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

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…

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?

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.