I've always been curious about chassis rigidity offered from the different door bar options. NASCAR vs an X that protrudes into the door vs a flat X. One or two friends have sent me pictures of modern TA cars using a straight X. Doesn't seem like it would offer the same protection. Any thoughts?

Little clarity on the post above about A-pillar tubes. I prefer a continuous tube from the floor of the a-pillar to the main hoop but the gusset locations stay the same as mentioned above whether a continuous tube or a halo style cage. I may start a thread for tips on layout and bending tube, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

On to cooling system! Road racing in Texas is a definite challenge for cooling and its a problem I really didn't want. I knew that I wanted as big of a radiator/oil cooler as I could handle and close off the front of the car as much as I could. It may be an aero brick but at least try to make it better. Here's where the problem started - ducting. Sure, the engine is moved back and its a big car, but having the front closed off and a duct to feed a vertical or near vertical radiator just wasn't in the cards space wise. More used race parts! I found a PWR/C&R radiator/oil cooler module from DEI that was in excellent shape for an absolute steal but it is a freakin unit. Probably north of 60lbs when full of fluid. Here's were I started. Huge front area, mounted with a slight angle, taking up about as much space is available




How am I going to make a duct for that? Being so heavy and so far outside the axle made me start to think - if you're going to start laying the radiator down for a duct, might as well keep going and get the weight as low as possible. Here's where I ended up. The face of the radiator is level with the bottom of the bumper.




Now this I can work with. Weight as low as possible, and an uninterrupted path for airflow. Cut some more factory frame rail off, build some 1x1 framing, and here we are.


Only thing left now is how to fill this thing. Used race parts! I found a fabricated pressurized cooling system reservoir that came with an inline pressure relief valve (PRV) that would do nicely. Here it is mounted on the firewall making it the highest point of the cooling system by a fair amount. There will be more on this item when it gets plumbed.



This brings up a topic - why not just put a filler neck somewhere in the upper hose(s) from the heads or TStat housing like so many people do, even OEM's? Downflow radiator anyone? Location matters! The radiator I found is about as badass as I could have hoped for, having extruded tubes. Even with the nice tubes there is still a flow restriction created by the radiator. Just for argument sake lets say 1.5psi and you have the filler neck in the upper hose with a 25psi cap. As soon as the water pump is moving water, that cap immediately sees 1.5psi. You have just lowered the effectiveness of that cap by 1.5psi. Sure, doesn't sound like much but when its the difference between water and steam...it matters. Feeding the lower hose is the only way to go IMO, if you're able.

Here's the lower coolant pipe feeding the water pump. Notice the -10 welded bung on the top of the coolant pipe bend. This is how the cooling system fills - also something to keep in mind. All the areas that are higher than this point have air bleeds - cylinder heads and top of radiator.




A quick note on welded on fittings - obviously this is a welded on -10AN. Koul Tools offers a really neat setup to recondition the flare on this fitting should it get damaged. If you're in a situation where you cannot recondition or don't have the tool, you're cutting that fitting off and welding a new one on. O-ring Boss (ORB) weld on bungs definitely don't have as large a variety of options as far as venders and sizes go, but they're getting better all the time as more people incorporate them. If I were to make that pipe again today it would be a ORB welded on and a straight fitting coming off the top of it. Yes, that oring is another leak point, but not an event ending leak point like a damaged flare.

Anyone notice the welded on AN fittings in the cylinder heads? Prime example of "why". The heads are a late casting C3 and only one of a couple pairs I've seen with a fitting welded in - most of them are tapped for NPT. As much as NPT makes me mad depending on the use, I would much rather have preferred an NPT. One day while working on the car, I'll damage that fitting. And life will suck.

Did anyone notice the lack of a lower ball joint in the control arm?

Great cage work & very good layout on your cooling system.

At this point in the build I was ready for spindles. Griggs offered a couple aluminum versions at the time but I wasn't completely satisfied with how they measured up after doing some more reading about suspension geometry and design written by Ron, so I reached out asking his thoughts on working with me to build spindles for the car. After some discussions about my goals and current setup he agreed and we got to work. I don't have many pictures of this process, so I'll try to keep the description accurate and brief.

