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.

It's been looking like rain all week, but I woke up this morning and things are looking good! Last night me and my mate dazza worked on the thing for a 4 hours after work to get it ready. I modified some EL falcon thermo fans and daz wired everything up. He's an autoelectrician so he went over the whole thing and tidied heaps of stuff up. He found the the main ignition wire running to the relays up front was way too thin and had mented and this was before we added 3 extra fans to it. So he replaced that and ran a switch inside for the fans.

I came across a few funny things while working on it last night. I was under the back of the car looking at how the towbar mounts up so i could remove it and I found a spare key wired up under the back. I was going through the glovebox and found a OSR final notice for someone who must have owned the car before me. It was a fine for drinking on redfern station hahah.

So the car is pretty much ready to go and the weather is looking promising so if all goes to plan I'll be blowing a set of tyres in 12 hours time! 

Incase I didn't mention earlier, the diff in the VK is absolutley stuffed. The gears are incorrectly worn due to shitloads of backlash, there's welding slag all through the housing, the barings are noisy as hell and the axels are twisted!  We picked up a stock VL diff off ebay for $10.50 to use for spares. The problem is that wagons have a different diff housing to sedans and the centers have to be built into the housing unlike the trusty old 9". So it looked like we'd have to take the 2 housings down to someone and spend some money.

We really want to make it down to the burnout comp at WSID this Saturday night and don't have the time or money to take it to an expert. So we thought as a quick fix we'll throw the diff back in it and use the spare axels from the VL diff, cross our fingers and hope for the best.

So yesterday we did just that, except when we put the axels in one was too long and one was too short.. We put them side by side with the old ones and it turns out that our original axels are offset 20mm to the passanger side. We doubled checked the housings, both measure 1400mm so they're pre VN style. The conclusion that we have come to is that our original axels are custom or out of something else. Our center has 4.11s in it and all the people I've spoken to say that you can use the gearset out of a pintara etc, but its not a straight forward conversion. 

So the only option to get this thing to WSID was to put the twisted axels back in it and hope for the best. They are only mildly twisted, so hopefully they'll hold up for one skid comp. While we were there we also fully de-adjusted the rear drums and fitted V8 Torana front springs to the rear of the VK. The springs that were in it were the stock ones that had been cut down with an angle grinder. It sat so low that we reckon the tank would hit the ground when we pop the tyres. My mate once did a similer thing to his stock 3.8 VN and it turned it into a drift animal so I know it'll help aid wheelspin. A few people have recommended doing this so we figured it was worth a go.

It's now all back together with the old damaged diff setup back in it and the extrememly stiff springs in the rear. I thought I should give it a quick test and I figured it would be straight out mean not video tape it. It's only a very small burnout because I don't want to upset my neighbours and these are the tyres that I'll be using on Saturday.

The main thing I wanted to test was the diff ratio and the springs. I hopped on the throttle pretty lightly so I didn't hurt the diff, once it started spinning i nailed it and she went straight onto the limiter. Look how hard the car shakes whilst on the limiter with those new springs in it!! I clicked her into second, and it really started smoking hard so i slowly eased the revs down again to try and look after the diff. I'm confidient that I could have easily got 2nd gear limiter and it should be able to sit in 3rd bagging it with no worries. This is why I really want to keep this 4.11 ratio.

So all we need to do now is wire up the AU thermos and the fan on the tranny cooler and it's ready to go. We'll be towing it down to the burnout comp so there's nothing to lose. I'll give it hell and if it blows it blows. 

There's no better way to celebrate our Queen's birthday than to lay down a patch in her honor!

Location: WSID
When: 7th June 2008 (Saturday)
More Info: http://www.wsid.com.au/event.asp?ID=797 

We need to pull our fingers out and get the burnout car into this event. We need to change the diff and get some new themros onto it.

We've decided to stick with the TH700 in the wagon since it turns out that theres alot more involved in swapping to the TH400 than we were originally told.. That's why it never hurts to get a few opinions before grabbing the tools, in this case it saved us some hassle. The turbo 700s don't have a great name for holding together so we want to give it the best chance we could. I pulled off the poxy little transcooler that was dodgily cable tied to one of the thermos.  Our new tranny cooler is a big alloy Perma Cool job with a built in thermo.

We had to do away with the outside thermo make room for it but thats ok since the AU fans will be mounted on the inside anyway. I left a 2" gap between the radiator and the cooler to minimise heat transfer between the 2 coolers. For the same reason we also decided to bypass the factory radiator pass through for the gearbox. Normally i'd say the more cooling the better, but since this is a burnout car I reckon it'll work against us because the radiator temps are guaranteed to always be very high so if anything it will heat the tranny oil. 

Now that the 700 is staying we thought we better do a serivce on it since it missed out when we did the engine. I dropped the oil and it was nice and burnt as i expected. I reckon one burnout comp would be enough to kill the engine and gearbox oil. Changing the gearbox fluid is a pain in the ass because there's no drain plug on the factory pan. So we killed 2 birds with one stone and installed a deep oil pan with a drain plug in it. This way we can drop the fluid without having to pull the pan off every time and the added capacity will help keep the oil temps down and hopefully give it a bit more life. 

