Shocking Developments...

Good news Today: Eric tells me that the part for my new shocks came in from Penske, and he thinks he can put them together in time for the VIR weekend. So tonight, out to the garage to document some of the finer aspects of the shock setup so that they will hopefully fit right the first time. (As it will be hard to make any adjustments in the time left). A unique feature of the Citations is that the front shocks need to have extensions on the lower front in order to clear the bellcranks and steering shaft. (Pictured here).

The extension is capped by a rod end (Aurora MM 6T) the rod end has a sleeve in it to reduce the inner diameter of the bore down from 3/8" to 5/16" to match the "bolt" The bolt is another relatively unique item with a round top with two flats and a turned down end that uses a 5/16 jet nut to attach. Two thin nylon washers are used to ensure a tight fit within the bellcrank. (above).

At the other end of the shock are more standard "hat" bushings".

The "hat" bushings have a .50" inner diameter to fit within the shock eye bearings.

Shocks (continued)

Thickness of the "hats" is .35"...

With both "hats" in place, the width is close to .75". I have to surmise that they do not quite bottom against each other in the eyelet bore.

Closeup picture of the front lower bearing and it's sleeve.

Width of the "custom" bellcrank end fastner is approximately .312 - roughly 5/16".

Shocks (continued)

Width of lower front shock bearing... .50" (I think this is a standard MM6T rod end with a bushing in the bore).

Rear shocks are more standard. They use the same "hat" bushings at both ends. Fastners are 5/16" diameter.

Shock lengths:
14" Front (center of eye to eye)
12" Rear (center of eye to eye)

Other developments today:
1) I SUCK at sewing, after about an hour of pricking my fingers and uttering a few choice explitives, I gave up last night. So this afternoon I took my driver suits over to the local Vietnamese district in town and decided to "outsource" the attachment of the required F1600 Series, SCCA Pro Racing and Hoosier Race Tire patches to the local taylor shop. $50 probably well spent and a lot of frustration on my part avoided :)

2) I have begun the car polishing exercise and applying the required stickers (at least the ones I have from Honda/Hoosier/SCCA etc). Lots of rubbing out left to do before I pack up. With all of the fiberglass and paint work, I got a lot of surface crud on the car. It doesn't look bad until you polish up one surface and compare it to the adjacent area. Next time I will keep the car covered better and during more of the process. I guess that is just a product of how I have been working lately. Stop by the garage thinking I will do just a little bit, and no need to cover everything up. Four hours later... the garage is a mess and a project is well underway... Oh well - at least it all seems to clean up nice, so no real harm done.

3) I have finally come to some consensus on the initial gearing to use, so tomorrow night it is gear change time. I think I will time the process to get a benchmark on how long it takes. I will likely want to make an adjustment after the test day next Thursday. I am still contemplating how much bodywork I want/need to remove to make it and efficent (and cleanly) process... Should be entertaining...

More tomorrow,
Sean

Airbox assembly (continued)

Right side view. The airbox scoop tucks in pretty neatly under the rear engine cover and the lines come together for a pretty smooth transition. Again - not show car stuff, but fairly nice for a racer. (And much prettier than the huge gaping hole in the rear bodywork that I ran for testing at VIR earlier this month).

View of the airbox assembly installed on the car with the rear bodywork removed. The attraction of this approach is that the rear engine cover comes off and on easily and the airbox stays in place. No clumsy foam seals or leaky mating flanges to worry about. Clean neat and easy to work with...

So that more or less completes the 'build' part of this process.
Kinda anti-climatic, but there it is the car is "done".

So what is next?

This week:

- Hopefully my new Penske shocks will be done in time for the VIR races. I sent Eric Langbein a note Friday, and he tells me that he is still waiting on some parts from Penske, but will call them Monday morning. This part is starting to make me a little nervous. The car performed amazingly well at teh VIR test with the old Konis, but given Lathrop's comments on their less than ideal valving characteristics, I am anxious the swap the Penskes in ASAP. Assuming they arrive in time, I will have to redo corner weights and ride height once they are fitted.

- Gearing... I wish I had more data on the Hondas to work from here. I think I will reach out to a couple of fellow Honda FF racers this week for some more advice, but I am pretty sure I will want to start the VIR weekend on a different gear stack than the one I used for testing.

- Front Sway bar - Dan Greaves (former car owner) sent me a note on this blog a week or so ago that has me thinking. He tells me that there is a softer front bar in the boxes he gave me with the car. Since the car had pretty noticable understear at the VIR test I am tempted to pursue this option. I will run this idea by Steve Lathop this week as well, but I suspect that the softer bar is a better choice for the lighter non-winged setup the car runs now...

- Home Ec - I got an envelope full of driver suite patches in the mail earlier in the week, so I guess I have a date with the sewing kit in my future.

