Team Bear Patrol ChumpCar Team

Caption contest!

2012-01-05T22:24:00.002-06:00

This photo of bear racing NEEDS a hilarious caption!

We need to turn this into Team T-Shirts and we need some hilarious captions or quotes to pair with it. Post your caption in the comments.

Winner gets their caption on our shirt, recognition on the blog and Facebook page, and I will personally buy you a Team T-Shirt.

I'll get you started, discuss!
"Even with one horsepower, BEAR WINS!"
"If horse doesn't win, I eat him"
"You cannot catch a bear"

Chumpionship at Iowa Speedway and the curse continues...

2011-09-06T21:53:00.008-05:00

Like usual, Chumpcar had some pretty sweet trophies, but these were like none before. The first place trophy is huge, and some of the others are just awesome! I wish we could have won the Hellboy one.

We finished prepping the car in the garage, making some changes during the Friday test and tune to see if we should run the rear sway bar or not.

The race had plenty of rain, which made some interesting trips through the infield, but it was fun getting in some drifting practice.

Things started to dry out around mid-afternoon. So the pace through the infield began to speed up. Below are some of our favorite teams, Eggboy in the SHO, the Chevette team and BAR (the later winners), and one of the coolest cars of the weekend, a 510 Datsun wagon.

Also running were the Holy Rollers (the other Simpson's themed team), Team Shake'n'Bake in the Wonderbread MR2 (I keep hoping they'll step up the theme and put the Fig Newton sticker on their windshield), and of course the perenial fave, Tow Mater.

With the course drying out, they finally let us up onto the oval. I missed out on this, as my stint was just before it dried out, but Soren and Jeff got to have some fast fun on the oval!

And then the end of our race. We lost the passenger front wheel bearing, and the wobble of the brake rotor ended up causing significant damage to our lower control arm and ball joint, our caliper, and even some to the wheel and rotor. Needless to say we couldn't find all the parts we needed in the middle of Iowa on a Saturday night. So after just a "short" 10 hours, our race was done. But it was still a blast, and everyone got in 1 stint at least.

And a big thanks goes out to everyone who helped out this year. Like our cheerleaders at Iowa below (my mom, my girlfriend Amanda, and Soren's wife Tanya), (not pictured but at Iowa was Erik's wife Steff), and my dad (who couldn't make it to Iowa after having his knee re-replaced the Monday before).

I'd also like to thank everyone at Falken Tire for helping supply our tires. Running the Azenis RT-615K this year made a big improvement in our car's handling. And a big thanks to Brian for helping get out the last two tires for me, that we shipped to Iowa at the last minute. And also Bruce who helped make it happen, and Mark, for all his advice around picking tires and helping with race setup.

Lastly, I'd like to thank my team, Jeremy, Jeff (my brother), Soren, and Erik, without whom this year (or last year) never would have happened. And also Pon, our guest driver for BIR who is moving to NYC now. Hopefully we can continue to make improvements and someday catch a podium. After being happy to just place in the middle of the pack last year, to move and podium twice, 2nd place at Road America, and 3rd place at BIR, was just awesome.

The Good, Bad, and Ugly of BIR videos!

2011-08-12T22:49:00.011-05:00

Videos from Brainerd 14 hours.

Greg, stint 1 in the rain. Camera battery died early.

Next driver, Jeff, stint 1, and proof we didn't hit the Tow-Mater truck.

3rd driver was Pon, his first stint in a race car.

4th driver was Soren.

5th driver was Jeff, looks like we hit a juicey bug in Pon's last run.

6th driver was Pon, much improved over his first stint. A little too much passing in the grass though...

7th driver was Soren, at dusk.

8th driver was Greg, but we forgot to change cameras.

Finally another update...and another trophy!

2011-07-23T10:36:00.008-05:00

Sorry for the long delay, but here's the report from BIR in Brainerd, MN on July 16th. We made the trip up Friday night to get tech'ed and checked in, and luckily made it without a wheel falling off the tow vehicle. As most everyone probably knows by now, we took 3rd place in the 14 hour race!

The Trophy: Sparky McBolt

The Team: Pon, Soren, Jeff and Greg

As it turns out, after Iowa, we had more then just one engine mount broken, ALL THREE, were sheared off. Luckily I had bought a kit, and we replaced all 3. We also found a small brake line leak, and replaced this with braided lines so we wouldn't have to drop the whole rear subframe.

Thanks to Alex B for taking and sharing some great pictures! Check out his site for more:
Alex Bellus Photography
Alex's Picasa Album

They're semi-chronological over the course of the day. Morning-Midday:

The run at dusk had a pretty awesome sunset, but that made seeing kind of interesting...

Thanks to everyone who helped get the car fixed after Iowa, and thanks to Jeremy, Erik and my dad for crewing during the race. And of course thanks to all our other fans that made the race and hung out with us. Aside from coming in for fuel early on the first stint (yeah we should top it off now before races...) and the radiator fans falling off, it was a pretty smooth race. I'm very glad I was the last one in the car, from the sounds of it, the mosquitoes after sundown were horrendous! Maybe next year we'll just run the double 7 hour race. Videos are uploading, and I'll post them soon. Tomorrow its back to work prepping for the Chumpionship on Labor Day weekend!

Iowa and the aftermath...

2011-05-20T16:38:00.005-05:00

So, as most of you already know, our race at Iowa went nowhere near like we expected. So much that I've put off writing this post for about 3 weeks. But we're moving onward. Of course I had to start off with a nice obligatory pre-race pose. We were quite excited, having thought we fixed everything from Road America. We had the alignment set, new shoes on, we were ready to rock!

Soren went out for the race start, and got on it right away. The green flag fell as he was in the infield, but he noticed quickly that the yellow went away and the race was on.

Another shot flying by, the car was looking good!

But then things went bad. The car stalled on Soren in the infield. It took awhile, but he got it started and came in to the pits. We dug over the car quick and couldn't find anything, so we sent him back out. Before hitting pit exit, it was stalling again, so we took it into the garage. First we thought it was the fuel pump ecu, and we called all over trying to find one. Then we thought it was the throttle position sensor, and called all over trying to find one. Both times most of the places were closed by noon on Saturday, until we found a TPS in Des Moines. Erik and Soren drove over to get it, and it didn't work. Car still wouldn't start. Digging back around the fuses I noticed a couple were different heights, so I pushed down on one, and click, it seated. Hmmm...I bet that was bad. We tried to start it, and boom, we were back. With 4 hours till the mandatory safety break, then an hour after the break before dark, we had about 5 hours before dark. So we decided to get everyone in the car to see the track before having to drive in the dark. All went well, got through the safety break, hooked up the lights, and sent out our Dad for his stint. He rolled through the next set of pictures as dusk was falling.

And rolled into our next set of issues. He came into the pits, having lost brakes coming into the infield (which is bad). Found the vacuum line off the booster, so we reconnected and added a better fitting. That worked for 30 minutes before he came back in again, with the other side of the hose off.

And of course I had to throw in a shot of everybody's favorite car, Tow-Mater.

So we called it a night. There wasn't a good way to test fixes. We thought it might be the brake booster, or the PCV valve, or something else causing pressure to blow it off. Turns out it was a broken motor mount. Broken as in sheared completely off. So the engine could rock over enough to pull the hose off. We diagnosed it in my driveway this afternoon, by doing a brake stand.

And then we took it out of the car. Now we need to either get a new mount, a used mount, or just weld a solid mount.

After that we still need to track down the source of a brake leak we had in the garage at Iowa. We had blue fluid on the ground as we loaded the trailer, but none today. So there's some more checking to do on that.

Its on like Donkey Kong! Chumpcar style...

2011-04-24T21:09:00.003-05:00

So I thought I'd start with a nice view that most of our competitors will be seeing next weekend. BABOOOM! Plus I wanted to show off our fatty 275 rear tires on our craigslist used Supra wheels. If they made a wider size of the tire we use, I'd probably have tried to squeeze it on. But I like these regardless. It should be fun to run these tires at temperature this weekend. It was too cold at Road America.

With a few new changes done earlier in the year (new bumper), and a few issues we think we had (fans at RA), we decided to hard wire a few more things then we did before. No more relying on the car's computers to turn things on. We hard wired new light switches for the new light bar we built, and we added a switch for the engine fans. Sure they could get turned off or left off by accident, but essentially everything on the top row should be turned on before starting the car. The second row with headlights and defrost are optional based on the conditions. We also ended up relocating our master killswitch to clean things up.

And here is the aforementioned headlight bar. Quick and easy installation. Just need to aim the lights on Friday night and we should be set for the darkness overnight in Iowa.

And lastly a picture for me as reference to the work we were doing on the alignment. We didn't leave ourselves enough time to visit the alignment guy, so we're getting it done ourselves. It should be close enough once we do the final setting. Had to play around a bit to see where our limits were and then went to recheck where we wanted it. We'll finish setting it this week, or Friday night at Iowa.

Big thanks to everyone who put in time making sure we got things finished up in time for Iowa after the damage at Road America. We're off on Friday morning for the land of corn and racing!

Almost ready for Iowa...

