Racecar Rebuild: its been awhile!

[6G72gearhead]

Hey, not sure how many of you remember me, but I used to race a lot of autocross and was starting to get into road course racing. Well in May of 2010 I managed to slide the car off the fastest corner of the course and almost rolled it. By almost I mean there was blades of grass stuck too the top of the mirror on the passenger side.

Unfortunately the result was the near complete destruction of my JIC Magic coilovers and several bent suspension links. To add insult to injury after I landed the car on is wheels I hit a berm, denting my header and basically destroying most of the plastic and sheet metal on the nose of the car.

Well, at the time I had no money to put the car back together, so it got partially disassembled and parked. I bought an old Volvo from my aunt and basically forgot about the car. I just didn't have the money to fix any of it.

So it was left to sit, like this, alone in a crappy carport.




To top it off this past summer I got blown up, leaving me with only half of my left hand, very blurred vision in my left eye, and I'm in need of 1 more surgery to replace my 2nd eardrum.


Well now I'm in my senior year of school, and I have managed to collect a sum of money I can use to rebuild the car with. So here it goes, I pulled the trigger on the last set of FLT-A2's in JIC's inventory and its time to get this thing back on the track!



Got it out of the rotting carport and now its time to start building!





Got her cleaned up!



Well since its been sitting for 2 years without running, I'm planning on doing a full engine rebuild. I don't have the money yet to go a crazy as I want to with it, but it should be more then it was previously. I have some new friends and contacts to start building the car for the class' I intend to bring it back into.

[foxbrand]

welcome back my friend! hell of a story, rebuild looks great so far

[4g63lover]

holy crap. your car was so clean! cant wait to see what you bring her back to.

[wetamup2k3g]

Great story, in for updates, good luck!

[Blue8g]

You were leaving the site as I was just starting here, but glad to see you back!

[M-Rod]

Welcome back! I always loved your car. Sorry to hear about the mis-haps since last seeing you around. You may be fond of the possible engine swaps available now, if that would interest you rather than fully rebuilding your 6G72. If you do decide to rebuild the 72, there is a killer deal on C3G right now for rods and pistons from a project that never left the ground. Once again, it's good to see you back.

[6G72gearhead]

Thanks guys, I've wanted to get this thing going again, I just wasn't financially able too until now. I'm still waiting for a few more parts before I begin.

A good friend of mine fabricates custom motorcycles and is trying to expand into the automotive market. We are already looking at an integrated battery box and a custom triangulated strut tower brace. I would really enjoy to take advantage of his abilities with titanium!

[greddy]

nice, good to see someone come back who actually regularly tracked their galant, I've felt very lonely for a while now. I have to ask, when you mean blow up, did you mean you were near an explosion of some sort? Also, what spring rates did you go with on your coils?

[6G72gearhead]

Yeah, its been a minute hasn't it, I saw your rally cross pictures, looks like a blast.

The car is coming back 6G72, I've already decided it. I really have learned a lot here at school and I have some idea's and techniques that I want to try out and see what this snappy little engine can do.

Since I have the Volvo the car will be coming back as a dedicated track car, no more compromises, the car will be built to the SMF Solo II class and the Street GT time attack class, which I can't remember what production class that also puts me in, but either way I'm not holding back. I want to put an 8G Galant on a podium. I will do it.

The springs I used to run where 8k and 7k for the eclipse, however I went 9k and 8k this go around just to get the platform sorted out. I can go up to 11k before revalving is needed, I just have to adjust nitrogen, which is easy enough. Jon from JIC is going to help me dissect my telemetry so I really get the most out of the suspension, he seems to support trying to get an oddball car into a competitive set up.

What happened to me was, well, we where experimenting with a mortar propellent, which consisted of oxidized acetone, it got knocked over and it detonated. At like 7300 fps, the amount was enough to have blown a suburban in half. However I stabilized the compound, which prevented the majority from going into an actual detonation event.

