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January 15. 2021: Update to my post from a couple of months ago - the burnishing tool works wonders but it makes a FOOKIN MESS!
So Zach went all #Mythbusters on that thang, added a vacuum assist which cleans as it polishedes. Works wonders, doesn't sh!t metal dust everywhere. #Winning
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Tube framed GT made to look like an S550 Mustang, from the crazy Aussies at https://www.marccarsaustralia.com.au/
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Some after hours assembly of Amy's HPR 454 LS7 engine for her 86. Rods bearings checked, main bearing and thrust bearing checked and dialed in, then the crank final installed.
Very meticulous measurements and tweaks took a few hours, but we got it all dialed in. #Agent86 #HPR454
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January 16, 2021: I have to post this PSA periodically, in case people get the wrong idea: Doing engine swaps IS NOT EASY. It is also NOT a cheaper way to get a good lap time on track.
Buying a run-of-the-mill C5 - C6 Corvette and modding that is infinitely easier and *always* cheaper (for the same lap time) as LS swapping any chassis, if you account for all of the time / labor / research / hassle needed to finish a swap.
That's the painful truth. I am telling you that as a shop owner who makes LS swaps for a living. Why would I lie about this?????? We have this talk with people all the time who call us and think that they can turn their ratty street car into a track terror for $1000 and a weekend of work, like the YouTube and TV stars like to promote. That's just bunk. The opposite of truth. FAKE NEWS, but on the real though.
Even if you value your time at $0/hour, and you have ALL sorts of skills that are helpful with swaps (wiring, plumbing, tuning, fabrication, parts sourcing, exhaust building, cooling experience, and on and on), and all of the necessary tools to make everything, it STILL takes a lot more effort, time, and money to do one of these swaps WELL enough to be fast and reliable on the track as a hum-drum C5 with a handful of mods.
Of course there ARE good reasons to LS swap some chassis, so lets list them:
1. You just hate C5-C7 Corvettes for some huge reason: laid back seating position/visibility, lack of interior room (these cars are hard to cage well), the "its just so big" factor, the feel of a remote transmission shifter makes you cringe, the gold chain car show factor, etc. All of these are valid reasons - if you have the money and skill to make a swapped car faster than one of them, then go for it.
2. The final weight of a stripped/track prepped C5 (2800 ish pounds) is much heavier than your own race car's end goal. It is still hard to beat that weigh in some swaps, but it CAN be done on *some chassis* without notable impacts on safety. Some.
3. You have an unusual love for some particular chassis and want to make THAT CAR in its fastest version possible. Hey, I get it - there are some neat cars out there to fall in love with. Just about any chassis CAN get much faster with an infusion of LS goodness! Some folks are on a crusade to prove that "X" chassis can be as good or better than Corvettes on track - with copious amounts of power, time, and money thrown at one. Go for it, eyes wide open.
4. You just HATE MONEY.
Again, we love LS swaps around here, and part of our business is built around them. But we're not going to "tell you what you want to hear". These are the painful facts, learned after 2 decades of swaps and hundreds of swap kits sold. There are also some chassis we simply will NOT LS swap: NA/NB Miatas, P-cars, E30 BMWs, most AWD and FWD chassis, and many more. Lots of reasons why - mostly the compromises needed to fit this engine and an appropriate transmission are too great of a cost to the original chassis.
I hope that eases some of your fever dreams. Again, if you have the will and the means, anything can be LS swapped. We can help with some chassis but not all. Cheers! #TheMoreYouKnow
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Random pictures from the shop, part 2! Brad has been painting like mad and the back half of the shop is all cleaned, painted and ready to be put back together. The drywall crew finishing the tape/mud work was worth every penny!
Steering column mount and AiM dash arrived late on Friday. Zach (after cleaning up the fab table, then making another mess again, ha!) got to work installing the Keyser column mount (that Tim found) onto our Prius column, which Magan removed the old brackets from and cleaned up ahead of time.
Perfect fit! Should have this column finally installed on the #TeamVorshlag E46 later this next week. A little more painting at the other side of the shop and we can finish cleaning up, organizing, and moving clutter upstairs over the CNC rooms.
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January 18, 2021: Some track driver was complaining online that his pads "de-laminated" and was super disappointed in this brand. Check out the pad material thickness - its HALF the thickness of the backing plate! This pad was used WAY beyond its design life. So I meme'd his pic and will use it to show what NOT TO DO, so others can learn.