As previously established, getting a vehicle CL and axle CL's was something I was already familiar with. Getting the car level and ready to measure was easy, but I was no longer making sure things were "Just level" - I was now measuring things at ride height and getting under the car to take a measurement was impossible, not to mention the concrete in my garage was not only sloped for drainage, it has ups and downs that would make consistent measurements impossible.

Ron has already outline how to measure out your car with pictures and techniques. Quickly looking at it, he outlines how to do this all on a drive on lift. I didn't have one, so getting set up to take the measurement is all I'll cover.

First thing I did was get the car up to around 12" from the ground and shimmed the car level. Next I bought a very basic laser level with an adjustable stand for manual leveling. Small variations in how the car was leveled make manually setting the laser's level ideal - as you put it in automatic, now you're leveling the car to the laser - much more difficult. Measure - tweak. Measure - tweak. The laser is simulating the ground, and it must simulate the ground at right height with the desired rake you want built into the car. Ron told me to start with around 1/2 a degree which if I'm remembering correctly was about 1/4" up at the rear using the points on the frame rail where I was measuring to level the laser. That will be different depending where and how far apart your measuring points are. Pick somewhere you can easily use, because that's where you measure every time you set up the car from now on.

Aim small miss small with your measurements.

The UCA, rear of the front LCA, and the rack points needed to be moved. As I mentioned above, I don't have many pictures of this process but I do have the UCA relocation method I used. The UCA needed to move up and out from the original location.
Outer ears were cut off and I used a piece of precision tube to go through both sides of the mini tower. I wanted to be as exact as possible locating the points provided by Ron, and this is the best way I could think of to keep everything inline.







This definitely isn't the end of the story - the tube structure at the rear of the mini tower had to be modified to "box in" the rear UCA mount, and a new front ear had to be made. I don't have pictures of these exclusively but as I continue with the build they'll be noticeable.


To get the ride height where it needed to be, a 1" extended length LBJ was used which arrived machined and ready to install in my LCA

So now the car is an inch lower than it was originally intended to be, Rev 1 exhaust just wasn't going to work. At the time, undercar exhaust was just in my brain so oval tube and over the driveshaft we go. Not in the pictures is the oil tank mounted behind the right side of the main hoop. This meant the exhaust had to be driver side only.















Picked up a lot of clearance. The exhaust is still low but for 3.5" into oval, I did pretty good. We've seen 2/3 versions of the exhaust, now. Boring....onto the next problem.

Shifter. I knew I wanted the shifter to be close to the wheel but not crowding the wheel, and I wanted to be able to make adjustments and remove the shifter from the top side.

Got a good deal on a second hand 5-speed Long shifter...but isn't it a 4-speed transmission? 
You'll notice the car is in a different shop for the shifter mod pic. It's a ways down the road but thought I'd toss this in there just to close the 5-speed shifter on a 4-speed thing.



By flipping the plate and welding in the plug shown, I was able to remove the 5th gear slot and maintain a reverse lockout. Reverse is next to 3rd which is weird, but who cares! it still springs to 3/4 for safety and the reverse lockout still takes the same effort as intended to use, which if any of you have driven a Long rail shifter, its kinda considerable. Saved $300 with a small piece of 1/8" steel.







Control rods are LH/RH 3/8-24 threaded aluminum go cart tie rods that I cut down and rethreaded the RH side.









More plumbing coming up next!

Oh plumbing, how I love plumbing. Seriously, I do! It's always presented a challenge and I appreciate the mindset to make it look good. Bending, routing, and mounting hard lines comes into this in a big way. I'm probably going to catch some flak for it, but all my plumbing (yes, all) runs inside the car between the front and rear bulkheads. Oil feed and return, brakes, transmission cooler for a short run, and fuel. Being that the car is as flat a bottom as I could make it, room for lines under the car becomes quickly limited leaving the only real option being the tunnel. The idea of any plumbing running parallel to a driveshaft spinning up to 8500rpm sounded like a bad idea, along with exhaust heat. Lines inside the car are protected by the frame and roll cage just like the driver. Of the pictures following, all remains how it is to this day with the exception of the fuel line being re-bent in stainless steel.

