Spring is in the air and my mind keeps wandering to racing. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> Good news is my car is coming back together quickly in the chassis department. Attached below shows the car in almost its final state at Carriage House Customs after some great work by Steve. The new engine was a hell of a lot more work than first thought as the new engine leans a lot more forward than the old one which required header mods as well as just the chassis work. In the end however it will be worth it if this thing is as bullet proof and reliable as I expect a EFI engine to be versus the old carbed on. <br />
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Another modification I had to make here lately was going with a custom oil tank versus the one I had purchased from Pegasus which was just too tall for the engine compartment. Its amazing how tightly packed the engine compartment is when you start to attempt to fab in what you need to support the engine. <br />
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Lastly I got my wiring harness tonight via UPS from George Dean and can't wait to hook it up to the bike and press the button and….of course have nothing happen. Its only my luck. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> I know George did a great job but as usual something has to go wrong. <br />
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So after weeks of waiting for choromoly in the correct thickness to come in without having to buy it in quantities the size needed to build aircraft the car is coming together. Just need to box the rear of the mount in so that the rear trailing arms going to the spar can connect. Then wash rinse repeat for the other side. <br />
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Plan at the moment is to get the girl back by the end of March, spend the first two weeks of April burning the midnight oil to put the car back together and then fire it up by mid April. That means I should be able to shake it down in a local parking lot and be ready for the first on-track shake down on May 7th with Donnybrooke at <a href="http://www.trackpedia.com/wiki/Brainerd_International_Raceway" title="BIR">BIR</a>. <br />
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Let's just say i cannot wait to get this car and myself back on the track. I can't stand driving around the 4Runner during the winter months…longing to hear 14000 RPMS and the wind buffeting my helmet at 140. <br />
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So Mike sent me an absolutely great show of my almost completed helmet. Tell me this baby doesn't look awesome! With regards to my car I am sorry i have been so lax in update, well I haven't been lax its just been that absolutely nothing has happened. I am starting to think that the Stohr is resembling my Ferrari in the way that both just seem to make money disappear out of my bank account every winter. Of course for the cost of a fricking Ferrari wheel bearing I am having half the chassis rebuilt…so I got that going for me.<br />
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I keep going up to Carriage House Customs to drop off parts and keep forgetting my damn camera along so I never have anything to really update you with here. Basically lots has happened. Last week I put the new fuel pump in the fuel cell which was a nightmare. Had to rewire the connector and then try to push the pump into the fuel safe cell's pump holder which if I would equate to being about as difficult as giving birth in that it was pushing an object to big through way to small of a hole. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> Aside from that George Dean is about done building my new wiring harness so that should be here next week. Beyond that I just sit around making car sounds imagining I have the DSR back while playing the new F1 game on PS3. <br />
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Yep I am sick like that. But hey what else can you do when you have had about 30 inches of snow in the past 4 days. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/sad.png" alt=":-(" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /><br />
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Hopefully I will be back soon with a lot more pics of the chassis rebuild.<br />
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So my helmet is looking just plain SWEET! Mike has been busy laying down paint on here and she is looking beautiful. Check out the pics below of the excellent work! My car on the other hand is at a stand still. We are waiting on the machine shop to finish up the bushings for the motor mounts and then should be able to start getting the car ready for the summer. I got all my parts over the last week here. Barnett kevlar clutch, DID chain, Ivan's smog block offs, Setrab oil cooler, etc are all sitting at my house ready to drop into my baby when she rolls home. I promise more pics of a naked Stohr (No not Lee) this week so you loyal readers can see whats going on.<br />
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Anyone have any opinion on Pigel shifters? Thinking about sticking one on but would like an opinion on them before I do. Specifically downshifts and leftfoot braking cooperation.<br />
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So my new lid got off to Mike Charness to have painted after Mike Skeen won the Trackpedia helmet painting contest. The design is migrated slightly to personalize it a little more for myself but I am about as excited as a kid on Christmas after seeing Mikes original designs and initial work. I think the color scheme is perfect for the Stohr with the red parts of the helmet being Ferrari red (Rossa Corsa) in memory of my old girl. Check out the initial pics and 'almost' final design!<br />
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Well since the car is still waiting to get the new engine cradle welded on due to the fact the that the shop needed to order some special order chromoly pieces I decided to bring the engine back home and install the dry sump kit while I had a chance so that once the engine was in the car it was in the car for good. Let me just say that if you need a dry sump kit for your R1 nothing beats the quality of the Taggart system (<a href="http://www.tpe-inc.com/" >http://www.tpe-inc.com/</a>).<br />
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Rob came over about 7:30, we had to run to Walmart for some RTV and Blue locktite so we got started about 8pm at getting this baby installed. I had already removed the old water/oil pump a few weeks back and it probably toook about an hour max. Installation was even easier! We started by breaking out the excellent directions Taggart provided and getting the required tools out. After that first step was checking the old o-rings to ensure they were in good shape, then dropping in the new pump. We followed that by getting the oil feeder and return ports installed into the block. After that it was a quick tightening of the two main mounting bolts, the three oil pump bolts and she was secured. We followed that by probably the most difficult part of the task which was getting the oil pump gear installed back into the drive chain. Once we get that installed we tightened the drive chain's bolt, installed the oil/water intercooler block off and it was all done! Now I just have to wait for a new oil pan gasket coming from the local bike shop for a whopping $6.14 and then install the new pan and everything is ready to roll. <br />
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I really just want to say again how damn impressed I was with the quality of the Taggart dry sump kit as well as just Yamaha's engine in general. I have never worked on such a sweet well put together engine.<br />
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The pictures below are of the dry sump, looking at the dry sump from the bottom of the engine, and the pan and oil/water block off.<br />
