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Paul’s Salt Racing

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Paul’s Salt Racing

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04/28/2026

The old saying, “ it’s not what you know but who you know”. Is so true. My good friend David Pierce called and said, “I’ll swing by on my way home tomorrow, we can fix that turbo”. He came by today and BANG, it’s fixed. He raced with turbos for many years on his cars and knows what to do. We took it apart and clearanced it so it would move more freely. It could use a little more clearancing but it’s good enough. The photos show it all. Now it’s time to get back to the build. Get it on the dyno and finish it. See the attached photos.

04/26/2026

Well I got the turbo reinstalled and guess what ? Either I marked it wrong or the repair shop over rotated the turbo. You are supposed to be able to rotate the turbo ends to get the fl**ge faces to match. This turbo is so tight I can’t get it to move. Back to the repair shop. Look at the photos and you decide who screwed up, them or me. You can leave your vote in the comments.

04/24/2026

The reinstallation of the turbo has been giving me fits. I got it back from the rebuild shop and salt was the culprit. The Bonneville Salt Flats have the word “salt” in the name for a reason. Salt gets everywhere. Including around the turbine shaft. The salt sat around the shaft and attracts water. The water mixes with the salt and you get rust. That is what froze the shaft in place. They got a new turbine shaft, bearings, and sealing rings and got me all fixed up. I put it in the car and everything is going well until it doesn’t. Turbos have something called “clocking” that allows you to rotate the clam shells so the fl**ges mate up. I rotated the compressor side without much problem. The turbine side (exhaust side) did not want to line up. I pulled and twisted with all my might and nothing. Wouldn’t budge a millimeter. (Little metric lingo there because turbos are metric). I tried a strap wrench, sticking a hammer handle in the hole and pushing and no good. Called the rebuild shop and he says take a rubber mallet and beat it over. I said I have a lead hammer and he says “even better, give it hell, don’t be gentle”. Nothing would move it and I was applying more force than I was comfortable doing. After a couple of days I called a local turbo shop and took it there. They had it done in a few minutes. They said they used a rubber mallet. Tomorrow it goes back into the car. Photos to follow. I attached some photos with captions.

04/09/2026

I got the coolant tank mounted with the new hold-down straps. The tech inspectors are very particular about these straps because it would be a bad day if it broke loose in a crash. The last thing I want to happen is go through tech inspection and find out you need to go back to the pits and start welding. I always get their opinion (thanks Kiwi Steve) before making any safety equipment. I hooked up all the hoses and checked it off the list.

I also put the mounting studs in the base of the turbo with thread locker it will dry and so tomorrow evening I can start mounting it in the car.

04/05/2026

Turbo was delivered yesterday. A quick check revealed that I ordered the wrong length mounting studs. I ordered them to avoid the gymnastics it took to remove the previous bolts. New order already placed for the correct length. The turbo looks great but the rebuilder forgot to include the oil fitting gaskets. I’ll call them first thing Monday morning and get those coming. Why is this never easy? Turbo installation will commence once the correct parts are in-hand.

I had the rebuilder replace the turbine but he did refurbish the old turbine so I now have a spare. (You can see it off to the side in the photo).

04/01/2026

Got a good report on the turbo. Rebuilding the bearings and a new turbine For a small fee of course but it’s all fixable. Hope to have it soon. I’m implementing a new off-season check list to include periodic oil priming of the engine and turbo. This should eliminate what happened to the turbo.

In the mean time I have finally figured out the process of polishing aluminum. Renee bought me the best random orbital polisher years ago and every time I tried to use it I had limited success. So I sat down Sunday and tried things until I got it to work. I just needed to figure out the progressive compounds sequence. Now I’ve got it down. I polished the whole water tank and it looks a lot better. Next is air dam.

Sometimes race cars get interrupted by the mundane things of life like a broken lawn mower. Almost destroyed a gear puller removing the hub so I could replace it. New parts for the mower arrive tomorrow.

Photos attached with text.

03/26/2026

Dropped off the turbo yesterday afternoon and they found the bearing and a seal are the problem. The turbine vanes show some wear but they said that is normal wear. When I saw the turbine vanes with some chipping I thought the worst but as they pulled it apart on the bench the owner of the company walks by and says, “that’s not bad at all, I would run it” I felt better. I’m still having it replaced. The compressor vanes looked perfect so no worries on the compressor side. So new bearings and it should be ready to run. I should have it back next week. No pictures this time because I was too busy talking and not taking pics.

