Deanz Rodz & Racecarz

Because of the limitations of yahoo's web hosting , we have decided to add this page rather than keep adding to the whats next page .. To see the Sidewinder build from the begining ..Start with the Whats Next page ....

Headering North 

We had the oppertunity to become involved with a very cool header manufacturer from Minnesota for this build ..Stainless Headers from Barnesville Minnesota .. Chris drove 10 hours to our shop to mock up their kit ..This kit takes all the guess work out of building headers ..They ship you a series of flanges,  adjustable elbows and collectors .. All you do is simply cut PVC water pipe slip over the elbows and screw down with self tapping screws ..Once you are satisfied with the headers you ship them back to them and they custom build your headers in stainless steel ..This is without a doubt the most ingenious system and the simpliest i have ever seen .. Chris(top pic on right) and Tom brought with them a camera and computer system and we mounted the camera up by the ceiling .. Very soon you will be able to visit Chris's website at www.stainlessheaders.com and be able to watch a timelapse video of this header mock up kit being built .. Stainless headers are also building the exhaust system for the Ghia as well ... Over the years we have built our own headers in house ..But this has changed everything for us ..From here on in we are definately having our headers built by these guys ..I cant say enough about this kit it is just DOWNRIGHT COOL !!
Today we recieved the picture of the drivers side header that is pictured above and shown in the previous picture in the mock up stage using the kit from stainless header manufacturing .. The look is more than i could of hoped for and the impact is going to be awe inspiring.. And while we are on the topic of awe inspiring

Jesse from Illinois Dyno Center .. www.idc-solutions.net.. arrived to Partially assemble the Ghia's powerplant the 505 cubic inch viper engine had its heads redone by Rolling Thunderz up above the border in Canada .. www.rollingthunderz.com .. The heads recieved extensive porting and have Manley valves installed..Rolling thunderz also designed their own custom grind for their camshaft used in this and had it grond for them by Comp Cams..The heads come back with all the Flow Bench figures and they should be able to suck Nuns of Bicycles at 50 feet ..LA Metal Polishing took anything that could be removed and polished it to a high sexy luster ..Jesse assembled the engine with the new camshaft , roller rockers .. Horsepower and Torque figures should be fairly even with about 600-650 hp and 600-650 ft lbs .. Topped off with Billet throttle body and Billet Valve covers from X-Metal .. Later on Jesse and the crew at IDC will finish the engine off when they run the engine on their dyno .. But for now we simply need to build the rest of the exhaust system.. and another teaser for how thats going to look... twin 3 inch angled turnouts will peek out just ahead of the rear wheels.. The Ghias exhaust is also being made by Stainless Header Manufacturing ...  

Catching up....

We have been slacking in our web site duties of late .. This summer has been a testing time and we have been under the gun 24/7 this summer ... With the Nova that sat in the background of many pics finally out of our hair and massive amounts of work done to fix our flooding issues we still have been able to get the sheet metal work done and the ghia is rapidly approaching completion and is getting close to being turned over to Dennis Bodmer at Specialty Auto Body in Mendota Illinois .. The following pics skip a few of the steps involved in getting the ghia to its current state .....
Go and Whoa

The clutch and brake pedals are a bell crank assembly that allow the clutch and brake master cylinders to be hidden under the dash ..The pedals are fitted with billet oval pedal from Billet Specialities
Bringing up the rear ...

This probably doesn't make to much sense to most people but what you are seeing is the inner structure of the rear valance panel .. originally the VW's engine was in the rear and the rear valance was held in place by the sheet metal around the engine .. Now the trunk is just that a trunk and we had to fabricate an entirely new inner structure to support ever panel in the Ghias body ..
Tin is In ....

Like I said we are skipping a few steps in the build here ...Simple truth is we didn't stop and take pics enough and some of the Ghia's Fabrication steps are lost in the process ... The Ghia's Sheet metal work has been an extremely time consuming experience ..The Ghia is designed to be a work of art from the underneath so all the strengthening ribs are turn inwards to allow for a perfectly smooth underbelly ... The sheetmetal was further complicated by the roll cage requiring part of the floor to be a bolt in and part being a welded in part of the body .. The way the floor is done allows for a very careful removal of the body shell .. The final assembly of the Ghia is going to require a very patient crew to prevent scratching of the body or chassis and severe threats have been made to the help following a disaster several years ago of my personal roadster at assembly ...
No Wasted spaces...

Eagle eyed veiwers will notice unusual buldges in the transmission tunnel... The Ghia's body is so small and the Viper engine and 6 speed transmission is so large that we pulled the sheetmetal in as tight as humanly possible that rather than sacrifice and extra inch in the tunnel buldges were made around mount bosses and the reverse lock ... This will make the upholstery more difficult but the need for space demands a sacrifice at Russ's end ... The drivers seat is now almost back in the rear seat original postion and suprisingly myself 6' 1"and Dennis Bodmer 6'2" are able to sit in the Ghia comfortablely .. My 5' 2" daughter Nikki is able to slide the seat forward enough to accomadate her... The Ghia should fit anybody with the exception of NBA players and wizard of oz munchkins 
Completely Exhausted

We have the headers installed from Stainless Headers and the workmanship from these guys is simply amazing ..We have a copy of the video that they filmed here and it will be linked to this as soon as somebody figures out how to do it ... I have come to the decision that i am not going to make my own headers anymore ...This way is just to simple to do and I now have a supplier who quality is up to my own picky standards ...... If you click on this link you can see the video with some luck.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYCck4pTn6g
Dashing thru the snow ....