2011-04-17T21:35:00.002-05:00

Well we're not quite ready yet, but we're getting close. Jeff got the new headlight bar started. Its not quite done yet, still slides in a bit tight, and we might lower it closer to the bumper yet. But other then that we just need to finish up the wiring and its good to go.

We did get the new radiator mounted once we got the support bracket remade. Took a little tweaking to get all the mounts lined back up, but it fits good and sturdy now. Got the fans hooked up, and mostly rewired. This time we're wiring them direct to switches and their own 12V power. We think whatever computer they were running through last year, and at RA, weren't working anymore. Luckily it wasn't hot that race...

We also decided to make another durability upgrade for the summer races. We've added a transmission cooler fan. We noticed last year at races like Iowa, where we'd have high speed time on the banking and slower speed through the infield, that you could watch the transmission temperature drop and climb based on car speed and airflow. So we think the fan will help with this. We also remounted it for straighter more efficient airflow.

With more power going to individual switches, we cleaned up some wiring. Soren and Erik almost got the new stuff done. We also replaced our makeshift alternator wire rerouting job from Brainerd last year, with a single wire. This also ended up moving our kill switch to the dash panel for easier wiring.

And lastly, we cleaned up Pon's epoxy job on the air intake and air filter housing. A dab of RTV and we should be all set with no leaks. We debating going with an aftermarket conical air filter and making our own adapter, but didn't want to get dinged for any AIV increase for using a more expensive air filter.

Next weekend there's a little wiring to button up before we can start it up. There's also some tubing to hook up for the transmission cooler and radiator, now that everything is mounted again. Add the new gauge for the transmission temp, maybe add a real coolant temp gauge, recalibrate the fuel level gauge, set the alignment, and a do quick front brake job. Doesn't sound like much, but it'll be a full day's worth of work.

Working for the weekend

2011-04-09T21:06:00.004-05:00

Of course I had to throw in another picture of our awesome trophy. Still haven't done a good post race explanation, which I apologize for, just been busy trying to fix things in time for Iowa.

So we had a good work day today. Got the radiator out, and its pretty clear that the frame moved, because the radiator didn't used to have a notch in it. But the frame did spring back somewhat. Soren measured the suspension mount points, and everything still seems to be square. So we're moving forward with fixing stuff.

Our radiator mounting cross member has seen better days. Between the original bear hit, a trip through the gravel, and not meeting wall, its about time to replace it. So we're going to cut it out and make our own.

The airbox was more damaged then we thought. It was pretty much cracked all the way around. Pon got it put back together, and epoxy'ed. Hopefully it holds fine. A little sanding and it should be as good as new...ish.

Apparently after the broken tie rod, the brake rotor decided to contact something. Not sure what, but the rotor had a big gouge in it now. I guess its time to order new rotors. Grant got the tie rods all replaced. First the broken one, then based on the amount of play in the inner tie rod, we decided it was time to replace the other side as well.

And yeah, maybe it really IS time to replace our brake rotors. Stress cracks throughout. But I guess the Frozen Rotors held up pretty well considering they did 14 hours at BIR, then around 18 hours at Iowa, and probably about 3-6 hours in track days. But for fun, I'm going to put on regular rotors and see what the difference in life span is.

And I guess its time for a little race update. As most of your know, we placed second on Saturday, and earned the fastest lap of the day. The Lexus was running well. Below is a picture after we received our fancy trophy.

Also, here are a couple videos that I've uploaded to Youtube. There are more available on my youtube channel.

Road America damage report, part 1

2011-04-04T18:36:00.004-05:00

Sorry, a race update will follow later tonight or tomorrow. But I did a little initial investigation of the damage. So pretty clearly the driver side inner tie rod is gone.

Lower a-arm looks to be okay.

Upper a-arm looks to be straight and okay as well.

Radiator, not okay. We knew this from previous inspection at the track.

And the left frame horn seems to have tweaked a bit. How much? Not sure. Enough to matter? Not sure. Hopefully its all in front of the suspension and shock mount points, and those stayed straight.

Lastly, the engine will not start. Not sure why. Something may have gotten disconnected, but the old ignition switch didn't work either. So a fuse probably blew (hopefully that's all). We'll be checking it over more tomorrow. It would go back into the garage a lot easier if it was running.

RA delayed one week

2011-03-28T22:52:00.002-05:00

So our race got delayed due to the snow, ice and cold. Big shocker being that Road America is in Wisconsin. The good news is, that gave us more time to button up the car and fine tune a few things. I think we're pretty much ready to go now, just need to pack the truck and trailer.

Added a couple new sponsor stickers to rep the nice tire deal we got.

The hood and bumper almost line up now.

Jeremy wanted to mount a bumper cam, for a sweet view during the race. So since we don't need headlights in this race, I stuck it right up front.

And the interior is all cleaned up. We also added a new fuel level gauge. Hopefully it works close enough. Even though we need to top off the tank each pit stop regardless.

We're all ready to Chump it up at Road America!

2011-03-20T20:10:00.003-05:00

The bumper is now relocated over the new tubular bumper. Charles and Pon stitched the bumper back together, and preserved the bear hair yet again. Good work guys, it looks, well, as good as it can.

Here my dad was getting the heater fans (aka computer fans) installed with the adapters. The adapters were going to make it easy to add ducting, but we went another route later.

This view shows the big inlet fan. This will provide "low" fan function, and blow air through the heater core. The computer fans will provide the "high" fan function.

And here's the final location we decided to mount it in. Mounted up off the cage, it let us use some tubing elbow to aim airflow rather then having to run ducting. I hope it works. Actually I hope its warm enough that we don't need it!

Friday night Soren swung by to drop off his mess of wires and switches. When I plugged it in to test it, it worked, so there's a method to madness. Apparently 90s luxury car wiring isn't as straight forward as one would think.

Here's where we got by the end of Saturday. The switches were all mounted, but the car would no longer start. Frustrating...

So after a good nights sleep, some delicious birthday dinner, a clear head prevailed and lead me to the kick panel fuses, where I found two blown fuses. I believe these were the result of working on the cutoff switch with battery power still hooked up. Whoops. So a couple new fuses later, and everything's lit and running. While it was running I even bled the powersteering since we had replaced the hose again.

And here we are, everything's back in the car. We did get all the wire zip-tied away after the pic was taken. So we're all ready to roll. Time to pack the gear and get ready to race. I'll probably take it for a spin tomorrow or Tuesday after work. And yes, I added a couple additional sponsor stickers too.

Big thanks to everyone who helped wrap up the car in the last couple days. Especially my dad, who came up and worked with me all Friday night and all day Saturday!

Just about ready to throw some heat

2011-03-13T21:47:00.004-05:00

Well we start with Jeff getting almost done on the door mods. Had to smooth it a bit, and there's still a little work to do, but its close.

Saturday we got the new dash panels cut out. The center one is all mounted and ready for switches. The steering column gages need tabs welded in place, and some final trimming to be done. You can see the steering wheel hanger mounted on the cage, it should help keep the nice wheel from getting dinged up.

Caz welded up the new box for the heater core. Of course all I had in the right size sheet was stainless, but it shouldn't rust now.

We decided to reuse the old heater core, and just remount in something smaller and removable.

Here's a mock up I did Saturday of the mini fans we're going to run for the defrost and driver heat.

Then I mocked up the inlet fan.

To help hold up the heater core, I made a brace for the base of the box. Here you can see it through the big hole for the inlet fan.

And here's a view of the core resting on the support brace.

Then I stole the supports from the original heater core box, and reused them. Since I can't weld stainless at my house, I decided to do the remaining work as bolt on or screw on. This worked out pretty nicely.

One hole saw and a little plasma cutting later, and we have 4 holes for the mini fans. I also drilled all the mounting holes. Now I just need to get some fans, wire them, and build a mounting bracket for the box. Its pretty close though, it should get installed next Friday. Also need to decide where to put it.

Then on Sunday night we made a stop by Caztek to check out the new City Cycle tourer. Caz and his crew have been working for months on a new, better touring pub-cycle.

Close up of one of the many nice Caztek details.

Nice little spot for the driver.

Two sides of "bars" with pedals and coolers in between, you know, in case the keg empties, like it did tonight.

And here's a shot from the side, for more info check out The City Cycle

Getting closer to being a real chump...

2011-03-10T21:21:00.003-06:00

So its been a couple weeks since I've posted an update. But don't think work hasn't been going on. A little time over at Caztek's shop got my new steering column all situated. Then Jeff and I spent some time getting the column located and braced up. What you see here is the finished product, with the new fancy suede steering wheel on.

It is a removable wheel, with a nice Longacre quick release. Here we also have the new "dash" panel mocked up. Pon came over and helped get that done. Saturday we should get the new panels made up, and hopefully start getting some of the new switches wired up. We should also have the new heater box, so we can hook up the defroster. Then we just need to tuck away the wiring and tie things up for the race. The muffler is back installed. We gave up trying to get the Y-pipe off until we have more time. So for now the catalyst material stays put.

And Jeff started work on smoothing out the door entry point to make getting in and out with the door closed easier(ie loading the car on the trailer). That was of course until we ran out of welding gas. On to our third bottle. Tune in after the weekend, some more work should get done soon.

