- I made these and
I dropped one down there.
(beep)
Now I got my little welding wire fishing line
and I'm gonna try to fish the piece out the bottom.
(upbeat blues music)
(piece lands) Success!
What up, guys?
I'm Matt Field, professional formula drift driver'
(engines revving)
Execpt that...
Was my Twenty-17 car.
This year, we're building a Twenty-13 Chevrolet Corvette.
Welcome to Field Prep.
Something really exiting is coming in this week.
The intake manifold from Nitrous Express.
It's all direct-port, plumbed, perfect.
Ready to drop on and I can't wait to see it.
I'm gonna mess with the fuel-cell again.
I'm sure you guys are tired of seeing it.
I'm tired of messing with it
but I need to put my aim fuel pressure sensor
in the top of the fuel tank so I can see
what the pod pressure is inside of it.
I'm gonna do some stuff like door opening cables
'cause you gotta be able to get outta the car
and the Corvette door-handles are kinda crazy.
Drill some bulkheads.
Slam some stuff through the firewall, mess it up.
Then we're finally gonna move to the back of the car
where I'm gonna do the fuel-filler
since I got the dry-break from Fuel Safe
and I know where the fuel tank is placed.
I'm gonna get the fuel-filler line up to the dry-break
and then, I gonna finally start working on
my rear frame-rail section cause I'm ready to chop that off.
I'm so tired of looking at it.
This is how you open the door on a Corvette.
It's kinda strange because normally,
the mechanism is on the door itself.
Like in there, on almost every other car but on a Corvette,
the mechanism is on the actual chassis, the release.
So the door handles are an electric pop-button
that works the motor in here.
But I'm not gonna have any of that.
This is how actually get out of the car.
So what I'm gonna do is attach this
to the outside of the car, right up here on this b-pillar
so that you can open the door this way
to get in and out.
But I don't know how Formula D is gonna feel about that
because the rules state that we have to have
a pull-cable inside the car.
A way to get in and out.
No more reaching out of the car to try to open it.
But Chevy's pretty cool.
It gives you this other release.
I don't even remember where this thing was.
It's a pull-cable just like you would do
on a door to get ina and out.
So what I'm actually gonna do is
weld some tabs off the cage
here and here to hold it,
so when I do wanna get out of my car myself,
I just reach in and pull on this cable.
I have some little pre-fab tabs.
Then I'm gonna drill these things out,
put some 5-mil hardware in here,
weld it to the cage
and then my release will be done and we'll be legal.
(upbeat blues music)
Needed to round out that tab a little bit
so that it sits on the door bar properly.
So we should be good.
Fit em up in the car.
Drill out the pieces, tack em on.
So I've got it tacked on.
I'll just be sitting here, bam bam bam.
And you can see, there's the cable in there.
It's doing everything it needs to do.
Simple.
Just taking this off.
I'm gonna weld it up.
Something simple but efficient still takes so much time.
I have to drill and tap for a fuel pressure sensor
'cause we're putting a fuel pressure sensor
to see what the two fuel pumps are doing inside the tank.
Some other tweaks and trims
and messing around with the fuel cell,
so might as well take it out and do it now.
This is where the two fuel pumps feed into
and then this is where the 10-psi relief valve is inside.
I'm gonna have to take this apart
so I'll show you guys some more,
but I basically need to figure out
where that pressure sensor is going to go,
because I wanna see what's going on inside here.
So this is an aim zero to 150 psi pressure sensor.
You can see, a super-small, compact..
This is actually gonna go to our dash,
which is gonna data-log the fuel pressure back here.
Up at the front of the regulator,
The Holley is going to data-log what's going on
and what's actually going on, going into the engine.
It needs to know that,
this needs to know this.
Trying to figure out where I wanna put this sensor.
I've had the gas tank in and out like five times.
Can't decide 'cause I have to think about
how I'm gonna be tightening the fittings
when I put it up in there for the final time.
The vent's the farthest away,
then the feed, then the return,
so I have to figure,
OK, I need to tighten one, then the other, then the other,
but if I put this in the way,
I'm gonna make my life Hell.
I've found, That's what building a car
is kinda all about.
Trying to think about how
you're gonna screw yourself and avoiding that.
You gotta try to think four steps,
five steps ahead so if you say:
"If I put this right here,
"am I gonna screw myself in the future?"
You can see that there's a lot going on.
This is the vent.
This is the feed.
This is the return,
Fuel pump wiring, and then, the fill.
I think if I sneak it around back right here,
and it will fit, I'll still be able to tighten the fittings
through this little hole in the chassis, right here.
One, two and three and this will be able to stay,
and stay out of my way.
I think I got it.
Just gotta pull it apart and see,
make sure that's within the perimeter of that pressure pod.
Forgot there's nuts on the inside.
Need a wrench!
So you can see what's inside of this pressure pod now.