- Polishing - Once I give the new paint a chance to cure for a few days, I need to do a general rub down of the bodywork to remove the overspray and general grime from the last few weeks of work. The car looks pretty good as it sits now, but I always like to enter a weekend with a polished up and waxed car. Makes between session clean up easier (and makes the anal retentive owner happier) :)

So all-in-all things are really coming together. I would like to have the trailer all packed up by this time next week, and that is looking very doable about now. A couple of months ago this was just an ambitious dream, but it is rapidly becoming a reality. Lots of late nights in the garage have paid off and I am feeling more than a little self-satisfied about now. (with many thanks again to the long list of people who got me here)

Hopefully the race weekend at VIR will not be anti-climatic. The field of competitors is daunting, and I am approaching the weekend hopeful, but realistic. My testing showed some real promise, but the reality will come April 9th when the green flag drops. Hopefully I can hold up my end of this bargin and do the car some justice...

So over the coming weeks, this blog will be taking a bit of a turn in direction. No more late nights of car building and first time discovery. Now is where the "rubber meets the road" and we see how it all works. I will certainly keep on blogging, but the topics will be changing to car prep, packing up and BEST OF ALL - RACING!

I can't wait,
Sean

Finishing up the airbox

Once the paint had dried it was time to work out the permanent mounting of the airbox and the top scoop. To keep the heat transfer from the engine bay to a minimum, I installed the trick gold shielding on the bottom of the box. This is probably not necessary given the high front location of the box, but I had just enough laying around for the job...

Trial installation of the box and scoop on the car. I am pretty happy with the lines and gaps. Not quite show car stuff, but certainly nice enough for a race car that I will beat to hell on the track.

Final installation. I affixed the scoop to the top of the box with 6 button head fastners. I used a thin foam one sided tape on the inside of the scoop to seal the perimeter. Once the button heads were drawn down it made a pretty nice seal. The front of the air box was riveted to the head rest bracket. The back is held in place by the rubber rear flange on the K&N filter itself. The hose clamp that holds on the filter also squeezes the filter against the airbox body also making a pretty good seal. To remove the box in the field is easy. Two botton heads hold the head rest on from the front, and remove the clamp from the filter. Then the whole works comes right out of the roll hoop opening from the front. Easy.

Front head on view. Little or no area added to the airstream.

Painting it all

So after much sanding and filling and sanding and filling it was on to paint. What else are you going to do on a Saturday night? F1 race from Australia on the TV and a fine green mist in the air... Forcast tomorrow is for 3" of SNOW! So tonight was paint night.

I think it turned out pretty nice. I blended the paint in from the top, so in a few days I will need to wet sand and polish it all up, but it looks pretty good right now.

I decided to do the airbox and scoop in green as well. A fine green mist has descended on the Maisey garage. Good thing I moved the BMW out of the garage first :)

Goodnight,
Sean

Bonding it all together

The last two nights have been a 'bonding' experience. First I patched the hole in the top of the engine cover that formerly housed the FC carb. and airscoop. This process was an exercise in patience (and as I am sure I have mentioned before this is not my strong suite).

The last of my expoxy resin was used on the first pass at the patch. I laid up two layers of fine cloth on the 'finished' side of the hole holding it all in place with my favorite tool (packing tape). Once this had dried (24 hours! as I was low on hardener). I laid up some Nidacore material in the inside to approximate the thickness of the original panel. It turned out pretty nicely.

Then I bonded the new fairing onto the opening over the fuel system. To ensure a good bond, I applied resin to the mating surface and then used several counter-sunk rivets to firmly clamp the two pieces together. Shown here is the nearly finished product. I am fairly happy with the result given my crude fiberglass skills and the tools at my disposal.

Once I had applied a little more resin mixed with microballs into a paste to the flange areas, I rough sanded the flange areas and the top of the new patch over the carb inlet area. Then I sprayed on a little filler-primer to see how much surface work was left to do. Pictured here is the 'raw' piece. Tomorrow night I will block sand the entire repair area and feather in the flange areas a little better.

Then comes the 'fun' part. Lightweight Bondo will be applied to smooth out the shape a bit and ease the transitions...

With a little luck it will be ready for paint this weekend...

Head on view of the semi-finished product. I still need to make the mounting plates to affix the scoop to the airbox and then lots of wet sanding and spot putty work are in my immediate future...

It is a little hard to see with all of the parts behind it, but I am pretty happy with the way the pieces turned out. There is very little (if any) protrusion into the airstream. I went a little large on the airscoop opening not knowing how much my helmet will interfere with the air flow into the air box, but the beauty of this approach is that I can easily go larger or smaller on the scoop later without redesigning everything else.

Sean

Fairing Rework

The most junior member of the "Maisey Racing" team (Sammy) came out to the garage tonight to give her dad a hand. I put her artistic talents to work putting the vinyl labels on the dash for the switches. Sam decided that it was easier to do it from inside the cockpit...

Unfortunately it was much easier for her to get in than back out. The Citation is a tight cockpit and she is just too tall to pull her feet back under her and too short to lift herself out with her arms like I do. After a few attempts to extracate herself, I was joking that I would just get her a pillow and she could sleep in it. She was game...but eventually we wriggled her out, but only after some neat new graphics were in place on the dash. Now the switches are all clearly labeled and look pretty professional (thanks to Dad - or "grumpy" as Sammy calls him for the vinyl work).

