24 hours of lemons build and VW VR6 swap.

[rozap]

Wow! Getting a trophy at Lemons is hard took us years, Great Job! Were you in C class? Where did you place?

We got the judge's choice trophy, which is kind of a participation thing, not really based on results...mostly just for having our **** together and driving an entertaining car. We were in class C. We didn't do particularly well, 29th out of 44 cars. But finishing the race at all the first time out was a big win for us.

In terms of raw speed, we were pretty far off the pace. Because of the brake issues, I was leaving a huge margin in the braking zones. Driver skill was also a limiting factor, none of us are experienced, so getting more seat time is a goal for me at least. I think there was way more to get out of the car.

Full results are here: https://speedhive.mylaps.com/Sessions/6202790#byClass we are car #98.

 

[kmead]

So I was wrong, things don't quite bolt up. But fortunately my neighbor had recently gifted me a lathe/mill combo. I had to take about 2mm off the mounting face of the carrier so the rotor would sit in the center of it. I also had to turn the rotors down so they are ~252mm from the original 257mm that came on the Fiat 500. I also had to cut a relief between the two mounting holes on the carrier to make it sit flat.

The rotors are cast iron, so they took forever to turn down to size. It's possible that steel ones would be easier to machine, but this is what I had from the junkyard and wanted to at least mock stuff up to see if we were going to run into something that made the whole plan fail.

But with the four modifications 1) larger mounting holes for the carrier 2) 2mm off the carrier face to change the offset 3) relief in the back of the carrier to allow it to sit flat 4) 5mm smaller diameter rotors, it all bolts up and spins freely.

The rear 500 calipers do not bolt up, and the piston size doesn't look like it's an upgrade at all. Also, the rotors are the same size as the existing ones on the X, so these are useless, but they were cheap because junkyard parts. We're planning to move the X front calipers to the rear, since that will bolt up, and will give us a slightly larger piston back there. It's unfortunate that the sliding pin calipers won't work from a brake feel perspective, but from a simplicity perspective this is the best path forward for the rear brakes.

View attachment 55922
View attachment 55923
View attachment 55925
View attachment 55924

Yes the rear calipers require a secondary plate to mount and yes it is the same 34mm piston size, the big value there is in the floating caliper.

The 2000 and up VW Golf rear calipers are 38mm pistons and are also floating calipers. These will need a plate as well to mount.

19mm master should be just fine, you will find most cars with the brakes you have also use the same 19mm diameter master cylinder. You may need a proportioning valve on the front brakes due to going from 48mm to 54mm on a car that could already lock up the front brakes.

 

[rozap]

Yea, going to test it all out without one and see, but I'm thinking there's a very high probability that a proportioning valve will be required.

I think if the pedal feel is still mushy, I'll go for the Golf calipers. But I think I can get the whole thing back together and do some testing first. I've heard the Golf calipers are a common upgrade, does anyone make a prefab adapter plate? It'd save a bit of time to just buy it.

 

[GregS]

If you use VW Golf 54mm Front, Fiat 48mm rear, I think you will be in trouble with the x1/9 19mm master cylinder. On the Golf with 38mm rear they use a 23.8mm master cyl.

 

[rozap]

We're going racing again in a few weeks. New brakes are on and they seem to work better than the old ones. Definitely had a rearward bias so we installed a proportioning valve and that took care of that issue. I still hate the pedal feel though. We're running Porterfield R4-S pads so we'll see how they hold up. We also added some ducting onto the fronts, replaced the front lines with metal braided ones (not in the picture) and replaced the fluid with ATE 200.

If you use VW Golf 54mm Front, Fiat 48mm rear, I think you will be in trouble with the x1/9 19mm master cylinder

I think in hindsight, a bigger master cylinder would have been the way to go. The long pedal throw makes accurate braking impossible, even with the stock setup. Maybe for the next next race, but I don't want to mess with it now and have to scramble to have something reliable by July 18.

Other than that there aren't any major changes to the car since the last time out.