Lets get started with the oil lines. I used aluminum straights and bends and welded it all together.


This was the beginning. After this I'm going to skip forward a little bit to the point where I had painted the interior of the car. It makes things much easier to see and because pretty. Aluminum tube and bends can be acquired from several places. This is all .065 thick, making it relatively easy to weld. The issue I ran into was the flared ends. Flaring up to 1/2" is easy. Inexpensive 37* flaring tools are available in both single and double flare. Over 1/2" is an issue. For my build I had some used BMRS fittings that I cut apart and welded in place. If anyone else is wanting to go the large hardline route, contact BMRS for flared ends. They offer flaring service on lengths of tube in AL or stainless that have one or both ends flared and leak tested. All you have to do now is add a tube nut and sleeve, and weld the ends on. They do offer complete bending services as well, but I've never had them quote out a setup for me.

Bending AL or stainless tube over 1/2" is also an issue. I recently tried a relatively inexpensive mandrel bender at work, from Woodward fab that can do up to 1" steel or AL tubing but the holding device needs some attention - it causes a sizable dimple in tube where its being held. Mitler Brothers offers a similar bender I want to try that uses a roller on the holding side that may provide a better product. If you can get one of these benders to work, the tubes could be made from one straight piece instead of welded together like I did. These tools were more than I could afford at the time. But..the product from hardlines....oooo




The short lines you see that dip under the oil lines are transmission cooler.


Near the rear bulkhead I did a mounted bulkhead block. Bulkheads are welded to a removable piece that continues the hardline for fuel and brakes, but changes to soft for oil feed and return.


The downward jog on the fuel line is why I ended up redoing the fuel in stainless. It was close to the floor and the very first time I drove the car there was a scrape on the bottom from who knows what. Not damage, just a scrape - right under that fuel line. I did a tight 90* fitting and brought stainless forward, as well as redoing all the rear lines in stainless too.



The scavenge filter mounted to the side of the oil tank was a cool idea I thought, and I like the way it came out, but checking the filter is a pain, even on a lift. That being said, I'm not a huge fan of the tube filter either. Cleaning the filter free of any particulate after inspection is a pain. I have a billet Oberg filter sitting on the shelf that I'm trying to find an easy accessible place for. The Clear View filters on the market are cool too. Little pricey and a little heavy, but cool none the less.



Here's the before and after on the fuel line.






This is getting a pit lengthy so, one more note on hard lines - Mounting. Hard lines need to be frequently mounted to prevent vibration, fatigue, and failure. Planning for mounting points is something I actually planned out! Wow! Lol! I welded 1/4-20 x 1/2" bolts all over the chassis for plumbing and harness mounting. the harness mounting studs also make great grounding points. I have seen several builders weld the lines to each other for rigidity which also works well. If you thumb the line over a long run like a guitar string and it vibrates, you need another mount.

Cant help myself, couple more pics. This is the Racepak display dash mount I made.






Until next time!

That is some, nice, clean work Ryan!

Do you still install roll cages for customers?

That is some, nice, clean work Ryan!

Do you still install roll cages for customers?

Thank you, Ron! Yes, I do. I have an 8-5 so they're on the side, but I try my best to keep the time tables reasonable.

That is some, nice, clean work Ryan!

Do you still install roll cages for customers?

Thank you, Ron! Yes, I do. I have an 8-5 so they're on the side, but I try my best to keep the time tables reasonable.

That's some nice roll cage, sheet metal & plumbing work you have done on your car. I remember you telling you had installed a lot of roll cages. With the work you're done on yours, I'd happily recommend you to other racers near you.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks, Ron! Would be great to work with people on their projects!

Been away for a week or so, lets get back to building stuff!

