opel motorsport club newsletter - k street studio

Volume 32, Issue 6 November-December 2012

Opels at BonnevilleOne land speed record, one near disaster,

and one LeMon

Featured Car – Roy Moulton’srestored 1969 1.1L Opel GT

Ignition Timing for ModifiedEngines • Brakes for theTinyvette • Materials • More

Photoshopping your Car -Turn your photograph into aline drawing.

Welcome to the Opel Motorsport ClubThe Opel Motorsport Club is celebrating its 32 year of dedication to the preservation and appreciation of all Germannd

Opels, with special emphasis on models imported into the United States. We are headquartered on the west coast and havechapters across the country, in Europe, as well as members in Canada and Mexico. Membership benefits includesubscription to this, listings for parts and service suppliers, the Blitz index and tech tip index (1985-date), free classifiedads (3 per year), club items, a member roster, owner support and activities, including meetings and our annual picnic andcar show.

To Join OMC:

Write toOMC TREASURERc/o Dick Counsil3824 Franklin StreetLa Crescenta, CA 91214-1607

or email him at:

[email protected]

Membership Dues:Regular: $45 annually, via check ormoney order (US funds only, madepayable to Opel Motorsport Club) or $47via PayPal.

Online: $20 annually or $21 via PayPalSend PayPal to: [email protected] your name and address information.

Meetings:The OMC meetings are as announced, atvarying locations. Please consult the OMCBlitz calendar or the OMC website to find outwho is hosting the next meeting or event.

The BlitzThe Blitz is the official publication of the OpelMotorsport Club (OMC). It is published bi-monthly. Circulation is limited to clubmembers and prospective club members.

The Blitz is copyrighted © by the OMC.Articles, photographs, drawings, technical tips,and other materials appearing in the Blitz maynot be reproduced without the expressed,written permission of the OMC. Viewsexpressed are not necessarily those of theofficers or members of the OMC.

Regional ChaptersEuropean Chapter (Netherlands)Contact: Louis van Steen: (011 31) 297 340536, [email protected]

Florida Chapter (Coral Gables, FL)Contact: John Malone: 305-443-8513

Michigan ChapterContact: John Brooks: 616-233-9050 ext [email protected].

Mid Atlantic Opel Club (Richmond, VA)Contact: Charles Goin: 804-379-9737cgoin@ mindspring.com

New England Opel Club (Swansea, MA)Contact: Gary Farias: 508-679-2740Gary@ opelgt.com

North American Opel GT Chapter(Chicago, IL)Contact: Jim Toler: 630-964-9797

Northern California Chapter (Yuba City,CA) Contact: Chris Cleveland:[email protected]

Ohio Chapter (Columbus, OH)Contact: Larry Shal: 614-861-1565

Pacific Northwest Chapter (Shelton,WA) Contact Paul Kaman: 360-426-9267

Rocky Mountain Opels (Security, CO)Contact: Branston DiBrell Jr [email protected]

Southern California Chapter (Rialto, CA)Contact: Todd Martin: 909-355-6735.

Texas Opel Club (Leonard, TX)Contact Rodney Killingsworth, 903-587-9640 [email protected]

Carolina Opel ClubContact: Roy Bell: 704-782-1866E-mail: [email protected]

OfficersPresident: TBA.VP/Secretary: Matt NewmanActivities: TBATreasurer: Dick CounsilBlitz Editor: Mike Meier, interimWeb Master: Richard Kavadas

ContentsOfficial Club Business. . . . . . . . . . . . 12013 Calender. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Chapter Opels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4International Opels.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4From the Archives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Bench Racing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6The Blitz Centerfold.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Photoshopping Your Opel. . . . . . . . 11Contemplating Bonneville. . . . . . . . 1411 Years, 209 mph, and 1 LSR, Black

Opel Racing’s Success atBonneville. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

A Near Disaster on the Salt, Followedby a Real Disaster on the Salt. . 21

Bill Ward Racing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25A Visit With John Paxson and the Bill

Ward Opel GT.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 33The Opel-Nosed Berkeley. . . . . . . . 35So How Would One Approach the

Challenge of Setting a Land SpeedRecord in a G/GT Class Opel GT?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Crapcans Invade Bonneville. . . . . . . 41Brakes for the Tinyvette. . . . . . . . . . 43Ignition Timing for Modified Engines

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Materials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Photo Opels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55The OMC Mall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Classifieds, swag, etc.

The Business Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Advertising rates, submission guidelines,copyright, etc.

Cover Photo: Team Tinyvette took it’s 24 Hours of LeMons 1969 Opel GT to Bonneville to make history as the “World’s FastestLeMon”. Photo by Kurt Bainum

mailto:[email protected]

Opel Motorsport Club The Blitz

Official Club Business

About This IssueYes, it’s pushing 60 pages, which is probably a record forthe Blitz. But then again we’ve missed a couple of issuesand we sort of owe you, and the Blitz has a fresh neweditor, and this editor found the theme of this issue, Opels atBonneville, compelling and very productive.

This issue also contains columns that hopefully will beregular items in The Blitz. Columns such as Bench Racing,where members tell us of their Opel projects, or Opelfantasies, or blatant but entertaining and family-friendlylies. Or the Opel Centerfold, Chapter Opel, Photo Opel,etc. These are sections created for the sole purpose of givingand also encouraging, members to tell us their stories.

Finally, we should say thanks to people who contributedarticles for this issue. The Bonneville teams have been verygenerous with text and photos and the submissions by ourmembers are what makes this a community publicationrather than just something for one’s amusement. The Blitz isyour newsletter and as such it should include the manyvoices that make up the classic Opels world.

Ballot and Membership SurveyYour annual ballot is enclosed with this issue. Instructionson how to fill it out and when and were to submit it areincluded on the ballot. The results will appear in the nextissue of the Blitz.

Treasurer’s ReportOur treasurer had been out of the country for severalmonths and is back at home now and getting caught up onOMC business. The treasurer’s report will be in the nextissue.

A PropositionSo now that the Blitz is being refreshed and renewed, andthinking a moment about the quality and content you find inthis issue, please consider the following proposition. Would

you like to see this new standard for The Blitz become thestandard for all future issues? That standard being, color,page count (maybe but probably not quite 60, more like 30-40 pages), a well developed primary theme withaccompanying technical and general interest articles? Yournew editor would like to be able to continue this. Producingthis issue has been fun and I’ve met some great, evenlegendary, people. I have learned a lot and I think this styleof newsletter could be really good for the Opel community.But, however, and of course, unless this became a near full-time job it would not be possible to do this as a bi-monthlypublication. Researching and producing this issue hasrequired some travel, many hours on the phone, constantlysending annoying emails to friends I am trying to getarticles from, plus many hours writing and editing. But it isa volunteer position, done in my spare time, and it surewould be nice if I had an extra month to do each issue.

Please note your preference on the ballot and/or contact anyof the officers directly.

Call for AuthorsThis is your newsletter. It is about you and what you do andwant to do with, to, and for your Opel. But who are you?What do you want and need? What are you doing with yourOpel? Other than lurking in the forums at OpelGT.com I,your editor, as well as other members, have no way ofknowing. So tell us. Call or write or make a tape and send itin and I’ll find a way to get your story into the Blitz. If yourace you already know you need to be a shameless self-promoter, and the Blitz is here for you. Or are you in thecar business, or have special skills or knowledge in relatedareas? We want to hear about it. Teach us. Inform us. Makeus better Opelers. Oh, you say your computer died, yourtypewriter has rusted up and you lost all of your pencils,but your fancy new DSLR works? Winter light is great forphotographs. Shoot away and send your best in. The PhotoOpel section was created just for you. Or do you have bigplans, or dream of an ultimate classic Opel, or have an Opelstory to tell, possibly true, possibly not? The Bench Racingsection can be yours for a whole issue. Just send in your talltales and I’ll make sure you get an audience.

Classic Opels OnlineOpel Motorsport Club – www.opelclub.com and www.facebook.com/OpelMotorsportClub/ OpelGT.com – www.opelgt.comClassic Opels Yahoo Group – [email protected] (Email them to subscribe.)The Opel Association of North America – www.clubs.hemminsgs.com/oana

November-December 2012 Page 1

http://www.opelclub.com

http://www.facebook.com/OpelMotorsportClub/

http://www.opelgt.com


http://www.clubs.hemminsgs.com/frameset.cfm?club=oana


Editor’s NotesAbout a year ago Gil approached me about taking on thejob of the editor of the Blitz. I promised to think about it,telling him that I needed to free up some time, etc.Especially the etc. part. Well, I never did free up any of thatbut after a visit to OGTS recently I felt the time had comefor me to make a contribution to a community that had sogenerously supported Alan and my efforts with theTinyvette. So, here I am.

I began this job by reviewing years of back issues to learnmore about OMC and the Blitz. The early issues werewonderful. They have the kind of charm you only see in apublication that circulates among friends. Several issue-years later I could see how the Blitz evolved as the clubgrew and the interests in Opels broadened, and in the morerecent issues Dennis and Dave had done a great jobupgrading the Blitz to a magazine-like publication. So nowhere I am, picking up where they left off, continuing thetradition and helping move the Blitz forward.

My plans? I’d like to give the Blitz a more Euro andmotorsport look. I also want to create regular columns thatyou, the readers and members will write. Meanwhile I hopeto focus on each issue’s feature topic, such as theBonneville theme of this issue, and coming in future issues,drag racing, road racing, maybe even LeMons, and ofcourse non-racing topics such as engine swaps andrestorations.

With all that out and on the table, and with this issue inyour hands, let me know what you think, want, need, andcan contribute. – Mike Meier

A modified Opel GT with a 95 hp, 2.1-liter turbo-diesel engine sets a number of diesel world records at Opel’s test center inDudenhofen, and reaches a top speed of 197.5 km/h. Shortly thereafter, the Opel Rekord 2.1 D became the first Opel dieselpassenger car on the market. – http://www.opel.com/experience_opel/sustainability/milestones.html



2013 Calender

Here is your 2013 calendar of Opel events along withmotorsports events that inspire us along with a few that wewill be participating in..

January5 - 20 Dakar Rally, Peru - Chile - Argentina

February

MarchTBA Texas Mile, Chase Field Industrial Complex,

Beeville, Texas23 - 24 Sears Pointless (24HOL, Tinyvette), Somona

Raceway, Sonoma, California

April20 - 21 Cure for GingerVitus (24HOL, Breadvan),

Gingerman Raceway, South Haven Michigan

May17 - 19 Carlisle Import & Kit Car Nationals, Carlisle,

Pennsylvania 18 - 20 Europatreffen in Wolfenbüttel26 Indianapolis 500, Indianapolis International

Raceway, Indianapolis, Indiana

June8 - 9 Doing the Joliet (24HOL, Breadvan) Autobahn

Country Club, Joliet, Illinois15 - 16 24 Hours of Le Mans, Le Mans, FranceTBA Climb to the Clouds, Mount Washington, New

Hampshire29 - 30 Button Turrible (24HOL, Tinyvette), Buttonwillow

Raceway, Buttonwillow, California30 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Pikes Peak,

near Colorado Springs, ColoradoTBA Spectra 341, Virginia City, Nevada

July20 - 21 Pacific Northworst GP (24HOL, Tinyvette), The

Ridge, Shelton WashingtonTBA Opel Nationals, Tacoma, WashingtonTBA The Maine Event (Loring Timing Assoc.), Loring

AFB, Limestone, Maine

August10 - 16 Speed Week, Bonneville Salt Flats

September7 - 10 World of Speed, Bonneville Salt Flats14 - 15 Vodden the Hell Are We Doing (24HOL,

Tinyvette), Thunderhill Raceway Park, Willows,California

27 - 29 Opel Nationals & International Route 66 MotherRoad Festival, Springfield, Illinois

October

November5 - 8 SEMA, Las Vegas, Nevada14 - 17 Baja 1000, Ensenada, Baja Mexico

December7 - 8 Arse-Freeze-Apalooza (24HOL, Tinyvette),

Chuckwalla Valley Raceway, Desert Center CA

Last year’s poster announcing the screening of this film.



Chapter Opels

News and notes from OMC chapters across the countryand in Europe.

New England Opel Club We will hold our annual mid-winter bench racing sessionlate January/early February in Foxboro, MA. Other 2013plans include Opels on the Lawn event as part of the LarzAnderson Museum's German Car Day on Father’s Day andwe are also looking into holding an event at Lime RockPark during Lime Rocks Vintage Fall festival on Labor DayWeekend. – Gary

Northern California Chapter We’ve had a number of outings and events in the past 6months or so, including attending LeMons races asspectators and racers, going to the Monterey Reunion atLaguna Seca, a cruise through the delta and another throughthe Berryessa Hills, and very recently meeting John Paxsonand getting to see the Bill Ward 7-time land speed recordwinning Opel GT. – Mike

International Opels

Snap shots of Opeling from around the world.

NorwayI am not member of any Opel clubs here in Norway, so Idon`t know much or anything actually, of what is going on.There is no Opel club where I live, other than some kidswith big stereos, so I don’t have news about Opeling inNorway in general, only about my own GT that has been on3 wheels for a year because it didn’t get approved last yeardue to the left rear wheel bearing making noise. I have theold style rear end. OpelGtParts in Holland have now the oldstyle bearings, but I couldn’t use them because the rear axleobviously has been modified to fit another type of bearing. Ican`t find that type of bearing anywhere, so there it standsfor now. It`s too cold to work in the garage, so I will waitfor warmer weather before I look at it again. – HallgeirBjørkavåg

A misty Monterey morning at motorsport’s most prestigious event on the west coast, the 2012 Monterey Reunion at Mazda RacewayLaguna Seca. Pictured here are Roy Moulton’s 1969 1.1L GT and Gil Wesson’s Conrero tribute car, both from the NorthernCalifornia Chapter. (Photo by Ray Moulton)



From the Archives

The Beginning Of OMC, RevisitedReprinted from the December 2006 Blitz

This topic was originally titled “The Humble Beginnings ofOMC” in the August 1994 OMC Blitz, which was over 12long years ago. So an outreach campaign for contemporarydiscussions with OMC’s founders started. Those contacteddescribe a club quite different than what OMC has become,but one organized in a manner consistent with the primarygoal for creating the club – which was to ensure its long-term existence.

There were Opel enthusiast groups, well before the creationof OMC.

The first U.S. aftermarket Opel parts business was foundedin Washington state. In a University of Washington dormroom in Spring 1971, “Mills Racing Enterprises” wasdescribed as being started by the “founding guys of Opelperformance” in the US: Ron Moser and Pete Mills. It waspatterned by Pete Mills after a business run by Pete Brock(famed for the 427 Daytona Cobra). After Pete Mills left in1972, the business was renamed “More Opel” by RonMoser.

Not entirely coincidentally, the first known Opel Club in theU.S. was a group associated with “Huling Buick” of theSeattle, Washington area, circa 1973. Pete Mills was doingsome sales and PR for Buick in that area around that time,including generating magazine coverage of performanceOpel projects. As one of 2 U.S. dealers who imported Opel“Sport Performance” parts (like the European GT SwayBar kits, Rekord Sprint Engine components, and “bigbrake” packages from larger Opels like the Commodore) forretail sale, Huling attracted a group that raced Opels. Theirclub was organized by Pete, based on other clubs he hadbelonged to, because “people wanted it,there was a need for it, and it was goodfor business.” However, the club’sname escaped immediate recollection,and no one we contacted knows ofexisting records from this group.

Ultimately, “More Opel” was sold toSteve Cortesy, who moved the businessto a shop in Santa Ana by the time ofOMC’s 1980 inception. Steve recalls

that a group of customers visited his shop on weekends,wanting to start a new club.

The “core” group were long-time original Opel owners,including many Mantas bought new from Buick dealers,and they wanted to meet monthly to share ideas and to “talkOpel.” So Steve arranged a meeting in Summer 1980 atAutosport. Attending was Pete Mills (who helped withorganization), Rick Graham (OMC member emeritus) andChris McCurdy (who chose the club’s “Motorsports” nameto reflect its emphasis on autocrossing, and who chose thenewsletter name to reflect the Opel logo, and the appellation“AG” after the club name – as a “German” joke).

Another primary goal, was to create a club and “make itstick,” as some Opel owners had already been burned byearlier clubs (like 1978’s Florida-based “Opel Club ofAmerica”) that would get launched, take member’s money,then delay publication and fold. Chris McCurdy, who hadedited newsletters for a Ford club, wrote some of the firstOMC Blitzes, and numerous events were held. Early 1980’sBlitzes cover frequent outings, like competitions, road trips,and the first OMC picnics. “It was a lot of fun at first, andthen people went on to other cars, got married, and soon…”

From there, we rejoin the August 1994 Blitz article, whichnotes that as Buick started to abandon Opel parts supplyand service work, Opel owners from outside the OrangeCounty area started to join OMC. The core group morphedinto a larger club of members from outside the area whojoined for parts and service tips, and the OMC Blitz evolvedto serve over a hundred members by the time of its monthlyincarnation in the mid-1980’s. Later Opel groups foldedinto OMC, and here we are.

Commentary from 2012 – This article gets reprinted everyfew years, and for good reason. It speaks to the spirit andinterests and needs of early members as well as thedirection OMC has taken since then.

The new Opel gauge set – cost factor, fun factor, and pucker factor.



Bench Racing

Building it one piece at a time~ My new

69,70,71,72,73 Blue-Red-Purple-Orange Opel

GT By Frozen Tundra GT

Once upon a time, a handsome prince from Titletown

was in search of his Opel in distress...

