C5 Racecar rebuild thread
 

Folks,

Lots of you know that my car was smashed up real good at the NASA East Coast Nationals event. It's all fixable and it's in process, but I'll be making a bunch of upgrades (of course) along the way. I'm just starting this thread to keep track of that progress and I'll update it as more stuff gets done/built/bought/fixed. Whatever gets posted in this thread will be cut and pasted from the AMT Blog and edited to be more CF centric.

Link to the blog is below if anyone just wants to read it there.
AMT Motorsport Blog

If anyone here checks the Facebook page, you know by now that the season ended with a bang at the NASA East Coast Championships. Not a good bang. A buddy of mine was driving my car in Thursday practice and #265 got away from him at Turn 9 at Watkins Glen. Not a very forgiving place to go sideways. He hit the wall at about 45 degree angle at 33 mph and subsequently tagged the back corner in the resulting spin after the hit. He came away perfectly unharmed, all the safety gear doing exactly what it's designed to do. But we were done for the Championship before it even started, and the season was over. T'was a shame since with the new clutch and brake master cylinder the car was running as good as it had all season. I think we could have fought for the win on Sunday, though perhaps not considering what a crash fest the Championship race turned out to be.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...281bc83bde.jpg

The damage was extensive. Unless you're a real Corvette nerd it would bore you to hear the the list of parts needed, but you can get the idea from this picture. Thankfully motor and suspension parts were unharmed. Frame needs to be cut, straightened, and a new section welded in. Of course it would be silly to not make upgrades as long as the car is getting torn apart, so we're adding an AJ Hartman carbon fiber hood and leaning forward a new racing radiator and ducting the air out the hood for increased downforce and better cooling. While we're at it we have to flip the intake manifold and run the air intake into the cabin. So we might as well add a Fast 102 intake manifold as well as an LS2 throttle body and fuel rails to take advantage of the new ST2 rule allowing more horsepower next year. Yay racecars. We'll also make a new splitter but this time use 3/8" thick wood and wrap it in carbon fiber for stiffness and lightness. I'll be doing the carbon fiber work so I assure you it will not be pretty but it will be functional.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...a7b5bf33f1.jpg

The wing itself has minor repairable damage, but all the mounts need to be replaced. Seeing how far all the aluminum bent, it's quite a testament to the strength of properly made carbon fiber parts. Thanks to Kognition Racing for making a solid wing! AMT Motorsport will be making all new mounting hardware milled from carbon fiber plate this off season, and we'll take the opportunity to move the wing a little higher and further back on the car. Car is also getting new wide fenders put on so we can run the absurdly wide 335 Hoosier A7s that have become the norm on racing Corvettes.


The car finally made it to Peter Agapaglou at Autosport Fab in Plainville, CT last week. Pete got right to work taking the broken bits off the car and taking inventory of any extra parts that needed to replaced that we hadn't already acquired. Luckily there were no surprises.


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...830ccd0c9d.jpg

See? Not that bad-ish.


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...ba7f2f34c.jpeg

Engine needs to be removed to facilitate frame straightening, cutting, and re-welding. Oh hey and while the engine's out we may as well get rid of the needle bearings that run the rocker arms and switch to a solid trunnion upgrade! Yay racecars!


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...053a289bda.jpg


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...c482cbe312.jpg


Trunnion upgrade comes from Straub Technologies. Price is actually quite reasonable and the quality is high. Point of these parts are simply to remove any little metal bits that could possibly come apart in the heads and grenade the motor. The stock rollers have needle bearings with hundreds of tiny little cylindrical metal pieces. Just one of those failing would cause big engine damage, so we're being proactive in taking those out of the equation. While the motor is out Pete will do a full inspection to make sure everything still looks good in the bottom end of the motor. Motor doesn't have 20 hours on it so the damn thing better be cherry.


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...e0079b344.jpeg

Clear shot of the frame damage. We'd hoped that maybe the damage was isolated to only the front of the car since it was bent so heavily, but it appears the car may have a sway all the way to the back. That's no big deal - the car had to go on a frame machine anyway so once they start tugging the frame with 30 tons of force, it'll get back to where it's supposed to be. The car is now at AC Automotive in Hartford, CT and they're taking care of all the body damage. Oh, and of course the steering rack will be taken out and sent out to Turn One for a full re-build and upgrades. Yay racecars.


