Mr.modified's GTR Four Zero

Nice lookin A-frames. Was everything TIGed up? Looks like pretty clean welds with no spatter all over.

Thanks. No I'm using a 110v hobart with flux core wire. I just cleaned everything off once I got done with it. I'm thinking of upgrading sometime soon.

Where the spindles slides in the sleeve it looks brand new for some reason. whatever, lookin pretty good man. Starting to get close to a roller.

Yeah no scratches or anything on it once I got the rust cleaned off. Anyway, didn't feel like doing heavy thinking out in the workshop last night. So instead I just drilled some holes in the trans shifter arm.

You can see what it looked like before about midway down on page three bolted to the peerless 700.

don't think the lost of metal there will make it more prone too cracking or breaking do you?

Looking good Mr. Mod! I'm guessing just front suspension, not rear?

Nah, I don't think it'll break. Should click into gear pretty easy anyway and not only that, but redline informs me that some shifter arms are just stamped steel anyway. Still plenty heavy.

And yes, only front suspension. Rear axle will be solid to the frame. Seat might have a spring though. I thought about doing rear suspension, but I figured the added weight and time wasn't worth it. I might have to re-evaluate using the 6" rims from the parts snapper where I got the hubs. Rims I have are somewhat tapered inside and might not be good to use. The problem is the snapper rims were pretty rusty. I'll have to look them over and see if they are savable.

Some modern day video footage of Lancia 037's running around. Gives you a nice look around the whole car for reference purposes. I'm pretty sure I know how the rear body work will go, but I still can't picture exactly how I'm going to make the front end. I think the hood will just be a sort of small cover over the engine, but the front fenders are the main problem. How to have front fenders that fit the sporty look.

Currently, both front a arms are done except for the brackets that will hold the shocks. I'm trying to figure out what rims to use up front. I'll either have to find 6" rims that have the same 4 bolt pattern as my hubs, fix up the rims that came with the hubs which are in really bad shape, or adapt the rims I have. Adapting the rims I have would take a lot of time. I'm going to start putting the engine together and hopefully That will be ready for a test run in about three weeks I'm guessing.

Transmission day today, since I'm waiting in figuring out what front tires to use and I can't find the rims that went with the hubs. I think they might have gotten scrapped. Cleaned every single piece of the peerless 700. Reverse deleted. I just need to get an input shaft seal before final assembly.


Everything back on the shafts so it doesn't get mixed up or lost.


Shift fork pitted from where some water ran down the shaft at some point. Nothing structurally wrong though. Painted the shifter arm white. Still working on the mounting plate. I have to make something to support the input shaft housing.

do you have any drawling's or pics of what this is suppose to be looking like

kawasaki220 wrote:

do you have any drawling's or pics of what this is suppose to be looking like

Not really except the first couple thread pages with some lancia 037 rally car pics. The rear should look pretty much like the car I hope. With the wing, black mesh grill area, round tail lights, and mud flaps. Rear fenders will be part of the rear section, but probably molded around the steel tractor seat. Between the wheels and fenders will probably be open, with only a small place to put your foot just behind the pedals. The hood and front end is the hardest to figure out. I think a tractor style hood, but the entire engine shroud might be visible through the top of it since the engine is so high and I want a low sleek look from the body. Front fenders Will be tough. I wanted them one piece with the hood, which might still work out. I'm not exactly sure how to make them look sporty and have them match the rear fender look. Grill in front of the hood will probably be two large openings left and right with black plastic screen. Similar to a sears custom. I tried sketching something out, but it didn't come out too good. Once the wheels and engine are in place, I will mock the body up from cardboard.

Current status in the engine department....

I plan on only running this thing with the upper tin work, but I don't like the idea of having such a large gap between the shroud and the lower cylinder. Also, it doesn't have a neat and clean appearance. So I cut the stock head tin work for that side down and added some extra pieces to the ends.  All welded on so the shroud lifts off as one piece.


Still needs some other holes filled in here and there, like the big rectangles that used to feed the air box.I'll plate both of those over.


