Great post Craig.....
I just dropped off the Dirt Missile and have already gotten a ball park guesstimate of fixing all the crap that is so obviously wrong with it.
Was funny — first thing the guys do is lift off the POS hood... Then notice right away that the plumbing is a disaster.... Mind you.... I’ve not so much as spent 10 minutes looking over this car. It was RON SUTTONS build — his “guys” working on it at my shop.... I stayed completely out of the way. Frankly — watching them was too painful to be interested....
Now — NOBODY but his builders (they’re not really builders at all) have touched this car. First thing one of the guys notices is that the front brake line (driver side) is almost cut thru... yeah - the routing of it puts it touching the inside of the wheel rim... about 2 more laps and the car would have no brakes....
They attempted to plumb some kind of PCV but it’s a dry sump motor.... you don’t run a PCV with a dry sump.... then they notice the cooling system plumbing — oh and the fact that the serpentine belt is misaligned - and that the dry sump system itself isn’t plumbed correctly.... and well.... this is all in the first 3 minutes of just looking it over.
Guesstimate for labor — about 300 hours
Motor is cooked — his wiz bang top notch tuner dude.... yeah - not so much... the 2000* coating on the headers is completely cooked off in a couple cylinders....
Oh - and then they pull a valve cover — yeah - more problems.... So on top of the 300 hours — the motor needs a rebuild. This was (note the was) a $30,000 Ron Sutton Secret sauce motor.... it has about 20 laps on it. Come to find out - Sutton sent parts to Scoggins Dickey for them to build the motor — but like everything else the ass ever did — they’re wrong....
Had dinner with Nick Relampagos (good auto-crosser and EX Sutton customer) and Nicks motor came from Sutton — he won’t even use it in his wife’s car.... LOL
Synopsis? My $200,000 Track Warrior —- needs $50,000 worth of wiring - plumbing - different parts that actually work - and that’s not touching the body issues.
Trust me when I tell you — Sutton is going to have some California tax issues... And now I hear he’s going to start up his business again. I’m thinking he probably ought to start preparing for a stay at the penitentiary instead.
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