Owners:

Tom & Heather Holt

Mike Hesse

March 14-20 1993

Race at APD. Memorial for Steve. HUGE turnout! Mike and I are running better… We bought some used tires from Corky. We have traction! The shift linkage broke on one of Heather’s runs, so another early exit.

April 4-10 1993

Race at Expo Center. New fuel pump…The carbs are still loading up in lift throttle turns. Mike is FAST, just off Corky. I have 2 DNFs. Heather crashes hard in to a tree after sliding way off course. The car’s unibody is totalled. The front left wheel is bent bad. Heather is unhurt. Corky cuts his finger bad helping move the car. Today sucked!

April 11 – April 24 1993

Begin tearing down car and searching for a good body.

April 25 – May 1 1993

Buy 74 260Z from Jerry’s Miracle Motors in Fort Worth for $275. Great frame, virtually no rust except some surface stuff on the body and a blown engine. Perfect! Begin transplant…

May 2 - June 5 1993

Completely gutted 260, stripped interior, pulled engine, trans, diff, suspension, wiring harness, glass, doors, hatch, etc... used everything from the 240 that was salvageable/interchangeable. Richard Windberg was a HUGE help loaned his MIG and engine hoist and a lot of his time. Keith walkup made an extended loan of his air compressor and air tools. Ed Gilfus welded in cage extracted from 240.

The major differences encountered in the transplant process were different strut towers in the rear, additional hump along drivers side of tranny tunnel which interfered with the seat, taller seat brackets, reshaped & beefier radiator support. throttle linkage was different as was gas pedal, and there were LOTS of extra/additional brackets all over the car.

We used the taller strut spacers from the 260 in an attempt to make the rear suspension work..

The hump in the tranny tunnel was hammered in to remove it as much as possible. The seat brackets were removed and a different drivers seat was used. New seat brackets were fabricated and we were able to get headroom never before imagined. Heather has a problem and we have had to create some large pads to get her up high enough.

The radiator brackets had to be mounted in a rather unorthodox fashion to make the work, but they did.

The throttle control rod had to be reformed to get its geometry right. the 260 gas pedal was used but had to be bent to make it work right. A new pedal stop was fabricated.

A new Holley fuel pressure regulator is added and the fuel pro model is tossed.

June 6-12 1993

First race in new car. Looks like shit. Ed Gilfus assisted in a quick shoe string alignment. We had way too much rear camber and ended up ruining one rear tire. The rear suspension is unacceptably low and the car is dragging the exhaust and frame rails through every turn. We all take one run and load it up. We go ahead and order Ground Control's rear coil-over conversion rather than try to spacer up the rear anymore than we already have.

June13-19 1993

Install rear suspension. Installed new plugs and learned how important indexing plugs is on this motor. Every plug that was not rotated into the top 180degrees was hammered flat by the pistons.5 out of 6 dead. New plugs and reset the timing.

June 20-26 1993

Night Cross. Still haven't had the suspension properly aligned but we're doing okay. Car developes a knock after a couple of runs. Mike is close to Corky and Ed. After my forth run the engine is knocking bad and dies upon finish. after finish line a cloud of steam comes from the exhaust pipe and water is draining from the Header flange. Blown head gasket at least.

June 27-July 9 1993

Removed head and found blowout in gasket. Head checked out okay. Installed new head gasket. Started engine and still had knocking. Check plugs and found #2 piston had lightly hit the plug. Pulled engine and dissassemled bottom end and found #2 rod bearing spun plus several other bearings badly worn. Had crank turned to .020 under oon all rod and main journals (It was .010 under). Also had #2 rod resized. Installed all new bearings and reinstalled #2 piston. During installation, the #2 compression ring suffered a broken corner. It's not as bad as it sounds. All sharp edges were removed and the piston was installed without further damage. The end result of the broken ring is a larger end gap. (about .5" as opposed to .125" standard)

Got engine running Thursday night. Friday morning loaded the car on trailer, sprayed on four cans of Black Krylon and left town for Mineral Wells Divisional.

July 10-17 1993

Had car weighed first off, scales were flakey and we were nearly DQ'd on weight but squeeked by. In the end the car weighed in at 2136lbs with ~150 ballast in the storage compartments. We are running 50 lbs less ballast than the old car which approximately tells us the weight difference between the early and late model bodies.

Carbs are still loading up, especially in lift throttle turns. Mike does pretty well on day 1, I'm a little slower. John Banks is turns a low 85 second run compared to Mikes high 89 and my 91. On day 2 we lower the fuel pressure to 3psi. It had jumped up to 6psi since we added the tank breather last week. We also reset the float levels to .35". (bowl cover removed and held upside down measuring from the lowest part of the float to the cover. Load up problems Greatly reduced. Intend to try lowering levels a little more. In the end, Mike finished 6th, I finished 8th out of 10. All in all not too bad considering the car had not been driven at all since the engine work, still no proper alignment, the carbs were a little out of synch, old mismatched used tires, etc... The final class standings were:

John Banks ~171s.

Peter Fehn's codriver ~173

Peter Fehn ~ 173+

Corky Matney ~174

Ed Gilfus ~ 175

Mike Hesse ~ 178

Greg(?) Hines ~ 179

Tom Holt ~ 181

Hines codriver ~ 182

Some real Slow guy ~ 190

July18-24 1993

Race at Bobcat Stadium. The car ran great through the first two runs for all three drivers. On my third run, power was way off. It turned out to be loose main jets on the #4 and #6 cylinders. We tightened them up and the car was back to running great. No other FP cars today so Mike won with me second. Heather finished 3^rd in EM.

TTOD Stamman AM – 33.83

Mike – 36.45 36.15 on a fun run

Tom – 37.08 36.44 on a fun run

Heather 38.93

August 8-14 1993

Race at Bobcat Stadium again. Blew lower radiator hose. Had to splice together a new one. Was back running in under an hour. Corded the right rear tire. Car ran good, Mike was third, I was fourth. Corky and Ed were about 1 second ahead on a 35 second course. John Banks was in town and drove Corky’s car for a fun run and beat us all!

Banks – 34.25

Corky 34.25

Ed – 35.10

Mike 35.7

Tom – 36.10

August 15-21 1993

New Orleans Divisional. Ordered new slicks. 23x9.5x15 R45 $151 each. Finally slotted the strut towers to get the rear camber under control and got a real alignment! We kicked ASS! 2 day/2 course format I was 2^nd by 1/10^th on the first day, behind Bob Maggio. Banks followed me and Mike was behind him. I was in first overall until Mike’s final run!

Combined times:

Mike – 100.142

Tom – 100.177

Banks – 100.3??

We were in the largest class with 9 entries and we were noticed!