grinding work to prep the trailer but time ran out. No pictures because I didn’t take any, haha.