Project PT-57, 1957 Truck, Built By Hot Rod Jim's

[GvEman]

An other awesome build! I love the theme! That turbo setup looks awesome.

[Steve1968LS2]

Originally Posted by ccracin

Well, Did you make it?

I don't think they did since I heard they were trying to substitute a '39 Truck at the Challenge.

I hope it's there though.. I've been dying to see it in person since it have my favorite paint scheme ever...

[GHOSTDANCER]

http://special-reports.pickuptrucks....jims-pt57.html

[ccracin]

Yeah, doesn't look done in those photos. That is a shame, they were busting it trying to get it done. Looking good though.

[Kendall Burleson]

The truck is at SEMA and I'm leave Texas about 6pm tonight now to Take them race tires And odd and ends .Guy keep your findercross that we make the race.

[73GMCSprint]

The truck wasn't quite done (well, done enough to race) as of this morning, but it looked close. They were sure busting their butts to get it done. Hope it's ready!

[fleet]

Russell will post here shortly. He's had some technical problems accessing the site.

[rat_rod_russell]

We did make it, we pushed the truck into the SEMA Show Monday for setup and drove it our on Friday after finding and fixing wiring problems.


We put down 567.13 RWHP and 506.27 RWTQ at 4:00 A.M. Saturday morning on the Dyno at Wicked HP with the Help of Chris. When we got to the track we were still locking down a few little things and needed to finish bleeding the brakes. We were given an extension at Tech but ended up missing our deadline when the front wheels with the race tires high centered on the calipers. I had ordered them because I was told they would clear the Z06 Calipers but such had been our luck for the last 2 weeks (Turns out that wheel guy is out of business now, go figure). I'm working on a full report sorting photos and a video. Sorry, but for now you'll have to live with these.

After we missed our dead line we had all been awake for 36+ hours and not have had any good sleep in weeks we all wanted to just go home at that point. We we're told we will be aloud to compete next year because of our efforts this year. The wiring harness was the major last stab that slowed us down. 2 bad sensors wired so we didn't get it running before we left and ended up spending 30+ hours finding and fixing a $700.00 harness. I will not release their name because they did make the harness for me in 3 days and for that I am grateful and by my research they've never had this problem before but I can say I'll never buy another wiring harness from those guys again after the indignant response I got when asking about the problem.

-Russell


http://special-reports.pickuptrucks....jims-pt57.html

[rat_rod_russell]

Hot Rod Jim’s PT-57 SEMA 09 Story

So here’s the story covering the why and what happened starting after our last post of photos on the 22nd.

Monday when you last heard from us it was Thursday October, 22. We started installing the motor bits, intake, pulleys, and fuel system then we noticed a little problem. Sunday night, most of the wiring was down. We were finishing up the fuel system, but the fuel rail wasn’t going down all the way to the intake. It soon became obvious that the 42 pound injectors are LS1 injectors not the short body truck ones we needed for the LQ4 intake. Our goal was to be on the dyno Monday afternoon. We spent most of Monday morning looking for a quick fix on the injectors, because we wanted to be on the dyno that night but nothing turned up. We then spent Monday night modifying the system to accept the LS1 intake.

To get the LS1 intake to fit the turbo system we had to modify the intercooler piping. So all those parts had to come back off. The piping then started to hit the inner fenders so we then pulled the front end back off and get them re-shimmed. Wednesday night and we’re finally getting close to having all those mods knocked out. I hadn’t finished drawing up the shop banners for the booth yet so I was spending time working on that while Jim and Billy worked on the truck during the day. Then I would come in at night to run wiring. If you cam by the booth most likely you met Darren. A buddy of ours graduated top of his class from WyoTech and was the M Class tech at the BMW of Austin. He loves wiring so he came down 3 nights from Austin (1.5 hour drive) to help me work on the wiring and learn how to program the Stack ST700 Tack. I was still sorting the exact tuning setup since I’ve never programmed a Turbo car before and the EFI Live custom OS we were going to run was a little confusing to me still. Kendal was tearing up the TIG on the display parts and a few little odd ball parts for the truck we hadn’t built yet.

Wednesday more of the last minute parts showed up. We had a bad check from a customer so we ended up selling off one of our cars, the little black 32 roadster, that weekend to make up for it. Our missing pair of 12” Z06 Corvette wheels from FedEx, 2 Sets of Hoosiers followed the wheels in the UPS truck with a few other boxes of other little parts in tow. Getting those mounted took a little time. Turns out almost no one can mount a 12” wide wheel in this town but the guys at Expert Tire got it knocked out with 2 guys standing on top of the mounting machine jumping up and down on those 345/30/R19’s to get them on to the wheel. That was fun to watch.

