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

For our Tuesday work session we removed the exhaust, gas tank, replaced the fuel hoses (tank-side), odds and ends interior-wise, replaced the wheels with the snow tires in favor of the rubber the white parts car had equipped, removed th awkward metal shrouds surrounding the strut perches and finsihed removing the power steering.  Not bad for a couple of hours.  So far, we’re still tackling the easy stuff, we are all quite aware that the challenging stuff is what truly lies ahead of us.   I might have to be absent those days.

We want to make it clear, right from the get-go, we are a green race team.

That’s right. We are Type-R’ing this beast out.  We are too good for side moldings.  Too fast is more like it. Real fast.

We are fortunate to have such a straight body. Not a scratch on it.

…Ya…

Champiros! This is a step up for us!

I didn’t take any clear photos of the de-flowered interior since the last stint of work. We havn’t truly cleaned it, but this is an rx-7 interior without sound deadening.  Should be a hit with the girls.

A bit of funky corrosion on the exterior of the tank, but the real treat was resting INSIDE.  a couple inches of green sludge welcomed us. The white car’s gas tank is in much better shape, we will be starting with that one instead.

Rob went to work on finishing off the power steering pump. We are making efforts to simplifying the setup. Though, I am not sure we can call what we have a “setup” just yet.  More like the result of removing lots of junk, we have arrived at this outcome.

Nick, with his handy angle grinder decapitated the strut crowns, or whatever their official name may be.  Crowns. Ya, I like that.

Ya! REAL man stuff. Rarrr.

Now isn’t that a lot better?  That servo on the top of the shock piston is what controls the adjustable shocks.  This, ofcourse, will be going into the sale heap.

More to come.

We accomplished a lot of our tasks on the way to prepping for the cage and seat.  We were able to finish up the sound deadening after mother nature did her worst to the adhesive bonding the heavy stuff to the chassis.  A couple freezing nights in single digit temperatures made the job so much easier.  Along with the sound deadening we removed the rear hatch and front windshield, remove the remaining pieces of the dash, heater core, steering wheel, removed the radiator, ac components, power steering, sun roof, photo’d all of the junk we want to sell and gutted the doors.

We started bright and early. 11am.

The cold temps outside did it’s job beautifully on the adhesive bonding the sound insulation to the floor pan.  We beat on it with a hammer and it separated cleanly from the body.  The seam sealer is always a bit of a problem though. A thin screw driver or pry bar does the trick when the blunt hammer had none.

All the sound deadening removed on the back deck. It felt very satisfying to have it be such a clean job. I have removed sound deadening on other cars before, and this was the easiest without the use of dry ice.

This is what the interior in the front section of the cabin looked like at the beginning of the day. By the end of our little work day, it was barren.

There was a mild case of rust rash in food well.  Grinder, spray paint, bam!

Prepping for windshield removal.

I am inside chipping away at sound insulation.  Leo is… doing something.

Nick removing the power steering lines to the PS pump.

AC condenser on the left was removed in one piece, and hopefully, will be enjoyed by another rx7 owner somewhere.

Nick doin’ work on the door skin. It wasn’t long before they were both done.  It took longer to remove the windows and motors.

Inner door skin removed, it’s ready for door bars.  The guys are considering whether to go the whole nine and take out the support still remaining in the door.

Another successful day.

Ghost edit from leo:

We might need some suspension work…

Jalopnik just put up a great article comparing the two sets of rules for ChumpCar and Lemons.  Check it out.

http://jalopnik.com/5424315/lemons–chumpcar-2010-tech-rules-by-the-numbers

There seems to be some conflict brewing between Chump Car and 24 Hours of Lemons.  For me, racing is racing.  More races at more tracks on the west coast makes me happy.  I can appreciate both of their takes on the idea.  Judging by the number of entries turned away at the last Lemons thunderhill, it even sounds like the market can support two series as well.  Maybe people are just kicking dust.  See the linked blog post and form post from John @ chumpcar with more of the history about where they started and how open they have been with the Lemons team.

The Lemons side of things:

http://presssnoop.com/?p=1498

The ChumpCar side of things:

http://forum.chumpcar.com/index.php?/topic/396-why-all-the-fighting/page__pid__3024__st__0&#entry3024