StanceWorks Video Transcript

Foreign Foreign that’s what my Ferrari weighed in Factory form and trust me it is far from the heaviest version of this car if you want to upset 308 owners remind them that their car is heavy because they like to believe that their car weighs what Google says that it weighs but that

Figure happens to be the early fiberglass European version of the car and that’s also a dry weight yeah make no mistake 308s are heavy Little Pigs today we’re going to find out how much weight we have shaved off of our car which is part of the reason we swapped

In a Honda four-cylinder and then we’re going to start Crossing things off the list so that we can head to the dyno next week let’s go now before we dive into what the car weighs now let’s rewind all the way back to episode one and talk about what it

Weighed at the beginning as I said in the intro it tipped the scales at 3 200 pounds or just under 1500 kilograms for the rest of the world we have waited a couple of times since most notably halfway through the build when the car was little more than a

Completely strict shell and then more recently when the car was largely finished although missing a lot of major heavy components the most recent figures spit out by the skills was 1966 pounds but this does include the wooden Dolly the car has been perched atop of for most of the last two years

We spent some time in weight a lot of the components that need to go back on the car such as the Aero package the wheel and tire package the electronics and several other bits and pieces and we followed that up with a guess of what the car might weigh once it’s finished

My total was 2 365 pounds but I did follow that by saying I don’t think there’s any way the car could be this light once finished and here’s why for starters a lot of the figures that I proposed for parts that need to go back on the car were completely ballparked

Such as the wheel package which we didn’t even have at the time we didn’t include things like the louvers behind the headlights or the headlight buckets and Towers themselves we didn’t have a finished hood on the car and we didn’t have our hella headlights or the mounts associated with

Them and all sorts of other tidbits too we didn’t include the weight of the coilovers nor do we include the drive shaft shop axles which probably weigh about 30 pounds a piece and then of course there’s the interior of the car which we ignored almost entirely we did account for a passenger

Seat but we didn’t account for things like door cards the carpeting the center console an instrument cluster or the rear bulkhead panels that I used to cover up the electronics in the car the kick plate or the throttle pedal don’t add a ton of weight but everything

Adds up and it starts to get heavy very quickly last but not least we converted from a carbon engine cover to a solid steel one and this added 40 whole pounds to the total weight of the car so while 2365 is a nice optimistic number I’m thinking that 2700 500 pounds lighter

Than the original weight is a nice goal to shoot for after all it’s important to remember that although weight has been a major focus of this build it hasn’t been the only one I want a car with all of its glass a complete interior something that’s comfortable to drive around in on

The street when I choose to do so at least relatively speaking I’m looking for something closer to my own personal F40 here not a dedicated track car so with all of that said now’s your final chance to leave your guess in the comments of what you think this car

Actually weighs as it sits right this moment I wouldn’t say that it’s done but it’s at least complete it’s full of fluids it’s got fuel in the tank it’s got a complete interior and it’s ready to go with a 3200 pound starting weight I would be thrilled to see 500 pounds drop

In total oh all right cars on the scales Khalil is covering the scale itself so we don’t know what it is you haven’t seen it right no no no okay so to recap as long as it’s under well let’s say this if it’s in the 26s

I’ll be content if it’s in the 25s I will be happy if it starts with a 24 I’ll be pretty dang stoked and if it’s lighter than Byron’s Car which is how much 23 33 23 33 so 23.32 which I don’t think there’s any chance on Earth no way

But fingers crossed you never know I just want to rub it in his face I already got it running first so I got all the bragging rights done but uh all right let’s find out here we go 23 77 that’s sick that’s way lighter than I thought it would be dude hell

Yeah that quarter balance isn’t too bad and I will say oh I will say it’s pretty close that’s 23.77 with the steel engine cover on it that’s 40 pounds heavier than the carbon one so oh yeah if I swap it out I got you I’m gonna get you dude

That’s really good that’s incredible let’s talk about it so obviously I am beyond thrilled with 2 377 pounds that far surpasses any expectation I ever had for this car I am truly blown away and it is going to be an absolute rocket ship on top of that the side to side weight

Balance is extremely close and with me in the car it’s literally dead nuts the front and rear balance looks incredible as well 40 Front and 60 rear that’s ideal for a mid-engine car like this and do keep in mind we have yet to actually Corner balance this thing this is just

Fresh out of the box but I know what some of you guys are thinking let’s say we did want to get a little bit greedy we wanted to see just how much weight we could trim off of this car well for starters we could install a carbon engine cover instead of the steel

One that we have now there are some really high quality ones out there and it’s on the to-do list because removing the steel engine cover is a chore it is without question a two-person job I’ve also been talking about carbon doors ever since we got started the

Doors on the car right now need some Bodywork and if I’m gonna spend the time and money why not upgrade and save a hundred or so pounds while we’re at it we could also go with a weight optimized wheel if we talk to our friends at rotiform and behind the wheels we’ve got

A lot of suspension components that will get lighter in the future we’ve got steel uprights and spindles and steel tubular control arms all of which I’d love to redo and Bill it later down the line but as said that is admittedly Being Greedy 2377 is more than good enough

