TeamSwift

No shaving needed. Popped right in. Hoping to get the transmission back in with other goodies and make it to the race on Sunday!

Van

Have you thought about taking padding off the bottom of carpeting that will shave some weight and reinstall carpet and no one will know.

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Cars and Harleys

That may be true but we are going to be honest as we can and not cheat.

Van

Swapped the side mirror for a block off plate. Saved 1 lb!

LSD is in the tranny. Tranny is back in.

Race seat is bolstered and in. 16lbs vs stock of 28lbs (I think it was). Will get to the passenger seat eventually.

The 4 puck race clutch that we ordered actually weighs more than the stock OEM clutch. About 2 or so lbs. Might go with stock for now. Hmmm... Lightweight flywheel is in. Kinch is hoping to get the short shifter installed tonight. We have a race tomorrow and not sure if we can get this ready in time but trying hard.

Sorry for lack of pics and specific weights. I'll get around to posting those later.

Van

Must have pics of LSD!!!

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1987 Chevrolet Sprint Turbo under construction

Good luck getting it all together

I don't think I'm alone in anxiously awaiting pictures, video and (winning) results....

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Spanish Inquisition Racing chip burning service--build yourself a custom chip!
http://www.teamswift.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=57216

We do have photos to upload of the LSD going in the tranny, short shifter, seat etc. hopefully this week.

We drove and raced the car with the Cusco clutch type LSD today and talk about a world of difference. Instead of wheel spin the car pulls into the corner while laying down all the power.

Two main challenges now are making the steering easier (probably way to much scrub angle), and getting better brakes or upgrading the pads to something really aggressive. Make swap to the honda brakes or go all out and fet a willwood kit.

We are now with in a second of the national contenders so we are quite excited.

Any one else having a hard time with the large amount of force required to turn the wheel from one direction to the other? We are wishing that power steering was an option on the MK1s.

We need to make modifications to fit 2.5 inch springs in the rear so as we can easily obtain and try different rates.

Not a picture of the LSD but the of car in all its glory today. It's pretty crazy that just yesterday, it had no shifter, no battery, no radiator, no wheels/tires, no exhaust, etc etc and then today we ran it in Street Modified (which was in 1st heat so we could hurry and get home to our wives and kids) and Kinch and I take 1st and 2nd respectively out of a class of 12. The local SM guys weren't brimming with excitement that a piece of junk car like ours beat them.

But to add to what Kinch said, we ended up within the same second as a former National Championship FSP car so that is promising for us. Still got lots to do. Time for us to hit the gym cause moving those tires back and forth on course takes some strength!



Van

'Anxious' might be over stating things

Good results gents, there will be a number of things contributing to the steering issue, first is obviously those wheels and the scrub angle, I found the steering much harder with high offset rims, do you have 4.5' backspace on those rims??? the other thing is the lower arms move a MILE under cornering, a single point brace is not enough, you need hard core bracing from the lower arm mounting points to the chassis as well as between the mounting points, I can not stress this enough in our cars and a mk1 is 5x worse than a mk2/3, pretty much every spot weld will pull in the enginebay around the firewall and turrets.

I also suggest a reinforcing plate on the gearbox cross member mount under the carpet, with the sort of chassis flex going on due the the huge g's you guys are pulling you will tear that mount out pretty quickly, happened on my mk1.

For the rear suspension you'll probably want some adjusters like these.

How are the new syncros performing?

We do have 4.5 inch back spacing on the 10 inch wheel. We probably need more back spacing to Elimimate the positive scrub angle we have. We are also going to try 8 inch wheels upfront at some point.

We are planning to use a spring coil for adjusting the tear ride height.

I'll check the rules as for te bracing. Once the car turns in it really turns in. We are set to max caster and caster so we can try changed there also.

It shifts great! I freaked myself out by not understanding the clutch cable connection. I was thinking to leave it loose, after reading the manual it worked perfectly.

I can't really tell from the pictures. But are those aero wheels? If so. How are they running? I was looking at a set of those in 13x7. Which is their smallest size. I would have to change bolt size to something like 1/2 inch to fit 45 degree lugs.

If those are aero wheels. What lug size and stud size did you go with? Was it hard to drill out and replace the studs?

Anyway. Nice ride. Good to see sprints can kick some butt on the track with "mild" modification.

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1987 Chevy Sprint base 1.0 3cyl 993cc (R.I.P.)
1986 Chevy Sprint base 1.0 3cyl 993cc (Totaled)
1994 Geo Metro base 1.0 3cyl 993cc (Had to sell)
1996 Geo Tracker 1.6l 16v 4cyl 1590cc (Daily)

The fronts are 13x10 Spinwerks and the rears are some 13x8 Circle Racing wheels off of Summitracing.

Van

10's are crazy wide, I'd be inclined to try 7's on the back and move the 8's to the front, what tire size are you guys running?

We are testing out the 13x10's in the front with the 255/40/13 Hoosiers. We're going to eventually do some back to back testing with 13x8's in the front with 225/45/13 Hoosiers. I'm of the feeling that the 225's on the 8's will be more manageable and easier to turn and possibly overall faster even if they don't have quite as much grip as the 255's. With the 5" backspace in the front, it ever so slightly hits the strut. Hoping that a little grinding can take care of that. We want the wheels as far inboard as possible.