Also, I thought I'd share that those damnedable cottonwood trees that almost ruined our fancy paint job last spring, are officially firewood.

Brand new bumper, ready for action!

2011-02-24T21:19:00.003-06:00

And the new bumpers welded on! Jeff came by tonight, and got everything welded together. A couple changes to the top bracket of the bumper cover mount and we'll be all set. And maybe a little trimming and a little paint. But who needs paint, its a ChumpCar!

Another view, this shows a sneak peak of a durability improvement that's in the works.

And lastly, just a sneak peak at the new tires! Yes its a bit hazy in the garage from all the welding.

It doesn't look like much...

2011-02-19T17:49:00.002-06:00

Our new team member Pon stopped by and helped me get the new bumper main bars bent. The new 1" die worked pretty well. A little more work on the rebuilt frame horn and things will be ready to tack into place. Next update should have a new bumper in place. As well as show the new trans cooler fan mounted and wired.

The new steering column is just about ready. Got some of the main sizes cut, but now its time for a little work on the lathe. Then combine the two steering shafts, and finish the support column to fit the bushing properly. I'm not giving any sneak peeks of the new steering wheel though. You'll have to wait for that.

Lastly we finished pulling apart the heater unit. We've saved the heater core for potential future use, as well as saving the pass through seals.

Not a big week of seeing progress, but we got a lot of little things done and ready for the next step. Jeff will probably come weld some of the stuff this week, and a trip to Caztek is also in order.

Back to work on the Chumpcar racer!

2011-02-05T15:51:00.005-06:00

So we've got two major workdays under our belts now, though scheduling this year seems monumentally more difficult, at least there's less work to do. Or so we thought. First things first, we got to removing the two seats. We had installed a passenger seat for the Road America track day in the fall. Then we got right to removing the steering column and the extra dash bar. That cleared out a good chunk of space.

Then with the steering out, I got work disassembling the steering column to get the base shaft out. We want to use the leftover steering knuckle at the firewall, but of course its a weird Toyota shaft size (think South Park, very small...).

So I had to remove all these parts...

Just to get these parts out. Now to order some parts, and build the new column. And maybe a new steering wheel.

Then we got to work on the damaged front bumper.

We didn't think it took a bad hit at Iowa, but as you can see, it did some good damage. Having previously just welded the new bumper to the still bent front frame horn didn't help. So we were going to have to cut extra off this time.

Jeff got to work cutting everything, and of course had tons of fun since there was so tension left in all the bent tubing. Oops.

So it just meant more cuts, and smaller pieces, which will really just be easier to throw away or recycle anyways.

Here's out new frame horn. We had to cut it back to remove the damaged area, then we welded in some new piece to extend it out even with the passenger side frame horn. Now its ready to start bending the new bumper.

Then it was back to the passenger compartment. Since we ruined out ability to use the AC last year when we removed the compressor, we decided it was time to remove the whole HVAC system.

Lots more room, for stuff...

The heater core is in this thing, but man was it a pain getting it out. We're going to have to really debate whether it goes back in or if we do some other heat source for Road America in March, or for defrost in general. Maybe we should just hope for good weather?

Here's the rest of the pile of parts we took out. Between the steering and the HVAC stuff, we got another 50lbs out of the car. Not as much as I was hoping for, but there's a few more areas we need to look at as well.

Up next I think will be the exhaust and getting the catalysts out. Along with hopefully fully loosening the alignment adjusters. Then maybe some hood and trunk tweaks. Only 7 more weeks until the Road America race. Looks like we'll be working more nights then we thought. Until next time!

Added some more videos, finally...

2010-10-17T21:50:00.003-05:00

So I finally got to uploading some more of the videos from Iowa. I have more to upload, but they're taking forever tonight. So this is all you get.

First off we have Danielle

Then two of Jeremy.

And then...(No and then!) Jeff helped me make a set of racking for the additional steel we bought recently. Thanks for the deal again Jeremy. Now, for the first time in like 9-10 months, I can actually park my car in the garage! Just in time for winter, phew!

Please welcome a new member to our family

2010-09-07T20:03:00.004-05:00

Team Bear Patrol is happy to announce an addition to our racing family, the #82 Fjord Cosworthless Escort. It's a 1982 Ford Escort that has been racing it's entire life, in SCCA ClubRally until 2001 and with some ice racing in Canada since. It's been sitting in a field since waiting for it's next phase, and we are happy to report that it will soon be running with other old race cars in the ChumpCar World Chumpionship.

The car is still set up as a rally car and will be converted to ChumpCar rules this winter.

Side view sitting on old Michelin Rally tires on 14" Tempo wheels:

The interior. The Escort has a fuel cell that will probably need to be modified to meet the ChumpCar rules, and the belts are very out of date. The passenger seat will also need to go for ChumpCar.

The windows were replaced by plexiglas or polycarbonate a long time ago, and it did not hold up very well.

That's mold on the side window. You can just see the names on the window from it's previous rally life.

Wow, that's a real Momo steering wheel! Note the codriver side gauges.

The Cobra seats are a little narrow for us wider guys, the belts are out of date, and the window net is not SFI, so most of this will need to be removed or replaced.

Mostly stock, but with extra cooling in the bumper and a fancy louvered hood. This car originally had a well built carbureted 1.6L CVH engine, but now has a stock MFI 1.9L.

It came down to the Cities on these 13" steelies with Michelin studded ice tires.

Looks mostly stock out back.

A little of this, a little of that

2010-08-15T19:28:00.006-05:00

This weekend we took the car out for a little fun. Soren, Erik and I hit up the MN Austin-Healey Club's Healey Hillclimb IX! Its a fun little autoX, then run up the hill from the parking lot. Lots of beautiful cars, lots of fun driving, not lots of video, because my in car camera was stupid. Here's Soren on Patrol.

And here's Erik in his beautiful NSX. Sucks about the clutch slipping now Erik.

And in bigger news, let me introduce you to the car on the team, Miss Escort 1982! Soren just brought the car back from the frozen tundra of Roseau, where he bought from CO and Jim, who used to run the car in SCCA Rally.

The engine is 1.9L from, I have no idea. Its fuel injected at least, so that's cool. I think its from a later model Escort, but not sure of the year.

It already looks like a ChumpCar doesn't it?

Manual transmissions, and its already set up with not 1, but 2 race seats! Granted we'll have to pull the passenger seat.

Its already fully caged, though we'll have to double check some of the rules and maybe raise or add another door bar, and potentially another diagonal tube in the plane of main hoop. We'll see, gotta email the man Lloyd.

And LOTS of spare wheels, and lots of spare parts. Everything you'd need to build a second ChumpCar!

Back to some Brainerd videos...

2010-07-02T22:58:00.001-05:00

Got some footage from Jeremy that Soren's Dad took on Jeremy's video camera. So I threw some together, added some music to mess around and threw 'em up on the youtube's. Hopefully Sony Music doesn't get mad at me.

More videos from Iowa will be up in the next few days.

24 hours of Iowa, explained...

2010-06-30T19:37:00.002-05:00

Wow, what a crazy f'ing weekend. Drive down went well, no tires fell off this time. The Iowa highway is a bit boring though. Anyways, Friday was uneventful, got through tech inspection with no problems, the guy remembered us from Brainerd, so it was a good time. Slept in a hotel, for our last decent sleep for a night. Got up for breakfast at 7am to get over to the race and get setting up, to be there for the 9am drivers meeting. Meeting started 40 minutes late, but luckily we knew to have our driver ready to get in the car right after the meeting. We had our pit lane all set up and our garage space set up. So at 1040am they started lining up cars in the pits, and shortly there after they started lapping the track. Chump races do a rolling start and wave the green on a random car. Flagged dropped at 11:18am on the car right in front of us and we were off. The first hour and a half was busy, the track was packed with cars that were quickly dropping out with issues, so there were tons of yellow flags. Our first driver, Jeremy, was getting in some good laps for his first stint of 1.5 hrs. Then as he pitted, one of our old, aged, cracked powersteering hoses gave up the ghost. Luckily Soren was out getting some supplies, so he picked up a hose and a couple clamps. We pulled the car into the garage, replaced the hose, quickly bleed a little air out, and what we thought was a quick fix really took an hour. But we got our next drivers out, and the car ran well for the 6 hours until the safety break. So after Jeremy we got our noobs into the car, Danielle and Matt, to get them experience with the car and track before dark. Matt was quick and bested Jeremy's time, granted Jeremy had lots more traffic to deal with. After the hour loss, we shortened everyone's stints to 1.25 hours before the break except Jeff who had been due to do his two hour stint. So Danielle, Matt and I did 1.25 hr runs and GD was it f'ing hot in the car. (Sorry for the profanity, but there's no other way to explain it.) Thought I was going to die. But our car was running well and even running in the heat of the day 4-515, I was able to shave some time off of Matt's fastest time. Then my brother got in and was running well for about 55 minutes before he came into the infield a bit quick on a lap and right behind some traffic and spun the into the gravel and into a tire wall. He and the car survived fine. (see below) He had to get towed out of the gravel, but drove it back to the pits under a red flag (stopped everyone else). We emptied the front splitter and radiator of gravel, roughly half a 5 gallon bucket's worth of pea gravel, and we had to change all four tires. They all had gravel actually imbedded INTO the bead of the tire (between the tire and the rim). So we got the four new tires on and sent him back out, and he finished the rest of the time he had until the mandatory safety break.