Those who have taken up the hobby of collector cars knowthat we are limited to what’s available and a whole lottaluck. Sometimes a car is better than it looks and sometimeswe learn the hard way. We have to remain patient, and beready to pounce. Sometimes we get burned, but every oncein awhile, the clouds part, and we bask in the alignedmoonshine.

Me, myself and I have learned that sometimes you just haveto show a little faith in the fellow Opeler. I caught Opelitisthis past March and now have an Opel Corral in themaking. At first I thought I made a few mistakes when Ibought a rough 1970, and then thought I hit the jackpot with

a 1970 in Minneapolis. After much hard work, and newparts I was ready to prep for paint. Only then did I findsome damage to the rear. I felt if I was to spend that muchon a restoration, I wanted a better slate. My painter insistedhe would make it perfect, but I’m car crazy.

A couple weeks later, while saving for paint and labor I wasbrowsing the world’s best Opel forum and I found an ad fora solid but overpriced GT. It was located in, you guessed it,the mini apple once again. The ad was vague, the price washigh and for my sake, it was overlooked by many. The sellertold me the story on how he found it in California, for afather daughter project. He said he looked at many, and thiswas the most solid GT he has ever come across in 20 yearsof Opeling. After having it shipped home, and replacing thecalipers, it sat for 2 years. Chasing boys and shopping forclothes claimed another victim...

I was not necessarily in the position to buy another Opel,but I am a sucker for a story. I will always move heavenand earth for the right opportunity for all good things in life.I have learned that all awesome things in life require a lot ofsacrifice and a little bit of luck. After getting to know theseller and hearing its story, I knew it was special. But thenagain, I thought my other 2 were special as well.



After much negotiation, I decided I would continue saving,and if it was still available in a month or two, I wouldpursue this avenue. I went back to planning my paint for my70. Low and behold the seller was car shopping for aNova, and found one for sale from a Cheesehead in my neckof the woods. I received a phone call out of the blue a fewdays later, asking if I could haul the Nova to him, andreturn with the Opel. In return, he gave me one heck of aprice, and insisted just a little down for now and rest later isjust fine.... I was on the road within 24 hours.

It was a long drive fueled by hope, and scared with fears ofrust and broken promises. I arrived just in time for adelicious cookout with all the homemade fixings, and had adelightful time with a wonderful family. We exchangedstories and funny anecdotes of how we are both car crazy. Iwas even offered to spend the night, but I was too excited toget home and bust out the wrenches. Derek's entire familywas heartwarming, and restored my faith in humanity. Itwas 2 hours before we even went outside to look closer atOpel. The suspense was intoxicating. It was like scratchingoff that winning lotto, with your lucky rabbit foot in onehand and not being able to look while you scratch off therest to see if you won more.

The car was better than promised. The glass was perfect,the engine was a fresh rebuild, and it had a lot of chromegoodies. Buckets of NOS rubber, and trim, already had polybushings, and undercarriage looked as if it was freshPOR15 before parked. Metal was straight as an arrow withonly a few minor dings, and it truly was a California creampuff. The previous owner in Sacramento put a lot of moneyinto her, and stopped just short of repainting it. I had itrunning smooth and strong within 30 minutes of working onher, and lemme tell you, she is so much stronger and fasterthan my last one. I have since installed an electric fuelpump, new Weber 32/36 and sanded down to bare metal. Itis at painters as I type. I will be utilizing all the soundadvice from our beloved Blitz, and implementing many ofthe techniques and parts suggestions of the brethren atOPELGT.COM. By the time I am done, it will be one of thefinest resto/mod examples this side of the Mississippi y’all.It will be my new 69,70,71,72,73 blue, red, purple, orangeOpel GT...

Luck is like lightning sometimes, and I make one heck of alightning rod.....

Stay tuned. ~James

Getting it ready for paint.



Zooms Just FineBy Roy Moulton

My first 'Opel Experience' was in 1957-58. I was ahelper in a N.H. small town autobody and paintshop. We did some repairs for a local GM dealerwho sold both Opels and Vauxhalls, and I workedon both.

My next Opel meeting was 1969-70 at a Buickdealer in Concord NH. I remember sitting in a GT,loved it! And I recall rapping on the roof, and beingsurprised it wasn't fiberglass!

But I didn't drive a new GT then.... Coulda–Shoulda!! A growing family by that time requiredmore practical transportation , so we had a '68Beetle as a second car.

While living in Virginia I owned a fun to drive '57Metropolitan in the '60s and a '57 MGA in the'70s. After moving to CA in 1982 I looked foranother MGA but found them to be expensive. Sowith help from a British friend I searched for anMGB. In January 1991 while visiting a boat show Ifound my 1969 Opel GT 1.1 near the Cow Palacein San Francisco. It had been stored for years, theinterior was almost perfect , exterior was OK, andit was last licensed in 1975. But who sold parts, oroffered advice for Opels in the pre-Internet days? When my 'wish book' catalog arrived from OGTSI had dreams of improving the performance with a

1.9 - 2.2 engine. Later I purchased a 'parts car' so Iwould have a complete drive train for the upgrade.But after learning how unique and rare the 1.1 is(but not necessarily in demand), I decided to restoreand maintain this car to its original appearance andspecifications. In the interest of safety, however, Iwill upgrade to the new OGTS brake booster,which I purchased this year.

This Opel became a daily driver for several years,when I had short commutes. In 1997 I decided to do a quick repair and paint job to my GT but themore I got involved the more involved it became,(Sound familiar?) and start to finish took severalyears. In 2007 it was back together and entered inHalf Moon Bay Dream Machines, and later thatyear shown at Port Costa CA. Since then ZoomsJust Fine has traveled to Laguna Seca for the OMCPicnic 2010, and to Laguna Seca and ConcorsoItaliano, Monterey 2011 and 2012. In September2011 NorCal Opelers exhibited 7 Opels at theCalifornia Automobile Museum, I was invited toleave my GT for another 6 months as part of aGerman car display 'Wundercars!'. There have beenother shows including here in Martinez and withother Opels at Livermore CA. Always someonesays "I haven't seen one of those in years" or "I (orsomeone I knew) had one of those back in theday". Opels seem to bring back a fond memory .Several drives thru the hills with other Opels goingto OGTS create new memories. The 1100 maywork harder, but she keeps up!

Name: Zooms Just Fine

Born: 1969, reborn 2007

Birthplace: Rüsselsheim, Germany

What Motivates Me: Stock 1.1L motor, 4-speedmanual

Best Features: Smog exempt, 30+ mpg

Turn-ons: Anytime someone complements myGT. Drives thru scenic or twisty countrysidewith other Opels. The curves & sounds of myGT.

Turn-offs: Tailgaters, especially tailgaters atnight with flamethrower headlamps and nodimmer switch. Stop and go traffic on thefreeway when its over 100 degrees out.

The Blitz Centerfold



Photoshopping Your OpelBy Mike Meier

Our cars are nothing if not photogenic, and no doubt youhave plenty of photos of your prized Opel. The best of thesephotos may get printed, used in a photo-montage video, orshared online via Facebook or other sites. But once in awhile you want to do something more interesting with yourbest of the best. A poster for an event promotion perhaps.Or, picture your car on a t-shirt, or banner, or flag, or aBatman spotlight. Or maybe you need to use it in a linedrawing for a technical illustration. With digitalphotographs and popular software packages you can do allof this yourself.

Recently I took one of my favorite photos of our car atBonneville and produced a line drawing, and from that, animage that will soon be on a t-shirt. It was an interestingproject and one that I think others would like to be able to

do to, you know, show the world our cars.

I used Photoshop in my project but I did not use anyfeatures that other photo processing software wouldn’t haveso non-Photoshop users should be able to follow this. Also,the instructions will be fairly general. This is not aPhotoshop tutorial. If you already use Photoshop youprobably already know how to blur an image, for example.Ditto for those of you using other software.

Before we start here are a few suggestions. 1. Keep your original photos in a safe place. Only work on

copies.2. Frequent saves. Save your work often to guard against

losses if the program or computer crashes.

Here is my method for taking a photograph and turning itinto the line drawing and then into something that can beprinted on a t-shirt.



1. Load The ImageObviously we need an image to work on. Ideally it will be areasonably high-resolution image that is in sharp focus. Thesubject of your photo should also be well lit and with noshadows cast by nearby objects.

2. Duplicate LayerPhotoshop and other programs let you layer images thatthey can be blending using a variety of techniques. Here wewill be using layers to keep the original image whileworking on a copy. Later we will make the working imagepartially transparent so we can check our work against theoriginal image. So, create new layer that contains aduplicate of the original image and then click the eyeball inthe layers pallet to hide the original photo.

3. Remove the BackgroundWorking with the duplicate layer now use the eraser tool toremove the background or select areas of the backgroundand delete it. Large open areas are easy to remove butyou’ll need to zoom in when working close to your subject.Don’t worry about getting every pixel of the background.Just try to get to within 5-10 pixels of your subject.

4. Posterize the ImagePosterization will convert your continuous-tone image intoone that has fewer colors. Your photo will look like it wascreated using panels, each a different color. The edges ofthese panels will become the lines in our line drawing. InPhotoshop the posterization operation is found in theImage/Adjustment menu. Posterize to 6 or 8 colors. Someexperimentation here may be necessary.

5. Find EdgesUse the Find Edges filter to draw lines at the edges of theposterized panels created in the previous step. Your imagewill be full of colored lines on a white background.

6. ThresholdWe just want the lines, and black lines at that, so let’s getrid of the color and turn our lines black. Use the Thresholdtool to do this, setting the threshold at a level that gives youthe best result. The art of compromise is important here.You won’t be able to get a prefect line drawing, as if youwere working from the engineering drawings of your car,but you should be able to get a reasonably completedrawing.

7. Clean UpAt this point you will have an image that contains the lines

you want along with things you do not want. Shadows andshading, for instance, will look like areas full of dark spotsand splotches. You will probably want to remove nearly allof it, though not all. The shading around the bulge on thehood or a GT, for instance, will be nice to keep, while theshadow under the bumper should probably go. You mayalso want to erase everything seen through the car’s glass.

This step is where the art begins. You’re making a lot ofjudgement calls and that means that at some point you mayrealize you have gone too far and ruined it. What I like to doin these cases is duplicate this layer so I can keep it andcome back to it if needed, while working on a copy thatwould not be so painful to throw away.

One final bit of cleaning is necessary here. We need toremove what is left of the background. The Find Edges andThreshold steps above should have created a black line atthe edge of your subject, and just inside of this there shouldbe a narrow zone of white. Zoom in and examine the wholeperimeter of your subject to make sure this is the case, thatyou have a white zone that separates the outer black linefrom your subject. If not, use the pencil tool to draw whiteover any black you see in this zone and while you are at itdraw over the black line at the edge of your image.

Next, use the color-fill (paint bucket) tool to fill this whiteborder zone with another color, such as blue. Next, selectthat area by color, and then delete it. The last of thebackground will now be gone.

8. Blur/ThresholdAt this point you should have a line drawing that you arereasonably happy with, except, the line quality is terrible.

The left half of this image shows what this project looked likeright after step 6, threshold. The right half shows what it lookedlike after step 9 and after the black areas had been filled in.



The lines are ragged and jagged and have gaps, andredrawing them using a mouse is neither easy nor fun. Sowhat we do now is blur the image using a blur filter. Youmay have to apply this filter several times before the linesstart to smooth out and connect up. But, these lines will befuzzy, and thick, so when the blurring is done use thethreshold tool again to sharpen and thin them a bit. Someexperimentation may be necessary here.

9. Clean UpYour image should look pretty OK at this point. You’ve gota black/white line drawing whose lines are reasonablysmooth and just about everything you wanted to preserve inthe image is still in it. But some details will havedisappeared, a result of the compromises we had to makeearlier. You may want to get some of these details back.This part will be tedious but it is fun because in the end theresults are so worth the effort.

Hide all layers except the original image and the layer youare working on. Next, set the transparency of your workingimage to 25-30%. You should now be able to see both yourline drawing and the original image, and you should be ableto see the details you want to restore. Use the pencil tool todraw white over parts of the thick black lines to restore thedetails of, say, your licence plate number or the Opel Blitzbadge on your car. Use black to draw in parts that aremissing. You’ll need to zoom in and yes, at times you maybe using a 1 pixel-wide pencil.

When working on the Tinyvette’s image I spent nearly anhour on this last step cleaning up the decals and otherdetails. After a time I became concerned that all that effort

would have been a waste. It’s not like I couldn’t already tellwhat the decals were, but in the end it was well worth it.

10. Color FillYour line drawing is now complete and if that is what youwanted for your t-shirt you are done. But I wanted to have ayellow image, the color of the Tinyvette, on a darkbackground. To be able to do this I needed to color in theimage and get rid of the black lines. The color part waseasy. All you do is select your color and go over the imageusing the fill tool, the paint bucket. You will have to zoomin at times so you can accurately fill small spots.

11. Remove the LinesThis is the last step, the one where we finally get the colorimage that we’ll put on a t-shirt. Use Photoshop’sSelect/Color Range... to select the colored area of yourimage. Next, type CTRL-C to copy this selection to theclipboard, and finally, CTRL-V to paste it into a new layer.You are done. You can silk-screen that on a t-shirt.

By the way, those keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste,they go back to the early 1980's, at least, to beforeWindows and Mac, before DOS, and maybe even beforeCP/M, practically back to the time when our cars were stillbeing manufactured.

I hope you found this useful, and if you try this make sureto share your images with us. Send them in and we’ll sharethem in a photo album in the new OMC Facebook page.

The image on the left is a photo of Roger Lee’s car that has most of the background removed. Removing the background took only afew minutes. Within an hour the image on the right was completed.



Contemplating BonnevilleBy Mike Meier

Apparently I have a problem when it comes to certain typesof project ideas. If I get it, and don't do it, I am scarred forlife and doomed to wander the Earth for the rest of my daysmuttering to myself "Why didn't I marry Juliette and why ohwhy didn't I run the Tinyvette at Bonneville?" This onecame to me when emailing a friend about helping anotherOpel racer get his car done and out to Bonneville for SpeedWeek. Then I thought, "World's Fastest LeMon", and fromthat moment on I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I went online and read the primer for first timers toBonneville and downloaded the various applications andmedical release forms, technical inspection forms, etc. Ieven researched drag chutes! These appeasement measuresdid not ease my symptoms at all. I felt that I was doomed toa life of regret, more so that usual, unless I did this.

While not yet a real plan, I mentioned this to Tinyvetteco-owner Alan, who didn't want anything to do with this atfirst but I could tell he was intrigued. I was sure he wouldchange his mind at the last minute when he saw me packingup to go, fitting what ever I could into the tiny car, campinggear, tools, and video/cameras, ready to do it all solo. It'sabout a 10 hour drive each way and the event runs for aweek. Registration was around $500 and I figured I stillneeded to put maybe another $1000 into the car for addedsafety stuff, including a $600 drag chute. The Tinyvettewould probably will be too slow to require a chute but thisis for the fun and bragging rights in the LeMons world, andvideo would most definitely be shot, so having the drag

chute deploy in the video would be such a nice little extra.

So there I was squirming in my seat and trying to not jumpon this full time yet, hoping this affliction would pass, butnot really hoping it would pass. I've tried the procrastinationprescription, “Just shoot for a 2013 run.” That would giveme a year to forget about this. But I knew I would notforget, and seeing as there is always a chance that the carwould be destroyed in a LeMons race I knew I had to dothis while we still had a car. And besides, someone else inLeMons might hit on this idea, and I don't want to be the"World's Second Fastest LeMon”.

I ordered the rule book from the Southern California TimingAssociation (SCTA). It was a chore to get through, partlybecause this was my first exposure to land speed racing,and partly because the book did seem a little disorganized.But, both SCTA and USFRA are volunteer organizations soI had to factor that in and thank them for their efforts anddedication, too.

The description of how the event was run was prettystraight-forward. There would be two courses, a long oneand a short one. The short course (5 miles) was for driversqualifying for each successive speed range, working theirway up to 200 mph. Did you think they’d let rookies go outand attempt a 200 mph run on their first time out?

The long course was for the land speed record runs, 7 mileslong, the last 2 of which are to get your car slowed downagain. You had to make two record runs to set a newrecord. After your first record run your car got impounded.It might not sound like it but impound is a pretty prestigiousplace to be.

Then there were interesting contingencies, such ascontesting another team’s car. To do this you had to pay afee and it the protest requires an engine tear-down, anThere is nothing like a little Photoshop plus Google Earth to

help you visualize your fantasy of running your Opel on the saltat Bonneville.



additional fee. If proven right you get it back. If not, theteam that had to tear into their motor gets the money.Obviously there is a lot of history woven into this rule book.

Digging deeper into the rule book I had to figure out whichclass the Tinyvette would run in. It looked like it would becar class GT (two-seater sports car) and engine class G (2.0liters) for us. But wait, there were complications. The rulesalso said that any aero aids would have to be period correct.That sure wasn’t us. And we had to have the interior doorpanels in the car. What! How do you fit a cage in the carwith those panels in? The car is already so narrow and meso wide. This was not looking good.