The location of the car is about to be all over the place. I was selling my house, trying to get some more work space, and right around the time these pics were taken, COVID was about to hit. Messed up ALL my plans. We've gotten through it as best as possible, but the back drop will change multiple times from here on out.

The original k-member has now become the lowest point on the car by a fair amount and the rack needs to come up quite a bit. As I already had a tube welded into the front of the stock frame rails that was originally intended to be the ARB tube, I wasn't worried about the frame moving, so I uh...just...cut it 


I spliced back in a piece of 1-3/4 as the K-member was bent up in, but being in the middle of the bend radius, you'll see its kinda wonky. Having issues finding pics of it, but I shaped a piece of tube that acts as a substantial gusset and smooths the transition. No doubt I'll find a pic later. Now the rack mounts.

I had toyed with the idea of changing to a Sweet Mfg rack at this point but it just wasn't in the budget. As the SN95 mounting is relatively easy to work with, I was able to get it moved up to height specified by Ron, which was quite a bit higher than original.







Again with another vehicle CL and leveling the car. Getting old, but also getting pretty quick at it! If the rack looks close to the crankshaft, that's because it is! I had to have a friend of mine put the drive mandrel on a lathe and get it down where it needed to be to clear. I'm just grateful I was able to get it exactly where Ron specified, making bumpsteer easy to set up down the road.



There's space there, I swear 

Speaking of budget things, it was time for wheels - one of the largest single purchases of the build, behind the initial cost of the engine. Jongbloed Racing 557, 18x13 all around - Ryan at Jongbloed was great to work with.




Also around this time I had decided to change seats. Originally I had a pair of Cobra Suzuka Pro seats. With the frame rails being straight and under the seat, the height of the seat was something I wasn't too fond of. The only way to get the seat down without cutting into the frame rail was the go to an aluminum seat and mount it on the floor. At the time Kirkey offered their 45 series road race seat but I didn't like the construction and halo adjustment compared to some of their circle track seats so I reached out to them about a series 88. I was originally going to just buy the series 88 as is, but Kirkey told me they could custom make the seat with symmetrical bolsters! The seat is an absolute unit.








With the seat being right on the floor the height is as low as I can get, and being designed with a back mount...it is SOLID! On the topic of back mounts, I very much like seats with back mounts especially ones with it integrated into the design. Yes, there are offerings to add mounting points to the rear of just about any composite seat. I've sat in several converted seats, and they feel pretty good - much better than before the back mounting point was added, but...getting in a seat designed with a back mount like the Series 88 shown or a Ractech 4119 composite seat, will completely change how you think about seat mounting. Also, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, I believe once you do a back mounted composite seat there's no longer an expiration on the seat. Food for thought - initial cost of the higher end seats is more, but never having to buy another one because your perfectly good seat is now "out of date" is worth it, not to mention the increased safety.

Might be getting a little slow for some a y'all, here's a carrot. We'll bounce back to some final fuel system stuff next.

Fuel system! I knew from the beginning that I wanted to be fuel injected, and if any of yall have done a port injection conversion on something that there isn't a bolt on solution for, you know it can be a real pain. If you haven't...it can be a real pain  . Totally worthit IMO, and don't forget to opt for computer controlled timing! The drivability and throttle definition from timing control is crazy good even with as large a cam as I have combined with a lightweight rotating assembly.

The manifold that came with my Busch series engine wasn't something I wanted to just replace with any EFI manifold due to the hours and money spent developing it, that I could never hope to surpass. With that knowledge it was down to converting. Talked to the guys at GSpeed - a local corvette race shop with some machining capabilities about milling the intake for injector bungs and here's what they were able to do for me.




Turned out great! Sourced some Injector bungs from Ross Machine Racing, and found a decent flowing throttle body from Accel. Throttle bodies were kind of limiting when I started this. Today there are so many options. At the time I started this there were far fewer offerings for a 4150 flange didn't flow much. The 3-blade Accel I found that was new but discontinued, flowed 1350CFM. Wilson may have been around there somewhere with their 4-barrel and fancy spacer claiming 1400-somthing, but I either didn't know about them or they were too expensive, and FAST, Accufab, and Holley were still a couple hundred CFM behind. Fast forward to dyno day, and I could use a little larger TB but the gains (6-10hp) aren't worth the $1000 it would take to get them.






