4Wheel Technology

07/09/2019

https://youtu.be/-jA3w3TuxaI

Disassembly of the Team Power Products R4 Motor Series

09/02/2017

Cars & Coffee September 2. Even though it was rainy early, the skies cleared just at 8am, and the placed filled with cars and people. One of crowd walking by was this young birthday girl who thought it would be nice to take a seat in the Miata!

08/18/2017

As I was updating my build list, I remembered I have many items pertaining to the tube chassis build you may like to see. I created a shared area. Please use this link to view items as i add them:

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AlK-65lSCrM8tFUGZsZHsyjsBvyL

Folder

08/13/2017

An additional view of the work on the current hot rod.

08/13/2017

We are finally doing things on the tube frame car project you can see. Take a look.

08/07/2017

Great new product which allows you to add AN hoses directly to radiator outlets without welding adapters to the beaded hose fitting. And made in OKC.

AN Fittings
AN Cooling System Conversion. Our system converts your existing cooling system to the AN style Hose without welding or installing hose clamps.
When sized and installed correctly, our adapters DO NOT LEAK!

08/07/2017

Shawn Dempsey is building an awesome street drag car (actually a Chevy Sonoma). Should see it on the streets soon!

ProNoma Drag Racing is an in depth look inside the build of 'ProNoma'. The Worlds fastest N/A all motor non power-adder true 91 octane pump gas race truck.

07/19/2017

When I first disassembled the engine for the tube frame car we are building, I found a problem which you may find interesting and was a surprise extra expense; it could be much more expensive if it was not repaired prior to start up though! 🤔

In the case of this Subaru EJ25 series engine, the camshafts (sticks with bumps!) are driven by a pulley attached to it. The camshaft has a pin which engages the pulley so they turn together. During disassembly, the pulley is removed from the camshaft to allow further disassembly of other components.

The short story is that the right hand Intake camshaft and pulley must have had a hard life, maybe had relationship problems, since they are supposed to be 'married' firmly together (sorry for the bad pun). But in the pictures you see the pin is missing (that drives the pulley) in the left picture (the pin fell out when pulled apart) and the drive hole in the pulley (top right picture) is elongated and damaged. The last picture (bottom right) is of a camshaft which has its pin for comparison.

For this engine, the pin is an interference fit, meaning the pin is driven into the camshaft at the factory and should never come out during its service life.

07/11/2017

What auto manufacturers have to do to pass cold start emission tests.

I finished up a short sub system mount problem today for the tube frame chassis (I will review later), but the engine has to be assembled as it is holding up other system buildup now.

Back to the engine. Again, this is a performance build and there are details to be addressed in that regard. In some cases, we modify all the hard (and expensive) work the manufacturer has done to certify emissions to get that extra 20 horsepower with smoother running. Of course the manufacturer must abide by certain rules (since we build less than 50 vehicles a year, we don't 😉) and in reviewing the modification I am making today, it amazes me the amount of money spent just for a 30 second period of engine running from a cold start.

Other manufactures have a solution to making sure cold start emissions will meet standards, but here is Subaru's method for this 30 seconds of running after startup. In the left picture, you see one of the TGV assemblies (the Subaru has two heads, and each head requires a TGV assembly; the TGVs sit on top of the head and admit fuel/air into each cylinder). The brightly colored brass parts are butterfly valves which open when the engine computer says so (they close off about 80% of the entire inlet area to the engine cylinders). These butterfly valves are not connected to your right foot pedal! They are tightly closed during this 30 second cold start window. The dark area by the butterfly valves are open areas which allow about 20% of the fuel air into the engine. After about 30 seconds, the engine computer commands a small electric motor to open the butterfly valves, allowing full supply of fuel/air into the engine. My long winded point is, Subaru had to research, engineer, build these TGV assemblies, manufacture custom electric motors, sensors, and program the engine computer to satisfy emissions for the first 30 seconds of an engine's cold start cycle. Wow! 😮

But we are concerned about performance. All these butterfly valves, motors, sensors, etc. just cause the engine to have its performance choked and made to run 'funny'. What to do? I know, we will just chuck those things in the garbage and smooth the pathway for the fuel/air to make more power!

In the top right picture you see the TGV without the electric motor control, sensor and butterfly valves, but you see how this inlet is divided into two part as described above. Things are looking better as far as stuffing more power into the engine.

The bottom right picture shows off all the work completed (about 5 hours of carefully cutting, grinding and smoothing) with the openings now fully unobstructed allowing maximum power (and efficiency) for the engine. Except for the first 30 seconds after a cold start, the engine will have better fuel economy, lower emissions, and better performance during its normal run cycle. But the EPA says...

07/11/2017

One more item which we had to work with the cockpit panel installation. There are some areas in which the builder (us) have to fit and install critical items such as seat belt structure which is not documented. As mentioned in an earlier post, the lower seat belt mount points did not exist. After fitting the steering column for proper depth and the seat location, we determined where we needed strong mounting points for right and left side belts. As one of my old supervisors told me when I was a new A&P mechanic, "some of this crap you have to figure out for yourself". Just like life! 😂

The outboard mount points were fairly straight forward. There is a 1.75" steel rectangular tube for the perimeter of the chassis. To preserve structural integrity, we drilled the square tube in the middle with an oversize hole, fitted a thick wall round tube into the oversize hole in the 1.75" square tube where we needed the attach point, and then welded the round tube into the rectangular tube. By doing this we restored the strength back into the rectangular tube but still have a mounting hole for the outboard seat belt (left picture).

The inboard seat belt attach points were not defined in the assembly manual at all. In one assembled car I saw, the inboard 7/16" bolt went through the small tube as shown in the right picture (which supports the center console). I envisioned what would happen to me sitting in the seat should the vehicle have a "sudden stoppage" and I saw that 7/16" bolt pull out of that little tube and launch me into next week. 😉

So again in the right photo you see the heavy bracket (black with two bolts) we manufactured which is attached to the main center structure beneath the car (the bracket is 1/4" thick structural steel angle). I believe I will stay attached to the car in the seat if there is a collision unlike the 'solution' in the previous paragraph!

07/10/2017

Busy weekend on the tube chassis car. The goal was to have all the interior panels installed so we may concentrate on systems instead of structure for a while.

These panels have been 'in work' for about eight weeks. About 70% of them were prefabricated but needed to have them fitted to each other as well as drilling the mounting holes for attachment to the chassis. The other 30% were new panels in order to cover areas as we added improvements outside the 'normal' build package for safety and performance.

The black panels seen in the photos were the ones installed and enclose the cockpit to prevent water, etc. from penetrating the passenger area. After being fitting and drilled, (fabricating when necessary), they were cleaned, epoxy primed, and painted with polyurethane coatings. After the coatings were cured (three days) they were installed with rivets and structural polyurethane sealant.

07/06/2017

The next few days will continue engine build up, but I am at the point of cleaning and updating more engine components before I may install them. But with Mike back from holiday, we should be able to show you additional chassis work.