Evo is short for Evolution Performance Driving School. Evolution Performance Driving Schools are hands-on, foot to the floor autocross driving schools. With programs designed to improve the driving skills of 16 year old novices to multi-time Solo II National Champions. (I didn’t write that it from their web site.)
This even is sponsored by the SCCA Tucson, Arizona Border region and will be held at the Marana Airport, Marana, AZ .
This weekend two instructors Brian Peters and Tom Kotzian will we taking us through our paces with our cars. Both of these guys have plenty of experience with National level Solo with the SCCA, including multiple National level wins, and Championships.
Yes I’ll have my 07 Corvette there and Well see how I do.
Yes I’m playing catch up with these. I’ll have another engine series coming up. Enjoy.
9/19/1970 – The Pinto debuted
1970 Pinto
9/21/1895 Duryea Motor Wagon Company was created. One of the first companies in the US to build gas powered cars. Their first was the one-cylinder “Ladies Phaeton”.
a one-cylinder "Ladies Phaeton"
9/23/1969 – Here’s a biggie….the debut of the Dodge Challenger.
1969 Challenger (this is the TA)
9/24/1909 Virgil Exner was born in Ann Arbor, Mi Who? Oh..you didn’t just ask that!?!?!?! Car designer for Chevy, Studebaker and Chrysler.
One thing I really hate is a leaky car. I don’t like it when stuff leaks inside the car and I don’t like it when stuff leaks out of the car.
I have a friend that alway says…”Hey…old cars leak. That’s just what they do.” To this I normally just respond with “Yeah…I guess so.” I say this because he has pride in his work he does on his cars and I’m not going to poke at him about it.
What I want to say is “Bullstuff!!!!” Not this day in age, there all kinds of reproduction parts and hoses that can be molded and even entire businesses that make custom hoses. If it’s a gasket that’s leaking you can make your own, there’s all kind of gasket material on the market.
If you remember back a bunch of post ago, you may recall my power steering issue with my C4 Vette. Oh…yes…my poor old vette (which now has a new home), leaking everywhere!!!!. I hated that, but it was all fixable, right down to having a place in town customize a power steering hose ( it didn’t actually get that far, the oddly shaped hose turned out to not be the issue.).
The reality is that chasing down a leak is sometimes difficult, almost always time-consuming and the likelihood that it will be expensive is high. So, no old cars don’t have to leak.
What old cars do do (that’s just as funny to type as it is to say) is vibrate. My ’70 Mustang is mostly stock parts, with the exception of polyurethane motor mounts, and it will shake stuff loose, is it a pretty raw machine. A good portion of leaks can be attributed to that alone.
A few weeks ago, I notice a dime sized dot of oil in my driveway….errrkkk….no I’m not a neat freak, my drive has spots (been meaning to get it power washed), but with my older cars I like to keep an eye out for issues. So I climbed under the car and looked around and it appeared that the leak might be from the oil plug it’s self. So I grab my 5/8 ” open end wrench and gave it a bit of a crank. Now you have to be careful, especially with the type of oil pan I have (aftermarket chrome) as it can get out of shape if you over torque the drain plug and really leak. I wiped down the pan so I could tell later on if there might be another leak.
Chrome Oil Pan and Plug
A few drives later I noticed another dime size drip. Only this time it was a bit further back. OF NOTE: My driveway is sloped, and pretty good incline at that. This causes a bit of a problem determining exactly where liquid might originate, that whole gravity thing, ya know. This drip did seem a bit further back then the last.
Again I check the oil pan and this time the oil pan gasket between the engine and the block. Nope no oil. So I go topside and start checking the valve covers. And sure enough there, there appears to be a leak in the rear of the left value cover. Not really a big deal, looks like it’ll just need new valve cover gasket, this 302 engine is wide open in the engine bay with lots of room (nothing like the 84 Vette was to get to).
Lots of room in this engine bay to work.
Valve Cover, you can see the bit of oil grunge along the bottom.
I then recalled that FelPro gaskets were used and I specifically chose the type used on drag cars, designed so that you can pop the valve covers over between heats to make adjustments. This particular set of valve covers that I purchased when restoring the car came with bolts that tighten with an allen wrench.
Screw with allen wrench (or hex wrench).
Just in case:
Allen Wrench/Hex Wrench
Hexagon end of allen wrench
So I thought…to myself (really….can you think to anyone else?) “I wonder if they are all tight?” Sure enough they were all loose. Hence the oil leak. I tightened them all down, wiped down the engine where I could reach and drove it a couple of days. No leaks!!! Now I make it a habit to check those every so often. This is BTW a good tip if you drive your muscle or vintage car.
