Seb's Goblin #454 (2008 SS/TC donor) - Registered

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Sebnuts

Well-Known Member
I received my invoice today, so figured I would start up a thread and introduce myself.
I purchased a salvage 2008 donor with around 165k miles roughly 2 years ago from a Copart auction - this was not a great experience, but got through it anyway. The car was in a front end collision, it was completely missing the front bumper and factory intercooler. The hood and driver side fender were damaged beyond repair.
I found color matching hood, fender and bumper off of a G5 from a local pick and pull junk yard and put a ZZP intercooler on to get the car titled and street legal.
After getting it licensed, I replaced the timing chain and put a Z54 turbo on it, and had ZZP do their remote tune. It's currently running around 24-25PSI of boost. I haven't had it on an actual dyno but it looks like similar builds are putting down around 330-350WHP with this combo. I'm thinking I want to run E85 with a 5th injector when it's all said and done with so I may take it up to ZZP for a dyno tune when the goblin is complete.

As soon as I get the chassis I will be doing a deep dive into the suspension geometry. At a minimum, I'll be building a set of rear lower control arms and change the angle of the strut if needed to get some anti-squat adjustability.

I just realized I don't have many pics of the donor, so I'll be sure to get a few more before I start tearing it down.
PXL_20201119_031712106.jpg
 
Desert Sasqwatch

Desert Sasqwatch

Goblin Guru
Welcome. Sounds like you have a good start to your build, always good to have a running donor before starting. As far as the rear suspension, DF has a new, but not yet released, rear suspension and subframe that corrects some of the geometry issue inherent to the Cobalt suspension - which is optimized for a FWD. Keep in mind that a McPherson strut doesn't lend itself to much geometry tweaking for anti-squat - the springs carry all of the weight with minor vectoring of weight into the LCA
or camber gain which is limited by LCA length and strut angle.
 
S

Sebnuts

Well-Known Member
Desert Sasqwatch said:
As far as the rear suspension, DF has a new, but not yet released, rear suspension and subframe that corrects some of the geometry issue inherent to the Cobalt suspension - which is optimized for a FWD.
Click to expand...
I purchased this kit as a 40th birthday present to myself. I've been following the "Adjustable Rear Suspension" thread, seems like I would have had to wait until my 45th birthday if I wanted the DF version LOL!
I'm a professional mechanical engineer (not automotive mind you) and amateur fabricator that likes to tinker with stuff like this anyway. There's a good chance I'll end up building a tubular subframe similar to the one DF posted up, if needed.

Struts are definitely not ideal in terms of performance, mostly curious to see what can be done to optimize with the least effort to start with. I purchased a license of susprog3d to help with this, so a full analysis of the "stock" setup will be the first thing on my list to get a baseline.
 
S

Sebnuts

Well-Known Member
I took a week of vacation last week. Between holiday stuff and some insanely cold weather, I managed to get the majority of the donor stripped down, I think all that's left is to drop the engine and fuel tank, followed by a LOT of cleanup and organization.
I managed to break the plastic elbow for the hose that connects the brake reservoir to the clutch, so I'll have to source a new one if it gets used on the goblin.
37506
 

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Desert Sasqwatch

Desert Sasqwatch

Goblin Guru
Sebnuts said:
I took a week of vacation last week. Between holiday stuff and some insanely cold weather, I managed to get the majority of the donor stripped down, I think all that's left is to drop the engine and fuel tank, followed by a LOT of cleanup and organization.















I managed to break the plastic elbow for the hose that connects the brake reservoir to the clutch, so I'll have to source a new one if it gets used on the goblin.
Click to expand...
The hard plastic hose? I think it gets replaced with a nylon hose, but not certain if this connector is still used with a stub off of it to connect to the nylon hose?
 
Rttoys

Rttoys

Goblin Guru
This piece here? You’ll need that, but there may be options to get around it if need be.
F0C2F9D5-9021-4E48-AFD9-667CD3FEA808.jpeg
 
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Sebnuts

Well-Known Member
Ross said:
Wow, that looks like some nice scans. Would you be willing to share them? Some of us like modeling in CAD.
Click to expand...
Yea, no problem. What CAD software do you use? If Solidworks, I can provide those files as they've already been aligned with some best fit geometry, otherwise I can just shoot you .stl files of the meshes and .step files for the geometry.
 
Ross

Ross

Goblin Guru
I use Rhino 7 which is an off shoot of autocad. It can read a bunch (20 or 30) of different types of files... but I don't really know the differences between them. [email protected]
 
E

enjost

Member
Sebnuts said:
I took a week of vacation last week. Between holiday stuff and some insanely cold weather, I managed to get the majority of the donor stripped down, I think all that's left is to drop the engine and fuel tank, followed by a LOT of cleanup and organization.
I managed to break the plastic elbow for the hose that connects the brake reservoir to the clutch, so I'll have to source a new one if it gets used on the goblin.
View attachment 37506
Click to expand...
I broke this piece on my build too. Let me know if you find a good replacement please.
 
S

Sebnuts

Well-Known Member
I made a little progress this weekend. Bent and coped some tubes and tacked up the new subframe.
PXL_20230305_201933959.jpgPXL_20230305_201950385.jpgPXL_20230305_203328122.jpg
And then bolted up the motor and trans so I could measure the clearance between the subframe and axle.
PXL_20230305_225445981.jpgPXL_20230305_225559533.jpg
With that out of the way, I'll be able to finalize the suspension design and start fabbing up the mounts.
 
Desert Sasqwatch

Desert Sasqwatch

Goblin Guru
Great progress on your new subframe! The design looks very familiar ;), but it is common sense for the triangulation to accommodate the stiffness for the LCA mounts. :D Get those front and rear transmission mounts fabbed up!
 

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