[foxbrand]

Well, if you want to make your 6g72 a little snappier, I have at least one 6g74 intake manifold (amongst the many left over parts) you can buy from me (mods don't worry, I will make a fs thread) however you might end up fighting my engine builder for the 6g74 crank if you plan on stroking the engine

Well fellow pyro, stay safe and good luck

[greddy]

excellent, I'm eager to see how your suspension setup works out, I'm on 8K 10K now going to 10K 12K for next track season.

[6G72gearhead]

Have you talked with the designer for the coilovers? That is really stiff, the problem is not so much the actual spring rate, but how fast the valve head reacts. When you go with a super hard spring, the valving in the damper has to react much faster, and in a much shorter stroke to have its say in how the car sets in the corner. I'll probably end up with much stiffer springs, but its going to be after I have collected some data about my driving style and how the car handles on course so when I revalve for the stiffer rate I'm also revalving to make the suspension react to the car much better.

Just some things to think about.

As for an intake manifold, we are drawing up some idea's for an individual throttle set up on solidworks, thanks for the offer but I can put up with a stock manifold until that is completed. Its gonna take longer to finish then this build, but that should kind of hint people to where this is going.

[greddy]

yeah I have, I have have custom coilovers built by AMR engineering who is local to me, the dampers are valved to deal with the stiff rates, I have a season's worth of track testing on the coils with NT-05s and we talked it over and it's time to bump the rates a bit :)

[w/oarctic7g]

Racing is an addictive sport glad to see you're getting back into it. Eagerly looking forward to your progress reports also if you can post pics of any safety upgrades like cage, reinforcements, bars etc that would awesome. Not many expect a g to be a formidable opponent but when you finish well its a pretty incredible feeling. I wish the 6g72 was an easy transplant into a 7g as that would be a significant improvement to my race car.

[6G72gearhead]

Sweet dude, I wish I had stuff like that here, all we got is a bunch of circle track builders that look at you funny when you talk about right turns. How is oversteer on the car? I know with my ST rear swaybar and a stock front turn in is fantastic with a very neutral feel. I think on my current set up going that much stiffer then the front in the rear would lead to a whole lot more oversteer then is needed.

I'll be moving the car to my buddies garage on saturday so we can start the teardown. Still working on getting ahold of all the hardware I need.



Yes, those are high strenth stainless 16mm bolts for the strut attatchment. Uppers will be cam bolts to allow me to dial in as much camber as I can.

[greddy]

the car is actually quite neutral, i went with higher rates in the rear with a beefy rear sway bar simply because of the motion ratio of the rear suspension. I really like the 2K spread front to rear so far. If you ever need stuff like custom camber plates or anything, contact http://www.amrengineering.com/ and talk to Andy. lifetime warranty on everything too. he made me some custom front and rear endlinks as well and made my rear bar adjustable. He's working on a set of rear camber arms for me as well.

[8thLS6]

Love builds that involve fab work and custom parts, so definitely looking forward to your build. Glad to see your getting back to wrenching behind the G. Best of luck in your build

[6G72gearhead]

Sweet dude, sounds like a quality set up you got. The camber plates I got, I'll use. My buddy Sam and I are looking into front and rear adjustable control arms to help change camber and caster. However the main points that are needing to be addressed are: getting this engine built, stopping the surface rust in small area's, making sure the new build will sustain large amounts of rpm for hours on end, and getting the engine bay prepped to do the battery box and strut tower brace.

[greddy]

keep me posted on those front arms, I might be interested in a set if you're willing to make more than one :) and the strut tower bar too. you keeping the battery box up front or trunk mounted?

[6G72gearhead]

Battery is going up front, about in the stock location, it will be a frame mounted set up, only much lighter and for a 16 series motorcycle battery. Possibly something special battery wise, but I'll wait until its a sure thing to divulge the info.

There is a good chance part of the strut tower brace will be weld in, as the firewall needs reinforcement before it can really support having that much load transmitted to it. The thing that makes it tricky is that we still have to be able to pull the engine in and out, so the cross brace that connects the towers directly will have to be bolted in, but that allows more flex.

I'm also toying with how much weight could possibly be saved by building a lighter crash bar. Running without one is foolish, but keeping the strength with lighter materials would be very beneficial.