I had the bolts threaded in to hold things for welding, but I may use bolts in the holes later instead of filling them just to keep a cleaner look. Also might use them to mount a throttle cable or something else.

Drilled all the holes in the manifold flanges. Figured I'd start on the headers. Junk block set on the frame in the approximate location where it will be bolted down. Keeping the engine as far forward as possible, higher cylinder forward. Since the whole tractor is going to be pretty small, there will already be a lot of weight on the rear from the seat location. The upper cylinder being forward gives you a little more room for the suspension.


The engine sits pretty high on the machine for how short the frame is. Pretty sure the shroud will stick through the hood.


1" washers for flanges with 1" electrical conduit 90 degree bends.


Front of the engine in relation to the suspension mounts. The block of wood the engine is on is about a 1/2" taller than the aluminum cross members it will sit on later. I decided to lay the cross members on top of the frame rails like the wood to give room for the belt system. Nothing can stick down below the frame level because the entire bottom will be covered with an aluminum skid plate.


Lining up the front pipe. The two will merge into one about in the middle of the green taped area. From there it will snake it's way around the transmission and under the seat and exit through two 3/4" mufflers. Unless I change my mind about the mufflers.


The crankshaft more or less centered on the frame has the exhaust pipes just out over the frame rails. There really shouldn't be anything wrong with this since your feet should be forward and I don't think any body pannels will be there. Probably though, the engine will be moved slightly to the right of the frame, maybe an inch or two. The first reason for this is obviously to give more room for the headers and especially the carbs. The side draft carbs and their air filters will probably stick out at least 6" from the ports. The second reason is that I think the port side of the engine is heavier than the other side. Extra block material for the ports, valves, lifters, and cam are on this side of the crank. The opposite side is just the aluminum block and rod access cover. So moving the engine to the right slightly should ballance the weight a little more evenly side to side. Not only that, but the steering rod that goes under the engine will have more clearance with the crank out of the way.

Intake manifolds started. Still need to cut down some edges on the washers maybe and then figure out how to link both throttles and chokes together on the carbs. I think I'll have a bracket for the throttle cable welded to one of the intakes.


I need to get rebuild kits for both carbs. At the very least needle, seat, and new press in fuel inlets. I think I'll make my own air filters. Probably an aluminum backing bolted to the carb, paper filter, and an aluminum cover. I saw small round air filters for an air compressor at tractor supply that I think would be about the right size. Otherwise I could cut out my own foam filters.

Tacking the shock brackets on




Should be good. They also help hold the tubes where they need to be.

nice welds, good job

Thanks. Things are turning out ok so far for the most part I think.
Peerless 700 racing transmission reassembled. Completely cleaned out, input shaft seal added, vent added, reverse chain and gears removed. One bottle of STP oil treatment dumped in. Ready to run.


Picked up some manifold gaskets. Some were not in stock, should be in next week. Needle and seat kits for the carbs and crankshaft seals.


Mufflers that will be welded together. I think I'll probably drill a 1/2" hole in the center baffle of each.


Picked up two parts 700 transmissions. No idea how many speeds. One probably completely rusted up inside, looks like it's been underground. The other one has a destroyed lower case. I was going to pull them apart and see if I can salvage anything. Maybe make one good one out of two. Most importantly, I pulled a pulley off the one with the broken case to use for the GTR transmission. About a 4-5" pulley.

Head sanded flat on the left with the one I just started working on to the right. You can see the light spots on the edge of the bolts where the high spots are. Funny how far off they actually are.


Close up view.


Sanded on the engine block also. Block is also pulled around the bolts some. I'll try getting the heads and block as close as I can working with sand paper first. Then I'll see if I can match them together with some valve lapping compound, grinding the head right on the block.


Started work on one of the front rims. It's not going to be perfect, but it should work out ok. Cut the hub out with a hole saw and a drill press. Took awhile since you have to cut really slow but it finally made it.