So we were down for an hour from 7-8pm, and we decided to try to put in a brass adapter for our trans cooler and temp sensor to try to stop a leak. Got it done just in the nick of time, and got our next driver, Erik, out there. Near the end of Erik's 1.5 hours, he started to get passed on the straight, which was unheard of with our V8 power. We would crush people in the oval section, struggle to hang with 'em in the infield, then pass and crush them in the bankings. But Erik tried to radio something in, we couldn't understand a thing he said because the mic's were still working horribly. We were just confused why he was being passed. So he comes in, and mentions the engine is "running funny", but we decide to run it. So I hop in for my second stint, the first in full night, (though the track left on 20% lighting which was nice, but the infield was super dark.), and I try to pull out of the pits and into the racing line and the engine is just stumbling a TON, basically like our pre-race event in Brainerd when the timing was off. I try another lap and wow, slow cars are passing me. This is bad. So I pull in, and we check some stuff quick, hand bump the engine to top dead center, and sure enough the cams aren't lined up. SOB, the timing belt jumped. We pull into the garage, and get to work. Turns out the bolts holding in the tensioner had backed out, either under the high temps and load or we didn't use enough (or any) locktite on the threads. So we slowly get this fixed, working on a hot engine is no fun. But all in all, we did it relatively quickly and get back out there. SOB its worse! We must have moved it two teeth instead of one. Pull it BACK IN, and we fix it again, quicker this time. I pull out of the pits and HALLEJAALUIEYA! I got power and get back to passing cars in the straights for about 40 minutes and POP, (blow a fuse) and my gauges and taillights and brake lights go out. Uh oh. I get blackflagged for no taillights and pull into the pits. They put in a new fuse, go back out, first lap, POP, goes again. We're now out of the big stupid fuses Lexus uses for the main block, a 150A and a 100A, we try a 60A thinking we found a lose wire from our damaged neon system (Jeff in the gravel), that was now touch inside the cab. So I had let Jeremy go out for the 60A fix, my time was mostly up. But that wasn't the issue and it popped again. So we put in a sold wire for the fuse instead, as there's still fuses behind it inline, and Soren goes out. He makes it a full lap, but later says he was getting flickering. And it goes again, burning through the sold copper a lap later. So we have a BIG arcing, grounding going on somewhere. Walking back to the pits, I recall our "fix" for the engine cut off switch in Brainerd being that we ran new wires from the alternator power back to the cut off switch and we could only disconnect the other cable from the alternator, and it disappeared into a huge harness to not know what to cut. So we taped up a ton and left it. So I'm thinking this probably got burned through and was now touching frame on turns. Fortunately and unfortunately, I'm right. So they cut it back and re-wrap it with a chunk of rubber hose, and clamp it and tape it and ziptie it out of the way, and at the same time Grant shows up, after running out to the closest truck stop 30 miles away in search of a 150A fuse. He found a 200A inline stereo fuse, and we made that work. So at 245am, Soren gets back in the car, and starts lapping. We're runing pretty well again at this point and HUGE thunderstorm rolls in. They pull all the cars off the track at 330a and say there'll be a 6am drivers meeting to go back out. We wake up at 630am, drivers meeting is late, have a quick one at 645a, they tell us we're now only running until noon, so our 24 hour race became more like 21 hours. But we got people back in the car, and ran without incident for the next 5 hours to finish the race in 13th place out of 24 cars. One of approximately 12-13 cars to finish the race. All in all it was a super fun weekend, and I thank everyone involved who helped us at the race or helped us get there.

And now for the big one everyone's been waiting to see... So after seeing it, it looks like Jeff gave her a little brake in the turn, and couldn't quite catch it. Thanks for not breaking the car, but we were glad you were okay. For future reference, call the pits and tell us you're okay before getting out of the car.

Watch for a future invite, but there'll be a celebration BBQ at my house in Coon Rapids, July 17th. We'll have the car out for people to check out, maybe rides, and of course food and booze. Hope to see you there!

24 Hours at Iowa Speedway in pictures

2010-06-29T19:31:00.007-05:00

Bears have wings?

2010-06-20T21:45:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I just had to start with a picture of our bear hair. People have been asking about it, so I thought I'd snap a quick pic.

For this next race, we thought we'd pay homage to the NASCAR boys and add a spoiler to our car. We'll see if it makes any downforce or not, but at least it looks cool and only cost about $20 to make. We also added some polycarbonate for the back window and side rear windows in an attempt to help our chances at actually getting any aerodynamic help.

Then we got a few more things hooked up inside for the driver. Lights are wired, radio is wired to a PTT (push to talk) button that's now steering wheel mounted. We also have two little surprises that are now wired. Just need to throw in a few more zipties and we're all set.

And FINALLY, we have our most complete checklist yet for a weekend of work! Top off the oil, get the new tires mounted, and get packed for the race. Should be good and prepared by the end of the week. We're off for the race in Iowa Friday the 25th, for the 24 hour race the 26-27th. We'll post post-race stuff as soon as we get back.

The Bear Patrol preps for Iowa!

2010-06-17T22:10:00.006-05:00

So things have been happening after the Brainerd race, but mostly boring stuff. Stuff like checking brake pad wear and tire wear to see what we needed to change and update for Iowa. Turns out we blew a front shock, but I forgot to take a picture of that. The muffler clamp hung down and got ripped off taking the car on and off the trailer. Its fixed now. Over the weekend Soren got started on the headlights, and tonight he mounted the extra side ones, and I finished getting the bumper holes cut bigger. Still need to clean them up a little bit, but its close.

We also took the time to "hard" mount a radio in the car. This base station has pretty good power and should ensure the car can always hear the pits. We still need to mount the push to talk button somewhere near the driver. Then it'll be nice and easy to plug in and out of the car when we change drivers.

With mounting the radio, we wanted to have auxiliary power so we wouldn't have to worry about the batteries. So we installed this three port adapter. One for the radio, one for the cage mounted camera, and one spare. What to do with that?

So the front tires were pretty trashed, so we're replacing those on the previously painted rims. But we figured the other tires were still better spares then the left over Continentals that came with the car. So we've got more tires coming, and with that, needed the spare rims to be painted to match the others with the "patrol car" theme.

And here is a teaser for a surprise, and that's all I've got to say about that.

So one more weekend to wrap up the final touches for Iowa, then its time for the 24 hour race!

Brainerd No-Brainer - Sunday report

2010-06-07T19:50:00.007-05:00

Sunday - I got a full nights sleep over night which was the first in several days. It felt good. And the sun was up, and it, too, felt good. Erik had only gotten one stint on Saturday, so he ran first on Sunday with a long, almost two hour stint. The rest of us would run 1:10 hour stints. Erik did a great job and equaled our best laps from Saturday. We ran approximately slowest to fastest, and so the trend continued with our lap times improving all day. Jeremy was last after me and only managed to beat me by 0.5 seconds after I used up our tires pretty good. Sorry Jeremy.

Sunday was another great day of racing. I did get a surprise on one lap after I out braked a slow Mustang on the front straight only to get smacked hard on the drivers side by a BMW who thought he could out brake me. Out brake me? He clearly had NO idea the insane brakes we're running. Or what his car was capable of as he then shot off of the track into weeds. But he managed to smash our drivers door in pretty good.

Other than that unfortunate event, the day was clean. There were much quicker cars out there, but I enjoyed passing several cars that were ahead of us in the standings. I think I was able to pass about 8-10 cars, and got passed by 3, not including the aforementioned BMW who did, briefly, pass me.

Jeremy wrapped up our race, bringing us just past the 22 Escort into 13th. Not as high as I'd hoped, but still respectable for our first time out. But more importantly, I had a huge amount of fun.

And in the end, we won the "O Pinion award" for being voted by the ChumpCar staff as having had a great drive. That was also awesome, too bad there is on trophy and five drivers. ;) It was great fun, the car ran well, we ran well, and we have a few ideas to improve for Iowa. I can't wait. 24 hours, and a fast track? That should be epic!

Brainerd No-Brainer - Saturday report

2010-06-07T19:42:00.003-05:00

Saturday morning - Up at 5:45 to get to the track early to get inspected and complete registration. This went really well. Many thanks to Lloyd and Kathy for helping lighten the mood for us and get us inspected properly. That really helped calm me down and allow me to truly enjoy the weekend. After Friday I was really tense. But after we were teched, I was ready to go have some fun.

I was first up on Saturday. One the second parade lap, the hood swung up on me and suddenly I was blind. DAMN! Luckily it was slow and the windshield was not damaged! A track worker pushed it closed, latched it, and I headed to the pits for an inspection. Hood seemed good, so off I went on a 'short' 40 minute stint. I was pretty happy with the car. It's not perfect, but it's a lot of fun. I started out passing three cars in the first lap and that was a lot of fun.

