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FUN! Great to meet everybody. Tom, Mike: can't thank you enough. Paul M.

I have a new Accusump system for sale 1/2 price. (After I bought the Accusump I changed my mind and installed a dry sump.) If my crazy job lets up a little I hope to come down and meet everyone at the NJ event! (Paul M, Super Stalker # 150.)

re: engine porn, can you tell us about any of the mods and performance parts?

For what is worth, I have read that the inspection part of the process is the same regardless of whether or not the car was previously registered in another state. In my case, I had the advantage of researching the law and talking to others while I was building my car (Stalker #150) - but it failed inspection anyway. The car did pass on the second attempt, about six months ago. Budlite's bumper ideas helped. Please PM if you want to talk about the details.

looks like a 12v 50 amp Nippondenso: http://www.spidermarine.com/inventory/101344-100-new-nippondenso-12-volt-50-amp-alternator you will want to check the rotation before you buy it.

Degoetz, you probably already considered this, but for a given caliper model, Wilwood offers different piston area choices. ex. if you have a Dynapro with 5" total piston area, you can go to the 4" or 3" version for less front bias - in case your issue is outside the range that a front proportioning valve can cure. Given your tandem master cylinder installation, different front/rear master cylinder piston diameters would be another solution - I did not see one like that on the Wilwood website but they might be out there. Brake setup is one of the simpler things to model on a car. There are spreadsheets on the internet. I made my own, just so I could understand the problem better. You will never get better than a rough estimate because tire and pad coefficients are a moving target - but if you can come up with a theoretical ball park estimate you can evaluate different set ups - could save time and money. A separate comment about heavy cars braking better than lighter cars: a well set up heavy car with lots of rubber can have certainly have good braking - but apples-to -apples, less weight will yield better grip, better braking and faster cornering (why we like sevens.) Yes, more weight or normal force increases grip, but that benefit is netted out by the increase in the inertia of the heavier car. Meanwhile, more weight pushes the tire deeper into the aggregate, which decreases the friction coefficient. See The Tire Handbook, Paul Haney, and The Chassis Newsletter, Mark Ortiz.

Are you sure about Cd being an area ratio? For cars we would normally be talking about projected frontal area. Real or planform area would not come into it. I can't see anyway to derive a single Cd in terms of multiple areas and have not run across anything about it. Hey I am not an aerodynamics engineer.. am I missing something? I agree with Manshoon11 about CdA being more relevant than Cd. Gives us an excuse for having pitiful Cd's!

I believe that car has 10.75" Wilwood rotors and Dynalites on the front, and 11" GM rotors w Dynalites on the rear. You can find the 2012 report that John posted on the Stalker forum. He reports 900 F front, 1000 F rear, bias adjusted so that the fronts locked just before the rears. The temperatures were measured after stopping the car; peak rotor temperatures would be higher. I made a spreadsheet when I was setting up my own brakes. I estimated that weight transfer during braking could easily be 70% or more to the front tires - depending on grip. So far my testing has confirmed it. That means the front brakes have to convert 70% of kinetic energy of the car into heat, while the rears have to do only 30%. Since the rear rotors are similar in weight and surface area as the front rotors, that says something about how much better the air flow is over the front rotors.

On a fast track with slow corners, the rotors might get pretty hot, even on a 7. A fellow Stalker reported 1000 F on his rear rotors. The front rotors work harder but the rears do not get as much air flow. You can estimate temperature increase per braking event using conservation of energy. Fred Puhn has a recipe for the calculations on page 11 of his Brake Handbook: http://www.scribd.com/doc/235504442/Brake-Handbook-Fred-Puhn I ran the numbers for my car. A single braking event from 100 to 40 mph would yield an average rotor temperature increase of 190 F. 140 to 40 would give an increase of 407 F. Paul M

Thanks for starting another interesting thread.. So - my front and rear roll cage hoops have combined frontal area of 210 sq in. For 150 mph and Cd = 1 , theory says that I would have 68 lbs of drag, which would use up 28 WHP. Might be enough to effect balance too. If the center of roll cage pressure was 40 inches off the ground and 18 inches ahead of the rear wheels, cage drag would transfer 29 lbs from the front to the rear tires.

Hey Jamie, You may remember we talked on the phone last year. My wife and I plan to drive the Stalker to Limerock on Labor Day - assuming good weather. I would do Sunday as well but too much to do on the car for upcoming Ambush. Hope to see you! Paul M

Bruce, Any chance a Sunday would work? 6/15 or 6/22? Paul M Super Stalker # 150

All good suggestions! Also, - does # 48 have LSD? - A number of Stalker owners have reported significantly improved handling when they switched to the current Brunton spec'd springs (stiffer, 600/300) and shocks compared to the set up that the earlier cars had. I will be starting with a similar set up, but with sightly softer rear springs. I'll see how I like it if I ever get registered. Paul M SS # 150

Interested in buying an open trailer for my Stalker. Located in CT. 914 318 4663

Budlight, Any chance I could talk to you sometime? I will be having my car inspected in a month or so. thx, Paul

