Every night this week I've been getting home from work at 7pm and going straight out to the shed and working on the 'K till 12:30-1 in the morning. My good mate Dazza has been busting his ass to help me get this thing done by the weekend.

We dropped the engine in last weekend so this week we've been flat out hooking up all the auxiliaries. There was a few problems with the original wiring that Dazza found and fixed up and we've added heaps of new stuff in. We've fitted the AU thermos and tranny cooler from the wagon, borrowed my monster tacho and oil pressure warning setup from my torana. The warning lights from the computer were just hanging off the computer under the carpet, so Daz extended them and worked them into the factory dash - we used the EST warning light as the engine management light and wired in the original alternator warning light. We also mounted the diagnostic port inside the glovebox so that we can easily diagnose what's going on if I see the engine management light.

The alternator warning light is very important for burnout comps because it lets you know when you've thrown the belts off the engine!! That's exactly what happened to me in the last burnout comp in the wagon, but I didn't put it all together in my head because I was too busy doing a skid. This time it's burnt into my brain that if I see that light, I need to drive out of there because it's going to overheat very quickly! 

Tranny Cooler

Tranny Cooler

Pro Rachet

About a month ago me and my mate Dazza entered the wagon in the Burnout Bonanza at WSID. We found some photos floating around the net but we haven't been able to find any videos of the event. Luckily one of our mates filmed both of our skids on his camera phone which is better than nothing. You can here my mates bagging us out in the background ;)

I did a quick edit job on the clips and stuck it on YouTube.

While I was stripping out the wagon I found some fithly bits of paper in the glovebox and decided to see what they were. It turned out that they were 2 year old timeslips from WSID.  There were 2 timeslips;

First run - 15.34 @ 91.73MPH

Second run - 14.72 @ 92.26MPH

To be honest high 14s is what I expected that the car would do which is still pretty respectable for a stock 5L. Although I found the timeslips in the glovebox I couldn't be sure if they were for that car because its not written anywhere on the slip.  So I had a look on Cackling Pipes and found a gallery from the meet that matched the timeslips. Sure enough, there's photos of the wagon exactly as it was the day I bought it.

It's really awesome to find out a bit of history of the wagon, even though it's going to be put to rest. Aparently the wagon had been entered in the Kandos Street Machine Burnout Comp one year. When I bought the car there was a massive dent in the rear quarter and the guy selling it told me that the previous owner had hit the barrier in that event. I'd love to find some pics or videos from that event to see how it went. I'm guessing that it would have been in either 2006 or 2007.

Anyone who's not blind will know that the wagon isn't all that easy on the eyes, but it does it's job – smashing tyres. The problem is that when its not in a burnout comp, it's sitting around taking up space looking ugly. When I bought the wagon it was registered but I hardly drove it because it didn't look like it should be on the road.. Driving around in a rattle can painted car with burnout damage and stockies on the back is asking for it! Especially with my driving record! The engine, box, brakes and cooling system are still really good, it's just the body thats rough.  So I've always had the idea of transferring the running gear into a nicer car and being able to drive it on the street. I've had my eye out for a while and looked at a few VK sedans in the last month but they've all needed too much work (gutted interiors, no glass etc). On Monday night I drove to Canberra after work to look at one that I found and I left a deposit on it. I'll post the info on that when I pick it up.

So this week me and my mates have been stripping down the wagon after work. We pulled the motor & box out yesterday.

I finally got the Skid Wagon out to another burnout comp. I offered my mate Dazza a co-drive since he'd been helping me out with the car alot. Daz is no stranger to the burnout pad so I knew the car would be in good hands.

The car was pretty much ready to go apart from the diff. I destroyed the last one and haddn't got around to building a decent one. A while ago I put in a bog stock VN wagon diff (factory 28 spline) which i was planning to have a full spool and 4.11 gearset installed into it. I haddn't got around to it and the comp was in a few days so Daz brought around his stick welder and we locked it up. Not a good thing to do if your planning to modify the diff in the future, infact not a good thing to do ever but it got us to the comp.

I took the car out in the first session and it was going pretty well considering the tall 3.08 ratio. I managed to get it up to 3rd gear and I was pulling some nice 360 whips which the crowd seemed to like. Next thing a hose lets go and theres steam pissing everywhere so i shut it off. I got pushed off the pad in style by the fire crew.

I found it pretty strange that it overheated since I was only going for about a minute and a half... Once we got it back to the pits we had a look and found that it spat the bloody belts off again! Last time it only threw off the power steering belt but this time it chucked them both off which obviously stopped the water pump spinning. So once again I leave the pad with tyres still inflated... :(

Luckily I brought a couple of spare belts along since the old onces were now lying on the burnout pad somewhere. Me and Daz fitted up the new belts and tightened the crap out of them this time. The hose that blew for me had only popped off so we were able to just slip it back on and refill the water. Daz took it out on the pad with some fresh tyres and went up to 3rd almost straight off the line. The car was under a fair bit of load but it was smoking like a demon. He managed to blow both tyres and get the whole exhaust red hot. When he stopped and got out of the car a small power steering fire started but then the hose blew off and extinguished the fire!! I'm so jelous!! He had to get towed out of there aswell but atleast the car went the distance this time.

I was glad to give Daz a go in the car since he's a good mate and it kind of makes hauling the car out there a bit more worthwhile since the car gets to go out twice. The CIG locker went the distance although after the second burnout it had 1/4 of a turn of play in the wheels. Despite cutting half the exhaust off since last time, the car's still not loud enough! We've got to do something about that before next time.