It got worse. Reading through the other technical and safetyrequirements I was checking off things we needed to do,such as add a scatter shield for the clutch and flywheel,replace the stock cast iron flywheel, get a real fire system,apply a safety film to both sides of the windshield, andmore. I figured we could do all that and still keep theTinyvette a LeMons car, but then I read the cage specs. Ourtubing was OK, but not our mounting plates, and we needto add gussets and other details. Plus the cage had to besuch that side-to-side movement of the driver’s head wouldbe less than 2 inches. It is hard enough to get in this carwithout that! And finally, for uni-body cars the cage had toprotect the driver from all directions, including from below.That sinking feeling was becoming Titanic at this point. ButI kept going, compiling a 15 page checklist listing each itemin the rules and noting what needed to be done. Then Icontacted SCTA directly by email, and the next day I got acall from their head tech guy, Kiwi Mike. It turns out heknew our car. He is a fellow LeMons racer and was parkednear us at our previous Buttonwillow race. He said he likedour car but it would not pass tech with the cage we had. Wetalked for a while. He described how cars disintegrate whenthey wreck at salt flat speeds. Well, at least this was not oneof those gray area situations. We were out. Then hementioned the World of Speed event that was a month after

Speed Week, that we did have a car that could run in that.

A ray of hope! I went online again and read and downloadedeverything I could find about the WOS event. Their eventincluded a standing mile 130 mph competition, a standing 2mile 150 mph competition, a bar stools event, a 36 HPevent for air-cooled VW’s using a certain type of enginecase, and also a land speed record event. Our little LeMonsGT might never run Le Mans, but it would most definitelyrun at Bonneville! The decision was made. I filled out theforms and sent in my money to join the Utah Salt FlatRacers Association (USFRA) and enter the 130 MPH Clubevent. This was going to be fun, interesting, and historic, ifonly for Team Tinyvette.

I must have read the rules at least 20 times, even thoughthey were less than a page long. I made another checklistand ticked everything off. We needed to add a hoop for ourdrive shaft and install metal valve stems. That was it. Wewere maybe $100 shy of having a salt-ready car.

But could our car reach 130 mph? We’ve had it up to 115mph on a closed course, so yes, it should be possible. Butthere was the issue of altitude and the rolling resistance ofthe salt. I did some calculations, a big spreadsheet thatestimated how the car would run. I input a rough dynocurve, the car’s gearing and tire diameter, an aero factorand estimated frontal area, and by golly we had the gearingand just enough power. It looked like getting to 110 mphwould be easy enough, but boy did the aerodynamicpenalties kick in after that. Getting from 110 mph to 130was going to be difficult.

I did a little aero modeling. Does our wing do anything? Didwe need a splitter? Would it help? It looked like it would, sothat meant a trip to... whoa, wait a minute. Wasn’t the ideahere to run the Tinyvette in LeMons race trim? Well yes, itwas, originally, but the more I thought about this the more Iwanted to do well. Another character flaw.

Before we put the car on the trailer it would get a Getragtransmission, Lexan side and rear windows, and dual WeberDCOE 40 side-drafts. Except for the new windows thiswould be our new LeMons trim.

The event was only 6 weeks away and the engine was stillin parts after the Buttonwillow race, the windows wouldhave to be made and installed, the carburetors had to beinstalled and tuned, and other stuff had to be done to the



car. Plus, a tow vehicle and team had to be pulled togetherand I had a web development project to finish first. But, ifyou are going to do something, you just buckle down and doit. And we did.

Many thanks to Alan Brattesani, Kurt Bainum, Keith Ory,Evil Genius Racing and Opel GT Source for theirencouragement and support. And Alan, I apologize for theengine and our having to miss the Thunderhill race.

The menu from our Bonneville DVD. The results of our two good runs and our third and final failed run are shown on the right.

This chart shows speed and power output versus distancecovered. It would take us a mile to get to 130 mph.

Wow, the splitter improved the aero and directs more airthrough the engine compartment.



11 Years, 209 mph, and 1 LSR, BlackOpel Racing’s Success at BonnevilleBy Dick Knorr, Black Opel Racing, Summerland BC

We, Frank Kinney and Larry Ryll and myself built the 1970Opel GT in 2000/2001 to race at the Bonneville salt flats.Our first race was in August of 2002 and went 156.676mph and we have been inching up ever since.

The Jan/Feb 2008 issue of the Blitz mentioned we ran 185.6mph in 2006 and hurt a rod. Well, actually we wrecked theblock, head, crank, 2 rods, 2 pistons and the camshaft in thePontiac OHC 6, so that was the end. There was nothing leftto gain with that engine.

In 2008 we looked around for a suitable replacement,another inline of course, GM’s new Atlas line of engines, adual OHC 4.2 (254c.i.) Vortec inline 6. We found a 2006version with the larger valves, 4 per cylinder, rollersfollowers, all aluminum head, block and pan, all the goodstuff the old Pontiac motor didn’t have. This motor wouldalso get a copper head gasket with stainless steel wire forsealing and with a receiver grove as well. What a waste oftime. We could not get the water to stop leaking. That motor was not long for this world, however. In 2009we lost a rod bearing and the crank and we windowed theblock.

The current engine was built in 2010 using the stock GMsteel MLS head gasket. They are bullet proof, even withturbos. This new engine is at 15:1 CR, uses Racetec pistonswith top and side coatings, Crower custom rods, an aero'dcrank, custom pan, 4-stage dry sump oiling system and aMeziere water pump. The cams are a custom grind bySchneider and we use adjustable cam sprockets.The engine is controlled by Mega Squirt 3 which gives usactive hole-by-hole fuel control and sequential spark aswell. We have 6 EGTs and 2 AFRs to keep track of what isgoing on along with RPM, oil and fuel pressure,

temperature and the tattle tale TPS data logging. Goingfrom the mechanical fuel injection of the old Pontiac to aMega Squirt 3 computer controlled engine was a HUGElearning curve for us old dinosaurs, but it got us a recordthis year.

On the chassis dyno in 2011 our motor made 380 hp at therear wheels at 7300 rpm, 285 ft/lbs at 6200 rpm. Since thenwith intake manifold and crank scraper changes we estimateabout 445 hp at the crankshaft.

Aerodynamics is our number one concern right now as wecan overpower the salt a little even in third gear, thenhandling gets a little loose above 180 mph. Our car has anose cone that slopes down from the original body seam andextends right around to each wheel well. It comes to arounded point at the center. This creates a lot of down force,but the downside is drag which slows you down, but we’dsooner have that than be flying over the salt as some Opelshave, right around 225 mph as stories have it.

The car sits 2” off the salt and has a splitter on the nosecone. We try to keep the air from going under the car. It hastwo nostrils for cooling, but we only use one. We have a fullbelly pan under the car to smooth the air underneath.

Up front in the head light pods there is 300 lbs of lead andright behind the rear axle is 700 lbs of lead, on the backdeck is a spoiler for more down force and traction.

The front suspension is a mix of Opel rack, lower controlarms and buggy spring, tubular upper control arms all

Speed Week 2012 Results for Black Opel Racing

Date Mile 2 Mile 2¼ Mile 3 Mile 4 Exit Mile 5 Driver Comment

8/12, 09:27 179.504 194.432 199.930 209.939 115.261 162.333 Kinney

8/13, 07:50 179.445 193.883 199.186 208.010 108.591 160.461 Kinney Record!

8/13, 16:00 116.334 147.795 161.555 193.416 206.409 203.021 Knorr

8/14, 10:18 175.272 192.543 196.769 204.612 208.221 207.929 Knorr

Team: Black Opel RacingNr: 6666Engine Class: E (3.015 to 4.276L)Car Class: GMS (gas modified sports car)Driver: Frank KinneyNew Record: 208.974 mph, August 14, 2012Previous Record: 202.098 mph, August 1999



mated to ‘85 Toyota PU spindles to achieve 15 degreescaster and zero camber. The rear diff is a GM 7.5 soon tobe locked 2:79 ratio with 9” Ford axles and disc brakes.

Wheels are 4.5 x 15” from Wheel Vintiques and are welded360 degrees to meet rules, we run Front runners, 23" on thefront and 26" on the rear, at 60 psi, per the rules. Now youknow why the lack of traction. I think it’s a law that youhave to run Moon discs on your wheels or you are shot atdawn. They do clean up the air.

We just missed the 202.098 mph record twice lastSeptember at the World of Speed where we qualified thefirst time but couldn’t back it up because of an oiling issue.Fixing that we qualified the second time and went toimpound. The rains came that night and they called the racethe next morning. “Oh well, there's always next year, eh?”

This past August we went to Speed Week with more

improvements, better oiling yet again and a closer ratio BWSuper T-10. On the first run out Frank went 209.939 mph,our fastest ever.

The next morning we were nervous as hell but everythingdid its job and he ran a back-up speed of 208.010 mph, fora record average of 208.974 mph and the coveted red hat.

Needless to say there was much celebrating and the plannow was to get me my red hat, but the engine was gettingtired after 2 hard years of thrashing on it. Leak-down testsconfirmed the rings were going away. We made 2 more runsbut each one was marginally slower and slower, so ratherthan risk that Catastrophic Engine Failure thing again wedecided just to spectate the rest of the meet, and that wasblast. So next year we’ll have fresh rings and bearings etc.and will see if we can squeeze 210 out of the little gal, thenfor 2014 we plan to run a turbocharged 2.9L Vortec 4-cylinder and go after a record that currently stands at 220



Impound at Speed Week, a beautiful place.

mph, and waiting, we hope. More salt flat brain damage....we guess!

It’s been 11 years since we began this quest. We owe a bigthanks to our crew – Ken Brown, Lance Brown, MarcPiccioni, John Gregg. and to our main sponsor, LordcoAuto Parts of BC, who has been a faithful supporter sincethe beginning. We are also tremendously in debt to our“adopted engineers”, namely Matt De Fever, Jerry Weigt,Bob Hoffman and Dr. Larry Mayfield for their time andexpertise over the years.

If you have never been to the Bonneville salt flats, you haveto put it on your bucket list. Check it out atwww.scta-bni.org or www.saltflats.com keep track of usat www.blackopel.com.

The photo on the right was provided by DIYAutoTune.com. Allother photos were provided courtesy of Black Opel Racing.


http://www.scta-bni.org

http://www.saltflats.com

http://www.blackopel.com


The Black Opel ispowered by one of GM’s Atlas line ofengines, a dual OHC4.2L (254c.i.) Vortecinline 6.

Frank Kinney gets hisred cap, signifyingthat he is now amember of the 200MPH Club.



A Near Disaster on the Salt, Followedby a Real Disaster on the SaltBy Mike Meier

While searching YouTube for video from Bonneville lastsummer, in preparation for our first visit to “the salt”, I ranacross an in-car video of a spin at 180 mph, coming off a220 mile per hour run, and that car was an Opel GT. Mostof the video was pretty typical. The start, then the beautifulsound of a big motor coming on and moving up through thegears, and before long the ¼ mile markers were streaking byand the speed which the salt passing under the car wassurreal. The car is aimed at the horizon while the motorspeed continues to climb slowly through mile 3, 4, 5, andthe run ends. The car made it to mile 6. So far so good. Itstarts to slow, but then it wiggles, it turns to the left andleaves the course, straightens out briefly then spins. Thedrag chute is visible briefly as the car comes around to180°. The car is on rough, ungroomed salt now and chunksof it are flying over the hood. The wheels are digging in andcar is shaking. Then it stops.

Video: http://youtu.be/NahRJHDl_ig

Photos at the end of the video show the toll taken – adamaged exhaust, broken front suspension, damaged airdam and splitter, and probably other damage, but otherwisethe car looks fine. It did not roll, nothing blew up, and thedriver was OK, so it was a story to tell to the grand kids.

This happened last summer at 2012 Speed Week. The carwas hitting speeds of 220+ mph in each run and made it to228.556 mph in one run, close to the record in their class,which was 231.516 mph, set by the Burke Bros. and Dad inback in 2004.

In the comments section below the video the car’s owner/driver Ken Lindebak noted that the chute maker said theywere using too large a chute, a fuel funny-car chute, andthat they were making a one specifically for this car andweight for use at Bonneville. The car was going to berepaired and it would be back on the salt in October for theWorld Finals event.

The car was running in B/BGMS (blown, gas modifiedsports car, 6.1 - 7.2L/373 - 473 cid motor). The motor wasa Chevy small-block, 415 cid, supercharged, and puttingout over 1000 hp. The front suspension was all Opel exceptfor custom 5-bolt hubs that swap in for the Opel hubs and a

The Lindebak B/BGMS car at Speed Week in 2012. (Photo by Bryan Jones, http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ )


http://youtu.be/NahRJHDl_ig

http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/


lowering spring from OGTS. The rear end consisted of aFord 9" differential, a 4-link panhard suspension, and coilsprings. After the spin the whole front Opel cross-memberwas replaced using a rebuilt one, and again with lots ofparts from OGTS. The rear end damage was repaired and anew nose was fabricated.

In 2011 Ken ran the red car and also a beautiful blue andsilver F/GT class car, the GT class being for unmodifiedsports cars (looks mostly stock from the outside) that are

running engines from the same manufacturer as the car. Inthis case the motor was a 2 liter Ecotec, an Opel design andtherefore legal in the GT class. The car ran a 146 but with amotor that was having problems. The next time this car seesthe salt it will have another motor, a higher compression2.0L Ecotec with dreams of 3.0 liters.

The blue car runs a 6 speed Tremec and a Ford 9-inch withladder bars and coil-overs in the rear. The front is standardOpel with the dropped center spring and custom 5 on 4.5"center hubs. This car did not run in 2012.

A peek inside the engine bay. The Procharger (crank-drivensupercharger) is further forward in the nose. The ice waterintercooler is forward and on the right side of the car.

Starting a run at Speed Week 2012. (Photo by Bryan Jones, http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ )

Ken Lindebak at Speed Week in 2011. (Photo by RalphKomives ralphkomives.zenfolio.com/)


http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/

http://ralphkomives.zenfolio.com/


For the red car 2012 was its third year at Bonneville. Inprevious years it ran the same size motor but without theblower. This year, at Speed Week, the blown motor had thepower to push the car to within a few mph of the record.The 2012 season was not over, however. World Finals wastwo months away and offered a chance for redemption.

The car was back at the salt in October, repaired and withengine modifications, ready to try for the record again. Thistime it began the event as car #2711 and was running inB/BFMS, meaning the same car as before but not usinggasoline, rather a “blend”. It took the record in that classwith a 233.988 mph average for two runs, hitting 250 mphat one point. With that record now only a certificationinspection away the car went back out as #1811 for anothershot at the B/BGMS record.

Ken’s first run in B/BGMS was off to a great start, havingreached 192 mph by mile 1. Then things got interesting. Ahot exhaust collector on the right side broke off and got runover by the right-rear tire, exploding the tire. The car turnedto the right and headed off course. Then it rolled, bouncedinto the air, came down on the rear and rolled some morefor over a quarter of a mile, coming to a rest upright. Boththe engine and cabin were on fire and the driver wasengulfed. Ken found the control levers and activated both

fire systems, one for the engine and theother for the cabin. That put out all ofthe fire except a small one in the rightrear. Most of the rear was gone.

Ken was still in the car, trapped. Thedriver’s door was still attached to thehinges but it was wrapped down underthe car. This prevented the inner steelrace door from opening. Rescue crewswere there very quickly to put out theremaining fire in the car and theburning parts of the car on the course. In order to get Ken out, they had to usethe “jaws of life” to cut the windshieldpost and parts around the door hinge sothe inner steel door would open. Kenwas fully conscious through the entireordeal and felt no injury. Once theouter door was cut away, then the innerdoor was opened and Ken stepped out. Ten minutes later he was released fromthe medical aid van.

It took a while for the officials to clean the course. Therewas debris strewn over one quarter mile but most of it wasoff to the right of the race track. Once the debris had beenremoved the car was picked up and taken to the controltower area.

Back at HQ there was still the matter of the enginecertification inspection for the previous successful runs inthe fuel category. The engine was intact although externalcomponents had been damaged, the oil pan pushed in,

An extreme zoom shot across a mile of salt. The car had juststopped rolling and was still on fire. (Photo by Ray the Rat,www.chevyasylum.com)

In “impound” after a successful qualifying run in B/BFMS at World Finals in 2012. Kenwith crew chief Chris Bradley and crew Steve Bruner, Laura Bradley and Nancy Brunerhad 4 hours to get the car ready for the next morning’s confirmation run. (Photo by Raythe Rat, www.chevyasylum.com)


http://www.chevyasylum.com



carburetor smashed, etc. The frame had broken and theengine was on its side tilted clockwise. The frontsuspension cross-member was now only attached by inner sheet metal. The normal method of checking enginedisplacement for certification was not an option because themotor could not be turned over using the starter. Thecylinder head pointing up had to be removed so they coulddo it the old fashioned way, measuring bore and stroke.Working on a twisted wreck they got the head off. Still,without being able to turn the motor there was someuncertainty about the engine’s displacement but thenumbers they were getting were so far from the class limitthat the car passed certification and the record was

awarded.

Back at home in Auburn, Washington Ken has a couplemore GTs out back. One of them is going to be lengthened,cutting the car between the firewall and suspension cross-member and the nose extended 28". The motor from thewrecked red car was salvageable and will be used in thenew, yellow, car, with an eye for 300+ mph and the covetedred hat.

Acknowledgments - Much thanks goes out to Bryan Jones,Ray the Rat, and Ralph Komives for the use of theirphotos. And a special thanks to Ken for telling his story.

It’s difficult to tell the front from the rear in these photos but it looks like the cage did its job and no one was hurt.

