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.

Just finished up one of our regular Tuesday after work sessions.  Rob and Nick came over and we got started.  This is the first real work the gray car has had.  We are mainly focused now on getting ready for the cage.  We got all the cloth, interior, and the doors off.  Not bad for under 3 hours work.

Sure is nice to not have doors in the way.

Still lots to do here.

Freaking dash.  I spent an hour working on the passenger side and then nick came over and said, ohh you just do these two bolts and it will come right out.  *Face Palm*  Signs point to mold danger so its good that we got started on this.

All tucked in for the night!  That’s doubled over.  I may have gotten a slightly too large of a tarp.

The parts are really really starting to pile up.  We haven’t even really started on the engine bay.  We need to start getting this stuff sold.

No real problems found.  Nick found some questionably connected electronics and I found a receipt from a tire store dated 2001.  The inspection marked leaking dampers on the front and rear passenger side.  No repair was on the receipt, I doubt it was fixed.  Looks like we will have to use our “spare” dampers right away.

A great head start for the big work session on sunday.

Several of our debates rage on.  What seat are we going to get?  Do we have a final decision on the cage?  Heater core or no heater core?

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

A deal popped up on rx7club that seemed good for the team.  One of the forum members up in Seattle had a White 1987 GXL RX7 (same year and model!) that they were parting out.  I was originally just shopping for an alternator but it looked like he was getting rid of a whole car.  For the right price, we really needed spare parts of everything.  Lots of things can and do break during a 24 hour race.  While racing with FreeRange we have been lucky enough not to need them (knocks on wood) but we have saved the race of more than one FX16/MR2 team who needed parts.  This is high on my list of “good things I learned from other teams”.  With the intent of keeping nearly everything off this car I was able to negociate a price of $400 for the car and all the parts.  This included an aftermarket strut tower bar, exhaust, wheel, and short throw shifter.  Upgrades!

The car had been in a collision with a semi (side swiped, hit and run too.  Everyone was ok).  Nearly every body panel on the car was bad.  The good news was that it was driving fine less than a year ago and had spent that entire time wrapped up in a giant tarp under a car port.

I joined forces with a friend of mine who just happened to be taking an Audi up to Seattle to sell (the same weekend too).  Towed the Audi up and brought the RX7 back.

On 11/15/09 we started work dismantling the car.  This was our first major work day for the team.  All hands were on deck!  Max, Ben, Rob, and Nick all came down to get it torn down.  No real major drama here.  We managed to get nearly everything off in one day.  The pictures will speak for them selves.

We found a complete set of these sockets hidden away in the back storage bins.  Bonus!

Day 1 finished with a short list of things left to do.  Front subframe, gas tank, rest of the carpets, heater core, head lights, and engine accessories.  Less than 2 weeks later Gabe came over and we finished it up.

Rob works with a couple guys who offered to take the shell off our hands for the scrap metal money.  Not wanting to deal with it we got them involved.  I’m not sure they have done this much.  A late night a couple days later, they came equipped with a saws-all and a toyota pickup.  They eventually gave up cutting it in half and found a way to get it out…   Apparently he even drove to work with it like this a couple days later.

Now we have a large pile of parts to sell and parts to keep.  We should now have every part we need (and plus some!) to get our car running.