Dazza smoking it

The radiator lets go on me

Me doing doughies

Daz's victory wave just before it caught fire. Note the red hot exhaust pipe

My embarrasing departure from the pad

Daz letting it rip

Popped

Awesome guard damage!!

Please Note: Photos in this post are copyright of Badger Photography and Fully Sick Photos where watermarked. More images from this event can be found on their websites.

In the last burnout comp I had trouble knowing what gear I was in due to the crappy VR commodore shifter that was rivited in with no gear indicator. I decided to spend the money and put a proper shifter in. I went with the B&M Pro Rachet which seems to be the way to go if your not running a center console. Installation was pretty straight forward. Because the commodores have a flat section in the tunnel for the shifter it made it very easy. I had to make up a new plate to cover the massive hole from the original shifter, other than that it was all pretty much bolt in.

The burnout car is almost ready to hit the pad again. I've trail fitted the VN diff and there are no problems there. I've purchased a good second hand 4.11 gearset so I've now got to get them fitted up to the center with a spool.

As you know I blew an axel during the burnout comp in June. I never explained why it snapped. First of all before the burnout comp we pulled out the axels and inspected them and noticed that the splines were very slightly twisted – thats a sign that they are already weakend. It's very common to twist splines with a locked diff. We couldn't source a new pair of axels in time, so we threw them back in and gave it a quick test to make sure that they were going to hold up for atleast one burnout.

It turned out that the twisted axels only played a small part in the axel blowing. What I didn't realise was that one of the stockies had a plug fitted to the tyre from a previous puncture. When the tyre wore down it spat the plug out causing a pinhole leak which was actually caught by a photographer. So the left hand wheel was now flat and the right was still fully inflated.

Locked diffs + uneven load on the wheels = blown axel.

I haven't really posted anything about the burnout car since we put it in the WSID Burnout Bonanza back in June. The reason for that is because we haven't really touched it since then. Burnout season is about to start so it's time to get the thing kicking ass!

We learnt alot from the burnout comp and found alot out about the car.

Strong points

- Power and gearing is up to scratch - I was able to get to 2nd gear limiter quite easily and the smoke was pretty instant. I think it'll do 3rd gear.

- Cooling - I was smoking it up for almost 3 minutes and managed to drive out with no leaking fluids. The gearbox was slipping on the way back to the pits which is bad, but we shouldn't be staying out there for that long in the future.

- Brakes - The VT front brakes on this thing are awesome and have no problem holding the car back.

Weak points

- Diff - the bodgie 25 spline cig locker 4.11 borgy is stuffed. We blew one axel, the other is twisted and the gears are minced from incorrect preload.

- Power steering - while it's great for doing skids, we keep throwing the belt off which makes steering it go from easy to virtual impossible.

- Fuel surge - As soon as I chuck it in for a heli the car loses power from fuel starvation. This was the reason why I was out there for so long, because I had to keep it in 1st when doing doughnuts to stop it surging.

- Car Presentation - the car itself looks like shit

We've got plans for all the weak points. I've ripped out the small borgy and thrown it in the bin. I was given a VN wagon diff (thanks Chocco!) which I've now bolted up to the car. The VN diff is far stronger than the original VK diff. The main difference is that it runs 28 spline axels standard. The VN axels are also heaps thicker than the VK ones. There are a couple of downfalls to the VN diff though, the main one being that its wider than the VK/VL diffs. You can't fit big wheels/mags on the rear with the VN diff, but stockies clear. Since this is a purpose built burnout car, we don't care, but this would be a problem for a street car. The other problem is that you can't run the original VK drums on the VN diff because the axels run different seals to suit disc brakes. You can either change the seal or run the VN discs. We chose to run the VN discs, which also means we have to change the handbrake cable.  A disc brake rear on a burnout car sounds like a waste of time but it was easier for us to go this way since we had all the parts in the shed. The rear brakes are always going to be clamped when we do burnouts anyway so it makes no difference. 

We're going to do away with the original fuel tank and run a small foam filled fuel cell in the spare wheel well, this should solve our fuel surge problems. 

As for the power steering issue we are going to first look at the pully alignment before we rush into pulling it off.  The power steering makes controling the burnout much easier but does rob a little hp and addes unrealiability.. But since it's already on there I'd like to try and keep it but if we keep having problems we'll source a manual steering rack and swap it out.

We're planning to do a quick backyard respray on the wagon to make it look presentable.

The rain held off so we hauled the car down there. We had some dramas getting it onto the car trailer because the thing was too low.

I got it onto the pad, got it into 2nd gear and took off nice and slow making plenty of smoke. Things were going great for about 30 seconds when I threw the power steering belt then it all suddenly got alot harder. I hooked it in for my first doughnut while in 2nd or 3rd gear and as it flung around it bogged down.. The dreaded fuel surge! So I smashed it back to first which brought it back to life and rode the limiter for a while. Most of my attention was wasted hanging off the wheel trying to steer the damn thing. I eventually got it back into a higher gear and off the limiter but then as soon as i turned it around it surged again.

Next thing I know I hear a large bang in the car. Woohoo, I've done the tyre! Oh wait, no thats the axel... I looked across and saw an official waving at me so did a 3 pointer and started driving out. As I started heading for the exit I thought f*ck it and jumped on the gas and did a single legger line locker all the way out trying to finish the tyre that still had drive. I ended up sitting there on the limter waiting for it to blow but then the car started sounding a little unhappy - the gap between the limiter bounces started getting slightly further apart so I took that as a sign to drive out of there while I still could.