That's it for now guys. Any questions or comments let me know! Lots of pictures will be taken of the rebuild and I hope they come fast and furious so this thread will be expanded upon quickly.

Place holder if I need it.

Maybe I'm dumb but isn't it faster and more reliable (straight frame) to by a flood salvage or super high miler and swap parts? Running ones on autotrader under $8000! You may even be able to cut the old cage out and drop it in and weld with some reinforcement.

The damage is not $8000. So between buying a new car, building a new cage, and swapping every God damn part over, it would definitely be a lot more to start over with a new car.

:lurk:

WOW....would have not expected that much frame damage at that speed. You mentioned adding a new clutch this season and were very happy with it. What did you go with? I have mine on my lift right now awaiting my final decision. Good luck with the build.

I went straight up stock on the clutch. I had already spent way more on the car this season than I wanted to, so in the interest of time and expense we went stock. Had I gone aftermarket however, it would have been a 7.25" Quartermaster.

Edit: btw the clutch in my car was actually in mint condition, it was the slave cylinder that went bad in my case. But since you need to get the whole damn thing apart to change the slave, we just put all new in.

I will have to say that my stock clutch held up well with 4 years averaging 35 days per year on track @ 530 rwhp. Was looking at the QM 7.25" with the rally discs or the Mantic 7000 to cut some weight and few up the revs. Both seem to have good reviews. Thanks for the input.

I was there racing ST1 and managed to stay out of the mayhem on Sunday. Could not believe how many corvettes ended up in the wall that weekend. Glad to hear yours is rebuildable.

Yeah I was astounded by the number of smash ups, none more surprising than my own. I heard Greenman's Vette is totaled. I watched him hit the wall on the front straight on the live broadcast. Can't see how it couldn't be totaled after that hit.

My car goes on the frame machine this week. Just another Corvette casualty of the East Coast Nationals wreck fest.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...9d97b4d0c9.jpg

I didn't know you hit anything!! I knew one of those yellow flags was for you but I didn't realize you hit anything! What happened?

Got punted by the BMW with McDonalds livery when he came back over the curbing on the exit of turn one. He spun me and I ended up going into turn 2 backwards. I actually steered it for a pretty long distance but ultimately put it in the Armco just after the apex. If you look at the pics from Track Time photos, he got about 15 pictures of the whole thing. He even has one picture when about a foot from impact.

Man that sucks. That's John from down South. He's a super nice guy I'm sure he feels bad about that. Sorry for the issues. What a shit show that weekend was.

Yes...it was John and he went out of his way to reach out to me and apologize. I told him there were no hard feelings......just a racing incident.

Hey Doug, If you are interested, my Corvette is for sale:cheers:

11/10 Update
 

Car is at AC Automotive in Hartford, CT and they're already making good progress. Little scary to see some of these pictures. Just looks like a rat's nest of wires and expensive parts hanging all over the place...


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...a1f2bd0c11.jpg

Car is on the rack and getting torn down.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...f200797057.jpg

They chopped off the front bumper section to get it out of the way. This shot gives you an idea of how much of a shunt the front of the car really took.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...32a72ac55b.jpg


I don't know if they've already tugged on the frame to get it more straight at this point, but glad to see they were able to section the frame in front of the suspension pick up points.


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...1d371b6f75.jpg

Close up of the section. You can see the corner of the cradle broken off in the bottom of the picture.



https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...5cccf60385.jpg

Frame is done on both sides, broken cradle is off, all my lovely suspension arms and AMT Motorsport Monoball parts just hanging in the breeze.


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...e477abb1e8.jpg

Inner and outer fenders gone and cradle gone. Just a scary pile of wiring.


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...996ddc880b.jpg

But at least the car will have a shiny new AJ Hartman hood on it, as long as it goes back together straight! Also got the new racing radiator, and appropriate hosing and ductwork to lean it forward and flip the intake. All that work will be done by Pete at Autosport once he get's the car back at his race shop.

While you have the frame apart there why not put the brake ducts into it?

Why would I want to do that?

Cool trick, but not legal in NASA. You cannot have larger than 1 1/4" holes in frame rails.