But with the weights out of the way let’s focus on the to-do list so that we can get this car to the dyno as soon as possible rather fittingly for an old Ferrari the first thing on our list is to solve a leak there is oil spilling from the back

Of the car so let’s get some parts removed and figure out what on Earth we’re working with while we could just reach through the back of the car we’ll save a lot of effort if we just drop the diffuser it’s mounted by two adjustable turnbuckles towards the back end of the

Car and then it reuses two mounts that held on the original sway bar towards the front the whole thing drops in about one minute now my hypothesis for where this oil leak is coming from has to do with the design oversight on my part not a part failure

You see the oil leaked out of the car only after it was parked and sat for about a day it hasn’t leaked at all while driving and didn’t leak a drop during Sema before even diving into this I had relative confidence that it had something to do with oil draining back

From the turbo into the sump tank and overflowing and a look at the Breather port on top of our oil sump tank confirms that is certainly the case there’s no oil on any of the fittings surrounding this part and the oil on top of the tank confirms that is where it came from

Thankfully we can easily remedy this problem in the future by just having our PDM leave our oil scavenge pump on for about 10 seconds after the car itself is turned off but as an added safety so that this can never happen again we’re going to add

Some vacuum line to that Port route it up the chassis and add a loop so that it can never slosh out at the end of the line I’ve added a small filter for overall protection and I’ve zip tied it in place for now until I decide exactly

How I want to mount it in the future now on the subject of breathers ports and hoses there is one component in the engine bay that I didn’t finish for SEMA some Keen eyes asked why I have an open AN fitting on the valve cover or what

The small black thing is over in the corner of the engine bay and the answer is that this is an unfinished vacuum regulator setup when I ran out of Dash 8an hose just hours before we needed to leave for SEMA I knew I had to just leave this one

Undone thankfully the car can run without it but to have a completely finished system we need to build one final hose and connect the port to the regulator itself if there had been room for me to turn a 90 out of the valve cover and go completely underneath the intercooler I

Would have but due to spatial constraints it does cross over the top of it other than that though I think we’ve got a nice visually pleasing and unintrusive setup that should give us perfect control over the vacuum in our crankcase Now let’s solve what is certainly the biggest issue we’re facing with the Ferrari and that’s the fact that my fuel pressure regulator is mounted to the end of my fuel rail coming from the BMW world this is completely normal but I’ve had countless Honda guys tell me this is a huge fire risk

Because it’s hanging off the end of an AN fitting and due to the fact that these k-series engines vibrate so much we’re gonna move it down to the firewall behind the engine as some of you guys know I had a gasoline fire burn my garage to the

Ground when I was in college so I take these kinds of warnings very seriously and I’m gonna suggest you guys do too in removing the regulator from the fuel rail of course there was some residual fuel that Spilled Out and some even got on our recently painted black chassis

But I’m happy to say that the steel it did its job and it wasn’t affected at all it wiped right off with no markings whatsoever turbosmart supplies a bracket with their fuel pressure regulator so I used it to make some marks and then drilled holes in our rear firewall

Of course this makes a mess inside of our freshly finished interior so I needed to clean it up and this gives me an opportunity to show you some awful video and talk about a new tool it may not look like it but this is a

Shop vac and I won’t say it’s the best shop vac but it definitely has some upsides you see it uses an air compressor or your shop air in order to operate your air hose connects to the bottom like any other air tool but it uses the Venturi effect to create

Suction and it fills the bag hanging off the back side of it they often come with all sorts of nozzles and extensions and allow you to reach into some tough places not to mention the fact that you don’t have to get out the extension cord and go plug it in

I had several people come up to me at SEMA and tell me their favorite part of these episodes were the tool suggestions so once again I’m adding a link to the description for a cheap version of one of these if you want to add one to your kit

On the topic of tools I got out the air rivnut gun that I showcased in a previous episode and added some rib nuts to the firewall for our fuel pressure regulator Mount unfortunately I forgot to hit record while I was doing it so the best you get is me bolting it in at

The end for the plumbing side of this we can reuse the hose that went from the regulator to the return port on the tank we just need to shorten it on the other hand we need to make a new hose to go from the fuel rail to the regulator itself

We’re going to do all of this with PTFE fuel line just in case we ever decide to go to an alcohol-based fuel in the future and if you’re curious about how to assemble lines like this I put together an entire episode dedicated to the topic I’ll link it up in the corner The list that keeps us from running on the dyno as an added plus it makes the engine bay look that much tidier I’m happy with the outcome it looks really good and we should still have really nice access to adjust the fuel pressure regulator now that it’s mounted on a firewall

All That Remains is to run a reference line from the regulator to a manifold but we’ll tackle that in the next episode from here let’s turn our attention to the front of the car because there is a potential safety issue that I want to address

We need to get the car up in the air and remove the wheel so I can show you what exactly is going on If we turn the wheel you can get a closer look at the adjuster that joins the inner tie rod to the outer tie rod and as some of you guys pointed out in a previous episode It’s Made of aluminum while that part doesn’t really bother me