Greg drove next, then Jeremy, Erik, and Jeff. Then we repeated this, resulting in a lot of pit stops, some of which were pretty slow and disorganized. But it was a great learning day. With two races in the weekend, we could learn on Saturday and improve on Sunday. It worked great, although most of the other teams seemed to follow a similar plan of improvement.

The only other excitement of the day was Erik spinning the car right in front of the pits. He controlled the car well, got it back on the tack and kept going. Several people, including Lloyd, stopped by after to congratulate him on the good recovery and excellent show! Nice Job Erik. We don't have any video or photos of this, but hopefully somebody else captured it,

The car ran solid, accelerated incredibly, but pushed hard through corners. Clearly our setup needs to be improved. I guess no alignment after lowering the car does not handle great. Who knew? I'm also hoping to build a DIY fiberglass hood and a DIY rear wing. I think those would both help. For Iowa, windows might be good as well for aerodynamics, as it's suppose to be a fast track.

After the race we hung out at the track for a while before heading out to a Chinese Buffet and then to bed. Lot's of folks came out to support us on Saturday, which was great. Thanks to my Dad, Greg and Jeff's Mom and Dad, Sheldon and his two oldest boys, Danielle, who brought delicious cookies, and AnnMarie and a huge thanks to CO for helping us get organized on pits. His years of rallying really helped.

Brainerd No-Brainer - Friday!

2010-06-07T19:21:00.003-05:00

Friday - While the car was running two weeks prior for the track day, there were still projects left to be completed before race day. Jeremy drove out from Wisconsin on Thursday night, and he and Greg tackled the last of the decals and the brakes, which turned out to be real trouble in the rear. A few of us arrived around noon to help finish projects up, but we ended up getting a late start, heading out of town at 3:20, rather than 1PM. That would get us to BIR at about 5:30, which would be in time for the Friday night drivers school.

Unfortunately, things did not work out so well. In Sauk Rapids, about half way to BIR, my Jeep started vibrating a lot. We thought a trailer tire might be flat, but Greg pulled around and reported that we needed to pull over that it was the Jeep wheel wobbling. At that same moment the Jeep started shaking and I immediately pulled over. Turns out all five lugs had sheered off and the wheel was no longer connected to the Jeep.. It appears that the shop I had do my brakes last week forgot to tighten the lug nuts properly.

This was not good, but at least the wheel stayed on the Jeep and didn't launch off into traffic. We decided to fix it and Greg and Jeff headed off to buy new lugs and lug nuts. Jeremy and I worked to take things apart to prepare to reassemble.

When the new lugs arrived, they seemed really tight. After 2+ hours of work, they would not pull into the axle flange. The wheel was on, but there was almost no thread engagement in the lug nuts. Flustered, I called a tow truck to carry the Jeep and tow the trailer up to BIR.

During this, Erik and Steff had headed up to the track to talk to the ChumpCar staff about our predicament. They were very accommodating and planned to let us tech late. Unfortunately we got up there pretty late and they decided to tech us in the morning. This worked out ok because we had misread one rule, as 5 other teams had done, regarding the electrical shut-off, and needed to fix it. That took us until midnight. It turns out that the cut off switch needs to cut off the alternator output in addition to the battery. Oops!

Repairs were made, and we headed off to bed a little after midnight. Damn that was a long day...

Let There Be Paint! Despite the Cottonwood Trees

2010-06-01T06:55:00.007-05:00

Despite a strong showing from Greg's Cottonwood trees trying to cover everything with their cottony seeds, we were able to get the body, wheels an hood painted. Man this can looks better in white than in dark green. The lower stance and modified front bumper add a very aggressive look tothe car as well. Me Likey!

Here is the progression of painting. In the morning the car was green. A couple hours of scouring, then cleaning, and then the multiple shades of primer before the finale, where Greg painted the entire car. It took about a quart and a half todo one heavy coat.

Neither Greg or I have painted using spray guns before and Jeff borrowed a self-contined unit from work to do the painting. Here is Greg prepping the gun and the paint:

Danielle helped paint the flat black hood which ended up being more challenging than I would have expected.

Greg Painting the wheels:

It's WHITE:

This pic is a littl hard to see and the car is up in the air, but here is our 'cop car' style wheel:

When we swapped the newly painted wheels on, Danille wanted to do it so she could use her favorite tool, Thor's Cousin Louie, the massive impact:

It was a long weekend, and there is still more work to do this week, but I'm really happy with what we've gotten done and am really excited about this weekend. In almost exactly five days (120 hours) we will be starting our first ever wheel to wheel racing in the Simpsons themed Team Bear Patrol Lexus SC400. I'm giddy, yes GIDDY, with excitement!

Teaser...

2010-05-30T21:23:00.003-05:00

So we've been working this weekend again, and I just had to throw up some teaser pics of the car in the final transformation. We think we have the engine timing fixed by bumping the belt back a tooth. It seems to be running really strong. Soren picked up another cooler for the transmission that had 3/8" fittings instead of 1/4". So now we shouldn't have a restriction in the flow. Now check out the pics...

First we have the bumper, its now actually mounted to the car again. Also check out the washer fluid bottle that's now reinstalled!

Just a nice blurry pic of the primed hood.

Next are the cage pics. Looks kind of cool in primer, but GD is it hard to try to paint a cage. Yes I know there are a spots we missed. Or more so, I now know after looking at the pics that I have places I missed. Jerks. Look at the nice parts of the cage instead.

And lastly, a quick peek at our special "patrol" edition wheels. You'll just have to wait to see them when they're done, they're going to look awesome!

More from the track day

2010-05-25T22:52:00.004-05:00

Here we are, the car unloaded, ready for its inaugural laps. It was quite a push over the weekend and last few weeks to get to this point. Thank you to everyone who helped along the way.

Soren getting ready to hit the track for the first time ever in the BP SC400.

Our BIR instructor for the day was Chris Lake-Smith. Here's some of Chris's bio from the BIR Performance Driving School website.

"Chris started his career in 1969 in England, finishing second in both the Daily Mail "Star of Tomorrow" FF1600 Championship and the Daily Express "Crusader" Championship, and was seventh overall in the very competitive 1971 European Formula Ford Championship. In 1972 Chris earned a works drive in the factory Elden team alongside future Indy 500 winner Danny Sullivan, and set FF lap records at several circuits, including Estoril, Portugal. He moved on to Formula Super Vee and Formula 3, campaigning in England, Wales, Belgium, Portugal, Mozambique, South Africa and the United States. Chris was a senior instructor at the Brands Hatch International Motor Racing School for four years and also instructed at Silverstone and Mallory Park in England. Having had over 120 starts in single-seater races, Chris scratched a lifetime itch in 2002 when he drove a Formula One Benetton at the French Grand Prix circuit at Magny Cours, France."

And he even liked our car! He liked IT, he REALLY liked it!

Out on the first lap, the BP SC400 looks pretty good for not being painted.

The day got nicer in the afternoon. The wind picked up, but it definitely help make the heat more bear-able.

And one last action shot of the car hauling down the straight in front of the pits.

And of course some more videos.
Greg:

Jeremy:

Soren:

Sorry I didn't get video of you Erik, we should have just put the camera back in for the afternoon without the tether.

Brainerd Track Day

2010-05-25T18:33:00.004-05:00

The car is ALIVE! After six months, we drove the car onto the trailer on Sunday night and took it up to BIR for a track day. It was a GREAT day, although it was insanely hot for Brainerd, 90F in May? Crazy!

The car has a high RPM stumble that we think is a mis-adjusted timing belt. Other than that the car ran great, it handled great, and was pretty easy to drive. I won't speak for the team, but I really like what we've built here.

It was a great day at the track and Chris, our BIR instructor, was really helpful riding with us for most of the day.

A video I took of the car driving by pit lane. We were worried about the sound level of the car, but it was one of the quieter cars there with just a glass pack muffler. Awesome!

One of the incar videos that Greg uploaded to youtube:

T-minus 2 days...

2010-05-22T21:35:00.004-05:00

First off the cage is FINALLY finished! Well sort of. We might and some bracing for the foot-box, and a dead-pedal. But all the required cage components are now in. Jeff had lots of fun fitting in the drunk to weld the rear down braces. He even commented how spacious the trunk was for a coupe, and that it could likely hold multiple dead hookers. Don't ask how he's knows this.

Next the new coolers got mounted. My dad got booted out of the house for some ladies art's and craft's weekend, so I took him under my wing, and he's taking part in a man's weekend with race cars. He did an awesome job getting the extra transmission cooler mounted below, and further below, the power steering cooler. Thanks for the help Dad!

The new wink mirror is in, which will help give us a nice panoramic rearview. Next we need to build a bracket for the gauges. But who needs 'em?

And lastly, a nice shot of the rear, with the trunk remounted, our fancy cheap LED tail lights and a nice shot of the complicated roll cage profile.

And now for some videos, we know you people love videos. First a test shot with my VholdR Contour HD from the main hoop.

We also took some test shots with Erik's Go Pro camera in and around the car. Its got quite the wide angle lens, its pretty cool.