You can see the two tubes that fill from the fuel pump.
You can see the pressure-relief valve on this tube,
when that the actual overflow,
or return on this pod.
You see the sump pick-up which is down here,
and that's where this pick-up tube goes down to.
It looks like my mark's gonna be right inside
of where the pressure pod is gonna be,
so I think we're good.
So I got the fuel cell top plate all done.
You can see here I got my pressure sensor in.
I changed out for a dash 10 pick-up.
I had to trim this down a little bit too,
for the fuel filler to be the right hight.
And then other than that,
it's ready to go back in.
Got the pumps in the tank.
These fancy fittings from Waterman to go back in there.
I'm gonna go ahead and put this back on shortly.
Hook up the fuel lines to it
and then the fuel cell is done.
Hopefully this will be the last time
that it comes apart, for a year.
I got something pretty exciting in today.
The spare fast lsxr 102 intake manifold,
but it's all plumbed up for the
direct-port nitrous from Nitrous Express.
Yeeesssss!
So we chose to go direct-port this year
because its just that much more consistent.
You know that each and every cylinder
is getting the same amount of nitrous,
and Nitrous Express does a great job of plumbing this.
I was thinking about trying to do it myself,
and then when I looked at their website
and saw how nice they do all of this,
I'm like ya "mine's never gonna come out that nice.
"Might as well let the pros do it."
So these are their two nitrous solenoids,
'cause we're doing a dry set-up,
so you notice that each one of these
fogger jets has only nitrous in,
'cause we're adding fuel with the fuel injectors.
And this is their purge.
So this purge set-up allows you to get the nitrous
all the way up to the solenoid
so that you know there's no air in the system.
And we'll run this purge out
the hood or out back, or whatever.
I'm trying to figure out where to have
the nitrous line come through the firewall.
So I have my bulkhead fitting.
Trying to figure out what I wanna do.
I know Nitrous Express really likes you to use the "y".
I kind of initially thought that I was gonna
use a "t" fitting on the firewall,
like behind the intake manifold,
and then have two single lines run up here and here.
But now that I got the "y" and I see how it's all laid out.
Looks actually really good.
Since all my bulkheads in the firewall
for any kinda fluid or anything is right here,
thinking about right here,
and then running it up on top of these,
and then sneak it right in there.
I think that'd give me the most room.
I just welded the bulkhead in,
like I had all the other fittings.
So now everything going to the firewall
is coming through right there.
You can see where I just welded that.
I'm gonna put the bulkhead back in and then
at least the front side of the
nitrous bulkhead stuff will be done.
I just got these battery lead bulkheads.
Since the battery is in the back underneath the car,
we have to find a way to get it into the car
to power the p.d.m.s, power the e.c.u.,
power the starter, the alternator, all that stuff.
So the battery is gonna come from the back, there,
through rear firewall with one of these,
come inside the car then to get through the front firewall,
I've got another one.
I'm gonna mount it right here.
So that makes the lead coming from the battery post
to the starter and to the alternator as short as possible.
I decided to go with the bolt-in style
versus the screw-together style 'cause on the S14
I had a couple of issues with the battery post
turning when you tighten it,
or the backing screw backing out a little bit.
And every time,
if you've got a freshly painted firewall or something,
you gotta tighten down on the rear bulkhead nut-thing,
you're gonna scratch something, regardless.
So this is just a simple 2-bolt style.
Goes right through there.
Gotta drill a one inch hole with the hole-saw,
and then bolt it in.
Go ahead and do it.
This piece came with nuts but
they were just standard nuts and non-nylock.
I figured since it's not real big hardware,
it's like 10-32,
that I would ditch that,
get a 5-mil nut that's a nylock and put it in here,
since the whole car is metric hardware.
All the rivnuts, everything is all metric,
so I wanna try to continue that.
This was bought from Painless
so it's got a standard hole size
that the nut jams in there so that it doesn't twist,
so you don't need to get tighten,
you know, get through both sides of the fire wall.
So I'm just gonna go ahead and press these in here,
and then I'll have metric nylock nuts in the bulkhead.
Maybe I hit with hammer, first.
(falsetto) Perfect!
(gravelly) Oh, money!
Got the battery bulkhead done in the firewall.
Looks pretty good.
I might have to trim this back a little bit.
This looks a little long,
but I'll know once I start stacking
my battery cables on there.
I'm kind of an idiot, though,
and I just continued to drill with the hole-saw this way,
and it totally splintered the firewall.
Hopefully they can clean it up in the body shop.
I have something pretty cool and interesting here
that I just purchased.
This is a CARTEK battery isolator.
Normal battery isolators are those big on/off
killswitch that you have,
that Formula D makes us mount it up in the right side cowl,
by the hood, fender hood area, whatever.