Hi Guys, First post, also been a lurker for a while. Sounds like I need to talk to Budlite as well. I will be finishing my Stalker build and registering in CT next year. You do have to jump through more hoops in CT than in many other states. I have tried to research the rules but remain somewhat confused. I have spoken to Cobra guys who have registered recently without a lot of trouble. For me the biggest pain is making an appointment, taking off from work, trailering the car to central CT, possibly getting rejected over some build detail, having to go home and correct what ever they don't like and then trailering to central CT for yet another inspection. Our cars are emissions testing exempt; although the rules say that smog equipment may be required, I have been told that the inspectors make up their own rules and do not pay attention to your smog gear. Reportedly, their focus is mainly safety related: e brakes, heat shields, DOT labels on lights, windshield safety glass, legal seat belts, etc. Much of this is outlined in CT DMV R-157. Des, feel free to contact me if you want more details. Sorry if I have posted in the wrong place... - Paul M

Blaine: I am in between guru's right now. Fred is not with Valvtect anymore; I think he retired. Hard to find good engineers that will let guys like me pester them with endless questions. How come all reps aren't as good? WestTexas2K: last year you reported good results with your Jegs foam. Still holding up OK? The Stalker guys have had trouble with the foam in Jaz tanks. I just got a Fuel Safe cell: their foam looks and feels like the same stuff as in the Jaz tank. Actually, it feels like polyethylene.

Hi, new to the group... I have been slowly learning the hard way about E10. It can definitely ruin an engine. Commercially sold gasoline is not the clean product that we would like to think it is anyway. In my business, E10 has been a major concern and I don't like it... but it does not seem to be as bad as the magazines say it is. For what it's worth, this is what my experience has been from selling E10 and storing boats with E10 gas: Phase separation does not automatically occur in three or six months unless a lot of water gets into the tank thru a bad load of gas, a fill cap being left off or the like. Yes, there can be condensation on the tank walls and I don't doubt that water vapor absorbs into the surface of the ethanol fuel over time - but we store a lot of boats and we are not seeing fuel system damage or phase separation in fuel tanks that went into storage with uncontaminated fuel. Maybe E10 would eventually go bad this way, but not in six months - at least we have not seen it, and this is with open tank vents - not with closed fuel systems like modern cars have. It is relatively dry in the winter most of the time. Maybe we would have more of a problem if we were in a more humid environment? If the fuel is suspect, there are ways to test it. Up to a point, E10 will absorb water without showing it. Phase separation occurs when E10 becomes saturated with water. I don't remember the numbers - maybe 3% at room temp? Until it reaches the saturation point, the fuel will look clear. One test we sometimes do is put a fuel sample in the freezer. If not quite saturated but there is enough water in the fuel, it will turn cloudy when it gets cold. If thefuel is really bad and phase separation has occured already, the alcohol/water/sludge drops to the bottom of the tank. The fuel on top will look clear, but will be low octane. Both the low octane gas and the stuff on the bottom is bad news. Another test is to take a measured sample of good fuel, add increments of water until phase separtion occurs. Then we take a sample of the suspect fuel and perform the same test. If less water causes phase separation, then the suspect fuel already had some water in it. Or you can send a sample out for $$$. I learned all of this from my fuel guru, Fred Ruling at Valvtect. If anyone knows of additional practical testing methods, I am interested. There are limitations to this kind of testing. The amount of water required for saturation will also vary with the percent alchohol. If the supposedly E10 is really E5 or E25, then you don't know if your simple test is telling you the water content or the alcohol content. One fuel supplier told me that gas stations can sometimes end up with water and phase separation in the tank. They pump out the water and then add pure ethanol to get the octane back up. Hopefully they are testing the fuel when they do this. I have been told that low octane fuel is delivered to regional depots, and then the ethanol is added before distributing to the gas station. Sounds like lots of opportunities for things to get screwed up! Stabilizer seems to work. I don't think a stabilizer will prevent phase separation but it does seem to prevent varnish and solids from depositing as much. We especially recommend stabilizer for engines with small carburetors, especially 4 cycle outboards that have very small jets. Do your homework on stabilizers. There are all kinds of additives on the shelf; some potions might make things worse - like alcohol based products. Dry gas will not solve a phase separation problem! Depends on which expert you talk to; some say empty the tank for storage, others say store with a full tank. I find arguments for full tank or near full more convincing - as long as it is not for a year or more. Near full is preferable to avoid fuel spilling out the vent from thermal expansion. Most boats have aluminum tanks. E10 may be corrosive, but we have not seen corrosion damage on aluminum unless there was contamination or phase separation. Maybe we will if we wait long enough? E10 is a good "cleaner." Pre E10 aluminum tanks tended to get white oxide deposits. When we were forced to switch to E10, the oxide broke loose and clogged filters for a couple of years. Another issue that we learned about after it was too late, was that alcohol and MBTE should not be mixed; apparently they react and precipitate some kind of solid. Hoses and seals have to be ethanol rated. This is pretty important. We have not seen any problems yet, but I expect we will. Have read that ethanol is bad for the foam in fuel cells; I am putting a plastic tank in my car, but will be leaving the foam out for street driving.