 

[kmead]

We're going racing again in a few weeks. New brakes are on and they seem to work better than the old ones. Definitely had a rearward bias so we installed a proportioning valve and that took care of that issue. I still hate the pedal feel though. We're running Porterfield R4-S pads so we'll see how they hold up. We also added some ducting onto the fronts, replaced the front lines with metal braided ones (not in the picture) and replaced the fluid with ATE 200.


I think in hindsight, a bigger master cylinder would have been the way to go. The long pedal throw makes accurate braking impossible, even with the stock setup. Maybe for the next next race, but I don't want to mess with it now and have to scramble to have something reliable by July 18.

Other than that there aren't any major changes to the car since the last time out.

There are Fiat/Alfa 48mm floating calipers to fit those carriers to would reduce the pedal stroke and and going to Golf 38mm calipers would give you more rear braking. There are 38mm slipper style rear calipers used on the Scorpion available new as well.

 

[rozap]

Yea, after test driving with the larger fiat 500 front calipers and the stock X front calipers mounted on the rear, it was very clear that the stock master cylinder has insufficient displacement for that setup. I threw the old rear calipers back on the rear and the pedal throw was significantly reduced. So I've ordered some rear Porterfield R4-S pads to match the front, and we'll go racing like that. Next race is in a few weeks.

I also picked up another X1/9 for $500. It's an 85, and it sat in a barn for the last 17 years. I checked the oil which looked fine, dropped a bit of gas in the intake, and it fired up on the first crank. But every piece of rubber on the car is shot, and the interior is a moss farm. So now we have a ton of spare parts. My plan is to pull the engine and transmission and bring them to the race as spares, and then start mocking up a swap for the lemons car using the other shell. Long term plans for it are still unknown. It could maybe be a fun street car with a fair amount of rust repair, or a rallycross car. But I've always wanted to do rallycross, and I already have the Corrado and Esprit for the street, so, maybe I'll go play in the dirt. But that's a few years off.

 

[rozap]

Ok, again!

We were back at ORP with the same engine, didn't touch it at all from the last race. We had all sorts of problems but again, self inflicted. We can't even blame uncle Enzo for our issues.

3 out of the 4 bolts holding the engine to the transmission vanished, leading us to wonder "why do we keep having to adjust the clutch slave cylinder to push farther?". That childlike wonder was shattered when the flywheel finally contacted the bellhousing and the engine "seized". Couldn't turn it by hand, and given some overheating problems we had earlier, we assumed the worst. So on Saturday afternoon after doing like 7 laps, we started disassembling it because, we're here and we're going to have to disassemble it anyway if the motor is toast. But after taking the axles out I look up and see the flywheel wedged into the side of the bellhousing. I look around some more and suddenly all the symptoms click in my tired, probably dehydrated brain. So we put it all back together and do 110 laps on Sunday, for an almost but not quite DFL class C finish.

Car felt incredibly slow, but our best lap was better than last year. Brake upgrades worked well, so I wasn't contemplating my mortality at turn 8 every lap. I had a titanic battle with the beetle powered 911 and the peugot 505, and I crashed into a mustang. Also got home and unloaded the car, and realized the O2 sensor was unplugged the entire time. Cool! A compression check at home yielded 125psi across all cylinders, so it's very low, but at least consistent. Unfortunately, the parts car has 180psi of compression....on 3 cylinders. Cylinder 4 is about 80psi, so it's not particularly healthy.

After getting home from ORP and contemplating how goddamn slow the car was (couldn't accelerate up the uphill parts of the track), I started cutting up the second car to mock things up. These are similar cuts to what is required for the K20 swap. Aside from torque and power delivery, the VR6 is absolutely worse than a K20 in every way, but the advantage here is that this VR6 has been sitting in the garage for years. So we'll see if we can get it to work, and if not, go with K2(0/4) power. Oh also it sounds way cooler than a K20.

