Monthly Archives: September 2006

Transmission Tunnel, Fuel Pressure Regulator and Line Lock

The results of some Aluminum, a little skill, and hours of work.

The results of some Aluminum, a little skill, and hours of work.

The line lock, mounted to the firewall

The line lock, mounted to the firewall

My SX fuel pressure regulator

My SX fuel pressure regulator – rivet-nutted to the firewall.

The new hood on the Talon

The new hood on the Talon

Over the last week or two Mark and I have been putting some work in on the Transmission tunnel on the Talon. While it would have been really easy to just place a box around the entire damn thing and call it done, we simply couldn’t do just that ;-) So, we made a transmission tunnel that anyone who’s ever played StarFox would appreciate:

So, there you have it. The transmission tunnel is now done :-) That’s a nice, refreshing accomplishment. All in all, I’d say we spent about 10 hours too long on making that. It’s okay, it looks damn cool.

In other car news: The Fuel pressure regulator has finally been mounted, too, along with the permanent mounting of the Line Lock / front brake line distribution block. This thing is actually really neat :-)

The line lock is simply a Summit Racing line lock kit, with some adapters. I mounted it to the firewall of the Talon using some rivet-nuts. If you’ve never seen these things and you’ve fabricated stuff, you’ve been under a rock, my friend ;-) The rivet-nut is just that – it’s a nut that you stick in a hole, and then deform into place. The rivet-nut then stays in the hole, and provides a threaded hole for you to mount stuff to.

Because I wanted to use Stainless screws, I decided to use Zinc coated rivet-nuts. I contemplated aluminum rivet nuts, but I was concerned about corrosion. SS rivet-nuts are also available, but are ~5 times the price of the Zinc coated mild steel nuts, so I just got those instead. All in all, they are awesome. Go out and buy some. Right now. http://www.mcmaster.com ;-)

I also mounted the FPR, as I said before. Back in the day, somewhere around 1998, I purchased this SX Fuel pressure regulator from Buschur. Sure, the anodizing is a little faded, but it does it’s job, and does it well. So, I’m going to use it. Therefore, it needs to be mounted to the car. Sure, back in the day it hung off the fuel rail (how it never leaked, I’ll never know) and vibrated all over the place. Today though? Sorry, I know this car is going to shake when it’s together, so I focused on making a [b]solid[/b] mount for the regulator. Here’s the end result:

I am very happy with how it turned out – you can see I even broke the top mount so that it’d fit around the brake lines, and that body seam on the firewall. That’s the way to do it ;-) So yeah, now that’s mounted.

Oh, and one last thing. In my last post I mentioned buying a hood off John Shepherd. Well, it’s fiberglass, and has the headlight covers integrated.

2006 DSM Shootout Coverage and a New Hood

The Talon in my garage.

The Talon, in it’s new garage.

Wow! It’s been more than a month since an update. And I haven’t even commented on the shootout or anything! So, it’s time for one :-)

Shootout News: The DSM shootout this year was the most exciting shootout I remember since.. ’98 or ’99. It was just plain nuts this year. Brent Rau brought out his 2G to lay down some exhibition passes, and ran a 7.00 at 199mph. It was crazy to see that car lay down passes. I love how the wheels come back up when he shifts into second gear ;-) It’s also really interesting to see the subtle little things that most people don’t notice about race cars. I could talk about that all day with the pro guy’s cars, no doubt.

Speaking of Pro guys, Mark and I wandered over to John Shepherd’s trailer and checked out his car. I am amazed every year (over and over) with how clean his car is. I mean, here’s a guy who races all the races, and you could literally eat off any part of his engine bay. John’s car is beautifully put together. I have some pictures somewhere around here – I think they’re in the DSM shootout 2006 pictures directory on my site. On top of that, I got to meet Shep for the first time (and I’ve been into the dsm “scene” since 1998) and we got to shoot the shit with Shep for about an hour and a half. I also bought a fiberglass hood for the Talon from him. The hood has the headlight covers integrated into it, so it’ll simplify the front end, and save me from having to add supports and/or weld the headlight covers to the body. It’ll look good when it’s all done. It was also loads of fun to see Shep lay down 7 second passes. That man is crazy :-) Kudos to him though – all his hard work is paying off.

On top of all that stuff, Rick helped me put the hood on the car, and Mark and I have spent some more time working on the Transmission tunnel. Hopefully we’ll be able to spend some time on the car soon, but with a marriage coming up at the end of October (mine!), it’s going to be hard to squeeze things in. Oh yeah, I also bought a set of 1600cc injectors for the Talon, and I also bought a Mark Williams yoke for the driveshaft. I had to buy a new yoke, because the Dedenbear tailshaft requires a smaller diameter yoke (The spec is like .020″ smaller than the standard yoke dimension) in order for the driveshaft to fit into the tailshaft. So, $200 and a week later, I now have the right yoke :-) Now, I just need to put it on the driveshaft.