Thursday saw more help and a few more headaches popped up. Kelly was back in the game full time busting on the truck helping to nut and bolt the chassis and he, the web coder, was actually getting some photos taken for me since I wasn’t even paying attention to it at that point. That day our truck and enclosed trailer both fell through due to unforeseen circumstances. So even if we got done we didn’t have a ride to the show. That’s when our buddy Jonathan pulled threw and hooked us up with his 1 ton Dodge for the trip. A long time friend of Kendall’s, Don with another shop in San Antonio, lent us his trailer since it had brakes where our normal shop trailer didn’t making the trip one step easier.

Friday the troops began to rally. Our plan we to roll out Saturday night and most everyone riding out was at the shop that day planning for a long night with some rest in the truck. Looking at what needed to be done, we recalculated when the absolute latest we could leave. Our new deadline now Sunday at 6 A.M. with the advantage of 2 hours in time zones and an additional hour because of the time change we had a few things going for us but the details of our to do list grew just as quickly. Darren was back in the shop now with all his stuff loaded up into the haul truck Kelly’s stuff on top of his, I hadn’t even looked at my bag yet, and I live at the shop in an apartment/ office. Kelly was plugging leaks in our turbos oil lines, Darren was still wiring getting all the grounds in place, Billy was locking down the turbo air lines and I was getting ready to start the truck for the first time.

Saturday we took the truck to have its front graphic mounted. Jim and Kendall both worked on the shop display, Billy was securing the advertising banners and cards while Kelly finished up some revision to the website. When I got back Jonathan and his son Charlie had both shown up to give us a hand getting the truck road worthy. Brianne our driver and her Boyfriend Jason both showed up even thought it was Brianne’s Birthday. We worked on driver ergonomics and pedal adjustment while I was trying to figure out something on the ECM. I played with it and played with it but I couldn’t get the pedal to show any signal, and the MAP wasn’t showing any voltage either. Watch our SEMA video to see what happened then. Saturday around midnight or Sunday morning later the truck still wouldn’t start. It would fire off then die. We decided that’s it and had to load it up. We couldn’t do anymore then, but we could plan to work on it at the show. So we did just that and started loading up the tools we would need to get it knocked out with. Then had to make plans for a second truck for the extra support tools we would need for chassis tuning. Kendall and Jim would stay behind and come out with those tools later and the 4 of us would all leave that night to make the setup for SEMA.

A whole lot of driving later its 7:00 A.M. and we’re in Vegas. We got checked into our hotel, it was supposed to be 2 rooms but they didn’t have it registered in there system so we only got one room and two beds for all 4 of us, yay. We got to the show, waded through all the crazy and finally got to our booth to set it up. Afterwards we all walked back to the hotel around 5ish and crashed.

The week was us all working off and on in the booth during the show then hanging around at night for 1-2 hours so we could spread out and pin out our harness looking for the reason the TPS and the MAP sensors weren’t showing any signal to the laptop. A short somewhere in the system but we reran both sensors back to the ECM and Wednesday night we got it to fire off and idle. I was still a little unsure of the tune so I went over to the EFI Live booth and talked to the engineers and programmers who make the software. Awesome guys all of them then Jesse Bubb asks me if I want him to write a base tune to make it easier. With my enthusiastic “hell yes” and he snapped open one of their laptops and started writing a base tune from a blank custom OS file. He asking me 2-3 questions and filled out almost 50 blank maps off the top of his head in 10 minutes then knocked it down to 3 tables for me to tune all based off the simple WO2 data. Rick Squires of Squires Turbos Systems offered me plenty of info and showed me a few things on his laptop for me to watch out for when tuning the remote turbos on the truck.

Friday, show was over and the mad dash out of the building started. We made it out around 7:00 P.M. then we were off to the tuners. Thursday night the guys with the Optima Battery Race hadn’t given up on us and helped us find a local Dyno plus a friendly shop owner who was going to be there all night anyway. Cody Chapman of Wicked HP was working on a Pro Mod Head and gave us a section of his shop to thrash in that night. We plugged holes, bled brakes, and worked out the tune for some safe power at the track.

We started on the dyno with 75 RWHP. The right bank coil pack had fried the fuse, swapped that and ran out all the fuel from the system then we started putting down 350-390 RWHP but we still weren’t seeing any boost. I had my buddies put their hands over the waste gate dump and could they feel hot air leaking out. Turns out in our rush we forgot to put in the sealing rings that seated against the plunger. We were all discussing about settling for dead turbos and run on all motor. Then the Cody pipes up “You want me to turn one?” Sure enough he chucks up a chuck of aluminum and went to town. An hour later we’re dropping the waste gates back in with their sealing rings. Crank it up and boom 5 PSI and we know the passenger’s side was still leaking a little. 3 pulls later and we have 567.13 RWHP and 506 RWTQ. By that time it was 4:00 A.M. and we still had to get out of the hotel and off to the race track.

[clill]

Damn.......