The red B.BGMS and blue F/GT cars at Speed Week in 2011. (Photo by Ralph Komives ralphkomives.zenfolio.com/)


http://ralphkomives.zenfolio.com/


Bill Ward RacingBy Mike Meier

The Opel GT that would run at Bonneville for 22 years,reach speeds in excess of 250 mph, take home 7 land speedrecords, and put three drivers in the record books, was builtby Bill Ward. Bill purchased the car, a 1970 model, from afriend for $200 back in 1985 and drove it home where hiswife Manette gave her endorsement by telling Bill to “paintit Hugger Orange (like their dragster Camaro) and make itgo disgustingly fast”. He did just that.

Bill had been involved in drag racing since his high schooldays back in 1957, running Buick straight-8's, Chevroletswith GMC motors, etc. on the tracks at San Fernando andLong Beach and was fairly successful. Over time hisinterest shifted to Bonneville and in the mid-70's heswitched to salt-flat racing.

It was in 1975 when Bill and partner Roger Gates startedrunning two cars at Bonneville. One was a streamliner thatwas built on the frame of a 1959 Curtis Indy car. Bill drovethat car on the El Mirage lake bed and won records there.This car is still intact and is stored at a friend’s garage inWilford Heights, which is a little east of Bakersfield.

The other car was a belly tank racer. This “car” waspowered by a Datsun 1600 motor, built by Ken Walkie whoworked at the Granada Hills Datsun dealer. That motor wasturbo-charged, boosted 50 psi, and put out 800 hp. Billdrove this car as well and it also brought home records fromEl Mirage. This car was eventually sold but is still running

on the salt today.

Having been successful with those cars Bill and Rogerstarted looking for another, and this one would be the Opel.It was an impulse buy, and “a cute little car”, as Bill recallsit, and it would define his salt career for the next twodecades.

The build would take less than one year and when done thecar would begin its new life powered by a small-blockChevy motor. The Datsun 1600 motor from the belly tankracer had been considered but it was simply too tall.

Bill said that the hardest part of the build was not wantingto throw away any parts, the window mechanisms, headlightbuckets, etc. He tried to give them all away and would evenleave notes on other GTs he saw around town offering themfree parts, a sure sign of early onset Opelitis.

During the build it was discovered that the nose had beendamaged. The local Buick dealer helped him find areplacement and that turned out to be an interesting effort.The car had not been produced in over 10 years but a newpart was eventually found. During the install Bill realizedthat with minor modifications it could be made removable.After all, the hood was now held in place using pins so itdid not need the hinges, and the headlight buckets had beenremoved so it did not need the cable for that. Thus thenostril portion became removable, secured by Dzus buttons,and this made it much easier to get to the fuel tank (locatedin the nose) and to get the big Chevy motors in and out ofthe car.

Speed Week in 2007, the final run for this 7-time LSR car. (Photo by Ray the Rat, www.chevyasylum.com )




In the lead-up to the car’s first event Bill ran into problemsgetting the car classed. He originally wanted to run it inCompetition Coupe but the car was too short. The nextoption was the Modified Sport class and he had troublegetting it accepted there even though it was a productiontwo seater sports car. Depending on how one interpreted therules the cargo area behind the driver could be considered ajump seat and that would put the car in a Coupe class. Itseemed that if you put a cushion back there it would be aCoupe class car, if not, it could get into the GT or Modified

Sport class. (Modified Sport is based on the GT class.)

Barely nine months after Bill bought the car it was atBonneville. On the car’s first time out it broke the recordspeed for its class (D/MS) but rain ended the event and hewas not able to back up that run. Bill returned home withthe car and simply parked it. The following year he broughtit back and drove the Opel to a class record 200.9 mph.

The learning curve on this car was about 2-3 years, butback then there were four events each year, two USFRAevents (July and September) and two SCTA events (Augustand October), so there were more opportunities to improvethe car and make a successful run. The July event wasprimarily a test and tune event and the others were forrecord runs, so Bill would work on the car all year andbring it to Bonneville in the summer. His driver would meethim there and Bill would tell him what he had changed sincethe previous year. No testing had been done other than whatcould be done at Bonneville. You can’t exactly drive thesecars on the street.

Bill’s secret was to make the car as simple as possible. The

motor was so complicated that it alone kept you plentybusy. In this sport what you do is build a car and drop in aparticular motor and shoot for the record in that class (class= motor + chassis). Once you get that record you go with adifferent motor and go after another record. Over the yearsBill’s car ran with motors ranging from SBC’s to blownBBC 454's and all along with only incrementalmodifications being done the car itself.

The car started out with a D-class (261-306 cid, 4.2-5.0L)SBC motor Bill bought for $200 and built up using a lot ofspare parts. That motor would get the car its first andsecond land speed records at Bonneville, in ‘87 and ‘88.

In ‘89 Bill went big. The car got a supercharged BBC! Itwas based on a Chevy 427 block and again he used a lot ofspare and borrowed parts, including the supercharger andfuel system which had been loaned to him by friends. Interms of displacement it was B-class motor (373 - 440 cid,6.1 - 7.2L) but according to the rules of the day the

Bonneville Land Speed Records Broken by the Bill Ward Opel GT

Year Class MotorTwo-way Average

Speed (mph)Driver

1987 D/MS SBC 209.961 Bill Ward

1988 D/MS SBC 222.965 Tim Confal

1989 AA/MS BBC, supercharged 241.338 John Paxson

1991 C/MS BBC 207.748 John Paxson

1992 A/MS BBC 231.779 John Paxson

1995 B/MSBBC 780 hp, 80 hp in

the exhaust232.183 John Paxson

2002 C/FMS BBC, NOS 209.792 John Paxson



supercharger bumped it up two classes to AA (500 cid,8.2L and over), the top engine class. The car ran its fastestever with this motor, 257 mph.

The car’s next engine would be a 368 cid Chevy, naturallyaspirated, but built using the same 427 block. It had adifferent crank, shorter rods (from 3.75" to 3.5") anddifferent pistons, all which dropped the displacement and lethim run in C (306-373 cid, 5.0 - 6.1L). It took two years toget the record in this car. The problem was that bydecreasing the stroke the compression ratio decreased, a lot,the heads being so big. Plus, at Bonneville altitudes youalready lose a number in the compression ratio. It took someexperimentation with the cam and pistons but eventuallythat LSR fell to the Hugger Orange Opel GT.

Bill was back the following year with an A-class motor(440 - 501 cid, 7.2 - 8.2L) that used the same 427 block butagain with different pistons and rods. This time it was a“straight-up 454". Following that Bill had the record with aB-class motor, similar to his AA motor but naturallyaspirated and sporting fancy new and then-pricy aluminumheads, which are not so pricy these days.

The motor used to get the car’s last LSR used the sameblock yet again but with nitrous oxide. It was a C classmotor in an FMS (fuel modified sport) car.

These motors were clearly not Opel and neither was thesuspension. In fact, there was no suspension in front. Billhad used a solid I-beam from a 1940's Willys coupe, thetype of car everyone was drag racing back then, and justbolted it up where the Opel cross-member normally goes. Inback the suspension was similar to stock. It used Volvo coil

springs because they were stiffer and could handle the extraweight of the ballast and the down force. Everything was inthe stock location but the mounts for the trailing arms werereinforced and Bill used a 3-link system for lateralpositioning. Air shocks were used so that the ride heightcould be controlled and bump stops were added after a runwhere the tires were damaged rubbing the fender liner dueto the down force compressing the springs so much.

The steering was a Saab rack and pinion. The reason forthis was that the steering rack was located behind the frontaxle, opposite of the Opel’s setup.

As for brakes, minimal. Drum brakes were mounted in therear and there were no front brakes. And there was no brakepedal either. Instead the driver used a hand lever. Brakeswere only needed when parking the car.

The aero mods that Bill developed for this car were asignificant part of its success. He notes that the car wastiny, that at the time others were running Corvettes whichhad a similar shape but were at least 50% bigger. Sostarting with the advantage of frontal area Bill blanked offthe radiator inlet and nostrils. No air could enter the nose,but then there was no radiator in there. Cooling wasachieved by pumping water from a 14 gallon tank that sitsin the passenger seat area. For the BBC motor a second 14gallon tank was added and installed in the spare tire area.

There is a distinctive wing in front. It is long and hastripped many a driver and mechanic in its 20+ years. Inback there was a spoiler and underneath the GT already hada belly pan and this was extended to behind thetransmission.

A big-block Chevy motor similar to the ones used at Bonnevilleis still in the car.

The no-nonsense interior, including the cage, enlarged tunneland relocated firewall.



Aero aids around the front wheels were added, too. One ofthese was essentially a fender liner that was just e" awayfrom the tire and which moved with the wheel. Bill says thatthis modification alone was worth 8 mph. There was alsosheet metal underneath that moved with the steering. Itprevented air entering the engine area. With no frontsuspension it was possible to get a lot of air to flow aroundthis part of the car.

The exhaust also got some attention. Bill found that whenhe routed it towards the side of the car, instead of straightback and under the car, that he gained around 80 hp. Whathe had in effect done was boost the engine, but from therear. The exhaust opened into a low-pressure area thatwould help draw the exhaust gas out. Bill cites SmokeyYunick here, saying that removing atmospheric pressure atthe exhaust outlet was as effective as supplying 14.7 psi ofboost.

Weight distribution was another critical aspect of this car.There have been comments made on the land speed racingforums where people wondered how Bill could drive such ashort wheelbase car so fast. Bill’s technique was to makethe car act like a dart or an arrow, with the weight in frontand the feathers in back. To accomplish this he added 300pounds of lead shot in front plus 500 pounds of steel shoton the deck behind the driver, which was in addition to the150 pounds of concrete he already had poured in the gastank area and the tank of 116 pounds water used for enginecooling. The result was a 60/40 weight distribution for a carwhose total weight was now 2200 pounds. (With this weightdistribution the car balances on the jacks at the front edge ofthe door.) Bill once experimented with moving the weightback a few inches and found the car was ill-handling at 160mph, so 60/40 became the permanent setting.

The drive train consisted of the simple and durable 2-speedPowerglide transmission and a boat drive, basically acoupling that takes the place of the torque converter. Tomake a run the car is in neutral while being pushed and thenit is shifted into high gear. They only used high gear (directdrive). Driver John Paxson preferred starting out in low(1:1.76) then shifting while Bill argued for just using highgear. They did a lot of testing using both methods and thetimes were essentially identical so they went with Bill’smethod. They’d just lug the engine at the start in high gearand run that way.

There is one last detail on the car’s setup that should be ofinterest. The car only had one pedal, the throttle. There wasno clutch because the transmission was an automatic, andno brake pedal because it used a hand brake. That shouldmake driving the car at LSR speeds easier, right?

On driving the car at 200+ mph Bill notes that you have toknock off 100 mph just to get back down to 100 mph, andafter going 200 mph 100 mph seems slow. It’s a differentworld, perceptually, at 200 mph. Another demonstration of this is that early in his salt career Bill would turn off early,thinking he had completed his run. One’s time-speed-distance judgment can get confused at LSR speeds.

Bill said that the car itself felt solid and planted, but whiledriving the car you were very busy thinking, listening,paying attention to everything the car was saying.

In the earlier years the car only had two gauges, a tach andoil pressure gauge, but the way Bill describes it, you hadmight was well tape over the tach during a run and ignore it.You didn’t have to shift gears in this car so you just run themotor up to 8500 rpm or so and keep going until youcompleted the timed section of the course.

The view from the driver’s seat.

The distinctive front wing, closed nostrils and closed air inlets.



Over the years the car has had five drivers, including Bill.Tim Confal was a partner in the project and the originalplan was to build the car and get Bill his LSR and then putTim in it so he could get his. Bill got his, plus his hat, in

1987 and Tim got his the following year.

“Rocket Man John” Paxson got that seat after Tim. Johnhad been hanging out at Bonneville with friends one yearand during the week he and Bill got a chance to talk. Bill

Bill Ward (left) and John Paxson

The rear of the car, showing the push bar, spoiler, drag chute, and cut-off stitch.

Bill and John (in the car) getting ready to make a run.



recalls that John had interesting things to say and so soonwould become his driver. Building the car and managing itduring events was so much work that it made sense to bringin a dedicated driver. John’s resume, by the way, includeddragsters, and notably, the 300+ mph hydrogen-peroxidepowered rocket-car dragster that he had driven in the1970's. Bill knew nothing about that at the time.

In 1999 Ellen Christensen drove the car at Bonneville. Sheand husband Ron were well known in Bonneville circles andabout this time a few close friends also learned that Ellenhad cancer. Bill’s driver, John, would not be available todrive that year so Bill and Ellen agreed that she would drivefor him. Her salt-life goal had always been to go 200 mphat Bonneville and this would be her chance. At that timeEllen had been running a Datsun 300ZX and had made acouple of 180 mph passes so she had her license to drive200 mph.

With these plans in place it was now just a matter of gettingthe car to the event. Bill describes his scramble to get partsfor the car, how friends helped out, and how he lost his jobat the Chrysler dealership in Ely, NV the week before theevent and was concerned about being able to afford to makethis run. But he pulled it off, and she turned in a 216 on herfirst run. Ellen was not able to back up that run and plannedto return the next year for another attempt, but before thatcould happen cancer took her.

After 2009 Bill retired the Opel. Rule changes, especiallyrules concerning the cage, would mean that he’d have to cutthe car open to install a new one. Plus there was the small-driver issue, the seat being bolted to the floor in the stockposition still didn’t leave much head room and with thefirewall pushed back to make room for the bigger motors

the driver’s knees were up at his/her ears (a slightexaggeration). But the car would see the salt once again.Bill drove it again in 2007, just before the rule changes tookeffect, so he could maintain his license. The car went over200 mph on its last time out.

A few years ago Bill was given another GT by a friend ofJohn’s. That car had sat under an oak tree in Napa for yearsand was covered in moss and full of acorns, but it could stillbe a race car. The plan was to chop the roof and cut the carbetween the firewall and front cross-member and move thefront end forward four feet, the maximum allowed by lakerules. This car would still be in the Modified Sport classand would borrow parts from the current Opel, andnaturally it would be painted Hugger Orange. But thatproject never took off. The car was sold and is now beingdriven on the streets in Lancaster, CA.

The Bill Ward Opel GT is now on display at LivermoreMuffler in Livermore, California. John had purchased thecar from Bill because he wanted to keep it together so thatothers could enjoy and appreciate it. The car is completeand while it does not have one of the race motors in it itdoes have a “very nice” 396 in it, with a 10-11:1compression ratio and lots of nice go-fast parts. Meanwhile,Bill now runs a 1979 El Camino at Bonneville in B/CBGC(Classic Blown Gas Coupe). The motor is a superchargedChevy 427 (432 cid) and the current record now stands at226 mph. The car has had its difficulties but it has manageda teaser 199 mph run in its 3 year out. The car will berd

back on the salt for another record attempt next September.Like the Opel the El Camino is car #30, and like the Opel itis painted Hugger Orange, and like the Opel, John is it’sdriver.



Bill apparently contracted a case of Opelitis back in 1985when he bought this car. Classic symptoms were displayedalmost immediately, honor and respect for parts he did notneed, then working on that car and that car only for 30years to make it faster, disgustingly fast. And when I toldBill about our recent run in the Tinyvette at WOS and thatwe also had a parts car at home that needed a new missionin life I sensed the affliction was still strong in him as hetold me how we could get that car salt-ready with a cagebuilt by Rick White (Auto Power) and by swapping in a

rear end from an S10 or Astro Vanor a late model Camaro, gettingsome 5" 5-bolt wheels, shorteningthe axles and mating Ford ends tothem, and then choosing whatevergearing we wanted from the wideselection available from SummitRacing. The rear suspension wouldnot need to be changed much andwe could get rid of the torque tubeand go with a torque bar instead.That would give us anindestructible rear end and with thatwe could start experimenting withdifferent motors. With an Ecotecmotor the 150 MPH Club shouldnot be difficult to get into. But after

that? 200 mph? A red hat? I already have a bad case ofOpelitis and LeMonitis and now it looks like I might havecontracted salt fever. I’m screwed.

Acknowledgments – Many thanks to Bill Ward and JohnPaxson who spent hours on the phone with me telling theirstories and reviewing this article to ensure its accuracy.And thanks John, and Ray the Rat (www.chevyasylum.com)for the use of your photos.

The Hugger Orange Bill Ward 1979 El Camino, car #30.




From left to right: Chris Paxson, John Paxson, Bill Ward



A Visit With John Paxson and the BillWard Opel GTBy Mike Meier

Most people who know John Paxson know him as Rocket-Man John, the guy who piloted a rocket-powered dragster toover 300 mph at ¼-mile tracks all over the country back inthe 1970's. I think I remember seeing that car on TV back inmy high-school/college days but it wasn’t until a few weeksago when I was talking to Bill Ward about his BonnevilleOpel that I learned about John. John had driven Bill’s OpelGT at over 250 mph at Bonneville and over the course of 14years broke 5 land speed records in it. When Bill retired thecar in 2002 John bought it so he could preserve it, but didbring it back out to the salt one more time, not in pursuit ofanother LSR, but just for fun. The car is now on display atLivermore Muffler in Livermore, California, which is aneasy drive from my house for a number of Opelers in myarea. So after a few phone calls we were all on our way toLivermore to see the car and meet John and hear the car’sstory from the point of view of the guy who had sat in thedriver’s seat.

