Chump car race,r anybody?

[Rattlesnake]

Last weekend was my first wheel to wheel race at the VIR 24 hours, a Chump car race. I co-drove a Honda Civic and it was a blast. We started last (82nd) and finished 15th. Anybody here doing this with a Mopar?
32985
32986
32987

[Orangetona]

Wow nice placement! Thats pretty awesome. :)

[Vigo]

I dont know of anyone doing chumpcar or lemons with a turbo mopar.

Although, over on TD there is a guy with a 94 or 95 caravan TBI/5spd doing Lemons. Not turbo, though. :)

I want to do it but i would need 5 friends with money, or one rich person to pay me to build and race it. Lemons racing $500 car actually equals $5k+ when you add it all up with fees, safety equipment, etc.

[turbovanman²]

I would love to do it but no time or money, mainly money, :(

Great job on the finish, :nod:

[sabrina]

That's a quite awesome.

[whywoody]

Hey great result!!
I had a go at the Calgary event, in a '95 sohc Neon......engine failed 4hrs into the 1st day! Actually, the engine did 675 klm's of track time at Calgary (lapping nights etc) before a spun bearing caught up with us. Lot's of fun, more expensive than planned (of course!), would like to try again but not sure if there's any budget left.
There was a few Neon's out there, and 1 Daytona which I believe was non turbo, as our car would out run it down the loooong straight. All the Neon's had engine failures, one team even pulled a friends engine from his daily driver and proceeded to cook that one just before the end of day 2...
We ended up using another car for Sunday. A team mate has an IT2 class 1.8ltr Nissan Sentra and the officials allowed us to run it in the 'Exempt Catagory' class.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll189/whywoody/Chump%20Car/IMG_7828.jpg http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll189/whywoody/Chump%20Car/IMG_4800.jpg

[Vigo]

There is a guy with an 87 csx that has run chumpcar. Ive seen pics of the car on here but i dont know his username here. So i take back not knowing anyone running chumpcar with a turbo-mopar.

[Aries_Turbo]

did all the neons die from oil starvation from the stock pan?

[RoadWarrior222]

I'd love to play but can't find the coin.

Yeah, I'd figured total budget needed to be somewhere near $5,000 though less if you happen to have seats, cage material, trailer etc lying around...

You know what I'd suggest though for those Neons... pull the pan off, mark the stick about a 1/4" below the lowest moving part, fill the oil to there.... though for other cars I might suggest scientifically BFHing the pan the opposite side to the pickup to stove it in.

[Aries_Turbo]

can you run an aftermarket pan and be rules compliant? the OBX deep sump baffled pan isnt that expensive.

or even some bolt in trapdoor baffles....

Brian

[bfarroo]

I can't imagine how much gas you'd go through in a TD. Do you know what kind of mileage you got with the honda. When circle racing my shadow with +40's I'm getting around 7mpg. That's about 100 miles per tank give or take.

[RoadWarrior222]

I think you'd about double that on asphalt though. More time in top gear ida thunk.

My 3.0 I'd figure would do about 15mpg, my Escort probably 20mpg.

So what does that Honda get on the street, about 40mpg? Say 2/3 of that then. 26mpg.

[Aries_Turbo]

jeremy clarkson from top gear got 17mpg in a prius, flogging it around their track.

i would think the civic would get a little worse than 26.

heck i got 20mpg in my neon when the exhaust manifold gasket started leaking and the o2 sensor was seeing lean and the ecu richened up the mix and i was trying to drive nice.

Brian

[whywoody]

Our Neon died from a stock oil pan, the crank started out near perfect, new bearings with clearances checked etc. I really don't know what killed the other's, although the team that ate 2 engines complained of overheating.
We built another engine and heavily modified the drain back ports in the head, and fitted a deep baffled Aluminum pan. I also fitted an oil temp gauge and sender in the pan, and an adjustable oil pressure switch (set at 40psi) wired to a super bright 2" LED lamp pointing right at the driver (No excuses this time!!!). With this set up we ran the engine at the same track in similar ambient temps, and found no oil pressure issues ( 50+ psi even on long high G sweeper...took alot to glance at the gauge!), but we found oil temps were running 340*f, or more if really used hard, which I believe is not good for anything... We need an oil cooler before we try again.
With the oil pan and cooler, we will see an increase in value ( or IAV,internet apraised value ) as per the rule book, but our car is a sohc with factory stock struts and sway bars, no headers or even cold air intake, so we are hoping our car will still come in under the $500 AIV. If not, and we are penalised a few laps, we are oK with it if the engine hangs together for the full event.
We were quite competitve and running 6 out of 36 when we broke. Very competeive against the Civic's, and 1st gen RX7's, 240sx's were a bit quicker in a straight line as were the 2nd gen RX7's and a ZX2 Escort.
Fuel consumption was a full tank (11 gallons/40+ltrs) every 170 miles/275 klm's. We drove for 45 min stints and fuelled after the 2nd driver got out, to make sure we didn't have to come in for a splash during stints. The car was awesome on brakes, Hawk pads up front on factory rotor's and cheap street pad's in the back, and they still look great after about a 1000k klm's of track use. Our track dosent have many hard bracking area's though. Tires were not bad (Dunlop star spec), and might have gone the 2 7hr day's if rotated Saturday night. The stock suspension worked them over a bit though.....the Sentra had Tockico struts and differnet springs/sway bars and it's tires were in better shape after a full 7hr Sunday than our Neon's were after 4hrs on Saturday.
I have some video from both cars, poor sound and lots of bugs, also totally un edited so some of it may be boring, but it gives you an idea of how each car shaped up against others. Also my 1st time racing cars, and the 1st time I even sat in the Sentra was being strapped in for my session.
Neon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqp1QtmqQIc
Sentra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz2cV7QjZh8