Fuel rail brackets have always been a visual thing for me. I've seen some really nice ones and some really "ok" ones. After welding the bungs, I wasn't confident in the equipment available to me or frankly my skill at that point, to weld thick rail brackets on and have them turn out the way I wanted. Sending the manifold in to have that done was outside my budget, so I had a friend machine me some bolt on brackets, and he nailed it.






Now onto delivery. There's two rev's of my fuel delivery system and they both worked well so I'll cover them. Here's the basic components that I ordered from Fore Innovations. I remembered Fore from my Terminator days and have always liked their stuff. Plus, support the little guy - Aeromotive makes plenty of money. Basics are a TI Automotive Hellcat fuel pump, Fore's adapter to 8AN, filter, and 3-port regulator. I chose a dead head style system with the reg mounted at the rear and have had zero issues from this style system. Dead head vs a full return is an argument as old as Ford vs Chevy, but the OEM's run this style system even with the big power coming out of Detroit, today. It works just fine - cuts out an entire front to rear run of fuel line, and the regulator mounting becomes way easier and far from heat.


Now it gets fun. A friend gave me one of ATL's surge tanks - ping pong ball style. I think they've moved to a flapper style now, but the principal is the same - a few check valves. I made a hat to clamp the pump and then for reasons I don't remember why, rivetted the hat onto the surge tank. Can't see it, but the return line does plug into the side of the surge tank in efforts to keep it full.







Simplest...fuel system...ever. As far as EFI goes, that is.


I will say that little filter vent didn't work as I'd hoped. It let fuel by. If I had stayed with this setup, a different vent would have been needed.

So on to Rev 2! Why? Taking the trunk off to fill the cell is a PAIN IN THE D**K HOLE! Why not run a conventional remote fill? Filling with cans, there's no automatic shutoff. Now you need a vent out the back with an overflow tank to catch the fuel or a discriminator valve to shutoff the vent and whatever extra spills out on your driving suit while holding a possibly full gas can. If you have a discriminator valve why not just do a dry break?

Did a little looking around and dry break stuff is a rabbit hole of money and components not exactly setup to work together without the aforementioned money in large quantities. Until I looked at Radium Engineering. They offer their universal Fuel Cell Surge Tank (FCST). Mine is an early version that I got new for a great deal from Scot at Scot Rods Garage, as well as dry breaks and a discriminator valve that plugs right into their FCST. Its a smaller fill pipe at 1.5" compared to the 2"+ that the big boys use but it still fills fast! If you're unfamiliar with a discriminator valve, it can be a 2 in 1 kinda thing or just a filling shutoff. In the Radium setup, a larger -12 vent that serves the purpose of rollover shutoff for the vent as well as closing the vent when the cell is full to stop filling. Combined with the dry break its awesome. Filling stops when its full, pull the can out, and little to no spillage. In other systems, the discriminator doesn't always double as rollover protection but it still stops filling of the system.





The discriminator valve is clearly visible in the second picture of the setup. Very simple device - on top a ball that floats and seals the vent when the fuel level rises. Below the ball that floats is a ball that doesn't float and will close the vent in a rollover. 

To the install! Shrank, and stretched, and welded a bezel to rivet to the inside of the qtr panel and hold the female for the dry break. You'll see this is quite a fast forward with the other work around it being done, but I thought maybe posting an entire system from start to finish could be easier and more linear than starting it here and finishing it later in the thread.






Next was a vent canister. IDK about you guys, but vents have always been an eye sore. I've seen and tried vertical loops and horizontal loops. Hoses that run the perimeter of the trunk if there's room, or around the outside of the tank. I wanted something different, so thought that all I needed was vertical head room, and something to combat droplets moving with the vapor. Here's what I came up with.