And they're always just big and clunky
and battery cables running to it, and obnoxious,
and I was thinking there has to be a better way.
There's a better way.
A much more expensive way but definitely better.
So this is a solid-state battery isolator.
You basically run this in-between the negative post
on the battery and your ground on your frame rail.
So instead of going right to the frame rail,
you come to this, and what this does
is it actually cuts the negative battery cable
instead of cutting the positive
like most people do with the battery switches.
So this allows you to de-power the whole car
so none of the car has power.
And it has a place for your battery negative,
battery positive and then your e.c.u. or your ignition.
This will kill your e.c.u. power,
which will shut everything off,
and then it also disconnects your ground from your battery,
so it's completely done.
Got your kill outside and your on/off inside.
I got this from Pegasus.
Awesome if they have it in stock
because this is a U.K. brand.
Its all F.I.A. approved, so it's sick.
I'm just pumped that somebody had it,
and that I figured out that there
was something even more bad-ass
than just the regular "ka-chunka" switch.
Made myself a mount for this.
I'm gonna weld this right up next to the battery,
underneath the car where I can get to it.
I was gonna just bolt it to the frame rail
but the frame rail's all round there,
so I made a nice flat panel
so that I can bolt this to it,
weld that to the car.
This is where it's gonna go.
This is the battery so the battery cables are
gonna be able to jump right to this battery isolator.
Tack it in and then I'll weld it all up .
(funky bass line)
We have the dry-break placed,
with the plate and all that stuff.
It's good to go, in the quarter-panel.
I'm gonna go ahead and make this portion of it.
That side already goes, it connects about right there
so I'm gonna make this portion,
fit in whatever straight we can possibly fit.
And then we're gonna couple it right in the middle.
So I'm gonna go ahead and start getting my bends together,
weld some stuff and start building it.
So it's been kind of an inconvenience
to get from here to here.
Much more than I would have thought it was going to be.
There's not a lot of room to get tight, down in here.
I actually had to trim this back.
I got crazy angles cut into these pieces.
I think it's gonna work.
Just trying to manage all these pieces all at once.
I'm lucky that Ry is here to help me hold up,
watching the inside or else
there's just no way I'd be able to do it.
Got the first piece tacked together.
You can see that's a crazy shape.
I'm trying to not pie-cut things
'cause I just hate that.
I hate doing pie-cuts but it's so tight up in there.
It has to drop down and up and everything, so.
You can see what we got going on.
It's a bit of a mess.
Alright, this thing is going in.
Hopefully it all fits together.
That one goes in, that one's mounted over there.
(falsetto) Woooooo!
I have this piece of box tube, three by six.
I need to get it to fit in here.
There's no use in having all this back here,
especially in a drift car.
We want as much crush room as possible.
And the rule book states that
as long as it's behind the rear-most
suspension mounting point
which is right here at the sub-frame,
you can chop that off.
Probably gonna be cutting it somewhere in here,
but I won't know until my panels
and everything show up from H.G.K.
'cause kinda wraps around and
mounts right at the end of the frame rail.
So I just need to get this fit,
get ready for that stuff so that when it does show up,
I can drop this in and basically be good to go.
I'm just gonna clean it up,
grind the edges a little bit,
get it to slide in and then
I get to wait for the carbon/Kev-lar bits to show up.
I made these for the top of the frame rail, here.
You can see it's gonna go like that
and tie the frame rails all together here,
and I dropped one down there,
which is normally not a big deal
because you just take the piece out,
but the piece set perfect and everything right now.
So now I got my welding wire fishing line,
and I'm gonna try to fish the piece out the bottom.
(beep)
(piece lands on floor)
Success!
Alright, I'm gonna try not to do that again.
Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and tack these in.
Alright, it's tacked.
Might as well just weld it while it's right on here,
then I know it's not gonna warp or anything,
and I can tap it flat.
Still sitting flat.
Now the box-tube has a stop when I go to get it in there.
There's no point in leaving it in now, though.
I might as well just take it out
'cause I'm gonna have to figure out fitting everything el-
I guess I can leave it in, I don't even know.
I just want the carbon-fiber pieces, already.
The car is gonna end up getting cut about right here,
and my plan for it is that I'm gonna cut it flush, here.
I'm gonna get a piece of metal.
I'm gonna get it laser cut or something with the holes in it
Four holes, basically for a bash-bar
and that plate's gonna go around this frame rail,
but also come into here,
so that it ties this frame rail
further into this box tube as well.
Since it is a bash-bar, it's going to take a hit,
so I'd like to try to spread the load across it,
as much as possible.
And that plate that's also gonna have
the nuts and everything welded in it,
where the bash-bar bolts
coming into here is gonna really help that.
You have no idea,
I can't wait to cut the back of this car off.
I hate it.
It looks like some stuff straight off of a train track.
That's the same material
that they build train tracks out of, I'm pretty sure.