With the Texas ALMS season-opener just a week away, we've gone into high gear/gang-bang mode on the Lola LMP675, with no less than seven people working on various systems on the car simultaneously. When one of our projects gets to this stage, we work long hours, and depend on plenty of Dunkin' Donuts. DD must know this, as they've just built a new store right down the street from our shops! Here Andy is bringing reinforcements as an early Saturday begins...

Engineer Mark Schomann is lending very welcome assistance on the project. You can see he's had his sugar-fix and is already hard at work.

As we all know, Kevin J. doesn't NEED donuts to get up to speed, so we can only assume he'll find a way to employ them in the car's construction... See below for details on the plumbing he's working on in the photo.

Rene does beautiful work with or without donuts...

Since the car doesn't have wheels on it yet, Gunnar, our young driver, can only munch donuts and go "Vroom, Vroom" in the driver's seat...

The Lola isn't our only sugar-powered project...here Bill gets an early Saturday morning start on the '73 Sebring-winning RSR (another on-going project you can follow here on our website).

Martin's looking low on energy, for obvious reasons. This is what happens when you arrive late on gang-bang day...

And now...back to our story...

Lots of progress over the weekend. The entire rear end paraphernalia is all in place, and you can see the shift linkage (black rod running from the gearbox above the motor). As it turns out, we won't be using linkage after all (but a cable instead), but more about that in the next update.

In a previous update we mentioned that both the intake and exhaust go through separate sides of the turbocharger. Here you see the piping starting to be extended on both sides to ultimately meet the turbo and the intercooler.

As a test, we'll be employing the right-hand radiator for engine (head) cooling water, and the left-hand radiator will be an oil cooler. Here you see the beginnings of the hose fittings that will connect this water radiator to the water pump and the heads.

This is a different oil tank than the one that came with the Lola, and has been customized for our application. What you're looking at is the top of the tank, sitting on the internal pickup/baffling fixture as the supply and return lines are being fabricated.

The pickup/baffling fixture has several functions. The baffles keep the oil from sloshing around in the tank, and also help remove air bubbles from return oil. The "hats" near the top prevent splashed oil in the tank from coming out the breather vent.

The oil cooler, oil tank (up forward, just behind the front wheel), and some of the oil supply and return hoses.

Kevin working out locations and piping pattern for the turbo/intake plumbing. You can see the exhaust pipe risers coming up to and entering the "hot side" of the turbo. The exhaust will then be routed out the back, on one side of the wing support.

A better view of the intercooler-turbo plumbing. This is a KKK turbocharger, utilizing a K27 "Hot side" (the exhaust housing) and a K29 "cold side" (intake compressor housing).

The other side of the turbo (the cold side), with the compressor housing removed to reveal the impeller inside.

Mark is modifying a GT1 rear air jack mount for our application.

The Lola wing is suspended in place while custom mounting brackets are fabricated and the location of the air jack mount fixed. The wing mounting brackets are first made from paper to the correct size and shape (and bolt-hole pattern), and then the finished pieces are made from aluminum. You'll see the finished mounts in the next update.

Meanwhile, Marcus from Motec and Andy are hard at work on the car's engine management system. There will be a completely different and more full system for the other motor we'll be using after Texas.

The four-cam/four-valve air-and-water-cooled motor currently in the car utilizes Kugelfischer mechanical fuel injection. The two-valve, fully air-cooled motor we'll use after Texas will have Motec electronic fuel injection. Note the silver box (red arrow). This is a Permatune CD (capacitive discharge unit), which will fire the spark plugs in this motor. The 2-valve motor will feature an ECU with separate transformers for each cylinder.

As for when this is all going to be finished...we'll make that call Tuesday morning (27th). If we decide we can't make Texas, it'll be because we don't want to jeopardize our Sebring program, which is our crucial warmup/test for Le Mans.

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