 

[carl]

It's interesting that the Lemons mentality is 180 degrees out from my motorcycle racing mentality. I did one endurance race on my 350 Yamaha with two buddies. I didn't enjoy the experience and logistics was crazy. Most of my racing was a Yamaha SR500, a big single and it ran for years with minimal service. You guys love the endurance scene and all that's involved with it. You can't leave your poor cars alone (I recall Bernice's rotary powered X) and this is apparently typical of the Lemons mentality.

I applaud your efforts and your devil may care attitude...sort of a "there's always the next race" world view. Probably a lot healthier than the killer instinct of Spec Miata.

Keep it up and I can't wait for the LS conversion.

 

[rozap]

I think part of it is that I enjoy building things, but part of it is that I have come to accept that since I didn't grow up around motorsport, I'm never going to be a competitive driver. I enjoy driving, learning, and getting better at it. I've done some instructed days, and take the Esprit to the track, but I'm never going to be competitive against the people who were in karts as 8 year olds. Spec miata is wound a little tight, imo. At the end of the day it's a hobby, so the entire goal is to have fun.

Also endurance racing is the best way to get lots of seat time in. Getting to do hundreds of laps in a weekend, you can really understand the car. Yea, really good drivers can do a couple laps in a new car and know where the limit is and what the fastest line is, but, I'm not one of those drivers.

 

[TheTallOne]

Wow, I've missed out on a lot not reading the forum as much as I should

Rozap; did you have a fresh motor in the X when you killed a set of pads your very first race? I ask, because I am mid engine refresh, but on our tired untouched 131k mile motor before ~3000 miles over 9 races we have only changed front pads once around the 6 race mark, and I put in fresh pads in the rear for number 8 because High Plains has hills. Are you sure your brakes weren't dragging? Your drivers may also be over-braking way more than the X generally requires. Or I'm just so down on power that my rebuilt engine is going to shorten lap times by several seconds

 

[rozap]

Wow, I've missed out on a lot not reading the forum as much as I should

Rozap; did you have a fresh motor in the X when you killed a set of pads your very first race? I ask, because I am mid engine refresh, but on our tired untouched 131k mile motor before ~3000 miles over 9 races we have only changed front pads once around the 6 race mark, and I put in fresh pads in the rear for number 8 because High Plains has hills. Are you sure your brakes weren't dragging? Your drivers may also be over-braking way more than the X generally requires. Or I'm just so down on power that my rebuilt engine is going to shorten lap times by several seconds

I think our issue was using street pads. I had ordered the regular old organic street pads from MWB. We've since switched to porterfields and wear has been a lot better, tons of material left after two races on them. I think brakes dragging was unlikely, but possible.

At the first race, the engine was "rebuilt" as in, we put new rings and bearings in it, gave it a quick hone and slapped it back together. We then blew the head gasket at the end of race 1 or sometime in race 2. In race 1 we tossed the alternator/water pump belt and the driver didn't notice, so drove a lap with the gauge pinned, so my best guess is that's when the head gasket failed.

So we're on the second engine now, and we did the same rebuild process, but this one was in much better shape as it hadn't been sitting for 3 years with oil and water in the cylinders when we got it. It came out of the brown X1/9 that we're currently mocking the VR6 swap in. We built it really quickly before race 3 when I confirmed that the head gasket on the original engine was toast. We now have much better telemetry back to the pits, which will hopefully help the issue of drivers not looking at gauges

I realized I never summarized our race at the ridge in October 2022. A few weeks before the race I did that head gasket check, and found that it was bad. But, we had a spare engine in the brown car, albeit with low compression in a cylinder. So we frantically rebuilt the motor, and installed it. After a bit of fiddling (seized injectors from sitting for 18 years) it fired up. Better compression numbers than the previous engine and it sounded healthy.

So we got to the ridge with a running car that had barely been broken in, and had our best race yet with 257 laps. We had one minor failure, where the car started misfiring at around 5000 RPM. I noticed that the misfire changed when the throttle position changed, so we suspected throttle position sensor. We swapped that and were back out within 10 minutes, and the problem was fixed. We also had brake warping issues, due to us not bedding the pads properly. And then driver screwups led to two penalties.

