Photos of other interesting cars from the $2011 GRM Challenge
Well That Could Have Gone Better…
After the scramble to get the car running, to the competition, and back I didn’t feel like posting anything. Now that the holidays are over with and I’ve had some time to reflect on the past year it’s time to start working on the car for next years $2012. But before I do that I should probably post up a summary of how the event went and post some details on parts of the build that have not been covered yet.
So I’ll start with the competition weekend…
10/6/11 Day Before the Competition
I took the day off work to pack the truck and finish getting the car “ready”. After picking up the rented trailer from UHAUL I made a harness bar (seat belts are nice to have) and fixed a couple coolant leaks. Skitter dropped off three wheels he was able to find in pull-a-part that would allow us to run the junk Hoosiers we got donated. We threw those in the truck and headed off to Gainsville, only having driven the car a couple hundred feet (idling around the neighborhood) and onto the trailer.
10/7/11 Day 1 Autocross & Concourse
Day 1 started early, we got to the track early, unpacked the car, and started getting things ready. We completed a couple last minute things and got the Hoosiers mounted on two of the “new” wheels thanks to Kuhmo. As I walked the autocross course, the rear wheels were swapped out in favor of the new Hoosier shod junkyard wheels and we were ready to go.
The first few runs were interesting… The car definitely made a good amount of power, but the Hoosiers were rock hard and provided almost no grip and the junk all seasons on the front provided an interesting handling dynamic. The engine burnt quite a bit of oil, especially off-throttle, and spewed fuel rich exhaust on throttle thanks to the super rich “tune”.
All in all everything was going ok, the engine had not blown up (which was nice considering we were not able to control boost), the brakes worked, and while it was not fast by any means it at least made it all the way around. That is until…
In all the excitement before the autocross event started, the rear wheels were swapped out and no one properly torqued down the lug bolts. I should have checked them myself after returning from the course walk but did not, important lesson for next year. As you can see, the wheel left the car at a good rate of speed on one of the last corners of the last autocross run. It passed me, hit the concession stand, and rebounded almost back to the car.
Those who were close by helped get the car up on a jack and we cobbled together some decent lug bolts (thanks Condor Speedshop) and were able to get the car clear of the course. We pushed it to the concourse judging area and no one noticed we had one odd ball wheel!
The hub was fairly damaged due to the lug bolts shearing out most of the threads of the hub which made securely mounting a wheel impossible. Luckily no damage to the fender or suspension was done. We pushed it up onto the trailer and headed off to try and salvage what we could.
The solution that we ended up implementing was to drill and tap the holes in the hub to the next size up and use the appropriate lug bolts. We spent quite a bit of time behind O’Reilly Auto Parts on East University Ave., who were nice enough to provide us power for our drill and put us in contact with Advance Auto Repair on East University Ave. who graciously allowed us to borrow the tools we did not have (proper drill and tap). Unfortunately, the drill bit was not up to the task of drilling though the hub’s hardened steel.
After just about giving up as it was getting dark, we noticed a couple guys wearing J&K Machine Shop shirts in the O’Reilly’s. The guys in O’Reillys had recommended J&K earlier so we decided to ask if they might be able to help us out. They were more than happy to help out, we followed them to the shop and they were able to get the hub drilled and tapped in short order!
After an extra long and disappointing day, we packed up and headed back to the hotel, “ready” to run down the drag strip the next day.
10/8/11 Day 2 Drag
Unfortunately the rain came early and the GRM staff was only able to open up the strip for a couple of runs before it was deemed unsafe to run. We packed up and headed back home…
Overall it went pretty well considering the first time we more than just cracked open the throttle was the first autocross run. We learned a lot and have a big list of things to accomplish before next year.
Special Thanks
A lot of people helped with car over the past year and there is no way the car would have made it to the competition without their help. I’d like to say thanks for all the help…
- Christian Yeager (aka Skitter)
- Nick Ginga
- Greg Ostrowicki
- Mike Hirsch
- Robert Amaro
- Ryan Archibald
- Greg Koerner
- Condor Speedshop
- Vorshlag Motorsports
- J&K Machine Shop
- O’Reilly Auto Parts on East University Ave. in Gainsville
- Advance Auto Repair on East University Ave. in Gainsville
Less Than Two Months To Go
Its been slow going for the past few months so we’re really going to have to thrash to get this together for the challenge. We’ve made some more progress on getting the turbo installed and the Megasquirt assembled but neither one is complete.
The to do list is still quite long and we’re running out of time. Should have quite a few updates in the next couple weeks…
Plumbing!
Literally… the cheapest way we could come up with a turbo manifold was using some scrap carbon steel for flanges and some 1.5” schedule 40 steel pipe and bends. We decided to flip the stock exhaust manifolds and go from there. Conveniently, due to the firing order and manifold separation it’s perfect for a twinscroll turbo like the HX-35 so we wanted to keep the manifold divided all the way to the turbo.
We started by squeezing the pipe in a vice to ovalize it so it would fit up with the divided T3 flange better (it has two rectangular openings). That lasted about a minute before my vice exploded, so we continued on with a small sledge hammer. After we had our straight sections set we held the turbo in place and tacked up the flange with some angle iron. After a little connect the dots with our pipe we had something that loosly resembled a manifold. After Robert completes the welding and some cleanup I think it will look halfway decent for less than $40 in plumbing supplies and scrap steel.