What does is the fact that I don’t have a ton of thread engagement to the inside of this part technically speaking it’s probably enough but I see no harm in adding more and while we’re at it we can convert this to a steel part so that we have a higher margin of safety

To get more threat engagement all we need to do is make it a bit longer but instead of Machining this out of Solid Steel stock I bought some threaded tube bungs and a bit of steel tube I turned the tube down on the lathe to make some

Equal length parts and then welded it all together but as you can see here I was having some serious issues with the TIG torch I tried cleaning all of my metal changing my tungsten changing my gas flow rate and changing the settings on the welder but I could not get this

Stuff to stop sparking all I can assume is that there might be a tiny bit of zinc content in the tube itself it doesn’t seem like it really affected the welds but in all because it was sparking and because this is a part based on safety I’ll probably redo these

Again very soon but they should do the trick for now and they’ll be safer than what we had before Now forgive the talking head segment if you’re looking for more Fabrication in this episode we are done we are about to get nerdy we’re going to talk suspension this segment is for everybody curious about whether or not the suspension on this car is going to work and all the

Work that we put into it at SEMA a lot of people ask me what the most difficult part of this build was expecting the answer to be something about Honda swapping it but that’s not the case anybody with some basic fabrication skills could pull this swap off redesigning all of the suspension making

All the geometry work was a significantly bigger challenge as made evident by how many control arms I have made for this thing now that’s not to say anybody couldn’t do this anybody could but it took a lot of work it took a lot of learning a lot of figuring and

A lot of trial and error now this entire redesign all the suspension Endeavor began with the front of the car we put wide fenders on it and these wide fenders called for a super low offset wheel in order to fill them we could have taken advantage of having

A big tire by putting a low offset wheel on it but the problem is we’d have a very messed up scrub radius the car wouldn’t have driven the way that it should if we’re going to put wide flares on all four corners of the car why wouldn’t we do everything that we could

To take advantage of that wide body by increasing our track width putting wider wheels on it and improving the geometry fixing the scrub radius making improvements across the board well that scrub radius was where we began this journey because I knew I needed to fix it we couldn’t check the scrub radius

Easily until the car is on the ground and rolling we can check all the rest of the geometry by articulating it on the car but knowing whether or not the scrub radius was good is something that I’ve had to wait until the car is more or less done in order to find out

So taking a step back this car was equipped with a manual steering rack from the factory it still has that factory Rack in it we will upgrade it at some point but for now that’s what’s here this car also came equipped with like 205s from the factory very skinny tires

So throwing 275 R comps on the front of it’s going to make it a lot harder to steer unless our changes worked so now what I’m going to do is show you guys what it’s like to turn the wheel of this manual steering car with 275 R comps on

The front check it out yeah I’m turning this thing with no effort at full arms length I mean yeah it requires a little bit of work but this is insane it turns so smoothly so effortlessly I don’t think that it could be any easier and I know that probably

Doesn’t seem like a really big deal but here’s why it is if I got the scrub radius correct I feel good that I got the rest of it correct because figuring out the scrub radius was the hardest part of all of it for me the part that I struggled with the most

In the way that I designed the suspension and the information that I had to work with if I got that right which is pretty clear that we are really good we’re very close if not perfect the rest of it should work too so I feel really good about getting this

Thing out on track and that it should drive at least reasonably well once we dial in our spring rates I know that we’re gonna have to make some changes to those spring rates we’re gonna have to go through that big box of Springs that h r sent us because the springs that I

Put on the car at the moment are a little bit too soft the suspension compresses a little bit too much once I set the car the weight on it down once I set the weight of the car down on it rather and I know that once we’re really

Hitting berms on track once we’re really leaning on this thing and applying aerodynamic loads downwards on it lots of downforce we’re going to need some more stiffness to it but that’s a crossroad we can we can get to later I’m not too worried about it right this

Second I want to get the car out on the street and to start driving it first now on that same note we do need to align the car it is eyeballed completely eyeballed as mentioned earlier it’s pretty close obviously rolls really well turns well all that kind of stuff but we

Do need to actually get it on an alignment rack and make a proper alignment it’s going to take a lot of time to get it all right but we’ll do it once we’ll be fine from there I will string align the car I want

To make a setup so that we can do that relatively easily we’ll do an episode about that I’m excited for it overall it’s really coming together I feel really good about all of it I hope you guys are enjoying this part of the process I know that uh none of the stuff

We accomplished today was crazy interesting but all necessary steps so that we can get this thing to the dyno and then start driving it around so I’m going to make some more progress this weekend if you are in the greater LA area unless I hit any major snags the

Car should be at radwood this weekend I will be there with it come say hi come out check out the car it’s going to be at the Honda headquarters in Torrance should be a very cool event I’m excited to meet and see some of you guys there

With that said I’ve got a lot of work to do I want to get this car to the dyno next week so hopefully hopefully the stars align we’ll get it done anyways that’s all I’ve got thank you as always for the support one last final mention I’m gonna do a Black

Friday sale on merchandise I’ll mention in the next episode as well probably 25 off everything I’ve got left in stock so if you want something snag It Anyways that’s it I’m done rambling we’re done here I got work to do I’ll catch you guys in the next one thanks as

Always for the support