Van

Quick update. Due to the weird (uncommon) ID of the rear springs it's not going to be easy (or cheap) to test various lengths and spring rates for suspension tuning so we figured out a way to make the more commonly available 2.5" ID springs that Eibach/Koni etc have tons of. The top puck works perfectly with the 2.5" ID spring but the bottom puck is built for the OEM spring. For some reason though the puck luckily has a hole in it. So we dremmeled the hole a bit larger to fit a piece of pipe through. Then we were able to set an adustable coilover sleeve over the pipe to sit on top of the puck. Now we can try out the many springs we have lying around or whatever else our local friends have.

Also, we have a race this coming weekend and the new wheel/tire setup will be 13x8's all around with 5" backspace in front. After a bit of grinding on the front struts, a 5" backspace wheel will fit PERFECTLY! You can't even slide a piece of paper in between the wheel and strut. Hopefully there's not any flex going on down there. We'll have our spacers ready and waiting in case. This setup should help with our scrub radius and allow us to not have to manhandle the car around course but still allow us to use wide tires/wheels in the front for maximum grip.

Next project: find a Koni yellow fitment for the rear. Stay tuned....

Van

The scrub angle/scrub radius was quite bad with the 13x10s which meant the steering wheel was very
difficult to turn. Using the 13x8 moves the center of the wheel inward an inch which helps bein the scrub radius more toward zero. Will see this weekend how much better the car is.
More on scrub radius here.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrub_radius

OK, our cars are very different so my set up might not be a relevant data point.

Still, I wonder if issue might be width and/or just raw grip rather than scrub radius. I'm running the 225/45/13 Hankook tires on 13x8 with only 4.25" offset and 6 degrees caster and steering effort is significant but just nice, not taxing.

Does positive scrub radius work at all like toe out in that it increases turn in at the expense of tramlining? My car seems to turn very quickly with the crazy offset designed for whatever circle track car that would have used these wheels, and I notice the same thing to a lesser extent on the 13x5.5s.

_________________

Spanish Inquisition Racing chip burning service--build yourself a custom chip!
http://www.teamswift.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=57216

Turn in was rather amazing and maybe more so the turn in after the turn in. The LSD might also be contributing to it. Kevin saw the scrub angle and mentioned that it can affect the way it turns. The car was actually pulling the car into the turn. Much more so than I experienced with the integra type Rs I raced for years. Van told me about a cone I clobbered and I asked it I got it with the front or the rear and he said both. The car just kept going once the wheels were turned as it kept accelerating. Previously we thought it would be impossible to slalomn but now it feels like any other car without power steering meaning once you have any speed it is easy to turn. Your car might have come with a wider wheel and less backspacing. If you know what the stock setup is I can compare that to the MK1 stock width and backspacing.

14x5.5, +45

_________________

Spanish Inquisition Racing chip burning service--build yourself a custom chip!
http://www.teamswift.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=57216

We have larger and longer Honda studs all around. The car had a few broken studs when we got it so an upgrade was in order.

Some of the modifications and changes we completed recently

Here is the hacking needed to install the generic Honda Shortshifter (I should have used the dremel rather than the 4.5 inch angle grinder) Also I you will need a smaller diameter bolt to fit through the short shifter and some washers or something to make it as wide as the stock shifter. I took a bolt out of spare Honda shifter - suppose you could buy one from Honda or a junk yard.

Comparison to stock


Lightweight flywheel from SuzukiRD 6lb 1.8 oz

Stock MK1 Chevy Sprint fly wheel


Cusco LSD - clutch type LSD 609F - direct replacement let me know if you want to buy one


Passenger Mirror 1lb 1.4 oz - block off plate 1.0 oz


Clutch Fork pieces - I was about to install the clutch with the LSD when I realized the spring that goes on this fork was missing. So I got a lesson on removing this. Who would remove that spring?! Maybe the spring is only on the turbo tranny and not the Sprint Metro since this tranny came out of our Metro parts car.
It took me maybe an hour to get a spring from another tranny off and onto this one. I used a long screw driver through the small hole near the outside of the tranny connected to a punch to knock the brass washer out to get this out of the tranny.


Spring Metro crown gear - I believe we were thinking this would not be a 4.1 Final Drive but it is


Stock MK1 rotor weighs 5lb 5.8 oz - I hope we can use these and get the car to stop. I think our brakes need an overhaul since we can't lock up the front tires. We might be trying the 1989 civic si calipers since I have a few sets on hand.


When it was time to remove the MK1 turbo tranny I expected it to be as easy as removing the NON turbo tranny. Well it isn't if you don't know to remove a bolt that holds the coolant pipe locked in place since the nipple for the turbo's coolant line is in the way when you try to remove the transmission. The nipple is in the center of the photo with the coolant line off of it but right next to it on the right. Removing the bolt that holds the pipe in place makes this much easier. Getting the bolt back in may take an hour ahhh.

Fastest run from this past weekend. Still needs a lot of work but coming along.... http://youtu.be/Q6rQhv4qTGQ

Van

Nice and smooth run, looks a fast course