And technically we got a few more things done, but we're not going to show them until tomorrow. Unless of course you want to stop by and help. Thanks to Erik and Jeremy for helping today too.

It moves!

2010-05-19T21:58:00.003-05:00

After the total failure of a second Harbor Freight spring compressor, Greg and I finagled (yes, finagled) the modified front shocks back into the car.

To recap, we took the front springs and cut them and installed them in the rear. This took the stock 170# springs and replaced them with 380# springs. We then replaced the front springs with 800# circle track springs from eBay. This required a modified spring perch on the shock, but lowered the car and stiffened it up significantly. Total cost: $30 for used springs, $0.50 in steel for the perches.

We were then able to drop the car onto it's new LS400 wheels for the first time. It's been on jack stands since December. With the lower suspension and sitting on it's wheels, it seems really low.

The stance looks great! The car drove out of the garage and then back in. It was a great evening.

Video of the car moving:

Cage is in!

2010-05-16T18:38:00.004-05:00

First item of the day was getting the wiring harness out of the way, and the cage in its final position. So when Jeff showed up he got busy on the cage. Of course he started off with the easy welds.

For the front we used some mini plinth boxes we made out of 2"x2"x0.25" box steel that we had leftover from making the bender. Welding behind and on the outside of these looked to be a HUGE pain. Good job Jeff! Maybe next time we'll make the cage easier to weld.

Just another shot of the cage in its final resting spot. Last item on the list is the rear down tubes. Which we got started making, but aren't quite done. But at least the cage is in place and won't move when we go to the Open Track day next Monday.

We did get finished with the modified driver seat brackets. Braced them a little extra, and should be good to go. I mean it should at least be as good as Lexus quality. Not like our car is going to accelerate away on its own.

Got some more done on the front bumper. The main section and the wings have been welded in. A couple spots need touch up, because this is right when we ran out of argon for the welder. It almost makes me not want to put the bumper cover back on.

The exhaust is cut and ready to be welded, but as mentioned above, we ran out of gas. I think this is the first time in history when a Brawley has ever "run out of gas".

Soren and finished cutting the adapters for his suspension. We have out own home engineered suspension kit to allow us to run stiffer springs. I sure hope they work well.

Just about ready to install. Can't wait to see the car on the ground.

Soren and Matt test fitted a wheel. I'm not sure why. We had to take it off when bled the brakes and replaced the old fluid with some nice DOT 4 Super Blue. Maybe it was to the test fit the stupid style lug nuts we had to get. I don't know, but they fit.

No good deed goes unpunished...

2010-05-09T21:34:00.003-05:00

Another weekend closer to the goal, and we're a few baby steps closer. Seemed like we did a lot this weekend, but don't have as much to show for it. Saturday we "fixed" the taillights. Apparently this car is picky about its grounding, and not having the fuel tank grounded (we had unbolted to attempt to take it out a couple weeks ago) made the difference. We jumpered the stupid "Lamp Failure Sensor" for good measure though.

This week I stopped by our buddy Caz's place, and he TIG welded up our stainless wye pipe with some aluminized steel adapters to start putting our exhaust back together. Below you can see his handy work, and the front of the glasspack we're currently running. Putting the wye pipe bace in was a bit of a trick though, as the welding had pulled the two legs closer together and things took some pulling on to line up. But we got it together.

And of course, we couldn't put in the new exhaust and NOT hear it. Duh... Its quieter, I think...

And Sunday Jeff stopped by to get some more welding done. And as you can see, we got the driver side door bars in, the plinthe boxes welded, and dash bar in. Not bad. Its all ready to weld to the car some night this week.

Jeff also fixed up the holes I blew through the sheetmetal and finished welding up the new, lowered, seat mount brackets. Might add a couple more braces, but I think we're good to go.

Saturday we got the beginnings of the new bumper fit together. Its about ready weld on. Soren also protected our new Cold Air intake (through the headlight hole) with some chicken wire. Looks a lot tougher now at least.

And last but not least, as a co-worker is fond of saying, no good deed goes unpunished. And sure enough, we put in some extra time Sunday welding things up, and the dash bar slips while being fitted, and pop, we have a cracked windshield. *sigh*

CORRECTION: Like Erik said, the front shocks are out now. But there's still some work to be done on the adapters for the new springs. Soren picked up some pre-cut pieces, and we got holes in two of them to fit over the shock, but need to cut at least two more to get closer to the expected height. So they're almost ready to go back on.

Another weekend closer

2010-05-02T18:58:00.007-05:00

Well Team Bear Patrol racing was at it again this weekend at Casa del Greg. It was a big week for Soren, as you can see below, he made the jump and bought a plasma cutter! So of course we cut a bunch of random stuff to test it out, but forgot to take pics of that. Below he's finishing up compressing a rear spring to get the last cut one back installed. To get some added spring stiffness he cut a junkyard set of front springs, to fit on the back. It should sit a little lower, and complement our front springs once we get them on. Now if only we had the tires on the wheels, we could see how it sits.

Erik stopped by to help finish wiring the new tail lights. He had to bring over his soldering iron because my Harbor Freight special is so awful. But what do I need a soldering iron for, I'm a metal banger?

Here are the cheapo tail-lights we bought so we could sell our stockers. A nice little pick-up on eBay got us some brighter LEDs, and we mounted them inset, so in case someone rear-end's us the lights shouldn't be damaged. Unfortunately our fancy Lexus has a "light failure sensor" and the lower resistance LEDs seem to be triggering it and not working. Stupid technology.

Soren also got the last of the battery relocation done and hooked up. He also fab'd up a bracket for the battery cut-off switch to put right within reach in case of an emergency. We also switched to a dry cell battery since we moved it inside the driver compartment. I think there are a couple things left to get the hold down part of it finished though.

Jeff stopped by after a crazy workout at Crossfit St. Paul. I finished coping the passenger side doorbars so he could get them welded in. The bottom rear section of the bottom bar needed some creative bodywork to get access to. Wouldn't want any sections not funny welded.

Passenger side finished.

And then I even snuck some time to fab up part of a personal project. Its so fun having all these tools now. Cut and welded up a base for a sprayer for my mower. Boring, but I love having all this stuff around to fab things from scrap.

Only a few more weekends left before the track day for practice at Brainerd...um yeah that's May 24th, okay that's three weekends if we don't take the car up the weekend before the track day to show it off.

Commence the welding!

2010-04-18T10:55:00.007-05:00

It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and what better to do then fire up the welder and begin fusing the metals with some gas metal arc welding. But in more important news, after weeks of being taunted for missing build days to transplant raspberry bushes, Danielle brought a delicious peace offering of mini raspberry cheesecakes. If you weren't here for them, you missed out. Just look how good they look!

Yeah I had eaten one already...anyways, back to the car. My big brother, and Chump, Jeff, came over to start the welding. We had tack welded the halo inside the car, and surprisingly, we were able to take them out together. So he started welding the Halo to the main hoop, then we started adding the diagonal cross bars. We decided to give our fat pig car some extra rollover protection with a second diagonal brace.

The el Jeffe had to hop in the car to weld some of the horizontal back braces. We could have pulled it all back out, but he wanted to see if he could weld himself into the car. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough on grabbing the camera to document his climb out the back window.

Another shot of the horizontal back bars. We're contemplating lowering the driver seat, which means we might need to add another bar for the seat belts, but we'll see.

Then we got to welding in the front down tubes. To get access to the top side of the weld, we had to plinthe box them, so we could remove the boxes and tip the cage down. Now I just need to build the finished versions of those plinthes, and we'll get those welded in, and the cage welded to the car. We also have a dash support bar ready, but decided to hold off on welding it in yet. But now that the down tubes are welded, we can finish cutting and fitting the door bars. They should be ready to weld in next weekend.

Soren climbed into the front wheel wells to get the new calipers, rotors and brake lines installed.

Don't they look hot? Nice aluminum, four pot calipers save us 4lbs per caliper, but it turns out the bigger LS400 rotors weigh 5lbs more. Doh! Oh well, we'll have some much improved stopping power, for basically the same cost as stock parts. Woot! We also picked up our first sponsor, Frozen Rotors, for a discount on cryogenically treated brake rotors, but we're saving those rotors until we get the race pads.

Next week we'll be back at some small projects, like putting in the braided brake lines in the rear, and flushing the brake system with new high temp fluid. Hopefully the tires will be installed by then and the car will be able to move under its own power. But the weekend of May 1st will be another big build day with lots of projects. We'll probably even start earlier then usual, so if you're a Chump, watch for that invite. Catch you Chumps on the flip-side!

Build Day 4/11 - More cage work

2010-04-11T17:25:00.004-05:00

Another build day with a few more projects worked on. We started working on the battery relocation and mounted the remote battery terminals in the engine bay. The cooling fan wiring is complete as well.

We also cut some 4" holes in the trunk to mount the tail lights in. I was amazed how easily a new hole saw cut through the sheet metal.

We also tried removing the fuel tank and found that to be amazingly difficult. You'd think a fuel tank mounted in the trunk would be easy to remove, but no. We did come up with a way to mount the cage into the trunk without welding, which means we can do it with the tank in place. Basically we'll bolt plates in on the wheel well rather than weld it. Should work out well.

