The Road to ChumpcarThe home of "Apex of Failure" a crap-can racing team.

I took a couple hours today to do a little check up on the car.  Looks like we have a full team formed and ready for the next race (Laguna again!) in February.  This time around we have Chris and plus Matt and Doug from Free Range Racing.  This time around we are going to make a few slight changes that should make big changes to our results .

First up, how did the tires fare?

These are both of the fronts.  They have a pretty decent amount of tread left.  The outside edge definitely got the most wear.  We should probably get them flipped and try to get some more negative camber in the front suspension.

Brake pads look okay too.  At least for the next 7 hour race.  I’m a bit worried about the rotors.  We did have some major pulsation at the end of the last race.  They are grooved slightly.  I tried putting a gauge on it to measure any warping but I couldn’t hold them straight enough to get a reliable measurement.  I’m not sure what to do here.  Getting new ones is probably about as much as getting them turned.  Maybe its time to step up to a name brand with fancy slots or something?

I pulled the drain plug.  It sure looks okay to me.  I went ahead and cleaned up the threads a bit and got a measurement for the threads (M14x1.5).

I got the tap ready and cleaned up the threads in the oil pan as well.  They were a little worse off than the bolt.  I got a new crush washer and tightened it up.  Felt normal and snugged up good.

I also drained a gallon or so of water out so we could get some glycol in the car.  I’m going to start parking it outside again and I don’t want that water freezing.  Boy does the car hate being cold.  Runs great warm though.

I gave her a good oil change too.

I did a little R and R on steering wheel adapter.

The threads on everything look good.  The bolts must have just backed out a little.  One of our readers suggested drilling through it and getting hardware hard enough to go all the way through and putting nuts on the other end.  It might just get some fresh lock tight for now.

The wheels stepan got us are looking mightly nice right now too.  Maybe its time for another tire upgrade .

Our air filter is getting a little tired too.  It came with one of our previous donor cars.  We recharged it once but the metal mesh and filter element is getting a little frayed.  It’s probably time to do some service on this too.

Were thinking of putting an exhaust manifold on the car (now that we have our AIV down).  It’s going to make the exhaust louder, we might want to make a laguna seca elbow.

All in all, looking pretty good!