The plan is to change the engine and gearbox oil after every comp and change the filters every few.

I got stuck into the burnout car over the weekend. I did a full service on it excluding the gearbox, because it's coming out. We are going to pull out the T700 and run the T400 that i've got.

I've taken it out for a few runs on the street and it's become obvious that the cooling system isn't up to scratch, there's no way it will make the distance in a proper burnout. We're going to put a massive trans cooler on it with a thermo and bypass the radiator. We'll do away with the thermos and run EL falcon ones since everyone seems to rave about them.

My mate helped me knock out the big dent in the rear quarter, it doesn't look like it's hit a guard rail now! 

I've managed to shoe-horn all my cars into my shed. I've now got the torana, VK, VR a bike and a spare 308 and TH400 in there. It's looking like a dump in there, I'm working on building some shelves up the back at the moment.

Me and my good mate Chris just picked up a project car that we're going to use to promote our website. Speaking of the website, we've sunk alot of hours into it recently and it's not all that far off being ready to go online.

We have had our eyes open for a burnout machine for a long time. We were originally going to buy a cheap early commodore and drop the spare 308 and T400 i've got in it. We decided against it since it's alot of work and it probably wouldn't be up to scratch in the horsepower department anyway.. So we decided to look for something that was already fitted with a V8.

This thing popped up on ebay the other day:

VK Commodore Wagon 185i Injected V8 Turbo 700 Transmission Locked 4:11 Diff

BASICALLY THIS CAR  IS A HOLE HEAP OF FUN TO DRIVE, THE CAR ITSELF ISNT IN THE BEST CONDITION BUT ITS NOT FOR LOOKS REALLY BUILT FOR BURNOUTS. THERES A DENT IN PASSENGER REAR QUATER WHERE I HIT THE GUARD RAIL AT KANDOS STREET MACHINE BURNOUT COMP. INTERIOR IS FAIR, HAS A FEW LITTLE BITS AN PIECES THAT COULD DO WITH A TIDY UP IF UR FUSSY BUT IS QUITE FINE TO DRIVE AS IS...

ENGINE IS GREAT DOESNT BURN OIL, HAS A POD FILTER, TWIN THERMOS,EXTERNAL AUTO OIL COOLER,

HAS BROCKY FRONT BAR AND GRILL IN AVERAGE CONDITION (GRILL HAS BEEN MODIFIED AT THE TOP FOR SOME REASON), ALSO HAS VT FRONT BRAKE CALIPERS, AND A STRAIT THRU MUFFLER THAT SOUNDS TUFF, THE 4.11 RATIO PULLS REAL HARD SO ITS QUICK OFF THE MARK, BASICALLY THIS IS A PRETTY RUFF CAR COSMETICALLY THAT GOES AWESOME AND HAS 6 MONTHS REGO...

ENGINE BAY IS AS SEEN, TRANS COOLER COULD DO WITH RELOCATING AND THE ENGINE BAY COULD DO WITH A TIDY UP...BRAKES ARE A BIT SPONGY PROBABLY NEED TO BE BLED.. SPEEDO DOES NOT WORK DUE TO THE TYPE OF GEARBOX...DIFF WINDS SOMETIMES

Sounds pretty good hey? Well It needs alot of work even to be burnout pad worthy. Here's the bad news that we've found so far:

• No cat converter fitted - if we want to drive it on the street ever again we need one.
• Starter motor is buggered - i've got a couple of spares in the shed so no biggie
  
• Probs with the ignition switch and the gearbox inhibitor switch is flakey.
  
• Diff whines like mad - we'll change the oil for now and see how it goes. I don't know if its a borgy or a salsbury yet.
• I don't think its got 4.11s, but its lower than standard.
  
• I'm almost positive that it's just a stock 165kw, not a 185i.
• Heaps of stuff is dodgily mounted with cable ties
  
• Headlights don't work
• Massive dent in the rear quarter from where the previous owner hit a wall in a burnout comp
• It's painted with $2 aussie export rattle cans

Unbelivably this thing is street registered! It managed to hold together for the 50km trip home. It does drive extremely well, i reckon it drives nicer than my VR with the same running gear. The powersteering was great till I threw the belt doing test and tune helis last night (no headlights keeps it interesting).

All in all we are happy with it. We wanted a project, we weren't expecting something schmick. The important thing is that the running gear is solid and all the hard work has been done, now we just have to tidy it up!

We want to get it out to WSID asap and have some fun in it!! We'll do a full service on the thing and have our mate Daz go over the wiring and fix up the dodgiest stuff. We have to get some guages on the thing, we are flying completely blind.

Later on we want to give it a quick paintjob and I'd like to swap out the T700 for the T400 which i've got. Then start working the motor.