Now the latest leak, I noticed a couple of days ago. I check the liquid laying in my drive (only about the size of a quarter) and it was power steering fluid. I’m thinking oh…NO..not again!!! I didn’t even look under the car and went straight to the computer and did a quick search for new power steering parts for my 70 Mustang. What I found wasn’t horrible, as in, well no retirement for me, got to fix up this ‘stang, but bad enough price wise to see if it was repairable.
So I crawled under the Mustang (or hunk of iron, as my wife calls it…or maybe she was calling me the hunk :^ ) and took a look. Yup, there was a leak but it appeared to be coming from the flared steel hose fitting going into the power steering unit.
Steel hose and the leaky mess.
A couple turns with a 1/2″ open end wrench and again wiped down area. I keep checking back to see if any new leaks appear.
I can say… right now…. that my 70 Mustang doesn’t leak….I don’t think!!!
So now I stand corrected, sort of. Old car do leak, hey new cars leak!! However, they don’t have to stay that way.
Tips:
1. Check under your muscle or vintage car for any liquid (hey…it’s ok if is just water from you AC..usually) on a regular basis.
2. Get under the hood and after your ooo’ss and aaahhh’s at your magnificent creation, tight things up. ( I always ooo and aaahhh!!!)
3. Get the car up in the air “”SAFELY”” and check the fittings you can’t see or reach from the top side.
4. Chase down the leaks and clean the area to make checking for a continued leak easier.
This site is getting a lot of hits and as all of my readers know it’s not a commercial enterprise..as in I don’t sell anything, nor do I have sponsors. I do it for fun.
A few months back while I was surfing the web I ran across a web site that offered to find small “Mom & Pop” racing teams sponsors for their companies. I read the site and I thought it was a really cool ideal. Then I got to thinking, which is often a laborious effort, and more times than not ends in some sort of less than optimal situation, I’d like to do something like that. Small draw back…..oh you know what’s coming…..Average Guy, Average budget….hell most of the time I can afford my this hobby of mine either. So there won’t be any cash involved. (Hear that?!?!!??! That’s the sound of internet browsers slamming closed!!!)
Well if you are still with me, here is what I’d like to do.
I’m going to add a portion to this site called “Mom & Pop’s Racing Corner. I’d like to feature the small racing teams from anywhere in the in the world from time to time. What’s in it for me? Nothing. What’s in it for the racing team? Some recognition outside their local areas. Maybe you get noticed pick up a sponsor or even a couple fans!!!
So if you want to play here is what I need:
1. Name and size of your racing team
2. Details on the vehicles you race…i.e., cars, and trucks (other types might be considers but NO…ABSOLUTELY NO…..LAWNMOWERS!!!!..unless they are really cool) like engine, mods, horsepower, transmission, you get the idea.
3. Type of racing (oval, drags, drifting)
4. A brief paragraph (or longer if you desire) on history and resent racing results and even next event you are going to attend.
5. Include some way for a reader to contact you. (email, facebook or other social media)
6. Include some pictures. At least one of your vehicle. It would be really cool to show the driver(s), owner(s), pit crew, engine builder, stuff like that.
I’ll select one every two weeks or so, depending on the response and run the information in that corner.
It’s going to be fun to introduce these small racing teams and learn more about their cars and their type of racing.
You can drop me a comment here and I’ll get back to your or just email me directly at timsweet@cox.net with your information.
This should be fun.
Thanks for reading
Tim
My Coupe taking of from the line. Before the new paint!!!
As you know the electrical system failure was the alternator and it was replaced.
A now the story continues……
I picked the car up and it started fine, even had power to flip the lights up (it could do that when I dropped it off) and I drive two miles home. It ran just horrible. No power at all. That was worrisome.
Now the ’84 Vette has a very simplistic computer that controls the fuel injectors and it does take a bit after a “power outage” for it to get the mixture correct. This should happen after a couple of miles. Well by the time I got home there was no change in the how utterly horrible it ran. So I took it for another spin and still no change.
So I disconnect the battery for a few minutes and then tried it again…still the Vette could barely keep idle and giving it gas made it shake and the idle dropped to 400, 500 rpm. So I thought ..ok..I’ll drive it to work in the morning and see if the 10 + miles will straighten it.
Next morning, a Volkswagen bus filled with 40 people could have passed me like I was up on blocks!!!!
