Honey Badger's Completely Off-the-Rails Race Car Build and Track Adventure Thread

[honeybadger]

Sounds like a great plan, care to elaborate on the cabinet set? I have a bunch of Gladiator stuff, but I need more...

Sure!

I grabbed the 14 piece NewAge set from Home Depot during the Father's day sale. Got it for 1,999 plus tax. It ended up coming in gouged due to a fork lift. I refused shipment per the delivery guy's recommendation and when I called Home Depot, they further discounted it as a way to say thanks. I was shocked. Being delivered to my house for $1,629.:eyebulge:

 

[Austinj427]

Find a color as close to avalanche grey as possible for the walls. It's light enough it will still reflect light well, and well, it's "avalanche".

 

[TheDeadCow]

Absolutely right. I'm insulating all 4 walls (door included) as well as the ceiling (already done). Since it never really cools off here in the summer months because of the humidity, AC runs a lot. Every bit counts.

And good choice! Are you running the FP lowering springs?

Yes, I've been running the FP springs for about the past year. Hoping the sways will take away the push.

 

[The Chairman]

Signed up for my first track day in TX and doing it the right way. Will probably try and pick something up before July 13th if timing permits, but this one is going to be hard compete with.

COTA under the lights! Hell ya! Any other members going?

Feel free to jump in with insights/recommendations for COTA.

I have signed up for the 13 July COTA event as well. Ran there with Speed Ventures a few times. Great track!

Registration is open for the 18-19 Oct event that was set up by MCA at Houston MSR:
https://motosho.com/event/5aec94c12538e

Can register for either Thursday or Friday, or both. I have registered for both days.

 

[NvrFinished]

There are a lot of good garage floor coating choices today. Just stay away from the cheap big box store stuff. This website has some good information on garage floor coatings and garage flooring in general.

https://allgaragefloors.com/

 

[sublime1996525]

The badger cave is gonna be sweet!

 

[honeybadger]

I have signed up for the 13 July COTA event as well. Ran there with Speed Ventures a few times. Great track!

Registration is open for the 18-19 Oct event that was set up by MCA at Houston MSR:
https://motosho.com/event/5aec94c12538e

Can register for either Thursday or Friday, or both. I have registered for both days.

Excellent! Have you run COTA at night? I imagine it's going to be a blast. And nice! I'll sign up for that too.

There are a lot of good garage floor coating choices today. Just stay away from the cheap big box store stuff. This website has some good information on garage floor coatings and garage flooring in general.

https://allgaragefloors.com/

I've poked around that site as well. Have a specific brand/place to buy the epoxy you'd recommend?

The badger cave is gonna be sweet!

I'm excited man. Been working for a few years to make this happen. I love clean, organized work spaces. Plus, I am excited to get Alexa in there to control my audio and lights.

 

[honeybadger]

Yes, I've been running the FP springs for about the past year. Hoping the sways will take away the push.

[MENTION=19800]CSL[/MENTION] has had great luck with them. He swears by this combo. I think you'll be very happy.

 

[honeybadger]

Find a color as close to avalanche grey as possible for the walls. It's light enough it will still reflect light well, and well, it's "avalanche".

Oooho. I didn't think about avalanche. Great idea. I'll see what the folks at HD can match for me. Thanks for the idea!

 

[Lurker_350]

Hope you are enjoying College Station so far. I remember (not so fondly) many summer days where it was still over 100F at 10 pm during college. Good call on a split-unit for the garage.

It's too bad that Texas World Speedway was more valuable for storing flooded Harvey cars than for racing; they had some pretty good in-field courses and some banked oval. It would have made a nice "home" track for you.

I still try to make it for one game a year each fall - beware of the traffic snarls near the university on gamedays!

Let me know if you want any info on the area, although mine would be a little dated by now.

 

[sublime1996525]

Oooho. I didn't think about avalanche. Great idea. I'll see what the folks at HD can match for me. Thanks for the idea!

Sherman Williams has a color called Repose Gray, my House is that color. It looks great.

 

[The Chairman]

Excellent! Have you run COTA at night? I imagine it's going to be a blast. And nice! I'll sign up for that too.

Have not run COTA at night. Could be hot the first few runs, then cool off the last run or two. However, a medical thing came up today and I have surgery tomorrow morning. Will be out of commission for a few weeks. So I won’t be at COTA this time. Trying to hand off my registration to another GT350 owner here in San Antonio.
Have fun!

 

[honeybadger]

Hope you are enjoying College Station so far. I remember (not so fondly) many summer days where it was still over 100F at 10 pm during college. Good call on a split-unit for the garage.