Matt also got the passenger door gutted, so they are ready to be reinstalled once the cage is complete.

Greg and Jeremy got a bunch more done on the cage as well. It's really starting to look look good. Since we discovered that the ChumpCar rules changed and we have heavier tubing than we need, we should be nice and safe, just like Lexus intended.

Build Day 4/3 - More cage, less glass

2010-04-04T10:46:00.007-05:00

Saturday was a light build day. Most of the team was busy with Easter and other things so Jeff, Greg and I, with a little late help from Fritz, worked on the harder projects.

Fritz and I removed the trunk lid and rear window. The Harbor Freight windshield kit worked well, although the cable broke four times. The rear window was 17 lbs. All of the glass is now out except the windshield, which will stay. I'd like to install polycarbonate windows, but it's a low priority at the moment.

We started planning out the rest of the cage, and the rear down tubes look like they will be a little challenging. In this photo is the fuel tank, which is mounted in the trunk, over the axle. The rear down tube will come down to the front ofthe wheel arch, next to, and in front of the fuel tank. So, next week, we'll have to pull the tank out.

Jeff and Greg fitting the main hoop diagonal. Hey,this is starting to look like a real roll cage now! Next week we should be able to get the door bars done and start on the rear down tubes.

We have a track day in late May, which seems like a long way away, but is getting closer every day. I'm sure glad we started in November!

Build Day 3/20 Cage bending and misc projects

2010-03-20T20:20:00.004-05:00

Another busy build day. Greg and Jeremy continued bending and building the cage. The main hoop is tacked in along with the halo, and the two front down tubes are now bent but still need a little fitting.

Two more pictures with the bumper taped in place. We started planning and cutting the tube bumper that we'll fit underneath it as well.

The main hoop tacked in place:

The wye-pipe we cut out of the car. It looks like we'll keep it and weld a 3" single exhaust onto it with a single muffler out the back:

Greg and Jeremy working on the cage:

The halo:

This is the original radiator. It's probably a good thing it was damaged in the bear accident, because it was in horrible condition.

The stripped down steering wheel. It looks so dainty now!

We also did a noise test with my phone. While it's not calibrated it gave an idea of noise. With only the two front cats still in place we were showing about 85dB at 50'at idle. Here's a video:

We also completed most of the wiring for the cooling fans including getting them wired into the original cooling fan ECM that originally ran a solenoid in the hydraulic system. It now runs a relay that will power the fan.

We also cut a piece of aluminum to cover the sunroof hole, finished cleaning up the rear side window openings, and worked on a bunch of other little projects. No huge break-throughs today, but a good day of working.

We have a tune day at BIR the last week of May, so we've got about two months left to finish the car. Should be enough time, but we've still got plenty to do.

Let there be lights!

2010-03-18T23:45:00.004-05:00

Got the dash wiring figured out tonight. Turns out the door connector and the dash connector use the same terminal plug. And putting the dash in the door plug doesn't work right. Weird.

Soren brought over the front bumper, so we set it in place. Looks good, eh?

More work to come this weekend, so check back for a new post Sunday or Monday.

IT'S ALIVE!!

2010-03-13T20:41:00.012-06:00

Alright, we'll start with the big news, and the big fun... IT RUNS!

After a couple tries, we got it fire. Turns out you do need to re-connect the plug going the fuel pump control. Weird. But with all the stuff disconnected, our gage pod doesn't work, and the alarm goes off when you first connect the battery. Strangely, disconnecting the gages, starting it, then reconnecting them shuts it off. Luckily we had the horns disconnected so we just had to deal with flashing dash lights. Cross the radiator and starting the engine off the list. Oh, and disconnecting the exhaust BEFORE starting it, was clearly a good idea. Glad we planned it that way. It was nice to hear the engine just through the cats. Guess we'll have to get that exhaust fixed and back in...

Now to less exciting things. We finished cutting the side impact bar out of the driver's door, shedding another 6lbs for a grand total of 31lbs removed from the driver side door. We also got the rear side windows out, one broken, one not. What a pain in the @ss. We're totally breaking out the rear glass.

And we also looked at brakes. The LS400 calipers I ordered from a shop in Missouri showed up Thursday, and we test fitted them. As you can see below, the aluminum LS400 caliper on the right is quite a bit bigger then the cast iron SC400 on the left.

We had to trim the dust shield, but got the caliper mounted on the passenger side to test fit the different wheels we had on hand.

Stock SC400 wheels definitely don't fit.
Nor did the 17" steel rims I had from my Dodge Magnum. Despite have more positive offset, it still couldn't clear the rotor. Guess we better check out the offsets available on Supra wheels and see what we can track down. Luckily with the 2X and our $900 Chrome Lexus wheels, we can use pretty much any wheels we decide we can afford. Too bad we can't afford some sweet Fiske wheels.

Next was a date with the sawzall. Thanks to some uber rusted bolts...

We cut out the exhaust...

so we could have more room to remove the 3rd catalyst and put in an H-pipe with true duals.

We also plan to ditch those HUGE mufflers and save a bit of weight. Just gotta figure how little muffling we can run and stay within the rules. Next week we'll get some exhaust cutting done, start mocking up and tack welding new pieces, and get to work on more of the cage. Thanks to Matt, Soren and Danielle for helping out today.

Build Day 3/6 more pics

2010-03-07T16:48:00.006-06:00

Here we were on another build day. Jeremy drove all the way out from savage Wisconsin. And he didn't even bring any cheese curds... BLASPHEMY! Aside from our first attempt at the halo, all the bending went well. Get ready for some action footage, here we are working strenuously to bend the tube. It was exhausting.

And here were are double checking out notes to see how far we had to do the previous 90 degree bend to account for spring back. So exhausting pressing that button for the air over hydraulic...

And a little later, here's the main hoop almost done...

And there she is! Left the legs a little long to trim to fit in the car, but the 30 and 60 deg bends look beautiful.

And after trimming off a half inch at a time, about 4 times, then trimming off blade widths, we got the main hoop to fit. A little more massaging of the sheetmetal around it, and it'll be ready to tack in place. After fitting the main hoop, we decided to widen the halo and made another one of those. It fit much nice, up front at the windshield. Strangely the windshield is wider then at the B-pillar. Kind of annoying. So making the wider halo should help with keeping the front legs of the cage tight to the A-pillar and not blocking too much visibility.

Still got quite a bit of work to do, looks like we'll be working some nights and weekends until its done. Otherwise June will sneak up on us.

Build Day 3/6 We Start Bending!

2010-03-06T21:38:00.007-06:00

Jeremy was in town today for our first cage day. Greg will need to share his photos of the cage, but we got the main hoop and halo bent and fitted. Greg and Jeremy bending:

Matt worked on gutting the driver's door. This took about 20 lbs more out of the door. We ran out of cutting wheels and still have the side impact beam to remove and start gutting the passenger door.

We finally got an accessory belt that fit the modified pulley routing and got it installed:

And with that we finished putting the engine back together. We replaced the idler pulley with one from the junkyard that was in better shape. The radiator hoses were reinstalled, and the reservoir was also reinstalled. The LS400 has two pusher fans mounted on the AC condensor in addition to the engine mounted fan. I picked up a pair of these fans and mounted them directly on the radiator. In testing, they seemed to move plenty of air.

With the hydraulic fan removed and pusher fans installed there is a huge amount of space between the radiator and engine. It looks a little weird, but will allow plenty of airflow. We should be ready to start the engine shortly.

Build Day 2/20

2010-02-21T21:53:00.013-06:00

Saturday was another minor build day and Greg and I got a little further on the car, although it looks worse with a lot more pieces removed.

Shiny new radiator is now installed. I bought a new accessory belt, but got the woring size. This should be running again shortly!

Cold air intake. I opened up the intake box and with no headlight here, this should feed lots of cold air into the engine. This must be good for +50hp!

Cold air intake close up.

Intake as it orignally appeared with a large resonator.

Intake tube with resonator hole plugged. This should add +20hp, right?

Dash is out.

In case you couldn't see it in the last photo. this is the dash wire harness mess.

We decided to take the doors off to aid with the cage building and stripping them out.

The dash is out, drivers side.

Greg lounging in the back seat.

More work on the bender kills a chopsaw

2010-02-21T18:10:00.013-06:00

So this week's episode began Monday with the material order not showing up. Jeremy pulled some strings to get us an awesome deal on the material, but we ended up having to pick it up ourselves. So Soren and I rented a 20ft snowmobile trailer and drove to Eagan to get the material. It didn't look as impressive as I thought it would, but 22ft lengths of 1.75" tubing is pretty heavy. Not to mention 12ft lengths of 1", 1.5" and 2" OD bar stock. Let the good times roll!

Also showing up on Wednesday was the die set! Thank you UPS!

Then Thursday night, Caz and Matt finished up milling the big parts and turning down the bushings. Hopefully the lead content in the 12L14 steel gives our shafts some nice lubrication. GD that sounds dirty. Sorry.