[anarchyjet]

I'm running a '93 shadow in lemons, and plan on doing one of the Road America CC races this year. First race I ran the 2.2 tbi and a broken ring caused massive blow-by and low power.
Second race I put in used t1 pistons, new rings, and t1 log induction and wiring. Car was running great at 8psi on a g-valve, and then suddenly had the same blow-by issues as the race before. Pulled the motor apart sat. night at the track and found broken ring lands on 2 pistons.
Swapped the rings to the old tbi pistons (just the broken ones, so it had 2 turbo pistons and 2 tbi) put it back together and ran sun on 4 psi. Still had major blow-by, was spraying oil all over under the hood. About a 3 quarts per hour. Finished the race, adding oil and changing drivers every 30mins to get everyone seat time.
The car is plenty fast, but really lacks handling. Cut spings on old struts and cut springs on $5 rockauto shocks is no good. I need some really stiff rear springs to counter understeer. If running a TM in crap can racing I would spend all the buget on shocks, springs and poly bushings.
After the last race the lemons judges gave my car a value of $0.17 so I've got about $350 to spend on handling after buying a $150 replacement engine.
I'm always looking for teammates if you are in the midwest. I charge $500 + and equal share of race gas for arrive and drives. You must have your own safety gear. PM if interested!
P.S. fuel consumption was 4-5 gallons per hour.
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/8421/gingerman2011.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/846/gingerman2011.jpg/)
Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

[whywoody]

I'd totally agree with the budget being spent on handling. Our Neon was really hard to drive quick with the stock struts and springs. It was extremely tail happy under brakes and trail braking into the corners usually ended in a spin. If it began to understeer, all that was needed was to lift momentarily on the gas, and the tail would come around and set up a nice drift while pointing you where you wanted to go. Sounds like fun, I know, but it wasn't the fastest way around! Weight transfer was crazy, eating the tires and taking alot of concentration. Our track had a long straight and other sections that needed power, we struggled a bit with the stock sohc Neon, and more so with the 1.8 Sentra.
We were very close to turning my turbo van into a Chump Car, as it goes good and has been 5 sp converted etc, but we felt that we wouldn't be able to get it to handle anywhere near good enough. The Neon was then close to getting the van's engine and trans swapped into it when we broke the first engine, but we all agreed we need handling improvements long before more power. Cheapest and best handling improvement we added was slotted struts at the lower clevis', then adjusted camber to -3* and Zero toe up front, and -1.5* and Zero toe for the rear. We also found in our parts car a quicker ratio steering rack. Tire wear was nice and even and it wanted to turn in great with these settings, understeer was minimal compared to the oversteer.

[Vigo]

Anarchyjet, thanks for the info.

Im really curious as to what caused the broken ring on the tbi. I dont know what can cause rings to break.

As for the log setup breaking pistons in endurance racing.. that does not surprise me. Even at stock boost, the heat accumulation over time with that setup would be pretty bad. Although, i'd be curious to know if it would have ever broken if running lower boost from the get go.

Im certain that there is a large variety of junkyard cars with (stiffer) coil springs that could fit in the back of a k-car, but very little of that info has been shared or documented.. That's a big project i wish someone would tackle..

[cordes]

What an awesome thread! Thanks for all the info guys!

[Aries_Turbo]

Im certain that there is a large variety of junkyard cars with (stiffer) coil springs that could fit in the back of a k-car, but very little of that info has been shared or documented.. That's a big project i wish someone would tackle..

89 s-10 2wd front coils fit back there but had to be cut ALOT to get the thing to sit down to a reasonable height.

they were really stiff too. i dont know the exact rate but it was alot thicker wire than the stock spring.

my buddies and i tried them to jack a shadow up into the sky but the rear shocks didnt have enough travel. :)

brian

[Rattlesnake]

What kind/grade of oil did the Neons with the engine failures had?
The reason I ask is because the rule of thumb would be 10 psi for every 1000rpm. Looking at some in-car video footage in my Fiero I noticed I was right at the 10psi/1000rpm rule, but as the engine got hotter that I was averaging 6.5psi and stayed there, and that is with the high-volume oil pump.
That happened at Charlotte Motors Speedway and the track temp was about 110F, it was a hot one.
I use Amsoil 20W-50 Z Rod which is designed for flat tapped engines or engines with similar sliding design, that means I have to upgrade to a thicker grade.

While working at BMW back in 2000 I remember a 10W-60 grade developed by the German company Liqui Moly for the M5 engines. They still make it and I can get it from one of my suppliers. But what I wanted to find was the Phosphorous and Zinc content of it so I sent them an email directly to Germany. Did the same thing with Mobil and Castrol (Castrol copied the 10w-60 chemestry with permission, of course). Got a answer from Liqui Moly the next day with exactly what I want it to know but 2 weeks past and I'm still waiting for Castrol and Mobil to respond.
I'm upgrading to the Liqui Moly brand and 10W-60 grade so my engine stays within the parameters. These 2.8 engines are known for weak oiling system.

Whether you have a quater mile racer, daily driver or endurance racer always look for that 10psi/1000rpm margin, if not upgrade your oil grade to meet that criteria and your engine will thank you!

Rei Moloon