First, the car. Your typical Opel GT is a pretty little sportscar. It’s not an aggressive-looking car. It doesn’t project animage of power or speed or ego. It’s a sweet little car that

looks, and is, fun to drive. And yea, it has race potential,and it is fun to race, but it would take a bit of work to makethe car look like it should be taken seriously on the track.The Tinyvette falls well short of that mark. Roger Lee’s carhits the bull’s eye. And Bill Ward’s car? Damned serious,determined, and all business, and yet a GT. That was myfirst impression and that is how I still see the car. It’s quitesomething. It is clearly a GT but has none of the stylishsports car extras such as fender flares and wide tires. Thenostrils and headlight buckets are closed using metal rivetedin place. The air inlet below the bumper is closed up. Thefront wing is a no-nonsense plate that extends far enough infrom of the car that it has tripped many a crew and driver.The hood scoop is a purely functional (not meant to bepretty) home-made affair that later got an extension toreduce how much air it takes in.

The motor is a massive cast iron BBC that sits low in thecar. None of the usual belt-driven accessories can be seenon the front of the motor. The car runs on its battery andcooling is provided by an electric pump and a 14 gallontank that sits behind the driver. Some pretty stout plumbingcarries the water to and from the motor.

The firewall has been pushed back to make room for themotor. The driver gets only three gauges and one pedal, thethrottle, and the throttle linkage is routed up almost to the

John Paxson, in front, drove this car he to 6 land speed records at Bonneville. Behind him is me, Keith Ory, andright to left behind the car is Alan Brattesani, Gil Wesson, and Bill Douglas (Photo by Roy Moulton)



windshield before it goes through the firewall. There is oneswitch for the fuel pump and one for the starter and thereare three levers, one for the transmission, one for the rearbrakes, and one for the drag chute.

The cage would not pass tech in LeMons because it doesnot protect from side impacts, keeping the other car out ofyour lap, but it has interesting diagonal bracing that wouldkeep the cabin from twisting closed in a nasty high, as inreally high, speed incident.

In other words, the car is strictly business. It’s an Opel withone purpose in life, to break land speed records.

John, on the other hand, is a friendly and very likeable,walking, talking chapter of motorsports history. We spentnearly 2 hours together with the car where he showed ushow it all worked, drove, and told us about the crazy thingsBill had done to it during its history on the salt. Then we allwent to John’s house where all that history is on display inhis garage and office.

John’s garage is one that we would envy even without thewalls full of photos and plaques and trophies. Clean andspacious and hosting three very nice cars, a ‘29 FordRoadster and ‘32 Ford, both highboys and neither trailerqueens, and late model Mustang. But the real story is toldon the walls of his garage. They are covered with photosand posters and press releases from his races in the rocket-powered dragster and from his summers spent with Bill andthe GT at Bonneville.

Actually, the real story is told by John himself, and Johnhas quite a few to tell, especially about his dragster days.My recollection of the stories he told may not be the best,but I will give it a try.

The dragster was powered by concentrated hydrogen

2 2peroxide (H O ) that decomposed when it contacted a silvermesh screen. This silver was a catalyst and the reactionproducts were heat, steam, and oxygen. Unlike the dilute

2 2H O you buy for use at home this stuff is very reactive andwill spontaneously combust on contact with manysubstances, including many common organics, such asasphalt, shoes, pants, paint, you. You don’t have to light it.

The engine and tanks were spotlessly clean stainless steeland instead of using a pump to get the fuel to thecombustion chamber pressurized nitrogen did the trick. The

2 2throttle controlled a ball valve in the H O circuit. That’s it.

A pressurized tank of concentrated household bleach setsitself on fire when it encounters silver and the dragsterdisappears in a cloud of steam. From 0 to full power inmilliseconds. No motor to wind up. No clutch to melt. Just0 to 300+ mph in around 5 seconds.

For John this car became a business. He would take it toraces all over the country, often by invitation, paidinvitation, because having a rocket car at your event wassure to bring out the crowds. And that crowd often includedNHRA personnel, and they were generally not happy to seethat car at races. I’m sure they had safety concerns becausewhen it crashed the results were certainly novel. I am sure itdidn’t help that the car was fast enough that John could givethe competition a head start and then still beat them, andcould do it without running at full power. Sounds like theManta/SCCA story, doesn’t it?

Eventually FMC, who provided the fuel, found out thatJohn and company were using it in a race car. I suspect theyfound out about it after a crash and the resulting fire madethe news. The reason they didn’t know earlier was becauseJohn had set up a dummy company that would buy the fuelfrom FMC. Eventually the Haz Mat laws in Californiachanged, the fuel became really expensive, the NHRA

2 2fiddled with the rules, and the days of H O fueled rocketcars were over.

The car was sold, then lost, and then one day John got a callsaying that it had been seen sitting in a field just outside ofLivermore. When he got there a dog was living in the carand that dog did not want to give up the car. The real ownerwas asking $30k for it but John passed, having already hadhis fun in the car. A little later the owner gave John the carand he restored it and now it is on permanent display at theNHRA museum in Pomona, CA.

With his rocket car days behind him John took a “normal”job, but only on the condition that he had August (SpeedWeek) off, and in some years September (World of Speed).He had just hooked up with Bill Ward and would be drivingthe GT at Bonneville.

John has so many stories to tell about his rocket-car andBonneville days. But I guess to hear them you are just goingto have to travel to Livermore, see the car and John’sgarage, and buy him lunch, or you are going to have to meethim and Bill at Bonneville the next summer when they runthe El Camino.



Berkeley Sport SA322 and SE328

Models: 1956–1958Production: 1422 approxBody style: 2-door roadsterEngine: 322 or 328 cc transverse two stroke twin, air-cooledWheelbase: 68 in (1,700 mm) Length: 122.5 in (3,110 mm)Width: 50 in (1,300 mm)Height: 43.5 in (1,100 mm)

Source: Wikipedia, Photo: Ocean Yamaha

The Opel-Nosed BerkeleyBy John Staiger, LSR Performance Group, www.golsr.com

The Opel-nosed Berkeley began life at the hands oflegendary builder Ron Benham in 1997. Benham was theSmokey Yunick of Land Speed racing – constantly pushingeverything to the limit and with the gift of seeing whatothers missed, all in the name of the pursuit of speed. Benham built his many cars in his one car garage insouthern California or friends’ garages if they would lethim. Even so, many believe his cars have put more peoplein the prestigious Bonneville 200 MPH Club than any otherbuilder. The “2-Club” is an elite group of less than 550folks who have set land speed records at over 200 mph.When Benham set out to build the Opel-nosed Berkeley hisgoal was to capture the SCTA Dry Lakes pointschampionship, one of the few awards he did not have. TheOpel-nosed Berkeley would turn out to be one of hiscrowning achievements, having set 16 Land Speed Recordsto date and putting almost as many into the various 2-clubs.Sadly, Ron Benham passed away in 2009.

To conform to class rules for Modified Sports (MS), theback half of the car (cowl back) had to be based on a realproduction two seat, 4 wheel car for which a minimum of500 were built. Benham choose the 1957 British builtSE328 Berkeley as his donor car. Believe it or not – heconsidered the Opel GT too big. The Berkeley is a very

small two seat roadster that was powered by a 328 ccExcelsior Talisman two-stroke motorcycle engine offering18 bhp and a top speed of about 80 mph.


http://www.golsr.com


As the Bonneville rules allow for streamlining ahead of thecowl, Benham choose to use an Opel GT nose narrowed byapproxamatly10 inches to fit the width of the stock Berkeleycowl. Benham choose the Opel nose because he believedthat it was extremely aerodynamic. Years later, Hot RodMagazine would run the car through the Aerodyn A2 WindTunnel and prove his assumptions correct. Allmodifications to the Opel GT nose shape, including a flat

dNASCAR type nose, worsened the C and aero numbers.

To campaign the Opel-nosed Berkeley Benham teamed upwith driver/partner Leonard Carr, who, with the aid of theirturbo-charged small block Chevy, would win the El MiragePoints Championship in 1999.

In 2002 Keith Turk purchased the car from Ronny andsuccessfully campaigned it at Bonneville and the ECTAMaxton venue utilizing various Ted Wenz-built small blockChevy engines. During Keith’s ownership it was known asthe So-Al Special (a..k.a. the Hot Rod Magazine Special).The Opel-nosed Berkeley would set three Bonnevillerecords, eight ECTA records, and put four people into theBonneville and ECTA 200 MPH Clubs.

Then in 2006, John Staiger the current owner, found theOpel-nosed Berkeley hiding in the back room of a speedshop in Detroit, tired, rusty and in need of… well,everything. With race cars one really doesn’t restore them



unless it’s for a museum. Instead, you lift off the body,throw away the old and build new, dropping the body backon a new race car. And that is exactly what they did. Johnwith help from Gary Hensley, his racing partner, and SteveGermond built a new race car under the Opel-nosedBerkeley body.

Powered by a 213ci (3.5L), former INDY 500 Aurora/Chevy engine coupled with the new chassis and drive trainput down 650 bhp on 100% methanol. After renaming thecar the Spirits of the Lakes in honor of his father and otherpast Land Speed racers whose finial resting spot is the drylake beds they formerly raced on, John and his team setback to back records in 2010 and 2011. Topping out at 252

mph during their second record pass in 2011 – BonnevilleLand Speed Records require a two way average speed overthe same mile, their record for the small engine Opel-nosedBerkeley came close to what had previously beenaccomplished using almost twice the displacement.

John and his team have a plan to eventually take the Opel-nosed Berkeley to 300 mph utilizing that same, small INDYengine, however their next stop is the gas class. In 2013 wewill see Opel verses Opel when Spirits of the Lakes squaresoff with Black Opel Racing in the E/GMS class. May thefastest Opel win!

Opel-Nosed Berkeley Land Speed Records

Year Venue Class Speed (mph) Driver

1998 El Mirage C/BGMS 216.116 Ron Hope*

1999 El Mirage C/BGMS 218.495 L. Carr*

1999 El Mirage C/BGMS 228.142 L. Carr

1999 El Mirage C/BGMS 240.752 L. Carr

1999 El Mirage D/BGMS 201.230 L.Carr

El Mirage D/BGMS 214.512 L.Carr

1999 El Mirage D/BGMS 216.466 L. Carr

1999 SCTA/El Mirage Points Championship Benham/Carr

2003 Bonneville D/GMS 246.555 Keith Turk*

2003 ECTA/Maxton D/BGMS 185.658 Tonya Hanley [Turk]

2003 ECTA/Maxton D/FMS 200.987 Tonia Hanley [Turk]*

2003 ECTA/Maxton D/GMS 193.710 Regan Yates

2004 Bonneville C/GMS 241.414 Tonia Hanley [Turk]*

2005 ECTA/Maxton B/FMS 201.121 Scott Guthrie*

2005 ECTA/Maxton C/FMS 204.512 Kurt Urban*

2005 ECTA/Maxton B/BGMS 200.789 Tonia Turk

2005 ECTA/Maxton C/GMS 202.579 Regan Yates*

2005 Bonneville C/FMS 252.623 Ted Wentz*

2006 ECTA/El Mirage C/GMS 206.621 Tonia Turk

2010 Bonneville E/FMS 218.432 John Staiger

2011 Bonneville E/FMS 244.229 John Staiger*

* Denotes record qualified for entry into the respective ECTA, El Mirage or Bonneville “2- Club”



The Spirits of the Lakes car features include:

• 1957 SE328 Berkeley rear body and Opel GT nose.• 213ci (3.5L) INDY Aurora/Chevy 32 valve DOHC,

Dry sump, Multi port EFI, COP, engine originally builtby Ilmor Engineering

• Radiator is in an ice tank to improve aerodynamics• Two thermostats with one cold circuit• 10 gallons of methanol (fuel)• 27” front track utilizing 32 Ford style axle w/Watts link

horizontal location• 36” rear track width utilizing Ford 9” rear axle, 4

W-link, w/J-Bar• 130” Wheelbase• 350 mph Goodyear Bonneville Racing tires w/Wilwood

disk brakes• 4 speed Jarico transmission w/OD mod. (push off

serves as 1st gear making it a 5 speed)• 25 lbs of Haylon onboard fire suppression system• Onboard electric engine water/oil pre-heat/cool down• Dual DJ parachutes – high speed and OMG• AiM dash and data logging• Dual Odyssey Batteries• 1,000 lbs of lead ballast

Key – C/BGMS, C (Engine Size) / Blown or blank for NA,Gas or Fuel, Modified Sports (Chassis Class).

Engine Sizes applicable to these records:A – 440ci to 500ci or 7.2 to 8.2LB – 373ci to 440ci or 6.1 to 7.2LC – 306ci to 373ci or 5.0 to 6.1LD – 261ci to 306ci or 4.3 to 5.0LE – 184ci to 261ci or 3.0 to 4.3L

The Staiger/Hensley team at Speed Week in 2012, from left to right - “Jack” Pete Peterson, Gary Hensley, Steve Germond, and JohnStaiger

The Spirts of the Lakes’ 213ci (3.5L), former INDY 500 Aurora/Chevy motor, putting out 650 hp on 100% methanol.



So How Would One Approach theChallenge of Setting a Land SpeedRecord in a G/GT Class Opel GT?By Mike Meier, channeling Bob Legere

A number of Opel GTs have run at Bonneville and havebeen very successful. Between 1987 and 2002 Bill Wardtook home 7 land speed records in a 1969 GT, at one pointgetting the car past 250 mph, but it was powered initially bya SBC and later a BBC. Black Opel Racing is currentlyrunning a car and just this year got into the record books inE/GMS, which means “gas modified sport” and with a 4.2LE-class motor. And there is the Lindebak team that iscurrently running a GT in B/BGMS and F/GT. Opels arerunning at Bonneville!

All of the above were running modified Opel GTs with bigmotors. But what if someone wanted to run a GT that lookslike the ones we drive on the street and is powered by amotor that is at least related to the ones that we have in ourcars? Well, that would be a GT class car with a G-classmotor (1.524- 2.015L). Per the 2011 rules for the GT classthe car would have to 2-seater production (minimum 500made) sports car like the Corvette or S-2000. (Two-seaterswith jump seats go in a coupe class. Bill Ward had a verydifficult time with that rule.) The car has to have theoriginal or replica fenders, hood, body pan, headlights (highbeam and low), tail lights, drip rails, door handles, basicallyeverything you would expect to see on the original car. Thestock gas tank has to be in the car but you don’t have to useit. Even the original side-panel upholstery or equivalent hasto be in the car. Air dams and spoilers, if used, have to beidentical to what came from the factory, and vents,alternative intakes... not allowed.

Some things can be changed, however. The alternator canbe removed. The exhaust can be somewhat modified and thewheel openings can be radiused to provide clearance fortires. Minor trim, such as emblems, can be removed as canthe wipers and exterior mirrors. But that’s about it. To thecasual observer your GT should look like a normal GT.

Of course the car has to be caged and a racing seat andharness used. Other required safety gear includes a scattershield for the clutch and transmission, safety film on bothsides of the windshield, a drive shaft retainer, a fire system,and more. Oh, and the 1969 c-clip style rear end would notbe legal.

The rules on engine are simply that it must be an internalcombustion engine that was produced by the car’smanufacturer. There do not appear to be any rules tellingyou what year motor has to be used, although the rule bookmakes it very clear that rules will be strictly enforced toensure that the car is typical of street machines that couldbe purchased from an automobile dealer. Making a call tothe head tech. guy would probably be a good idea.

RallyBob once described his overall plan for his Bonnevillecar to me. Basically, and from memory, the car would benosed down to reduce lift and to keep air from flowingunder the car. The engine would be built for power, nottorque, would rev to 10,200 rpm and put out 230-240 hp,and this should get him up to 170-172 mph.

Current Bonneville G/GT Record: Team Siegel, MazdaMiata, driven by Luke Siegel, August 2011, 165.296 mph.

Here’s where I raid a 2006 thread on the OpelGT.comforums where Bob mentioned watching “The World'sFastest Indian” and being inspired to at least start the enginedevelopment program, and then over the course of a coupleweeks he described the project in more detail.

As far as the merits of the GT as a Bonneville car goes, Bob

dnoted that “although the C is just 'okay' by today’sstandards, the frontal area is superb. If I can get the front ofthe car low enough to avoid front end lift, and can balancethe rear lift, the car should REALLY haul a$$.”

Bob had purchased a rust-free California GT for thisproject two years earlier, in 2004. It was a southernCalifornia car, driven by a lady from 1970-1981 and thenby Roger Wilson from 1981-1983. After that it sat out inthe desert until Bob bought it and had it shipped toConnecticut where it now awaits its chance to make landspeed racing and OMC history.

The whole project would involve the following:

• Strip the shell completely• Replace the damaged nose panel• Sand and paint the body• Fabricate and weld-in the roll cage• Make the gauge panel• Build the front suspension, from scratch• Build the rear axle (Toyota), custom-fit to GT shell

with 4-link and watt's linkage• Install the fuel cell and lines



• Overhaul the ZF gearbox• Rewire the entire car• Design and build a cold air box• Design and build the header and exhaust• Do the engine R & D, head porting, fabricate all custom

components, assemble engine, install engine, dyno tune• Wind tunnel testing• Test at a drag strip• Test at Maxton AFB in North Carolina (East Coast

Timing Association sanctioned land speed racing)• Go to Bonneville!

That’s the plan, now here are some of the details describedin that thread.

Engine – Bob will use a 2.0 block since it is already boredto 95 mm and would get bored to over 97 mm. Bore andstroke options considered were:

• 97.500 x 66.802 mm, 1995.02 cc, 1.459:1 ratio• 97.028 x 67.564 mm, 1998.29 cc, 1.436:1 ratio

The stoke would be shorter than stock and the advantages ofthis would be higher-revving due to reduced piston speed(reduced friction, better lubrication). The increased borewould allow for bigger valves.