On to the next race...

Here are some pics of the coilovers I built. The sleeves are from a honda civic lowering kit. One kit was $50 and provided all 4 sleeves, as well as the top perch. Sites like summit wanted around $75 per sleeve, so this was the cheapest option I found. They seem to be plenty high quality. It's just some bits of machined aluminum. When I bought the car it had koni dampers, which was lucky, so I wanted to reuse them. So the process was cutting the perches off the dampers, lathing some tube to various inner and outer diameters, and welding it all together. Spring rates are 250lb/in in
the front and 350 in the rear.

I also made some camber plates. The picture shows the swivel bearing after it was pressed in, but before I installed the retainer.

Then I wanted to improve the brakes more. I made a dual master cylinder setup with a .62" bore size. I tried a .75" bore but it was way too stiff, and I wanted to the mechanical advantage to come from the hydraulics, rather than the lever in the assembly, just because I wanted to reduce the flex of the assembly as much as possible. The assembly isn't the lightest thing in the world but theres no flexing and the brakes feel amazing. I'm super excited to have confidence on the brakes. With the calipers we run up front, the feeling was really mushy and horrible with the stock setup. Now the travel is pretty short and it feels very firm.

Next race is coming up on April 1st, at the Ridge in Shelton WA. I'm looking forward to driving the car with the new changes.

 

[rozap]

Oh and, I made an embarrassingly small amount of progress on the motor swap this winter. I even installed heat in the shop so I really have no excuse for my laziness. I need to get back on that. But here's where it currently sits.

We also decided to go with a speeduino for the ECU, rather than the oem VW FI. Reason being is that the AFP engines are much easier to source than the AAA engines, of which we have the latter. So if we toss a rod out of the side of the above engine, we'll likely replace it with an AFP, at which point it's just plug and play with a standalone ECU, versus sourcing a completely difference ECU, harness, and sensors with the oem setup.

Also, if one day we want to do forced induction, we'll want the capabilities of a standalone unit.

 

[subasurf]

Would love to see more pics of the pedal assembly.

 

[rozap]

Would love to see more pics of the pedal assembly.

Will snag more pics soon. On vacation for a bit but back in a week.

Race number 4 is in the books. We raced at the ridge this last weekend, and it went well. Every type of weather showed up. It was pouring, then sunny, then hailing, then pouring, then snowing, then sunny, etc etc. It made racing super fun, since our car was a little bit more competitive with our lack of horsepower.


We had two unscheduled stops, both on Saturday. One was to fix a tire that was rubbing in hard right turns and we got towed in once when the water pump belt snapped and the car started to overheat. Fortunately we saw the overheating on the telemetry and were able to tell the driver to shut it off before the engine was hurt. Three driver errors also ate up some time.


The brake and suspension upgrades worked well. I finally was able to get confident on the brakes and was braking later than just about anyone, with still a ton of margin. I couldn't believe how well the car stopped, I kept pushing it further and further, and never actually pushed it far enough to lock up. The pedal was firm at every stage of the race, and the stopping power was very consistent once everything was up to temperature. I'm super happy with the setup (recap: Fiat 500 front calipers and rotors, porterfield r4s pads, Ate 400 fluid, stock rear calipers, 2x .625" master cylinders, brake ducts on the front, steel braided lines) and feel like it will be able to handle more power.

The stiffer springs helped it respond more quickly. The car still felt predictable and compliant because we didn't go crazy with the spring rates. The camber plates allowed us to dial out some of the excessive camber we had in the stock setup, and looking at the tire-wear post race it looked like it did the trick. We ended up running -0.5* and it seemed to work well.

Overall I'm super happy with how these relatively large changes just worked without much fuss. I had dialed in the brake balance on the street the week before and didn't need to mess with it all weekend. We also cut some radiator vents in the hood and made some ducts, and it seemed to run about 10* cooler (it peaked at 197 degrees F after a fast lap following someone) , but also the ambient temp was cooler than the last race, so hard to tell how much impact it had, but it seemed to help a bit and the hood louvres look cool.