I cut angled slots into a piece of tube to act as baffles, welded a -12 on the bottom, and bead rolled the top for a breather. Done! or so I thought...The first time I dumped more than 5 gallons of fuel in the cell, I was getting splash coming out of the filter.  Uh...what the...why is there that much liquid fuel coming up the vent?


It's hard to see with everything being black, but here's the bottom side of the inlet with rollover protection on an earlier version of Radium's FCST. Its a flap on a bolt that telescopes closed in the event of a rollover. Notice it's proximity to the disciminator valve. When filling fuel its splashing off that flap, and at a high volume the air leaving the cell through the discriminator is carrying large quantities of liquid fuel with it.




The solution - a simple piece of tube I had lying around, cut long ways, and a lug to hold it in place. This shields the discriminator during filling and it worked like a charm. Four dump cans, a clunk of the discriminator valve shutting off, and a full fuel cell without a drop of fuel coming out the vent.




That's the completed system. Notice the black fittings on the vent hose. Only black fittings on the whole car because of COVID supply chain problems. Summit was out of blue/red aeruquip with no ship date listed  .

So a note on functionality between the two systems. I didn't have a lot of drive time on the ATL surge tank setup, but it functioned well for the time I did have on it. However...I used the fuel pump in the ATL surge tank to empty the cell before converting to the Radium setup. This left about a half inch of fuel in the bottom of the cell. Once the new setup was completed (minus the shield), the Radium setup was able to fill its surge tank, which is about 2-liters, and prime all the way to the rails with 45psi on the pressure sensor. All accomplished with the fuel leftover that the ATL setup wasn't able to pick up and pump out of the cell. Food for thought.

I have recently added a second hellcat pump into the Radium surge tank to convert to E85, and it was a cinch. The system is already set up for up the 3 pumps and its easy accessing the additional circuits to add pumps. The new Radium FCST's are even easier, making the pump module come out separate form the cell hat itself. Only switching to E85 in effort to bring the operating cost down. I added a Flex Feul sensor so I can run pump E85. Despite the higher consumption, my fuel costs will be cut roughly in half over the 50/50 leaded race gas/non-ethanol pump gas mix I was previously running. Yes, there are extra steps with E85, but as always - I have more time than money. Pumping the fuel system out to save $250/day running the car? Worthit.

Happy Saturday everyone! Lets get back to some suspension stuff. ARB's. I needed a different front bar after Ron changed the front geometry, and though the rear setup didn't originally have one, I wanted one. The RC on the Griggs watts link is adjustable but why not have another tuning tool in the box? Used race parts. Picked up a splined rear setup with bars ranging from 3/8" to 1".

Lets start with the front bar though, it had more challenges. My suspension ended up being a medium travel setup with travel around 2-1/4" in dive to start. Not a ton of travel so it didn't require the really long arms necessitating a huge bar to start. Ron hooked me up with a step-up 1-1/4 to 1-3/8 setup with needle bearings. The step up bar and tube give me a lot of room for growth. Smoother movement of the bar and lower maintenance requirements was a no brainer vs the cost increase for the bearing over a bushing.




The location is pretty well set front to rear, but that's about it. Ron calls out a maximum height different between the ARB CL and the upper end link CL - I want to say its 1" but its been a minute. This pretty much dictates everything else. Aaaaand another CL string setup to be dropped.




I know, the pictures are really busy. There's a lot going on and it wasn't easy to get an angle that showed it well. After playing around with all kinds of different heights and ideas, running the arms under the LCA turned out to be the only way to achieve the heights desired, but it too had its needs.


That 2x3 tube is clamped to the bottom of my frame - keeping some adjustment in the end links and staying within 1" difference front to rear at ride height, there's just enough room for an 1/8" aluminum plate behind the splitter blade.






So now the control arms. Pretty basic modification. Add tabs for the end link that allow use of both positions on the bar. Some end link misalignment is going to be present using a single mounting hole on the control arm so I centered the upper mount between the positions on the bar so the misalignment would be equal regardless of the bar position. I thought about doing a longer to use two holes so the end link would be vertical in both stiffness settings, but I was concerned putting too much twisting force into the LCA on the softer setting.