Okay so its the end of summer and snows a long way of ...The Ghia's dash is a hand hammered all steel comfiguration that has to be the most difficult to design yet ... The dash hides all the clutch ,brakes ,wiper motor, computer, bell crank assembly and fluid resivors ..Complicating the dash was having a roll cage go though it .. The roll cages cross bar/brace serves as a mount for most of the underdash components ... Later a billet gauge cluster will hold the speedo tach etc .. Mid dash will a a LCD screen computer ... The Ghia will even get a glove box ... The Ghia may be a grossly overpowered go kart but you still have to put your road maps somewhere .........
Tubbed Vee Dub ?

Like I mentioned early some of our build steps were skipped due to a hectic summer ... The Ghia's wheel tubs are once again are hand hammered ...Since this pic mounts for the trunk hinges have been installed and a reinforcing brace for the rear window valance has been hidden away ..Later a hand hammer fuel cell will fill the void between the tubs ... Over the years I have used bought tubs from the likes of Jegs and the more I get into building cars the more disappointed I get with the quality of bought components ... With each car we have bought more and more equipment to enanble us to do more and more work in house ..With each car the amount of work we do in house gets bigger and bigger ... The Ghia is entirely 100% built in house this time we have even gone as far as humanly possible to ensure a fit and finish that will win over the pickiest of the pickiest

Going with the Flow ...

I realise we haven't updated in ages and because of some complaining by a friend of mine in Florida we are taking time out to do it ..... ( Hi Dennis ..Now quit complaining ... I'm busy ..)

Okay the Viper engines orginal thermostat housing was a bulky unit that interfered with the radiator so after many hours on the computer designing a new one .. The orginal was a 45 degree unit that wrapped around and projected out about 6 inches ... The solution is now less than 3 inches and redirects the coolant at 90 degrees and outflows the orginal viper design by 200% .. The new thermostat housing also eliminates the ugly plastic power steering resivor and now has a billet aluminum resivor ..nothing is ever easy on the ghia all this also required us to modify the power steering pump to acept a threaded fitting rather than the generic slip in plastic fitting .. What many people dont realise is what kind of time jobs like this take .. The thermostat housing swallowed up about 30 hours of CAD design CNC programming and machining .. If you do the math on that this one off thermostat housing should of cost over $2000

Steering in the right direction

The Ghia's steering is nothing short of a nightmare .. To overcome the inability to put a rack and pinion under the engine the rack had to be moved in front of the engine and then a secondary slide had to be built to allow the tie rods to be mounted in the unusual fashion .. Contless hours were spent perfecting the function on the computer being a single chip was made .. According to the numbers the computer spat out the entire amount of bump steer this design permits is a whopping .024 of an inch side to side or .048 total over the entire travel of the front end .. Not to bad when .125 total is concidered acceptable ... And for my eagle eyed watchers who think the spindle looks weird in the picture .. It is .. Its one of my rear steer spindles turned backwards .. Its just for a mock up

Close Quarters

The last 2 pictures are just showing how close everything is in the Ghia .. The space in front is even more compacted with the radiator that has to be fitted in the nose .. There is no room for too much in the front of a Ghia let alone the massive amount of iron and aluminuim that has been squeezed in there ... The Ghia is on its way out of here soon as of the adding these comments the list of things to do is now down to one page and at last count 16 items to go ... pretty soon the Ghia is off to Dennis Bodmer at Speciality Auto Body in Mendota Illinois ...

What a big turn-out

The fine folks at Stainless Header Mfg in Barnesville Minnesota have built the entire exhaust system for the Ghia .. Ususally they build headers only but in this case they went out of the way and built a one off 3 inch exhaust system with a free flowing resinator/muffler .. The whole system is in 4 pieces- header , front 90 degree turn , center muffler and this turn out .. It all clamps together with a slick band clamp that seals it all up .. The unusal turn of the front turn-out is a necessity to clear the intermediate body mount .. There is no room for anything in the Ghia and the exhaust system was subject to the same troubles that this huge engine has provided in this tiny car ...

 Thems Da Brakes............

I have been doing this kinda stuff for many years but every once in a while I make something that finally becomes what I see in my head .. And for the Ghia I wanted to do something that I dreamed up about 10-12 years ago .. Rather than the ususal hub with a hat from companies like Wilwood , I wanted to make a one piece billet hub with a jigsaw puzzle like interlocking fingers to hold the rotor in place .. The saddest part is that this interlock will never see the light of day ..It will be between the hub and the caliper mounting plate .. 100 % of people who see the Ghia finished will never know just how cool the back of this hub and rotor looks .. This is the effect I wanted .. The pictures here don't have the impact that seeing these in person does ..Unfortunately the billet calipers havent arrived yet .. The Calipers are from Aerospace Components and the drilled rotor is a Wilwood piece ..Once the UPS man drops the calipers off we will update again ...