So I think with these changes working well the car is ready for some more power. I've started looking around for fuel cells, and unfortunately the biggest one I can see fitting in the frunk is only 12 gallons because of how the brake setup takes up space. This is pretty far from ideal, but the driving skill on our team is almost nonexistent, so I don't think it'll be the limiting factor in competitiveness.


A bit more progress on the swap. Got the lower and upper intake manifold on, which required more cutting. Took the engine out to cut a small slot so the water pump pulley would clear, and put the engine back in. Then I undid my previous cross brace to accommodate the throttle body. Got the accessories mounted and the serpentine belt clears everything. The engine is actually easy to take in and out, the process doesn't require any special cuss words. I'll be adding bracing back in now that I know where everything lands. It should end up similar to the abarth prototipo.

As far as I can tell from heresy on the internet, the VR6 weighs about 300lbs, with the 02a transaxle at 90. Apparently the fiat 1500 weighs 230lbs and the transaxle is also 90, so this will add about 70lbs to car. If we get our **** together and corner balance the car before and after the swap, I'll be able to give more accurate numbers for the whole build.

 

[Kendall]

Love the livery. I'm curious how you will mount the speeduino. The Hammond case that is recommended is a pretty tight fit for all the wiring that you need to connect. I'm thinking of getting a bigger sealed project box and fitting in any hot/ground buss or relays I might add. One of these ones



Regarding the spherical bearing in your camber plate, and I don't know how much it matters, but did you machine the bearing pocket after welding the parts together? My concern is if the pocket warped after the welding, the bearing might not be held in place equally in 360* around the perimeter which might also show as positions of the bearing with more preload. Maybe I'm over thinking it though.
Great work on your project.

 

[rozap]

Unsure about mounting the speeduino right now, first step is getting it all running and then seeing what we need in terms of a fuse block and relays. I think it'll end up in the passenger area. I think we're going to finally remove the remainder of the stock wiring block because the only thing we haven't touched at this point is the EFI harness, and the connectors are a little fragile after all these years.

You're right about the spherical bearing. The pocket did warp during welding, but my feeling is that the bearing isn't going to wear evenly anyway as it mostly gets pushed on in the same orientation. I think at high mileages it could be an issue, but it'll be hard to tell if it's the pocket or the fact that they're not loaded evenly just because of the geometry.

 

[rozap]

Would love to see more pics of the pedal assembly.

The fulcrum also has a spherical bearing, as the lever has to be able to move side to side as you change the bias. The little wings and large washers on the top of the lever constrain the upper spherical bearing to allow movement in only one plane. The upper spherical bearing has a threaded insert I made which is pressed in, which is what makes the threaded balance rod move when twisted from the dash. The box itself wasn't welded directly to the bulkhead as the metal was too thin so the bulkhead was reinforced with some (iirc) 14 gauge sheet. That means nothing flexes when you stomp on the brakes. The box itself is made of 1/8" steel.

 

[rozap]

Got the engine running on speeduino engine management. Valves quieted down after it warmed up. It has been sitting for 15+ years.

Also the axles arrived. The splines and CV are the same between VW and Fiat, so all that was needed was lengthening the short one and shortening the long one a few centimeters. Dutchman axles out of Idaho was able to reuse the long one and just shorten it and cut new splines (I think they charged $75 for that) and then they made me a new short one, which was pricier since it's heat treated and stuff. But overall they were great to deal with and all in cost was pretty reasonable.

 

[rozap]

Small update: upcoming race is in a few weeks, then we'll start on the engine swap in the real car.

Put front and rear sway bars on the car. Rear bar is from a VW bug that a friend gave to me, and it fits perfectly, with custom mounts. Front is from MWB. We also fixed some issues with our radio, but otherwise the car is unchanged from the last race.