Pre-track inspection should always be looking at the thickness of the brake pads - THIS IS THE WAY to spot these issues before you take a lap, before you lose your brakes. If the pads are even close to the same thickness as the backing plates they have no chance of lasting a track day. THROW THEM AWAY and put your spare set on.
You do have spare pads, ready at all times, right? If your pads have to be built to order then ORDER TWO SETS so you don't get caught out. I'm saying this because it has happened to me, and my big 2014 crash was due to *this very oversight*, 100% on my part. During the pre-track inspection our techs noted the pads were the same thickness as the backing plate, but I hadn't ordered spare pads and said "it will be fine". During my first session the brakes failed, at 155mph. And now I have a crushed vertebrea, yay!
Don't take your brakes for granted. Ever. This is a sure fire way to ruin your day! #ThisIsTheWay
-----
Some of you might remember the corrosion test we started last October, after looking at moving our camber plate bushings from carbon steel with a yellow zinc chromate plating to a stainless steel. I also put a bare carbon steel part on the test, which is outside the shop.
Surprisingly the plated carbon steel piece still looks great after 83 days. But.... this is a static test, and the real part sees a lot of suspension forces that could likely wear the plating off before it corrodes away. And of course there is no salt spray, plasma this or that, yadda yadda yuadda. #EnterArmChairEngineers
We quietly switched to stainless for all bushings starting that day, and we're making more this week. Eventually we will be 100% stainless for these parts, but I'm not willing to toss out 100s of perfectly good plated parts (that have worked great this way for 17 years). We have been switching more hardware to SS versions over time as well.
This is not the only thing we might switch to stainless steel. This material costs 3x as much but we haven't had a price increase in NINE years, and all of our materials are up up up in the last 3-4 years. We've managed to reduce waste and increase machining efficiency to keep prices stable, but as more of our items switch to stainless there will eventually be a price bump, which will likely have to happen in 2021.
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Good, healthy reasons to mod your car - not the social media reasons. Well said - worth the 8 minutes.
https://youtu.be/4bS9lsxecAg
-----
That's What's Up!
So Zach went all #Mythbusters on that thang, added a vacuum assist which cleans as it polishedes. Works wonders, doesn't sh!t metal dust everywhere. #Winning
-----
Tube framed GT made to look like an S550 Mustang, from the crazy Aussies at https://www.marccarsaustralia.com.au/
-----
Some after hours assembly of Amy's HPR 454 LS7 engine for her 86. Rods bearings checked, main bearing and thrust bearing checked and dialed in, then the crank final installed.
Very meticulous measurements and tweaks took a few hours, but we got it all dialed in. #Agent86 #HPR454
-----
January 16, 2021: I have to post this PSA periodically, in case people get the wrong idea: Doing engine swaps IS NOT EASY. It is also NOT a cheaper way to get a good lap time on track.
Buying a run-of-the-mill C5 - C6 Corvette and modding that is infinitely easier and *always* cheaper (for the same lap time) as LS swapping any chassis, if you account for all of the time / labor / research / hassle needed to finish a swap.
That's the painful truth. I am telling you that as a shop owner who makes LS swaps for a living. Why would I lie about this?????? We have this talk with people all the time who call us and think that they can turn their ratty street car into a track terror for $1000 and a weekend of work, like the YouTube and TV stars like to promote. That's just bunk. The opposite of truth. FAKE NEWS, but on the real though.
Even if you value your time at $0/hour, and you have ALL sorts of skills that are helpful with swaps (wiring, plumbing, tuning, fabrication, parts sourcing, exhaust building, cooling experience, and on and on), and all of the necessary tools to make everything, it STILL takes a lot more effort, time, and money to do one of these swaps WELL enough to be fast and reliable on the track as a hum-drum C5 with a handful of mods.
Of course there ARE good reasons to LS swap some chassis, so lets list them:
1. You just hate C5-C7 Corvettes for some huge reason: laid back seating position/visibility, lack of interior room (these cars are hard to cage well), the "its just so big" factor, the feel of a remote transmission shifter makes you cringe, the gold chain car show factor, etc. All of these are valid reasons - if you have the money and skill to make a swapped car faster than one of them, then go for it.