And now a lesson that seems obvious, and something that I typically do, but apparently forgot - always move the suspension through its full travel in every position of adjustment! I'd forgotten to check droop clearance at the stiffer setting. Didn't matter the first and second time out as the car was still just being shaken down, but it was time to move the bar to the stiffer setting and oops! The end link clears the LCA on the stiffer setting, but only at ride height...I mentioned oops, right? With the suspension at full droop everything would be in a major bind.




Little pocket from a piece of 1-3/4 tube and she fits! I was a little concerned about rigidity from the control arm after the change, so I opened up the lightening hole behind the pocket and welded in a piece of .120 wall tube.




And onto the rear! Rear bar was quite a bit easier but the axle side of the end link is different.





I was able to run multiple holes on the axle side to keep the end links vertical regardless of the position. A couple easy brackets and done. I moved this same setup over to the decoupled 3-link setup. Had to move the bar mounts a little and make new brackets for the 9" axle but other than that it stayed the same. Bars are relatively easy to swap out and the end links can be moved between positions from above with the car on the ground.





Final note on ARB's - in particular, splined bars. Something Ron and I talked about that I'd never thought of, is how the bar will shorten as it twists. Whether you're using clamps or the ARB arms themselves to keep the bar centered, you need a gap for the bar to shrink. If you do not have this extra space between the bar clamps/arms and the bushing/bearing, the bar will bind. Or if your arm/bar isn't designed for the clamping bolt to have a groove in the bar, the arms could be forced off the bar.

At the time Kirkey offered their 45 series road race seat but I didn't like the construction and halo adjustment compared to some of their circle track seats so I reached out to them about a series 88. I was originally going to just buy the series 88 as is, but Kirkey told me they could custom make the seat with symmetrical bolsters! The seat is an absolute unit.








With the seat being right on the floor the height is as low as I can get, and being designed with a back mount...it is SOLID! On the topic of back mounts, I very much like seats with back mounts especially ones with it integrated into the design.

That seat is awesome. One thing Oval track racers do better is prepare to protect them selves WHEN they crash. Too many "Track Car" guys think it won't happen to them, because they're not planning to push the car 102%. Which is rubbish. A crash at 100mph is a a 100mph crash, regardless of intentions. 

Fuel system!

So a note on functionality between the two systems. I didn't have a lot of drive time on the ATL surge tank setup, but it functioned well for the time I did have on it. However...I used the fuel pump in the ATL surge tank to empty the cell before converting to the Radium setup. This left about a half inch of fuel in the bottom of the cell. Once the new setup was completed (minus the shield), the Radium setup was able to fill its surge tank, which is about 2-liters, and prime all the way to the rails with 45psi on the pressure sensor. All accomplished with the fuel leftover that the ATL setup wasn't able to pick up and pump out of the cell. Food for thought.

I have recently added a second hellcat pump into the Radium surge tank to convert to E85, and it was a cinch. The system is already set up for up the 3 pumps and its easy accessing the additional circuits to add pumps. The new Radium FCST's are even easier, making the pump module come out separate form the cell hat itself. Only switching to E85 in effort to bring the operating cost down. I added a Flex Feul sensor so I can run pump E85. Despite the higher consumption, my fuel costs will be cut roughly in half over the 50/50 leaded race gas/non-ethanol pump gas mix I was previously running. Yes, there are extra steps with E85, but as always - I have more time than money. Pumping the fuel system out to save $250/day running the car? Worthit.

I am a fan of the both the Fuel Lab brand & Radium Engineering brand of Top Plate systems with Fuel Cell Surge Tanks.  They only cost a little bit more money than running the square collector in the bottom of the tank.  They pickup more fuel, increasing how far we can run on the same number of gallons.

FuelSafe told me the Radium Engineering brand is hard to get sometimes. So they use the Fuel Lab brand more.