The crank would be a new 1.9L crank. It would be de-stroked, polished, and coated to reduce oil windage. Thecounterweights would get an airfoil profile rather than aknife edge profile.

Instead of a roller cam a flat tappet cam would be used. Theweight of the valve-train components would be reduced toallow the engine to last and the high rpm and power levels.Once the cam specs. had been worked out the rest of thedecision on how to develop the head could be made.

“Guess what came in UPS today? Got my camshaft forthe 'Bonneville' GT! Definitely the nastiest Opel cam I

have seen in person. Hope it does the trick!”

Bob estimated that the valve reliefs will be ½" deep thanksto the extreme valve overlap and lift, large valves, and shortstroke. In a short-stroke engine the piston accelerates slowlyaway from TDC, reducing valve clearance.

The exhaust valves would be titanium rather than Inconeland these would mate with ductile iron seats so that theywould work in the cast iron head.

Transmission – The transmission will be a close-ratio ZF5-speed. The shifter location is in the same place as a4-speed's so no modifications would be necessary. Thetransmission is much stronger than the 4-speed. The clutchwould be a super-light twin-disc clutch.

Suspension –Tubular double a-arm front suspension withwide mounting points for stability. Almost zero camber gainand about 10° of caster. Going to use forged racing Pintospindles and will use a Manta rack and pinion. Coil-overs ofcourse. Big front sway bar, no rear bar. Understeer is goodat 170 mph! Modified steering ratio, very slow, no largeinputs at speed! Rear axle will be a Toyota 8" with a 4-linksuspension and a spool.

The track will be widened front and rear until the tires/wheels are flush with the wheel well openings (improvedaero). The front tires will be 22.5 x 4.5 x 15, and the rearswill be 25 x 4.5 x 15. The wheels will be lightweight, forgedaluminum, weld wheels, 15 x 3.5" front and rear, with flush'moon' style wheel covers.

Exhaust – The exhaust will be a fabricated oval pipe, around pipe split in half and flat sheet welded between it.This is needed for ground clearance since there will be verylittle space available under the car.

Well, it’s 2012 now and the speed record Bob wasoriginally aiming for has increased by about 10 mph andMaxton AFB, where Bob had planned to test is not longeravailable. 2011 was the last year the ECTA held an eventthere. Bob’s not getting any younger either, but that mightbe part of his plan. He recently told me that Bonnevillemight have to wait until he is too old to road race. So Bob,would that be 90?

“Now I just need to rob me a bank.”

The 2006 thread included kind offers of donations of fundsand labor to help get Bob and his car to Bonneville. Paypalwas discussed and also the idea of Bonneville becoming agathering of Opels supporting Bob. Similar ideas havecirculated around here in the NorCal Opels communityrecently. I wonder if a project involving a combination of Bonneville, Opels, and RallyBob might be something theOMC community would want to take on. I once asked Bobwhat it would cost to get the car done and out to Utah. Itseems that $100 from each OMC member would about dothe trick.



Crapcans Invade BonnevilleBy Mike Meier and Steve Ward

Bonneville, where history is made. Where the fastestmachines on Earth show the rest of us what can be donewith a motor or two and any number of wheels.

Bonneville, on the bucket list for most of the men in thewestern world and too few females, unfortunately.

And then there was Bonneville in 2012, it’s reputationtainted by the arrival of two crapcans.

On September 13 one of the ugliest crapcans to ever run arace rolled onto the sacred salt of Bonneville. A field-findand former circle track racer, it had run only one race in theChump series and was held in disdain by all who lookedupon her. It was actually five different cars welded togetherto make one, and was at least that many different colors,with liberal chassis lightening achieved by years of rust. Butunder the wrinkled skin lay a purpose built 2085 ccturbocharged engine. True, it was built to “Chump Spec”,with an intake manifold made out of square tube, waterinjection made from a garden mister, and a Chinese eBayturbo. Despite the homemade parts, it was a beast, and inspite of its inglorious racing pedigree, the car, dubbedKarmen Electra, was here to make history as "The World'sFastest Chump"!

At 4 AM Utah time Team Tinyvette arrived with its field-find Compuware Corvette-themed 1969 Opel GT, furthersoiling the salt. Powered by a lightly warmed Opel motorthat had received dual Weber side-drafts just the day before,

it was also here to make history as "The World's FastestLeMon"!

Was it a coincidence that two of the slower cars from theonly two crapcan race series in North America showed upfor the same event, or did it simply mark the breaking out ofcrapcan racing into the broader world of motor sports, andtherefore a clear sign of the direction motor sports washeaded. Who cares? That’s trivia for ESPN or SpeedTV tojaw on about. We were actually at Bonneville, it was dayone of this event and the Ghia had just completed a 118.2mph pass. The Tinyvette had just complete its first run,turning in a 117.7. This was going to be a battle of Chumpversus LeMons.

With Saturday's runs in the bag Sunday would settle thingsonce and for all. Chump or LeMons? Karmen left the linesputtering and coughing after idling a bit too long, thencaught its stride and took off, and shortly afterwards twotrack stewards ran about 40 feet down track to pick upwhatever part had just fallen off the car. Apparently it wasnot essential. Additional chassis lightening, perhaps.

A few minutes later the Tinyvette takes off, wheels spinninga bit too eagerly, but otherwise a good start. 6000 rpm,shift. 6000 rpm, shift. 6000 again and the Tinyvette was in4th at about the half mile mark. Hold that throttle down andjust let her fly. Watch the gauges. All good. A/F at12.9/13.0 and steady. Good. Turn off the fan to gainanother 1/4 hp. Futile. Two miles. Hold it from “2-to-Q”for the speed trap, then lift and slow for the turn-around thatis a generous 3/4 miles ahead. The Tinyvette turned in a117.2 mph. Everyone was 3-5 mph slower on Sunday

morning so The Tinyvette beat the trend,and while that result was not bad, it was nota Chump killer.

Back in line and comparing notes, a criticaldiscovery was made. Karmen Electra wasrunning in the 130 MPH Club event, astanding 1 mile attempt to reach 130 mph.The Tinyvette was in the 150 MPH Clubevent, a standing 2 mile attempt to reach150 mph. Karmen was doing in 1 mile whatthe Tinyvette was trying to do in 2. Thecompetition was over. Chump had won.

The day was not done, however. Both teamshad more runs ahead of them and KarmenElectra had a real chance of getting into theSteve Ward, frantically working to get Karmen Electra ready for her next run in the

130 MPH Club competition.



130 MPH Club. The Tinyvette had no chance ofgetting into the 150 MPH Club. It was runningin that event because two miles sounded likemore fun than one and with LeMons-mandatedsafety it easily passed tech for that event. Chumpcars would undoubtedly be able to qualify for the150 mph event. Most street cars would qualifyfor the 130 mph event.

With the Chump crew trying to find the tune,Karmen Electra eventually ran 122.2 beforeusing up its allotted 6 runs. Every attempt hadsome minor glitch that kept the goal of 130 mphjust out of reach. Spinning tires too much,bogging the engine at the start, too rich, then toolean. Getting to 130 mph in one mile in a streetcar or crapcan is more difficult than it sounds,plus at Bonneville one has the altitude and therolling resistance of the salt to deal with.

In true LeMons fashion the Tinyvette went on to blow up inits next run. The pretty little thing started losing power atabout the 1 mile mark and finished with a 76.8 mph run.Smoking a bit and sputtering on acceleration it limped backto the staging area and then back to its pits. The engine waspuffing smoke out the valve cover and when trying to drivethe car onto the trailer it shot the dip stick out. Theelectrode on the spark plug was gone, melted, and TeamTinyvette was pretty sure they were going home with aperforated piston.

Karmen Electra, representing ChumpCar World Series, hadwon this one, but more importantly they went home with the

honor of being the “World’s Currently Fastest and ForeverFirst Chump”. Team Tinyvette, representing the 24 Hoursof LeMons, was going home knowing it was the “World’sCurrently Fastest and Forever First LeMon”, and consolesitself with the knowledge that its title sounds better thanChump’s.

"The World of Speed" at Bonneville is a grand grassrootsevent. It's more laid back than August’s "Speed Week" andit includes the novelty events that open up the salt to regularfolk and irregular crapcans. It does have a very serious landspeed record section, however, and if you have never heardthe Doppler shift of a 400 mph car streaking by, you needto. Your life is not complete.

Most of all, some of the friendliest and mosthelpful people in the world (Team Tinyvettehad to borrow arm restraints and a sparkplug.) bring the world’s most impressivehome built toys to see if they can get theircar into the history books, or at least a fewautobiographies. Chump and LeMons cars,with minor modifications, would pass techfor the 130 MPH Club event and add awindow net or arm restraints and the 150MPH Club opportunity could be yours. Tolearn about The World of Speed go tohttp://www.saltflats.com/.

Relaxing at the end of a day of salt flat racing.

The Tinyvette, looking down range at the 2 mile long course on which it iscompeting in the 150 MPH Club event.


http://www.saltflats.com/


Brakes for the TinyvetteBy Mike Meier

Simple question. Why do we put brakes on cars? No, we doit so we can go fast. You can’t go fast if you can’t stop.And what if we want to go faster? Better brakes. And whatif we want to go faster all weekend? Not the brakes westarted out with, that’s for sure.

When Alan and I rescued the Tinyvette from that orchardup in Oroville it was a mess. Everything plastic or rubberwas shot. If we had put a battery in the car it would haveimmediately caught fire. If we had tried to start it, it wouldhave caught fire. If the tires hadn’t half rotted off and wemanaged to get the car rolling we would have never beenable to stop it. Clearly we had a lot of work ahead of us andfirst on our list was brakes.

The car got gutted and scrubbed and caged and made it tothe track for its first race just as the paint was drying. Thebrakes we ran with in race with were Opel GT brakes,consisting of a new 22 mm master cylinder from OGTSalong with rebuilt calipers, wheel cylinders and braidedlines. The cost of brakes is off-budget in LeMons. We alsogot some high-temperature Motul 600 brake fluid, availableat a local motorcycle shop, and some Porterfield compoundpads that our friends at Evil Genius Racing had made up forus. For rotors we used the ones we found on the car. Ourlocal tire shop resurfaced them for us, but only after wereassured him that they would not be used on the street.They were too thin to be street legal.

That race went well, enough. We finished. Our first time outand we finished a 15 hour race in this foundling of a sports

car! And the brakes held up, mostly. Stopping took a littleextra pedal effort later in the weekend but it wasn’t so badthat anyone complained. We did develop a little shimmy infront. No problem. Just resurface the rotors again and swapin new pads, bleed the brakes, and we were ready for theButtonwillow race.

Ever since that first race we always bring a spare set ofrotors and pads and two bottles of fresh brake fluid to eachrace. The rotors are pre-mounted on a spare set of hubs andthe hubs have fresh new wheel bearing in them. We’venever needed any of this but that was probably because wemade damned sure we had good brakes at the start of therace.

For that whole year our mostly stock set up served us well,but not that well. By the end of each race we had to reallypress that pedal. The car would stop and since this problemcame on slowly it was manageable. Then we lost our firstmotor at Reno-Fernley and installed the one we built fromFord Cook’s block – 2.0L, high-compression Venoliapistons, and a mild cam (Permission was given for the camby the LeMons judges.) Between the modest increase inpower and our guys having a year of racing behind them thebrakes started getting a much tougher workout. By the endof the following Sears Point race we were really having tostand on the brakes to get the car stopped. Post raceinspection showed very uneven pad wear, bent backingplates, and for the first time, a leaky caliper. The dust bootswere cooked and the seals much have been too. No problem.That’s racing. Get new pads, rebuild the calipers, and goout and do it again.

Next race, same thing. The brakes were cooked. We

Ratty, rusty and rotten rear brakes, but everyone has to startsomewhere.

Are these supposed to bend?



couldn’t keep doing this.

I spent hours scanning the OpelGT.com forum for solutionsand found several. There was a nice looking setup whereusing larger rotors and moving the caliper farther from thespindle that would double our braking torque, but heat wasour problem, not stopping power. And besides, we had to beable to modulate these brakes in adrenaline situations. Therewere others as well but I soon settled on a solution thatinvolved getting a pair of 1977 BMW calipers and ventedrotors and doing a little grinding on the hubs.

Geoff, one of our team members, found us some newBrembo rotors for cheap and he already had a pair ofaluminum Brembo calipers from an Alpha that wereidentical to the iron ones on the BMW. I had already pulleda pair of iron calipers off a Pick-n-Pull BMW along withtwo sets of rotors, so we were set. Just rebuild the calipersand bolt it all up.

It wasn’t that easy. We bolted up the rotors and hub anddid a test fit on a spare steering knuckle. The calipers wouldnot fit over the hat on the rotor. Surreal. How could that be?Back to the OpelGT.com forum for confirmation and adviceand as far as I could tell I was doing it right. I checked theBrembo web site and got the dimensions for their rotors.The hat on the BMW rotor was larger than those on theOpel. I looked at everything again. Maybe I needed to movethe caliper mounting holes. Fortunately I had neither thetools nor the skills to attempt that. I finally called Gil atOpel GT Source and we talked. He agreed that we had thewrong rotors and that the Rekord rotors that he sold wouldfit. Everything else should be OK.

It was. The calipers fit over these rotors. This project wasmoving again.

We bought long wheel studs from OGTS and Alan and Iinstalled them in the front and rear. We’d need the longerstuds, plus we’d already broken and replaced two studs andfelt it was wiser to go ahead and replace all of them. Thesetoo were safety items, off-budget in LeMons.

Everything went together without any problem at all. EvilGenius Racing supplied us with Porterfield pads for thesecalipers and all that was left to do was to put the wheelsback on. They rubbed the caliper.

The original solution included a 15 mm wheel spacer so Iwent online to find them. This could take days, but it turnedout that 2Bennet, an Audi performance shop right here inour smallish town, the only speed shop around, carriedthem. Ninety non-refundable dollars later I was back athome and finishing up this job. But, 15 mm is a lot, andnow the tire stuck out past the fender, and that is notallowed in LeMons. Have you ever seen what tire-to-tirecontact on a race track can do?

Maybe 15 mm was too much. I removed the spacer andstacked up washers to see how thin I could go. About 8-9mm. Back to 2Bennnet and sixty non-refundable dollarslater I had them on the car. It wasn’t much but the tireswere inside the fender. Still, it sure looked like they weregoing to rub. BFH time. Actually, a 12 ounce hammer wasused and I gently folded the metal over, rolling the fenders,just like them fancy tuner boys do.

Everything fit. The brakes were bled and the car would stop

Bench-fitting everything before it goes on the car. The rear brakes got an upgrade, too, consisting of larger wheelcylinders and Porterfield compounds on the shoes.



in the drive way. It was time to venture out into public. (Thecar is street legal, licensed, and insured, and I hadpurchased a AAA-Premium membership because of thiscar.) Backing out... turning... grind, scrub, crack! The tirehad rubbed and broken the Lenke air dam. Fudge! I guess itwas finally time to learn how to work with fiberglass.

The brakes felt good on the street at low speed but after afew quick stops from only 35 mph it became clear that we’dhave to relearn these brakes. Modulation would be touchier.It was really easy to lock up the tires. And did I mentionthat the Infineon (Sears Point) race was just days away, andrain was expected?

Alan confirmed that the brakes were touchy. Zep confirmedthe brakes were touchy. The car goes on the trailer in themorning. I had to come up with a solution quick.

When we unloaded the sky was clear and the track was dry.Friday gave us time to test and Alan would do that testing.My solution was to disconnect the brake booster hose. Zepsuggested that we also plug it. It might take some leg workbut other than that we should be fine, and on a wet track,we might actually be better off than other teams.

Alan took the car out and after a few laps radioed in that allwas good, the brakes were fine. That was good to hear. Iwouldn’t get to try them out until my stint in heavy rain andheavy traffic on Saturday. When my turn came braking wassurprisingly difficult for the first two turns, but then I gotbusy with the other things going on around me and beforelong the new normal had set in.

Meanwhile, our friends on the Bimmervitch team had been

worrying about the same thing. They had just installed 4-piston Volvo calipers in their Russian rally car-themedBMW E-21 and now they were confronting the prospect ofheavy rain on a difficult and technical course, and with130+ other crapcans flying around the track with them. Thefaces in their pits did not look happy. Their solution was torun into Petaluma and get cheap old regular pads,something with less bite. That actually worked well forthem, on Saturday, and Sunday morning, but towards theend of the race I was lapping them every 10-12 minutes.The car was creeping around the track to just keep it goingwhile their team got things ready in the pits.

Bimmervitch had screwed up. Saturday was drenching,Sunday was dry. Saturday was slow, Sunday was not. Theyhad forgotten to swap back in their race pads. Saturdaynight at a LeMons race tends to be a big party, even in therain, and while some teams will spend all night putting theircars back together (One team built a motor on a picnictable, at night, in the rain, using parts from two deadmotors.), others will get happily drunk and eventually fallasleep.

Bimmervitch had burned through their NAPA pads and halfof the backing plates before their driver wised up andradioed in that he was having a little trouble. When hefinally pitted they discovered that the backing plates werewrapped around and welded to the caliper pistons. I’m notsure how they fixed it but they did. They might have puttheir old brakes back on or borrowed calipers from one ofthe several dead Volvos in the paddock. However they didit, they got back out on track and finished the race, ahead ofus, but that is another story. Did I mention electricalproblems? Did you know that you can run an Opel GT on a

Installed and looking pretty, perhaps too pretty. Here’s our Bimmervitch friends at an earlier race atButtonwillow in 2011, in the dry, and on good brakes.



fresh battery for almost 4 hours?