03/25/2026

After a lot of effort the turbo is out and I’m hauling it to Texas today to get it rebuilt. The very last bolt on the mounting bracket was almost inaccessible. I hade to cut a perfectly good wrench to get it into the small space I had to work with. It required me to lay my chest on the valve cover so I could contort my right arm to reach the bolt with the shortened wrench. I could only move it one flat at a time on the hex head. Then turn the wrench over and get one more flat. Each flat was about 15-20 seconds. It took a solid hour of that nonsense to get the bolt out. But it’s out. The vanes are still frozen solid and I confirmed it was getting plenty of oil. I’ll let the rebuilder tell me what happened but I’m sure the bearing is out. Which surprises me because it’s a ball bearing setup. I leave at 11:00 to drive down there and drop it off. Photos attached. More later.

03/24/2026

I knew things were going too smooth. Yesterday evening as I was putting heat wrap on the header tubes to isolate the heat. Some of the sensors that might not like a 1700 F header right next to it. I stepped back to stand up straight after bending over the engine bay for a couple of hours and rest my back. As I stood there looking at the turbo I reached over to give the vanes a small flip with my finger to spin them. Nothing. No spinning. In case you don’t know, a turbo should spin very easily. In operation turbo vanes will spin between 40,000 and 90,000 rpm’s. I looked at the vanes on both sides (intake and exhaust sides) and I didn’t see any debris or gouging. They were stuck. I turned a little harder. Nothing. Thinking the bearing may just be dry I prime the oil system with a drill spinning the oil pump and verified oil was flowing to the turbo. Still stuck. Damn! I found a turbo rebuilder in McKinney TX. After work tomorrow I will remove the turbo and I plan to drive to McKinney Wednesday and drop it off. I’m totally stumped why it’s frozen but it ain’t gonna make boost if it doesn’t spin. Race cars! Always something. At least I found it now so I’m counting that as positive. One step forward and one back.

03/22/2026

I made continued progress on the motor today. It’s amazing how those custom built headers that snake their way through engine bay and make it possible to fit the proverbial 6 lbs in a 5 lb sack. However, once they have had a number of heat cycles it becomes clear that once you take them off to work on the motor all those stress points created by all those welded joints make everything move just enough that nothing wants fit the way it did before. That starts the battle of trying to gain or lose that 1/16” here and there to get everything to go back together. Turbo setups are the worst. It’s one of those burdens you bare playing with race cars. I prevailed in the end. The headers, turbo, and waste-gate, are now securely mounted. Plug wires, exhaust temp sensors, block water hoses, boost pressure sensor, etc. are installed. Tomorrow is exhaust wrap/insulation to control the heat under the hood and anything else that is dangling free and needs to be reconnected. Then reinstall the intercooler. A few photos with captions are attached.

03/16/2026

Made good progress today. Attacked taking out the intercooler so I could reinstall the headers. Taking the headers out with the intercooler installed required Houdini levels of contortion. Reinstalling them was impossible. It was actually fairly straight forward to get the intercooler out. Not easy, but typical race car limited space difficult. Now the headers themselves are an adventure that has to be experienced. There are only 8 headers bolts but it requires 2 different sockets and 4 different wrenches to install those bolts. Some are ARP studs and the rest are 3/8” bolts with different heads. The studs use a 7/16” 12 pt. nut but some are so close to the header tube you have to use a 1/4” drive socket others a 3/8” drive socket with a swivel joint. One stud could only be tightened with a gear wrench ratcheting wrench. The guy who built the headers for me must have lost one of the ARP nuts and put on a standard hex that needs a 9/16” wrench. When I took headers off I put each part in a ziplock bag and labeled it because you can’t mix and match. It is the most specific arrangement I have ever seen. The next adventure was getting the collector on the tubes. Nothing like 4 dry gritty pressure fit tubes to get aligned all at once. Patience won out though.

Then I realized I forgot to buy new V clamps for the exhaust joints. The nut that tightens the clamps cuts into the threads when you install them so they don’t loosen due to the exhaust heat. But that makes them a once and done item. I know some people reuse them but I have enough trouble keeping things working without adding another possible point of failure. New clamps will be here in a couple of days. Photos attached for today’s progress.

Address

Newalla, OK

Telephone

+14056283371

Website

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