The more I looked at the fairing we made Saturday the less I liked the comromise look. So out came the "Sean Maisey Technique" molding supplies... (packing tape) and I carefully taped out a shape I liked in place over the fuel system. Once it was all smoothed out and shaped, I cut out three layers of glass to cover the new shape.

And here is the product. a much more nicely countoured fairing done in place, so I KNOW it will clear all of the engine parts. A little finish work and I think I will be much happier with the result.

Next, closing the gap over the old FC carb inlet.

Later,
Sean

Rear Bodywork Continues

The 'fun' part of the moldless construction is chipping the foam out of the hard shell. Talk about messy processes...

To gauge the look of the airbox, I tried out painting it to match the frame. I think I will ultimately prefer to make these green like the rest of the body, but it did help me gauge the finished look.

Airbox and scoop in place and on to fitting up the engine cover/fairing.

Front view. Unfortunately the right side of the fairing was not a good fit. That is the problem with trying to make parts away from the car. (We made the scoop and fairing at my dad's shop Saturday afternoon. The more I looked at the fairing the less I liked the look and the fit on the right side. I was contemplating hacking a big piece out of the right (drivers right that is) side and reglassing it to a different contour. In this view you can see that it is just too high and doesn't fit well.

Airbox (continued)

Finished airbox and inlet scoop.

Moldless composites. Burt Rutan would be proud. Both the tail fairing and air inlet scoop were made this way. My dad turned me on to this technique. Basically you shape the basic piece out of foam (like a surfboard) and then lay up the cloth layers over the foam to impart the desired shape.

This is the end result of the layup, a hard fiberglass shape that imitates the original foam piece.

More on the Aixbox/Scoop

Top view of the new airbox. As you can see, it wedges nicely between the throttle body and the headrest.

View with the temporary fairing template moved out of the way. Note just enough room for the throttle linkage to operate with out interferance with the airbox. Now to build a new fairing to cover the intake and continue the lines of the new airbox.

Right rear view of the new airbox.

Stripped of the parts... This is what I am starting with.

On other notes:
- I did a little gear analysis earlier today. Turns out that I was running gearing that was way too tall at the VIR test last week. If the Honda was up to it I could have done 138mph at 6600rpm... I am thinking that the Honda top speed in SCCA trim is more like 129-130. Maybe with the F1600 restricter I can pull another MPH or two, but probably not 8-9! My 3rd gear was way off too, so a gear change will be in the offing before the F1600 debut. Hopefully this will all add up to much more competitive lap times...

- Eric Langbein tells me that he has my new (to me) Penskes in process. Assuming that Penske has all the parts in stock, I should have them done in plenty of time for VIR.

- I sent in my entry for the opener earlier today. Hard to believe that it is only a few weeks away now.

- All the way to the VIR test the speedo on my trusty old Dodge Diesel truck was jumping around and ultimately quit altogether. Nothing like driving 3 hours in the dark in a driving rainstorm with only the tach to go by. So - time for a little tow truck maintenance. Tonight after replacing both the transmission and differential speed sensors, I was dismayed to still have the problem. So back under the truck...Eventually I traced the wires and discovered that the diff sensor wire had been rubbing on the drop link for the rear sway bar and one of the wires was severed. So a little wiring work later, Big Blue is back in proper working order again! One less thing to worry about.

More tomorrow,
Sean

Scoop Part 2

After some careful consideration I have decided to go in another direction with my air intake system. Earlier in the week I constructed a cold air box that fits in the space between the roll hoops. The box will be affixed to the back of the headrest on the front and will be held in place by the air filer at the rear. The portion of the airfilter that slides over the throttle body fits through the opening allowing the rubber base of the filter to sit flush with the back of the airbox.

The airbox is still in rough fiberglass and will need to be finished for final installation. I left the top of the box open for access to the filter for service. Tomorrow's agenda is to fabricate a top panel that incorporates a scoop over the top of the headrest. I plan to attach the top scoop plate to the box with rivet nuts or nutplates for easy access to the filter inside.

I contoured the airbox to match the shape and profile of the headrest. Only the scoop portion will extend into the airstream.

Right side view of the new airbox. I have trimmed the original faring to use as a sizing template. Tomorrow I will make a new fairing out of foam that will continue the lines of the back of the airbox to smoothly blend back into the original bodywork.

Scoop

So back from the track, and I have a surprisingly small list of issues to address from the test. First and foremost is to fabricate a permanent bodywork solution to cover the intake area and a cold air inlet. In discussions with my dad, we are thinking that the bodywork should be extended to cover the whole area, and a seperate cold air intake can be fabricated that will stay attached to the car. So Saturday and today I started work on a first concept of the bodywork mods. Pictured here is my first try. The concept is to take the cold air in over the top of the headrest. I am still trying to decide if this is a big enough inlet, so I may still enlarge it a bit before I call it done. My original calculations indicate that a 2.5" diameter inlet should be sufficent. This inlet has more area, but sure looks a little small. Thankfully I have a little time now to mull it over.

Right side view. (Still in need of much finish work if I decide to keep this profile).

Front view. I can trim the headrest down about 1/2" and still meet the 36 sq in. rule, so that may be an option too.

Any input is appreciated...

Sean