I got in our car late on Sunday to take the last stint of therace. The car felt great, so much better than last year withour massive vacuum leaks and all the sputtering andbackfiring that caused. And the brakes, perfect! Saturdayhad been all tiptoeing in the rain racing but on Sunday Icould use all of the car. Cornering was great, power wasgood but never enough, and braking was the best we hadever had, even with no brake booster. Hard braking into theturn 9 chicane, then hard braking into the turn 11 hairpin,great and great! Good bite, no fade, easy to modulate. Itwas time for stickier tires, which are not allowed inLeMons, unfortunately.

Traffic was lighter than it had been all weekend, with atleast 25% of the field retired and had moved on to the finaldrinking phase of the race. Still, it was nuts out there. Thepace was fast and the sun was getting low. Heading up thehill to turn 2 I had no choice but to look directly into the sunand still could not see the traffic ahead. I was staying ontrack by looking out to the side.

Cars were still dying on track and getting towed, bringingout a local yellow in each case. The Pettycash RacingCherokee got broadsided by an Alfa during one of thesemany late race cautions. A few laps later their driver musthave still been driving in a red mist because he had justforced a car off the track exiting turn 4 and by turn 7swerved to cut him off in a high speed section of the track. Iwas right behind them during all of this. This was going toget ugly and I did not want to watch it. Later that lap thecheckered flag came out and we were done. And they weredone, except for the post-race discussion in the pits.

Between the help we got on OpeltGT.com and from Gil atOGTS, and with a team that pulled together and handled asub-optimum car well under very difficult circumstances,well, what can I say? We, as in everyone in this paragraph,got it done, and in a very tangible way, you were all outthere with us! Thanks.

EpilogOur setup works great on the track and on the street. Therace pads are a bit more expensive than standard streetpads, and they do dust, but they will take the heat ofmountain driving and repeated panic stops on an LAfreeway. The Motul brake fluid has performed well but notethat we do bleed enough fluid from the system after eachrace to flush the calipers. We also flush the whole system atleast once a year as opposed to the 5 or so yearsrecommended for street cars. To help with cooling weremoved the dust shields and installed ducting to bring someair to the inside of the wheel. Every little bit helps.

The new rotors and calipers work great. Like I mentionedabove, the brakes worked great all weekend. Braking at theend of the race was the same as at the start, and believe it ornot, pad wear has been reduced. But there is no doubt in mymind that these things are getting hot. After our first racethe shiny new rotors had turned black and blue at the baseof the disc, where it meets the hat. The temperatures therehad to be at least 300°C (575°F).

These brakes have held up well through two races. They aretaking the heat well and are getting the car stopped, overand over again. We are very happy with them, even if theBonneville salt has taken the shine off.

It looks like it got a little hot in here, but everything still workedgreat.

Our crude brake ducting solution may or may not be helping,but we’ll keep it just the same.



Ignition Timing for Modified EnginesBy: Dave Andrews (http://www.dvandrews.co.uk/)

Editor’s Note – Dave owns and writes about a Robin HoodSierra 7, similar to a Caterham. These are powered bysmall 4-cylinder engines and while not Opels, I think thisarticle covers a subject we all want to know more about.

An often neglected but important area when tuning anengine is the ignition system. No I don't mean harder plugs,competition coils, lumenition etc., that only affect theefficiency of the spark, but the actual ignition advancesupplied by the distributor. Tuned and modified engineshave different advance characteristics and requirementsfrom a normal engine. Adapting the advance curve to meetthese requirements using the standard mechanicaldistributor is not that difficult a task once it is understood.This area is often considered to be a black art, but it isactually quite straightforward.

Correctly setting the advance curve for a modified enginecan make a considerable difference to the tractability of theengine as well as ensuring that the engine is giving of itsbest power wise.

Modifying the advance in the way described can only bedone on an engine that uses mechanical advance. Someengines use mapped ignition which is electronicallycontrolled, Ford ESC, EECIV, Bosch K,L Jetronic,Motronic are examples. These are not suitable formodification. A quick and easy check to see if yourdistributor has an advance mechanism is to remove thedistributor cap, grasp the rotor arm firmly and try to turn itin a clockwise direction. If it allows 10 or so degrees ofmovement and then springs back, then it contains acentrifugal advance mechanism and is suitable formodification, if it is rock solid, don't mess with it, itsmapped.

Why an Engine Needs More Advance as its SpeedIncreasesWhen the compressed mixture inside a cylinder is ignited ittakes time for the flame front to reach the piston and for theexpanding gases to start pushing it down. The time that thistakes changes according to a number of variables such asmixture strength, how well the cylinder has filled (dependenton volumetric efficiency and throttle opening), compressionratio and combustion chamber shape. Given the samecircumstances of mixture strength, cylinder filling and CR,the time taken for the mixture to fully ignite and burn is the

same regardless of engine speed. At increasingly higher rpmhowever, the time available for this burn to take place iscorrespondingly less, so it follows that you have to startburning the mixture earlier in order for it to push on thepiston at the right time. This is the basis for increasingignition advance.

Too much of this and the burning mixture hits the piston asit rises (pinking or pinging), too little and the flame frontreaches the piston far too late and does not do a good job ofpushing the piston down and the engine behaves like a herdof turtles. One of the reasons a diesel engine does notperform at higher rpm is that it has compression onlyignition, so there is no way to increase the effective ignitionadvance.

How this is AchievedThe distributor as fitted to conventional ignition systemsdoes not just distribute the spark amongst the cylinders andswitch the coil; it also contains a centrifugal mechanism thatadvances the ignition timing automatically as engine rpmrises. Normally there are a pair of weights within thedistributor which under the affects of centrifugal force tendto be thrown outwards, this tendency is greater as rpmincreases. The weights are shackled by two small springsthat restrain them progressively. As the weights moveoutwards they exert a turning force on the top of thedistributor shaft relative to the driven part of the shaft, thismoves in the same direction as the distributors rotationthereby causing the points/electronic trigger to actuateearlier and advancing the ignition timing. As engine speedincreases the weights overcome more of the spring's tensionand advance the timing still more. There is normally a stopof some kind that limits the amount of advance that thedistributor can supply. This centrifugal mechanism isusually hidden away underneath the baseplate of thedistributor.

Vacuum AdvanceUnder conditions of light or closed throttle, the volumetricefficiency of an engine is quite poor, and cylinder filling isaffected to the extent that the effective compression ratio ismuch lower than the static or calculated compression ratio.In these circumstances the mixture will burn much moreslowly than with a fully filled cylinder and the flame frontwill reach the piston quite late. This can dramatically cutthe overall efficiency of the engine and its economy. Underthese conditions the engine will tolerate and indeed benefitfrom advancing the timing by up to 15 degrees over itsnormal setting.


(http://www.dvandrews.co.uk/


The device that usually performs this trick is called thevacuum advance device. The way this works is to exploitthe partial vacuum that is present in the inlet manifold whenthe throttle is closed or partly closed. A tube is connectedfrom the manifold to a sealed diaphragm in the distributor,which in turn is connected to the distributors base plate. Thesuction deflects the diaphragm which turns the base plateagainst the direction of rotation of the distributor therebyadvancing the timing, this gives much better throttleresponse on part throttle, and far better economy.

Many people who tune engines disconnect the vacuumadvance mechanism, and indeed on some distributors it isvery hit and miss in operation and can cause anomalies inthe timing. All in all however for a road engine, the vacuumadvance retard should be retained if it is possible to do so(not always easy with side-draught carbs). This will have adramatic affect on economy and driveability especially onsmall throttle openings and when 'off-cam'.

Why a Modified Engine Requires Timing ChangesA standard production engine has to run acceptably wellover a wide range of operating conditions, poor fuel, towingof trailers/caravans etc. and yet still deliver good economyand flexibility. Consequently the engine is tuned to givegood low down performance and will use conservativetiming and fueling settings. It also has to cope with poorquality fuel and changes in altitude that can seriously affectthe engines behaviour.

A tuned engine generally is not designed to give goodperformance below 2500-3000 rpm and indeed below thislevel, the volumetric efficiency of the engine is seriouslyaffected. The more extreme the cam profile, the worse thissituation becomes. This means that the effective cylinderfilling at lower rpm is poorer than with a standard engine.

As explained earlier, in these conditions more ignitionadvance is required to overcome the slow burning of themixture. If this advance is supplied by retaining thestandard distributor and simply increasing the static timing,then the overall advance will be too high by the samenumber of degrees, this is obviously undesirable and canwreck your carefully modified engine. Not increasing thestatic advance however will lead to a very sluggish engineuntil quite high rpm is reached.

The engine speed at which maximum advance is reachedalso needs to be earlier for a tuned engine, say 3500-3800rpm, on a standard engine maximum advance may not be

reached until much later, say 4500-5000 rpm. This meansthat both the amount of advance, and the rate at which it isapplied will not be satisfactory in a modified engine if thestandard distributor is retained is unmodified condition.

Establishing a Static Advance RequirementThe static advance requirement for a modified engine is verymuch dependent on the duration of the cam fitted. Below isa table of advance requirements and expected idle speeds fora range of cam specifications. ON NO ACCOUNT usethese settings before the maximum advance on thedistributor has been correctly limited.

Cam Duration AdvanceIdle SpeedExpected

270° 10-12° 600-800

280° 12-14° 800-1000

290° 14-16° 1000-1100

300° 16-18° 1100-1200

301°+ 18-20° 1100-1400

When establishing static advance the golden rule is neveruse less than 10; never use more than 20 degrees. Theengine may well tolerate more than 20 degrees at idle, butthe moment the throttle is opened and cylinder filling isimproved it will pink heavily. One problem oftenencountered when using more static advance than standardis that the engine may 'kick-back' when starting causing thestarter to slow dramatically, this can be confused with aflattened battery or duff starter motor. You may need tocompromise by the odd degree or two if your engine will nottolerate the required degrees of advance at start-up.

Static advance implies a measurement taken when theengine is stationery, however it is usually set at idle in orderthat any latency in the distributor drive gear is taken up. Arough setting can be made when the engine is still, but itMUST be set at 1000 rpm or lower with the vacuumadvance disconnected so that any latency is taken up and thecentrifugal advance has not yet started its operation.

Establishing Maximum Advance RequirementNotwithstanding the compression ratio and other factors,the characteristic that determines the maximum advancesetting is the shape of the combustion chamber and theposition of the spark plug. Below is a table indicating thedesired maximum advance for the various commoncombustion chamber shapes.



Type of Chamber ExampleMaximumAdvance

Semi-hemisphericalJaguar/Lotus Twin

Cam40-44°

Cardiod/heart‘A’ Series‘B’ Series

34-35°

Bathtub Pre Xflow 34-36°

Bowl in Piston Xflow 35-37°

Closed Pinto 38-40°

Wedge Imp. 36-38°

Open wedge Rover V8 36-38°

Pent-roof 4 valveVauxhall 16v,

Zetec, Cosworth YB30-32°

Note how little advance a four valve, pent roofedcombustion chamber needs, this is because of the very shortand equal length flame paths from the centrally placed plugpromoting a very fast burn. Engines with a faster burn timehave a much higher rpm potential, the faster the burn, theless advance requirement, and therefore the fewer problemsat high rpm. This is why Grand Prix engines have manysmall cylinders; these have small combustion chambers thathave very fast burn times, allowing much higher rpm thanengines with fewer large cylinders.

Below is a chart showing the typical and ideal advancerequirements for a modified engine, the engine speed atwhich maximum advance should be reached is 3500-3700rpm, advance should start at around 1300 rpm and be all-in

by the figure below.

How to Go About Modifying Your AdvanceNow we have established what the static and maximumadvance should be, we should think a little about how we goabout measuring advance, modifying the distributor andsetting the timing.

First of all you cannot correctly time an engine without astrobe/timing light of some kind which is reliable, youcannot correctly time an engine without markings on thepulley to establish where the various engine positions are,E.G. Top Dead Centre (TDC) and various positions beforethis. The most critical position is the maximum advancesetting that should NOT be exceeded.

To achieve this the engine pulley needs to be marked atTDC (most already are), at the position for desired statictiming (between 10 and 20 degrees depending on cam) andat the maximum advance position. The most satisfactorymethod I have found is to accurately draw the pulley on asheet of card, then using a protractor draw the appropriatemarks on the circumference of the pulley template. If youhave a PC, use a drawing package to accurately draw thecircumference of the pulley and the degree markers ratherthan doing this by hand. Remember that if the engine rotatesclockwise (most do) that the static and maximum advancepositions will be further round the pulley in a clockwisedirection from the TDC marker.

These marks need to be transferred to the engine pulley.This is most easily done by removing the pulley andmarking its circumference from the template by filing a



small slot or groove where each these marks need to appear.Then fill these slots on the pulley with tippex or similarwhite paint. You may also wish to mark the 20 and 30degree positions, simply ensure that you can tell these apartfrom the other marks then refit the pulley. Make sure youcheck and double check where you are going to mark beforedoing so; do the job only once and do it correctly.

Establishing the Existing AdvanceTo begin the timing exercise you must statically time theengine at around 10 degrees BTDC. With the engine at 10degrees BTDC on the firing stroke align the distributor sothat the points are just about to open or in the case of anelectronic distributor so that the stator and rotor tips are justaligning. Lock the distributor enough to stop it moving.Ensure that the vacuum advance retard is disconnected andthe tube plugged. Start the engine and let it idle, adjust thetiming with the engine running to 10 degrees BTDC andlock the distributor.

Now increase engine speed until it is around 5000 rpm andhold the engine steady - this ensures that all the centrifugaladvance has come into operation. Use the timing light to seewhere the maximum advance is currently set. If it is not inline with your mark, adjust the timing carefully until it is,remember most distributors turn in a clockwise direction soyou must turn it in an anti clockwise direction to advancethe timing, and a clockwise direction to retard it. Ensure it isset at the maximum marker at 5000 rpm and lock it intoposition.

Now allow the engine to idle and examine the timing againto see what setting you have for static timing, this should beeasy to estimate from your markings. Write this settingdown. If you then subtract this static setting from themaximum setting this will give the degrees of mechanicaladvance that the distributor currently supplies.

Example – Maximum setting 38 degrees, static setting 10degrees (38-10) = 28 degrees supplied.

We have now established how much advance the currentdistributor gives and can move on.

Establishing Mechanical Advance RequirementWe have our desired static and maximum advance figuresalready calculated, so now we can use the same simpleformula to establish how much centrifugal advance we needfrom the distributor.

Maximum advance 38 degrees, required static advance 18degrees (38-18) = 20 degrees required.

In our example the standard distributor is designed to givemaximum advance from a starting point of say 10 degreesof static advance, if the maximum advance required is 38degrees, then it's range is 28 degrees (38-10), this meansthat if the static setting is increased to 18 degrees, then thetotal advance will be 46 degrees (18+28), way too much. Itis unlikely that the standard distributor will give the correctamount of advance, it will usually give too much. This iswhy we must restrict the total centrifugal advance that thedistributor is capable of supplying to our new figure, in thiscase 20 degrees, then with the static setting of 18 degrees,the maximum advance will be 38 degrees (18+20), thecorrect figure.

If the advance supplied is MORE than required, and this ishighly likely, it means as expected that the distributor issupplying too much mechanical advance, and that the stopsin the distributor must be bent to restrict the travel of themechanism. If the advance supplied is LESS than requiredwhich is unusual, then the distributor is supplying too littlemechanical advance and the stops must be bent/filed toallow more travel of the advance mechanism.

TIP – As the distributor must now be removed from theengine it is a good idea to turn the engine to near the statictiming position to assist refitting, you may also find ascribed line on the distributor body which should align witha mark in the centre of the rotor arm heel. This is also anaid to refitting.

Modifying the Distributor to Limit AdvanceTo alter the amount of advance, it is necessary to removethe baseplate from the distributor to expose the centrifugalmechanism below. On some distributors, notably the Sierraone, which is a magnetic reluctance type this is a tricky anddelicate operation, the rotor is held in place by a small pinin the shaft of the distributor, which must be removedbefore the gubbins and base plate can be removed, notecarefully how the thing came apart before working on theadvance mechanism. Some base plates need turning inrelation to the distributor body in order to remove them,notably the BOSCH type as fitted to Ford engines, notewhich way the base plate was turned and how it fits backtogether very carefully.

Once the baseplate has been removed grasp the drivegear/pin in one hand and turn the end of the shaft with the



other (oo-er). It should be possible to establish how thecentrifugal system functions and how to limit the advance.By taking in to account the current advance supplied andthe desired advance, it should also be straightforward towork out how much restriction is required and then bend thestops which limit advance in the appropriate direction toachieve this.

Standard distributors have the rate of advance controlled bytwo springs attached to the centrifugal weights. The twosprings are usually of different tension and length.Frequently the heavier of the two springs is not actuallyunder any tension when the distributor is stationary,however the weaker of the two should have absolutely noslack when stationary. If the lighter of these two springsdoes have some slack, it is important to take this up so thatthe spring is under slight tension otherwise the timingsettings will be altered immediately the engine turns over. Ifthere is no tension in the spring, bend the stop on that springto re-instate tension.

On some distributors that do not use stops which can bebent to change total advance it may be necessary to addmaterial to slots or to pins. Do not be tempted to do thiswith materials such as araldite or filler, it will simply dropoff or wear out, metal must be added, either via a dab with a

MIG, or little braze. I have used small metal sleeves in thepast (small pieces of tube) to increase the size of pins etc.Those of you equipped with Pinto engines have a veryconventional distributor that uses stops that can be bentvery easily.