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The engine replacement in my Stohr is rolling along nicely. As you read about in my last entry on the topic I had everything out of the car (engine, wiring, cooling system, etc) and it was time to attempt to fit the new engine. Well thats really where the joy ended as I started to see there were multiple areas that the new engine would not fit. <br />
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1. I was able to confirmed what I had heard from Lee Stohr about the main engine mounts being different on the 2004-2006 Yamaha R1 engines compared to the 1998-2003 engines.<br />
2. I was able to see that the spar also was not going to fit the new engine<br />
3. Much to my dismay that the oil pan of the original engines oil pan would not fit.<br />
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So I knew this was going to be a costly investment but figured might as well just go for it after looking at and confirming the 2007 R1 engines mounts are the same meaning I had an upgrade path. So I fired up the trust Dremel and went to town. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> <br />
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My first step was addressing the fact that the new engines rear top mount was now about one inch to wide on the right to fit the spar. Thus after some analysis I decided to cut it off to make it fit the spar as there was no structural integrity being compromised and my new engine cradle would be built to unstress these mounts. Much to my further dismay I found that Yamaha actually change the rear engine mount more than just making it wider on the top. They moved the bolt hole approximately 5-10mm closer to the engine meaning I have to weld and plug the spar complete with redrilling the mount hole in the spar. This picture shows the engine and spar mating after I modified the engine.<br />
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So next up was trying to actually fit the current engine into the car so that I could give the local race shop an idea of how everything would mount up by putting in some template mounts. Despite what I had heard from others the new engine was too wide to fit into the old cradle so out with the angle grinder and back to cutting off one side of the mounts. <br />
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Once I got that done, placed the engine and rear spar into the car it was pretty clear the oil pan was not going to fit as it hit the floor. So since I was going to go dry sump anyway it was time to take the oil pan off and just put a simple seal on the engine bottom until Ken Taggert was able to ship me the new dry sump. <br />
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Once that was done we spent the day before Christmas putting the engine back in the car and bolting her together as best as I could possibly given the limited mounting points that lined up. It was then all ready to head off to the chassis shop where she remains today. <br />
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At the current moment the chassis is sitting on a chassis table, jigged up and ready to be re-welded while the shop finishes up a set of cars that is going to Barrett-Jackson. I hope to have the car back in the garage by the end of the month so that I can plumb everything back in with the new dry sump and move to single radiator. Should have that finished in February and I am hoping that the car will be starting and running in March. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> Fingers crossed!
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Got home from work today and what should appear in the entry way but a nice big brown box from the UPS man. I had to of course rip it open like a kid on Christmas and immediately try on my new lid. This Arai helmet is the highest quality helmet I have ever seen and I have seen a good deal. The fit and finish are excellent and it feels really light on my head which was really important to me. The visor mechanism is SOOO nice compared to my current helmet but no matter what I do I seem to fog up the visor so I am going to have to look into getting an anti-fog one before the season starts. Can imagine much worse than fogging up heading into the kink. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /><br />
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Next step is to shoot the helmet off to Mike Charness (http://www.helmet-painting.com/) to get her painted to look just like the Trackpedia helmet design contest winners vision. She should be once sweet looking lid as well as be comfortable as all hell on the track. Pictures below of the new helmet next to my current one and the new paint job (grey is chrome).<br />
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A big thanks goes out to Tom Shelton Jr. for organizing the group buy of the helmets and putting up with all of us whining. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /><br />
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Happy New Year to everyone out there! I rung in the New Year watching the Chicago Bears get their asses handed to them by the Packers with my wife and dog. To tell you the truth it was a nice change from the usual bar scene. On New Years day here I spent my day out in the garage whipping the tow vehicle and my wifes car into shape. Took a good deal of time on my wifes Honda Accord rotating tires, changing oil and the usual jazz. <br />
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Then it was on to the Toyota 4Runner which occupied the rest of the day up until the Rose Bowl began. Had to change plugs and went with the Bosch Platinum 2 plugs instead of the OEM NGK Iridiums, that I became very happy with when I ran them in the Ferrari, for no other reason than they cost 2 bucks a plug less and they were actually available locally today. Outside that I changed the oil, and dropped in a K&N filter while modifying the air box to remove the stupid noise screen they had in there…just want to get every last pony out of that V8. I think if I could every car I have I would screw with doing stupids little things to it to get more HP out of it. Next weekend is going to consist of changing the diff fluid and transfer case fluid, putting the new tires on the car after I picked up a nail over the holidays and then all thats left is brakes in the spring. Anyone have suggestions on pads? <br />
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A much cooler post soon on taking the Stohr up to the local race shop to get the new engine cradle welded in. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> Happy New Year again everyone!
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So I finally have the whole engine out of the car and am ready to start the reassembly process. Now as a flashback remember I am putting a 2005 R1 engine into the car versus the 1998 one thats currently in it. It all started out as looking so simple. I have come to find its a lot more work than I expected. Good news is that I got in touch with an excellent shop here in the local area that is going to revise my chassis to hold the new engine. Bad news is that the frickin Stohr Spar is pretty much a custom unit for the 1998-2003 Yamaha R1 engine. I'll get into more detail on that in the next update tomorrow. Overall it took about 8 hours to disassembly everything to the level I am at now which is the car completely stripped of radiators, engine and everything else. Next step is putting the new engine in the car and having my chassis folks design a engine cradle for me and hopefully fix the spar so that it fits on the new engines rear mounts…which I have…ummm…modified to make it fit. <img src="http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/templates/default/img/emoticons/wink.png" alt=";-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> So engine pictures below as well as a bare naked Stohr.<br />
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Disassembled Car, followed by old engine, followed by new engine.<br />
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