It's too bad that Texas World Speedway was more valuable for storing flooded Harvey cars than for racing; they had some pretty good in-field courses and some banked oval. It would have made a nice "home" track for you.

I still try to make it for one game a year each fall - beware of the traffic snarls near the university on gamedays!

Let me know if you want any info on the area, although mine would be a little dated by now.

We're excited for the games. We went to quite a few games in Seattle - always a good time with that very loud, effective crowd. Going to be fun to experience the original 12th fan base. My only question at the moment is where to go to have a bit of fun on the backroads? Already got busted for speeding on Highway 6

Sherman Williams has a color called Repose Gray, my House is that color. It looks great.

Thanks for the recommendation. Will look into it!

Excellent! Have you run COTA at night? I imagine it's going to be a blast. And nice! I'll sign up for that too.

Have not run COTA at night. Could be hot the first few runs, then cool off the last run or two. However, a medical thing came up today and I have surgery tomorrow morning. Will be out of commission for a few weeks. So I won’t be at COTA this time. Trying to hand off my registration to another GT350 owner here in San Antonio.
Have fun!

Sorry to hear that! Hope everything is okay. Will look forward to seeing you out there later this year, hopefully. Here's to a speedy recovery!

 

[Lurker_350]

We're excited for the games. We went to quite a few games in Seattle - always a good time with that very loud, effective crowd. Going to be fun to experience the original 12th fan base. My only question at the moment is where to go to have a bit of fun on the backroads? Already got busted for speeding on Highway 6

I used to enjoy the roads toward the west. You can take university drive toward Snook (the town) and turn right on FM 50, then left on FM166. There are some fun curves on the roads between Snook, Caldwell, Cooks Point, and Tunis. The highway patrol prefers FM 50 and 60, so beware on the larger roads.

Another fun road, but a bit further away, is from Hearne toward Temple - FM485.

On any of these roads, you may want to scout the conditions with the Raptor. I was enjoying them in my WRX, so clearance, bumps, and gravel weren't really a factor (actually preferred the gravel!).

Unfortunately, you won't find any roads like what you had in the pacific NW near college station.

But if you venture west of San Antonio toward the Frio river, there are some amazing roads out there (FM 335, 336, 337, 1050, etc.) and less traffic during the fall/winter/spring. It gets pretty busy there during the summer.

 

[honeybadger]

Taking a little break from garage updates

I have tons of garage updates, but we'll keep those on the back burner until it's all done (super close).

In the mean time, let's talk about the sway bars, COTA and a surprise problem.

On July 13th, I got to run COTA at night with a local group called Edge Addicts (highly recommend - awesome people). What a blast.

Leading up to the event, I had some upgrades to install - Ford Performance sway bars, Full Tilt Boogie front end links, and AIM Solo 2 DL.

The sway bars are pretty straightforward, but I'll include some pics and thoughts just in case folks don't want to watch a youtube video.

I started by disconnecting the end links (shown below).

I also removed these mag ride sensors as they are fragile and expensive. Side note, they are side-specific, so don't mix them up.

I somehow lost the pics of removing the front sway bar bolts, sorry about that. Essentially you need to remove the intake to get access to the bolts on the driver side. The front bolt you can get with a huge extension aim straight down in the engine bay. The second bolt is blocked by the alternator. I recommend an 18MM ratcheting wrench. Make your life easy.

Passenger side is easy. Just the big extension will work.

To get the bar out, we pulled it out the driver side BEHIND the strut. It was surprisingly easy - took less than 3 mins.

Top angle.

New bars are quite a bit beefier

Same with the end links. The OEM end links are known to bend. I was surprised to see neither of mine had given my love of kerbs.

The rear sway is easier than the front. Once again, disconnect the end link.

Then remove these two 18mm bolts on each side.

For some strange reason, Ford Performance doesn't supply a new brake line mount even though the OEM one won't fit a bar with more mounting holes. Weird. I used my bench grinder (sans the bench) to knock it down.

Good enough for this n00b.

After all was re-attached, I re-aligned the car. I went pretty extreme this time to combat tire wear and start to play around with fine tuning turn in. I settled on -3.7 up front and -3.2 in the back (in all honestly, this is where the rears came out after I reassembled and I didn't change it since they were even with each other). I'll provide some thoughts on feel in the COTA post.

AIM Solo 2 DL is installed as well. Make sure to use Race Studio 3 to configure it BEFORE your track day - otherwise it isn't super useful