After the advance has been limited it is time to refit thedistributor and re-time the engine as detailed previously.Hopefully the required advance will now have beenobtained, if not then repeat the procedure above until thetotal advance on the distributor is correct. This can be alittle tedious if it needs several goes to get this right,PERSEVERE; it is well worth doing.

TIP –- When fitting the distributor it is often quite difficultto get the drive teeth/oil pump drive etc. to line up correctly,it is sometimes a good idea to turn the engine over slightlyby hand backwards or forwards until the various drivesengage, then the engine can be turned back to the staticsetting again.

Establishing the Correct Rate of AdvanceIn most applications for performance engines, the heavier ofthe two distributor springs requires replacement with alighter spring. Alternative springs can be gleaned from ascrap distributor (it does not need to be of the same type



necessarily) from a breakers yard. This is necessary to givea faster advance ramp, as seen in the previous table.

When the heavy spring is replaced by a lighter one, BOTHsprings must be under tension, but not under too much,there must be no loose rotational movement between thecentral shaft and the weights as this will give too fast aramp and lead to pinking. The static timing, if set as beforeis plenty, and we do not want any more until around 1300-1500 rpm. If the distributor does not have bendable poststhat allow the spring tension to be varied, then the springsmay need to be tweaked a little to shorten or lengthen them.

Once you have substituted a weaker spring for the strongerone, it is time to check the rate of advance. Re-assemble andrefit the distributor, and set the static timing to the requiredamount of advance. Set the idle at between 900-1000 rpm.Hold the engine at 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000 and 3500rpm and note the amount of advance at each rpm. Ifmaximum advance is not reached at 3500 rpm, graduallyincrease the rpm until maximum advance is reached andnote the rpm. This is usually a two-man operation.

Plot the rate of advance on some squared paper, alongsidethe ideal advance ramp shown in the previous table. If theadvance springs are too weak then maximum advance willoccur at considerably less than the 3500 rpm ideal setting.If the springs are too strong then maximum advance willoccur well beyond this setting. To be safe, the springsshould prevent maximum advance being reached before3500 rpm.

If the advance ramp starts before 1300 rpm, then thisindicates that the initial tension on the springs isinsufficient, so it will be necessary to bend the posts toincrease initial spring tension. By bending posts to increaseor decrease initial tension it should be possible to make theadvance ramp very close to the ideal which is a steadyincrease in advance between 1300 rpm and 3500 rpm. Thehighest acceptable rpm at which maximum advance shouldbe reached is 4000 rpm, the lowest is 3200 rpm. Do notexceed these limits.

When you are happy that the rate of advance is near to theideal (this will be after some trial and error) it is time toroad test the car. Try accelerating in each gear from around1500 rpm and see if the engine pinks (pings), if it does notethe engine speed at which this is happening, and doublecheck the advance at this speed. It may be necessary toincrease the spring tension a little to restrict advance at this

engine rpm.

Most engines will pink a little if given unreasonably lowrpm and a high loading, so if this only happens at 1500 rpmin a high gear, this is an unusual combination and isunlikely to be encountered in normal driving. When the rateof advance is correctly set it should give the engine a rocksolid idle, strong progression and mid range performance.

Well, that's all there is to it.

If you have properly followed the procedures outlined in theprevious text, then the advance curve for your modifiedengine should be very close to ideal and you should be ableto feel the difference in your engines performance. If youare in doubt, exercise caution, better too little advance andslightly tardy performance, than too much and a ruinedengine.

Points Type DistributorsIf you are using an early distributor that uses points, youare probably aware of the problems that can be caused,points bounce, arcing at the points, timing scatter. As thepoints wear, the timing tends to retard significantly, and thedwell setting goes all to hell.

As a replacement for points I can strongly recommend theIGNITOR unit that can be bought from Aldon Automotive,Europa or Demon Tweeks, this is a completely selfcontained electronic ignition trigger (Hall effect) andamplifier all in a single unit that fits neatly inside thedistributor as a direct replacement for the points. It requiresno black boxes, or separate amplifier, and only requires apower feed from the plus side of the coil to be fed into thedistributor with the switch wire. Because it is a rotarydevice it is not affected by clapped out distributor bearingseither. It is also ideal for classic cars where its selfcontained design renders it undetectable from outside thedistributor. Fit this unit and forget it, it requires nomaintenance and is ultra reliable. It is relatively inexpensivecompared to normal electronic ignition systems such asLumenition.

I used an IGNITOR on my old Pinto engine that used to eatpoints. The starting was much improved and the timingstayed perfectly set for many thousands of miles.



Materials

Fundamentals for MechanicalsBy Mike Meier

Ah, materials. The stuff we make stuff out of. The stuff weall too often break. The stuff we need to figure out howmake better so we experience less of its breakages and itsheaviness. It’s the stuff we powder coat and paint. It’s thepowder coat and paint. It’s the stuff that rusts, or doesn’t,or rots in the sun, or doesn’t. It makes up exactly 100% ofour Opels but represents only a small fraction of their costs.It’s what I studied for years and now if no one here objects,it is something I’ll write about for The Blitz.

The topics I’d like to cover in the next few issues are theproperties and behaviors of materials that we all probablyfind most important, and those are the properties that areimportant in structural applications. Properties such asstrength, ductility, toughness, and others. Later I’ll offersomething on fatigue and fracture, and maybe after thatfailures in general and how to diagnose them. Then afterthat, we’ll see.

As much as I’d like to jump right into the meat of thesubject of mechanical properties I thought it would be bestto lay a little groundwork first, to cover some fundamentalsso that you might began to see materials the way I do. Sowe’ll start here with some fundamentals that are relevant ina discussion of the structural properties of materials, plus afew clarifications that I might not need to make for thisaudience but I feel I must so that I don’t confuse anyonelater on.

StressThis probably doesn’t require saying but I’ve seen peopleconfuse this issue in their haste to solve some vexing Opelconundrum. Plus I feel I need to should start at thebeginning. Here I simply want to make the distinctionbetween the strength of a material and the strength ofsomething made of that material. Two bolts for instance,one large and one small, the larger will be stronger,obviously, but the strength of the material in both is thesame. I almost feel silly for even pointing this out. Anyway,it like how pressure is to force. For example, 32 psi airpressure in a tire may sound like much, but the 1200+pounds of force (in the hoop, or circumferential direction)that pressure exerts on the sidewalls is significant. Thestrength of materials is given in units of pressure (force perunit area), the strength of things in units of force.

StrengthMoving on, when we pull on or bend or twist or compress apart of your car the material it is made of resists, and thelimit of that resistance is what we call strength. If the stressexceeds this strength one of two things can happen. It cangive, deforming under the load, or it can break.

The origin of this resistance is found way down deep in thematerial where the chemical bonds between the iron (insteel) or copper (in brass) or zinc (in brass) or aluminum(in, never mind) atoms hold everything together. Try tovisualize a bunch of very, very small ping pong balls allheld together with a rubbery glue. The balls represent theatoms and the glue the bonds. When you grab hold of theballs at each end of your mess of balls and pull what youare trying to do is break all of glue joints holding at leastone layer of balls to the next. If this happens by unzippingthe glue joints, like peeling tape or velcro, you’ve got afracture. The material did not give, it broke. In ductilematerials we usually get a lot of give first. The way thisworks is that a group of balls will break their bonds, thenslide over a bit, and reform those bonds with the next groupof balls. This will repeat until either the stress is removed orthe unzipping process steps in to finish things off. Thissliding process is what let’s us bend sheet metal, forinstance. So I guess the question to ask when you overstressa part is, will it slip, or unzip?

StrainWhere stress is the resistance strain is the give. Strain isyour reaction to stress at work. Strain is one of yourmaterial’s reaction to stress at work. Strain, whenmeasured, is given in terms relative to the unstrainedcondition. Pull something to twice it’s length and the strainin that direction is 100%. Double your workload at theoffice and the twisting, compressive, shearing strain youexhibit will depend on how well you handle such things, Inother words, your strength.

Elastic, Plastic, and In BetweenMany of the terms we’ll be using here have somewhat vagueor associative meanings in common everyday usage. Elastic,for instance, is like rubber bands and underwear and plasticis like, well bendable plastic or squishable Play Doh. Usengineering and science types need more precisely definedterms and in our world elastic means when you apply a loadyour component deforms immediately, and when youremove that load again the component immediately returnsto it’s original dimensions, like how rubber bands do.Plastic deformation, on the other hand, is permanent.



Stretch a bolt farther than it can go in an elastic manner,then remove the load again, and after the elastic strain isrecovered you’ll have a bolt that is now longer that it wasbefore. The differences in length, before and after, ispermanent. Bend sheet metal over a form and the spring-back is the elastic strain in the material when loaded whilethe bend when you are done is the plastic strain. The totalstrain when loaded includes both the elastic and plasticcomponents.

Now, to complicate things a bit, something you probablythink is a malicious sport among egghead writers, there isan in-between behavior that is common in plastics andrubbers and some alloys, especially at high temperatures,and that is that when loaded the material’s resistance is highat first, but then in lessens. Likewise, when unloaded theexpected elastic recovery is slowed. Now, this is notsomething you’d normally see in a standard tensile test ofmetals but it is very important in how your tires andsuspension bushings work. This behavior, a slower versionof elasticity, is called anelasticity and the anelastic responseto changing loads basically means the material acts like ashock absorber. You’ve probably heard that your tires arethe first component in your suspension, and now you knowwhy. The elasticity of the rubber and the compressibility ofthe air in the tire, combined with anelasticity of the rubber,provide you with an integrated spring-shock absorberdevice.

As great as this anelasticity thing is, absorbing these loadscomes at a cost. If you have ever noticed that your tires gethot after driving on them, and even hotter if they are under-inflated, the reason is anelasticty is at work when yoursidewalls flex. The absorbing part of the shock absorbingbehavior means that the energy is absorbed by the materialrather than by your butt. This absorbed energy heats thingsup, and in extreme cases can even melt the inner sidewallsof your tires. Ask me how I know.

But how? How does this all happen, really, inside thematerial? It’s fine to know what happens, but to be able todeal with new situations one needs to know about the how,about the mechanisms involved, the fundamentals. Toanswer the elasticity question think about those gum-bondedping pong balls again. That gum is elastic, rubber-like,springy. In real materials the bonds that this gummy goorepresents do in fact behave like springs. You can compressthem somewhat, or pull them apart somewhat, and whenyou let go these bonds will make sure these atoms return totheir normal positions. Picture those ping pong balls as

being linked to each other using simple coil springs andyou’ll see what I mean.

To answer the anelasticity question we have to step back abit and picture polymers, the main ingredient in plastics andrubbers, as kinked and folded chains of atoms. Really longchains, like 10's of thousands of atoms long, not a measly 8to 10 like in gasoline. When the load is first applied thespringy bonds between the atoms in these chains willimmediately stretch or compress, and yes the bends in thischain will open up a bit, too, but neither of these will getyou very far. What happens next and which will allow thematerial to deform to a much greater extent is that portionsof these kinked chains can slip past each other. This doesnot happen immediately because they need to negotiate theobstructions of their neighboring chains, but it does happen,and if you raise the temperature a bit, this can happen morequickly.

I think we have already answered the plasticity question inparagraphs above but a bit more that can be said. There issimply a limit to how much stretch you can get out of thebonds between atoms before they break. In principle it ispossible one could simultaneously break every bond in thecross-section of a material at one time, but that is veryunlikely. I mean, really, really very unlikely, except incertain tiny laboratory-grown perfect crystals. What younormally get is groups of atoms that start to slip, slide,move past each other in a shearing motion. This could behappening locally all over the material, slipping and slidingin different directions in different regions, a little bit here, alittle bit there, but overall all this motion averages out to bein a direction that accommodates the loads. This brings usto the very fascination topic of dislocations anddisclinations, of how materials get stronger as you deformthem, of how tiny hard particles can strengthen a material,and then on to why metals like magnesium can be so brittlecompared to steel and why that is not as ductile asaluminum. If you want to know more about this things,sign up for one of my advanced courses.

In the next issue I’ll cover the tensile test and all of theinformation that gives us. That is probably the most usefultest and it the one that measures the strength and ductilitythat we find in the handbooks, along with other usefulproperties that are not generally published.



Photo Opels

Our dear Opels certainly have their charm. Some may beseen as beautiful, even sexy, impressive in sometechnological or performance sense, or just plain WTF.Each month we pick 2 of the best the photos that have beensubmitted by members and friends of OMC. The

final selection is based on the subject as well as thecomposition and quality of the photo. These photos will beadded to our Facebook gallery, and who knows, we mightfinally produce a calendar that features these photos! Seethe submission guidelines on the inside of the back cover fordetails.

Mossy Manta – Tosome this photo mayrepresent decay andneglect of one of ourfavorite cars, but Isee a nobility in it, aloyal friend who willbe ready to roll againwhen we call upon itto do so. Submittedby Mike Meier

Sunset GT – A stormwas coming in fastand the track had tobe closed and thecorner workersbrought in. In thepaddock we got adramatic light showthat shined upon ourbeloved Tinyvette thenight before the startof it’s first true 24hour race. Submittedby Mike Meier



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Video“Opel GT, Driving the Dream”, El Dorado Productions,Mike Siegel, 2008, available from www.eldoradofilm.de/,eBay, and Opel GT Source.

Books“Opel GT - Gold Portfolio, 1968-1973", R.M.Clark:Brooklands Books, 172 pages, 1996.

“Opel GT, Ultimate Portfolio, 1968-1973", R.M. Clark:Brooklands Books, Ltd., 200 pages,

“Opel Manta, 1970-1975", R.M. Clark: Brooklands Books,Ltd., 92 pages, 1997.

“Opel GT Motorsport, 1968-1975", Maurice VanSevecotte, Detlef Kurzrock, Stefan Müller: Petrolpics GbR,2008.

“Opel Kadett GT/E”, Antonio Biasioli: Editrice Elzeviro,144 pages, 2010.

“Opel - so wird er schneller: leistungssteigerung am OpelAscona, Manta, Kadett, GT : (1968 - 1972)”, Gert Hack:Motorbuch Verlag, 127 pages, 1972.

“Opel Wheels to the World”, Karl Ludvigsen: AutomobileQuarterly & Princeton Publishing, 112 pages, 1979.

“Nur Filegen ist Schöner”, S.W. Lukas, K.J. Hause: VerlagJungjohann, 1985.

“Das Grosse Opel GT Buch”, Wolf Dieter; Walter Günther:Heel Verlag GmbH, 144 pages, 1990.

“Opel GT Projekt 1484", Etienne Henrion, Stefan Müller:Podszun GmbH, 191 pages, 1997.

“Opel Ascona - Mit jedem Kilometer wächst dieFreundschaft”, Peter Kurze, Rainer Manthey: DeliusKlasing, 112 pages, 2011.

“Jahrbuch 2012 - Opel”, Eckhart Bartels, Rainer Manthey:Podszun GmbH, 2011

“Opel, Chronik der Personenwagen, 1899-2012”, EckhartBartels, Rainer Manthey, Podszun GmbH, 144 pages, 2012.

“Opel Manta 1970-1988", Alexander F.Storz:Schrader-Typen-Chronil, 96 pages, 2009.

“Opel Manta, Das Kult-Coupé”, Johnny Leyla: KometVerlag, 144 pages, 2009.


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Illustrations: Drawings and photos are also welcome.Please submit these electronically using a common fileformat and with sufficient resolution to look good printed,minimum 180 dpi, ideally 300 dpi.

Deadline: We can usually accept submissions up to abouttwo weeks before our mailing deadline.

Photo Opel SubmissionsFor Photo Opel submissions we are looking for greatphotos, not snapshots, of Opels and Opel-related subjects. Ifyou have such a photo, and you either took the photo orown the rights to it, by all means send it in. If selected itwill appear in an upcoming issue of The Blitz. Please notethat your photo will be printed at roughly 6"x4" and we willwe need 180 dpi minimum and ideally 300 dpi images.

Opel Centerfold SubmissionsCould your slinky, sultry, shiny, sexy Opel, boldly if notprovocatively posed, under seductive lighting, possibly becenterfold-worthy? Is your Opel one of those few that“everybody wants”, one that sets a standard for beauty andgrace, one that gives all other Opels hope while making allother marques bitter and jealous? Well, we want to see it.Everybody wants to see it! Send in your best photo of thecar, one that is suitable viewing by children and full pagelandscape printing, along with a smaller photo of you withthe car, along with the car’s back story, the personalversion, not your build diary. And don’t forget to provideyour car’s vital details, including “Best Features”, “Turn-ons”, and “Turn-offs”.

Copyright Policy on SubmissionsYour submission does not become property of OMC. Wewant to encourage people to tell the world about their Opelsand the fun they are having with them, so if you latermanage to convince Road&Track or GrassrootsMotorsports or others to publish your story, we don’t wantto get in the way. We do, however, need for you to grant uspermission, in perpetuity, the use your submission in OMCprojects and publications, such as The Blitz, posters,banners, reprints, books, post cards, videos, on the web site,Facebook page, calendars, etc. And obviously, you musthold the copyright to your article or photos, i.e. be thecreator and have not transferred the copyright to anyoneelse. Also, in this same spirit of openness, if anotherpublisher wants to reprint your submission (article, artwork,or photo) we will contact you to make the properarrangements.

Contacts at OMC

Membership: [email protected]

Advertising, letters, and submissions:

Opel BLITZ Editor515 K StreetDavis, CA 95616 USA

[email protected]




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