Ok…at this point I’m getting a little bit…P.O.’ed…(that’s short for…oh..you know what it’s short for!!) I call up my guys and I explain my displeasure. My take was that they should have test driven the car and that they have had the damn (that’s short for @#$@#%%!!!!!) thing enough to know that it wasn’t running right. I expanded on my thoughts in person when I limped the car back there after work..which was not a great day…which might have contributed to my disposition. Sorry Sean, but you ya know noting but love…its all good dude….Sean later told me I hurt the only “feeling” he had…I told him to get over it. They had a new guy there and he was the one that test drove it after the electrical work.
This was the start of a 3 day, all hands on deck, WTH…(that’s short for “What The Heck” >wink?<…I didn’t want to push the envelope with the “bad words”, because I would have had to add “put the kids to bed ..I’m about to use some adult verbiage”) is wrong with this car!!!
I’m thinking it’s still electrical, computer was F ‘ed (short for “fried”) or there was a short somewhere. I ended up at the garage a couple of nights after work poking around a bit – Tim Sisk the guy that runs the places is good about that.
So here is what was happened.
It appears that the evap system that is supposed to take the fumes from the gas tank for emissions was filling up with fuel every now and then. This system is supposed to push the fumes through a canister filled with charcoal and remove some of the harmful particles. Of course it doesn’t stop there the “cleaner” fumes then are pass back into the intake manifold to be “re-burned” and sent out in the world through the Vettes exhaust system. This simple hose highway runs along the entire length of the car and isn’t designed to handle fuel.
The end result was fuel running through the hose design for only fumes, traveled the hose highway all the way to the front of the car, filling the charcoal canister – which wasn’t designed to hold gasoline. Once full the gas has not where to go but across the engine, just following Avenue Hose, and dumping fuel directly in to the intake. That’s the cause of the poor (understatement) idling and running. The car was drowning in fuel.
Canister - now rendered useless.
How does this happen? Well it occurs when too much pressure builds up in the fuel tank. The venting of the fumes is supposed to prevent that. Once the pressure builds, which doesn’t take long with a full fuel tank, the gas has to go somewhere, so it takes a trip up the evap hose.
Now, here is where a guy starts to wonder WTH (short for….) am I doing with a one off car???!!! Really the 84 Vette is a one off production year. There were not ’83 Corvettes sold and although it has the same basic engine as the ’82 Covertte crossfires, nothing else was the same, and the ’85 Vette was an entirely different animal. This leads to a fairly significant lack of printed knowledge on the system..this many years out. Why do I mention this? Because it’s tough to find the knowledge after this long and the newer repair books treat the ’84 systems as ..”oh yeah..it’s not the same as the ’85 or the “L83 (my engine) is similar.” Gee..thanks for that. But it is different and it’s not similar in many ways.
Here is one.
The fuel tank on ’85 Vette has what is called a check valve with allows vapor to travel through it, but if fluid enters it, a small ball is pushed by the denser liquid to a point where it will block the hole. There is a diagram of that in many of the new repair books. But there are none for the ’84, and no, upon actually view the parts, you aren’t going to see anything that looks like the ’85 check valve.
Ok..armed with is knowledge, I showed up at the garage and share the info. This left us all scratching our heads. There seemed not logical reason for pressure to build up. There is only the fuel pump down there (that we tested in a bucket of fuel and worked as it should) there was only one other fuel delivery system was the “limp home” system which use the oil sending unit to push just enough, when the tank was low or fuel pump failed, to get you home or a repair shop.
This lead into the third day, at which point the fuel module was removed from the tank again and it was discovered that there was indeed a check valve.
There is a check valve built-in to the fuel module, it had a piece something (appeared to be plastic or maybe rubber) lodged in it large enough to keep the ball in a position where the it increased the pressure so much that sent it shooting fuel out up the vacuum line. It was incorporated into the system in a way that was not conducive to separate replacement. It was cleaned and that solved the problem..well most of it.
The canister should be replaced find one it not easy. Right now we replaced the PVC valve with a right-angled and the canister is no longer in the flow.
For my 84 that’s not a problem since there is no sensor that checks that and the car is running great. I’m not sure but I think she’d even pass emission, unless they were to visually see that it wasn’t connected.
Of course I’m a big tree hugger and (you can tell because the Mustang gets 4 gallons to the mile ..hey that’s what dead dinosaurs are for!!!!) so I’ll eventual get it replaced. If I can find one. In the mean time I’ve re-routed the hose to protrude under neigth the engine so the fumes don’t fill the engine bay.
Some pics:
Hose Highway with Canister
End of the hose that is supposed to travel on to the Intake, now routed under the car, temporarily.