2. The final weight of a stripped/track prepped C5 (2800 ish pounds) is much heavier than your own race car's end goal. It is still hard to beat that weigh in some swaps, but it CAN be done on *some chassis* without notable impacts on safety. Some.
3. You have an unusual love for some particular chassis and want to make THAT CAR in its fastest version possible. Hey, I get it - there are some neat cars out there to fall in love with. Just about any chassis CAN get much faster with an infusion of LS goodness! Some folks are on a crusade to prove that "X" chassis can be as good or better than Corvettes on track - with copious amounts of power, time, and money thrown at one. Go for it, eyes wide open.
4. You just HATE MONEY.
Again, we love LS swaps around here, and part of our business is built around them. But we're not going to "tell you what you want to hear". These are the painful facts, learned after 2 decades of swaps and hundreds of swap kits sold. There are also some chassis we simply will NOT LS swap: NA/NB Miatas, P-cars, E30 BMWs, most AWD and FWD chassis, and many more. Lots of reasons why - mostly the compromises needed to fit this engine and an appropriate transmission are too great of a cost to the original chassis.
I hope that eases some of your fever dreams. Again, if you have the will and the means, anything can be LS swapped. We can help with some chassis but not all. Cheers! #TheMoreYouKnow
-----
Random pictures from the shop, part 2! Brad has been painting like mad and the back half of the shop is all cleaned, painted and ready to be put back together. The drywall crew finishing the tape/mud work was worth every penny!
Steering column mount and AiM dash arrived late on Friday. Zach (after cleaning up the fab table, then making another mess again, ha!) got to work installing the Keyser column mount (that Tim found) onto our Prius column, which Magan removed the old brackets from and cleaned up ahead of time.
Perfect fit! Should have this column finally installed on the #TeamVorshlag E46 later this next week. A little more painting at the other side of the shop and we can finish cleaning up, organizing, and moving clutter upstairs over the CNC rooms.
-----
January 18, 2021: Some track driver was complaining online that his pads "de-laminated" and was super disappointed in this brand. Check out the pad material thickness - its HALF the thickness of the backing plate! This pad was used WAY beyond its design life. So I meme'd his pic and will use it to show what NOT TO DO, so others can learn.
Pre-track inspection should always be looking at the thickness of the brake pads - THIS IS THE WAY to spot these issues before you take a lap, before you lose your brakes. If the pads are even close to the same thickness as the backing plates they have no chance of lasting a track day. THROW THEM AWAY and put your spare set on.
You do have spare pads, ready at all times, right? If your pads have to be built to order then ORDER TWO SETS so you don't get caught out. I'm saying this because it has happened to me, and my big 2014 crash was due to *this very oversight*, 100% on my part. During the pre-track inspection our techs noted the pads were the same thickness as the backing plate, but I hadn't ordered spare pads and said "it will be fine". During my first session the brakes failed, at 155mph. And now I have a crushed vertebrea, yay!
Don't take your brakes for granted. Ever. This is a sure fire way to ruin your day! #ThisIsTheWay
-----
Some of you might remember the corrosion test we started last October, after looking at moving our camber plate bushings from carbon steel with a yellow zinc chromate plating to a stainless steel. I also put a bare carbon steel part on the test, which is outside the shop.
Surprisingly the plated carbon steel piece still looks great after 83 days. But.... this is a static test, and the real part sees a lot of suspension forces that could likely wear the plating off before it corrodes away. And of course there is no salt spray, plasma this or that, yadda yadda yuadda. #EnterArmChairEngineers
We quietly switched to stainless for all bushings starting that day, and we're making more this week. Eventually we will be 100% stainless for these parts, but I'm not willing to toss out 100s of perfectly good plated parts (that have worked great this way for 17 years). We have been switching more hardware to SS versions over time as well.
This is not the only thing we might switch to stainless steel. This material costs 3x as much but we haven't had a price increase in NINE years, and all of our materials are up up up in the last 3-4 years. We've managed to reduce waste and increase machining efficiency to keep prices stable, but as more of our items switch to stainless there will eventually be a price bump, which will likely have to happen in 2021.
-----
Good, healthy reasons to mod your car - not the social media reasons. Well said - worth the 8 minutes.
https://youtu.be/4bS9lsxecAg
-----
That's What's Up!
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