Hole is off slightly and made to look worse because I'm trying to hold everything with one hand and things are off a bit. The hole doesn't really matter as far as the wheel being straight on the hub. What matters is that I drill the lug holes correctly. Should be pretty easy with the drill press. The center part which is kind of pushed out needs to be pressed flat. There are two thicknesses of steel in the center as the rim is made of two stamped pieces welded together. One side is flat and the other side (shown here) is dished slightly. Not a major issue.

Are you going to chamfer the threaded bolt holes in the block? It will give the metal a place to go when you tighten the head down, instead of ant hilling like it did.

Maybe a little but probably not much. I think there will be less warping of the head without the factory head gasket. Metal to metal fit. Going to try to make the head and block fit as close as possible before installing with the high heat permatex. I now have all the parts to put the engine together. Bought a set of new lifters and gaskets for the manifolds. Priced out new piston rings, but decided to reuse the old one because they are $45 per set. The rings I have aren't worn down, just had some light surface rust from the water that was in the engine. I'll carefully clean them off then begin engine assembly. Working on sanding the manifold flanges flat the past few days.

Hope I measured everything right. Took some off the end of the crank so that everything fits nice and snug on the frame. Crank is now I think 2" from the mounting holes to the end of the crank. 2-1/4" from the skid plate to where the engine will sit. Perfect...till you run over a rock and bend the skid plate into the crank, May have a fix for that later.


Swiss cheesed the camshaft gear. Originally, the cam weighed 1106 grams. Now, with these holes I get 1031g. 75 grams of steel removed. That's more than an opposed exhaust valve which weighs around 69g. Intake slightly lighter at 63g. So by my calculations, 75 grams is about 6.8% of the total weight of the original unmodified cam. Which might not sound like much, but I don't really care so much about the total weight as I do the spinning weight which is mostly an issue at the outer edge of the gear. So just guessing that the gear is about half the total and the shaft/lobes are the other half, and also figuring all of our holes are at the outer 1/3rd of the gears diameter, we can say (estimate...) that drilling the holes reduced the spinning weight (improving acceleration) by about 15-19%. Sounds cool to me. Mostly the holes just look cool. I'll probably counter sink the rest of them and/or maybe drill the smaller ones out slightly larger. I could also drill another 4 holes in the center most row. One of those originally was to hold the cam as it was milled at the factory.


Anyone know if there is supposed to be a spacer here or a steel shim? I don't think there was, but if anyone thinks otherwise, let me know!

There should be a shim like whats between the gears in a transaxle. Thin but strong

Guess I'd better look through my stuff and see if I can find something

I still don't see any shims in any of my parts boxes. Anyway, some slight modifications to the oil slinger/dipper. This one was originally from the 40CI block. Decided to use this over the one out of the 42CI because the rivets holding the gears on look a bit heavier.


With the oil level up where it should be, only part of the top or larger slinger is exposed. If the oil level is low, the lower gear needs to help throw the oil up to the next one. Since normally this gear won't do much when the oil is where it should be and since I'll probably check the oil regularly anyway, only using this for short runs, I cut the lower paddles about in half. The upper paddles being much more critical only got about 1/4 of their lenght removed. Since the paddles are tapered and wider at the bottom, this doesn't signifigantly reduce the area of them...I hope. Opposed twins are fairly tall compared to some other engines I thought and didn't want to take too much off. I see the lower gear in this case being almost useless, but I didn't want to completely remove it. At least there will be some oil in a low oil situation or hard cornering ect.


Unchanged paddles (left) compared to modified ones (right). My goal was reduced drag and also reduced possibility of breakage at high rpms (which I have heard of about these and also steel dippers although I've never seen pictures). Engine building video and test running hopefully sometime soon. Still working on it.

Getting on well I see! Looks good

Making progress. I feel like it's going to be super tight trying to get it all done by the deadline with time left for a test run video. Trying to get the engine assembled this week. At least everything except maybe the carbs and intakes. I'll need to link the throttles together somehow and probably weld a throttle cable bracket to one of the manifolds.

As far as the chassis, I now have the center of the other front rim drilled out. Still need to drill the holes for the lugs.

Yeah. Do you have a rolling chassis yet