Slobalt

[Charles Stewart]

Hi Mr.Buth,
Since there is no NHRA accepted products for your specific engine L61 134 cu.in.at this time (and just in case you didn’t know that website) go to ZZP Performance website. There may be a few interesting parts for your car/engine L61 set-up and some really good tech/ explanation related to those parts that may help you.

[Ellis V Buth]

Fall Classic in Indy marked the end of our 2023 season. Andrew Fidler was still waiting on parts for his stocker, so he continued to drive the Cobalt. Leading up to the Fall Classic Andrew worked on fabricating a new weight box which will let us move the weight towards the front of the car. That's the only change from St. Louis...and while we see no change in ET the car did stop spinning and the reaction out of the beams became much more raceable.

We end the season with a best run of 16.02 and 2 full weekends of consistent runs under the index. If we had the faster oil in the car at Fall Classic, I believe we would have seen a 15.9x timeslip from it! So in year 1, we saw a gain of 1 second and significant testing time and lessons learned. We were able to complete the season with all upgrades and maintenance for right at $2,000.

This winter, we plan on going thru the head and getting stronger valve springs, installing an electric water pump to get rid of the one driven by the engine, setting up the electric fan to be controlled by the driver, replacing the rocker panels that are the only real rusted spots on the car and getting the car painted.

After that, if the budget allows, we will see about getting a more favorable gear ratio for the stock setup as we believe we have one of the gear ratios that falls "in the middle" of the available options for the 2.2L setup from the factory. We are also going to start looking for a spare engine that we can work with and try to make some improvements or at least have a "fresh" engine that doesn't have 160,000 miles on it.

Now that we have a "proof of concept" season in the books, our goal is to make the car as quick as possible. Our hopes are to be able to run 1 second under in DF/S trim which would put us solidly under in CF/S trim as well.

[Charles Stewart]

Hi Mr. Buth,
If you take the time to read the GM sport compact performance build book part number 88958728, you will find there some very interesting details/suggestions for your L61 engine.
Since no race parts are accepted for your engine in the NHRA accepted products listing, you must read between the lines here.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxzZ...UpUdZN92YfEmkQ

[Ellis V Buth]

After a long winter that saw multiple other projects taking longer than expected, the Slobalt sat outside and got no attention until early April.

Despite sitting all winter, she started right up! Andrew pulled her into the shop to remove the balance shafts from the engine and get the car ready for the season. While performing this task, he found a major issue where the tensioner for the timing chain had a bolt broken off and allowing some slop in the timing chain. Quick fix, but could have certainly led to major disaster!

The removal of the balance shafts and related components resulted in a little over 5lbs of rotating weight removed from the equation. In addition to that, we put an electric water pump on as well. We also installed gauges in the car so we can actually tell what RPM, temperature, and oil pressure we are running at! We also made the switch from C11 to Sunoco Purple.

Tested it out at a bracket race at Indy a couple weeks ago...and we finally saw the 15.90's pop up on the board! The air wasn't bad...but not great either. And we had a pesky wind that couldn't make up its mind which way it wanted to blow. The air was somewhere between .07 and .10 slower than the air we had in St. Louis last fall, so take our 15.99 compared to that 16.02 from last fall and the changes seem to have picked us up another 1/10 of a second!

Driver/builder Andrew was also able to pick up his first round win with this car in eliminations that day which felt like throwing the proverbial monkey off his back for sure.

If weather cooperates, we will have the car out testing/racing again this weekend at Indy to see if we can find some more performance.

[Billy Nees]

Ellis, don't disregard the wheel alignment! I aligned the Cav last fall (it was really bad!) and hadn't had it out 'til last Sunday and was quite surprised! I haven't figured out just what it was worth yet but it was significant! Much more than a RWD car would have been.

[Ellis V Buth]

Originally Posted by Billy Nees

Ellis, don't disregard the wheel alignment! I aligned the Cav last fall (it was really bad!) and hadn't had it out 'til last Sunday and was quite surprised! I haven't figured out just what it was worth yet but it was significant! Much more than a RWD car would have been.

We had just had the car aligned before turning it into a racecar. Unfortunately, when checking that we were already 1/8" out which seems like the right place to be with a FWD racecar so there wasn't anything to gain from that.

I appreciate the tip though...it did encourage us to at least check the alignment to confirm where we were.

Car ran a 15.95 at almost 87 mph this past weekend so we are still making steps in the right direction at almost .55 under. Looks like you've got the Cavalier flying now!

[TCarper]

Hello Mr. Buth. Really like your slobalt thread. I to am a FWD racer here in D1. running a 1985 Grand Am in BF/S. Good job on et improvement. I enjoy seeing other FWD racers and their progress. What 60' times are you posting? You mentioned different gear ratios and I can tell you you will need to think outside the box on that one. Not much available off the shelf for us FWD guys. Any future plans for improvement? Keep up the good work.

[Ellis V Buth]

Originally Posted by TCarper

Hello Mr. Buth. Really like your slobalt thread. I to am a FWD racer here in D1. running a 1985 Grand Am in BF/S. Good job on et improvement. I enjoy seeing other FWD racers and their progress. What 60' times are you posting? You mentioned different gear ratios and I can tell you you will need to think outside the box on that one. Not much available off the shelf for us FWD guys. Any future plans for improvement? Keep up the good work.

60' times are killing this thing. 2.26 I believe is our best 60 to date. We certainly have ideas on the gear ratio stuff its just a matter of finding the time to work on it.

We have lots of ideas and plans if everything works out right. We still have plenty left to find just in the tune I believe and we are going to try to go through the head this offseason since it hasn't been touched since it came off the assembly line. I think there is quite a bit to be found there as well.

[Ellis V Buth]

Finally got the car back out for the Fall Classic. We made some adjustments to the fuel in the tune and leaned it out at the test n tune on Friday. Started out running 15.94 on the baseline from earlier this season, then ran as quick as 15.82 after changing the fuel curve. We also played around with line pressures in the transmission.

By the end of the weekend we had a 15.77 timeslip with a 2.262 short time and a 10.09 on the 1/8 mile. All were far and away the best times the car has ever run!

Now we are just over a year and a half into this build. Started as a 17.00 1/4 mile car (10.90 1/8 mile). We've spent around $3000 total on parts and fabrication. And we've run .730 under the index! We still haven't freshened anything in the head or the engine or the transmission so there is still plenty left in this old girl I think.

Hopefully we can get some work done on it this offseason. Not sure what we're going to try first, but we've talked about head work, valve springs, cams, transmission gear ratios, and more. We will see what time and budget allows us to do before April rolls around