So there you have. Good thing there wasn’t a car crusher in towing distance….nah…I love that car.
8/8/55 – test of first solar car. William Cobb created a prototype, but it was only a 15 inch model. Basically, an electric current was produced that in turn powered a tiny motor. The motor turned the vehicle’s driveshaft, which was connected to its rear axle by a pulley. I couldn’t find a pic of this one. However, Alan Freeman developed the solar-powered car in 1979 that you could actually put a human in. Here’s the pic. (It’s really just a bike…I think.)
Alan's Solar Car.
8/11/66 Chevy introduced the Camaro. There is some discussion on whether there is such an animal as a 1966 Camaro, they were, build in 1966 but sold in 1967. Here a pic.
8/15/56 Packard no longer producing cars in Detroit. Previously the Packard company bought Studebaker and tried to keep the Packard name a live in 1957 by reworking a Studebaker and give it the Packard name.
1956Packard
1957 Packard...looks alot like Studebaker
8/21/1897 Oldsmobile becomes a company. Of course the company is no longer in business another icon gone.
Before I start this next segment on the 318, I have to admit that organizing and presenting this work of art (oh..yeah..I’m laughing too!!!!) could have gone in a lot of directions. The two that stuck out the most for me was by year (chronologically) or by brand. Neither was a solid idea and at some point in the ’70s the only thing separating brands within most U.S. car manufacturers wasn’t much more than vinyl vs cloth seat covering. So I decided to go with brands, Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth, knowing that there we would be some crossover information and it might look a bit disjointed. There’s some good stuff, and a couple of things you might know about the 318.
Chrysler began using the 318 in 1967 and carried that power plant until the late 1990s.
From 1967 to 1971 the 318 carried a 230 hp rating w/ the standard 2 barrel carb, managed 340 ft lb of torque and sported 9.2:1 compression ratio. (that is actually a lower compression ratio than the original Ford 250 straight six I took out of my Mustang). In 1967 the 318 engine was used in the Belvedere, Satellite, Fury, Coronet, Polara and Charger and in 1968 they added as the base option in the Dart GTS and Barracuda.
1967 Polara 4 door.
From 1972 to 1979 the 318 was bounced around in the horsepower arena between 150 to 140. That’s nearly 100 hps lost from the late 1960’s. At lower end of the new scale were the California models with the extra smog control. It was still a mainstay, being the base engine choice for the Duster, Cordoba, Monaco, New Port and unexpectedly the Road Runner, just to name a few. It was never sported anything bigger than a 2 barrel carb and the compression dropped to 8.5.
It didn’t get any prettier in the 80s either, although there a bit of a bump in the high-end of the hp range to 175 hp but the company more than made up for that dropping the lowest number 120. Interestingly, they made the California models with 155 hp and a 4 barrel carb. The compression stayed about the same, but in ’83 – ’90 they made a HD version of the engine that had between 165 to 175 hp, depending on the year and sported a 4 barrel carb. This configuration managed to lay down 240 – 250 ft lb of torque, not too bad in one of the lighter cars, like the Dart, but barely power enough for the big old St. Regis. The 318 was also added to some of the most memorable cars….come on..you doesn’t remember “vooo..la rau….oh..oh…” (Volare )and the LeBaron, and Aspen. Even some larger cars like the St. Regis, New Yorker, Gran Fury (I can’t see any car begin called grand with only 120 hp, but that’s just me.) and the Imperial.
1976 Volare
Oh and speaking of the Imperial something interesting happened in 1982 and 1983. That little something was EFI. More on that in the next segment.
Hello, my brother and I are thinking of taking on a project and would like to know if the throttle body injection components from the 1989 318 in his truck will work on a 1979 318 engine. The reasoning behind this is due to our …
7/26/1945 Kaiser-Frazer Corp organized – it also include what was left of Graham-Paige car manufacturer. Frazer Nash was a British car making company. In 1953 it became just Kaiser Motors.
1946 Kaiser Nast Sedan
1953 Kaiser Darrin Convertible
7/29/1916 Nash Motor Company as founded by Charles Nash when he purchased a company called Jeffery Company which made a car called the Rambler. I bet you can guess what came eventually American Motors and their Rambler.
Oh..in 1909 Buick purchased Cadillac on the 29th day.
8/3/1900 The Firestone rubber company was founded by Harvey Firestone. It was based in Akron, Ohio and had only 12 employees. Six years later Mr. Henry Ford contracted with Firestone to supply tires for the Model T.
8/7/1937 the Cord company stopped production car, but of course when one to build planes etc.