Next up, Discount Steel finally finished putting together my order. And they STILL didn't get it right. But whatever, I got what I needed, including a 28"x48"x3/8" plate to make a welding table. Luckily the manwagon has a spacious storage compartment.

Here's el Jeffe putting the wheels on the table. Almost time to stand 'er up and check it out. Note, the camera is in focus, there's just that much haze and weld smoke in the air.

And here's what we got done on Saturday. A rolling, flat, table of awesomeness. All set and ready to begin welding the important stuff on Sunday.

Well we thought it was done, turns out we had a few more finishing touches to put on. Here Jeff's welding on the last of our hooks for holding all our welding tools, hammers, squares, brushes, etc.

And here's the final resting place for the Harbor Freight chopsaw. You lived a good life, but couldn't quite handle all the 2"x2"x1/4" box steel I was making you cut. You'll be remembered, but of course replaced with something awesomer that'll be tax deductibe.

Now for some final shots. Had to air out the garage a bit to get some clear shots, but here are some views of the welding table and the beginning parts of the bender. As soon as the new saw arrives, I'll make a couple 45 degree cuts and we'll be finishing up the bender in the no time. Hopefully by this time next week we'll have our first bent material!

Budget suspension mods

2010-02-14T20:05:00.007-06:00

After talking to a guy who tracks a SC300 turbo, he suggested that the stock spring rates on the SC series is sprung a little too soft for track use. So I started thinking about possible ways to respring the car and possibly lower it. This is the first step in that process.

First, the SC400 shares the same suspension design as the MkIV Supra. It has upper and lower control arms and shocks, not Macpherson Struts like most other modern cars. The front and rear springs are both 5" diameter, although the front springs taper to fit into the upper control arm. The rears appear to be straight.

I managed to find a pair of used front shocks and springs on eBay for $10 which I bought to experiment with, and then bought a bunch of used circle track springs also on eBay for $7 to $12 each. Turns out 5" diameter is a common size.

Stock front springs, 368 lbs per inch:

Stock rear springs, 154 lbs per inch:

Front shocks with circle track springs:

Close up of the springs:

On the left is the stock spring. It's about 12.5" uncompressed. About 11" of that is at 5" diameter. In the center is the stock shock with the circle track spring. Notice it's a bit shorter, 9.5" overall. On the right is the stock spring and shock together.

The taper on the stock spring need to be there to fit into the upper control arm, and since the spring is a little short, and adapter will be needed. I've got a few ideas on how to solve this such as: a solid machined piece or a threaded piece and huge nut to create adjustable coil-overs. I'm not sure what we'll do, but I can continue experimenting on these parts off of the car.

Based on what the stock front corner weights should be (975 lbs), the stock spring should be about 9.9" compressed. The circle track spring is shorter, but this one is 650 lbs per inch, and I have some up to 1100 lbs per inch. At 650 lbs per inch, the spring will be compressed to about 8". If you add a 1.75" adapter (to fit inside the control arm), it would sit at about the same height as stock. I've also got a pair of 800 lbs per inch springs that would sit higher, so they may need to be cut to fit.

To keep this cheap, the front springs might be usable on the back as well. That would significantly increase the rear spring rate without adding too many dollars to the car. This would go from 368/154 to 650/368 or 800/368. Seems reasonable.

In the end, adjustable stiff springs will keep the car from diving too much or leaning too hard in the corners, and it should handle better. And the greatest part is that instead of used Supra springs or a used lowering kit to keep in budget, once this is done, we can swap out spring rates to tune the car even better. Too bad we need to continue to use used shocks. That's crap can racing for you!

Just in case anybody is interested in seeing the front shock assembly disassembled, here it is. On top, from left to right, is the destroyed boot, bump stop that we'll probably need to cut, and top shock mount. In the center is the front shock, and at the bottom is the front spring:

Starting the bender

2010-02-14T16:44:00.016-06:00

No, no, not him. One of these...

From Frank at Takac's Cycles In the never ending quest for more tools, I decided to build my own tubing bender. Having looked around and seen how expensive buying one was, I luckily stumbled upon Frank's site and plans for his bender at Takacs Cycles. So I ordered up the plans, and contemplated how to drill all the required holes for the upright and swingarm. Luckily through Danielle and Soren, we befriended Caz and the crew at Caztek. And Caz offered the use of their shop to help the team. So we could use the band saw to easily cut through the 5/8" and 1/2" thick plate. Like buttah...

They even let me make make a mess on the layout table. But I did clean it up.

Here's Matt, one of the Caztek guys, on the Bridgeport drilling all the holes in the swing arm. Look at that concentration!

Here's the day's progress. Not as much as I hoped for, but not from a lack of trying. Unfortunately I ran into issues getting all the steel we needed. It started off as anger at Discount Steel for taking FOREVER (two days) to cut my steel, when it turned out to be because they were out of material. And low and behold, their archaic inventory management system that said they had enough material for my order, was wrong, and the value was "low enough" to mean they had zero. So what started off as anger for their lack of customer service and finishing my order, turned out to be the result of an old computer system. Maybe someday they'll fix that. But at least tomorrow my big order of steel through Jeremy should here, and hopefully I'll have more steel then I know what to do with...literally, I'm not sure where I'm going to store it all. Oh, back to the pic above, you can see the awesomely machined swingarms, and some other cut steel pieces. We got a lot of little stuff done, but will need another night or two this week to finish cutting all the holes. Apparently cutting 1.375" holes with a boring bar in 0.020" passes takes awhile when your biggest drill is around an 1.0". Harbor Freight was also out of stock of the hydraulic ram, but should have more on Tuesday. And my 1.75" die from Pro-Tools should be here Wednesday. Everything else from McMaster-Carr already showed up.

And this is some fun with a flamethrower! Stopped the open house at the Hack Factory with Caz as he and the crew showed off their flamethrower, pulse jet engine (not running...BOOOOOOOOO), and their t-shirt launcher. Lots of other cool stuff there as well from other people, but not as cool as a flamethrower. Step 2 for the project I believe is going to use higher pressure for a bigger flame. I think Soren and I need to build something to compete with Caz. If only we could write it off as a business project.

More pics from the last build day

2010-02-07T12:04:00.007-06:00

Thought I'd add a few extra pics I had from yesterday. I mean, how can't I post another picture of our awesome seat? I am a little confused with how we're supposed to connect the back bracket piece to the seat that connects to the cage... Next we'll start cutting out some of the door, and that huge side impact bar.

Here's the box of parts we pulled to shed another 10lbs.

Like Soren said, hopefully we didn't take out any we need, because as you can see below, it gets a wee bit confusing. But the engine and ABS modules are still there, so that's all we should need, right?

Here's a picture of the new belt routing that Soren mentioned. With taking out the AC compressor, and bypassing the location for the hydraulic fan pump, we'll need a shorter belt, but should still have sufficient wrap on all the needed pulley's and accessory drives. Time to mark it, measure it and head to the parts store.

Had to show this grossness also. Mixing hydraulic fluid, coolant and oil looks a bit strange. I bet it'll kill some grass in the backyard too...

And one final picture, an action shot of Soren approaching ludris speed. As you can see, he hasn't quite gone plaid yet.

Next up, the big bending weekend in about a month. Gotta finish making the bender from the plans I got from Takacs Cycles. Should get a post together on how that goes once the steel shows up. Until then...

Build Day - The seat is here

2010-02-07T10:50:00.004-06:00

Saturday was a 'major' build day and we managed to get the almost the entire team together to see how everybody fit in the car with the new Corbeau Forza 2 seat. Despite a range of heights and weights, everybody fit fairly well. It looks like Ben will need to add some padding, but a lot less than we were imagining. The Supra bracket fit well, although the slider is a little tight. Hopefully it will loosen up with use. We'll also check all of the seat bolts to make sure it's not binding.

It does look like a Gurney bump may be required to make sure nobody's helmet rubs the ceiling. This should be pretty easy since we need to fill in the hole vacated by the sunroof. How many horsepower will this racing feature add? 20? 30?

We also put some tape up to simulate a cross style door bar. That will make getting into and out of the car a little more challenging, but a cross type door bar looks a lot better than the traditional parallel style. We also need to look at a removable steering wheel although the car has, seriously, electric tilt wheel, so when we remove the motor perhaps we can modify it to tilt up out of the way a little?

We also got the hydraulic pump for the fan taken apart so that we could reinstall the housing and put the belts back together. We need to fit a smaller accessory belt on the car, bypassing the AC and hydraulic pump that we removed, but the belt routing will work really well. The cooler for the hydraulic system will be reused, probably as an oil cooler or a bigger power steering pump. Yeah for free parts!

We also pulled another 10 lbs out the car as well with a few hopefully unneeded computers: Air bag controller, cooling fan controller, keyless entry receiver, etc. The airbag controller was about 4 lbs by itself! We're up to about 450 lbs pulled from the car.

Overall a good day. The next major project is the cage. Tubing it on order and we should be building it in about a month.

Seat pre-install

2010-02-03T20:38:00.010-06:00

So apparently I'm not carrying my weight info in the blog and have called a slacker. So here's an update on the seat. It showed up during the snowstorm on Monday, thanks to a timely Up's man. I unpacked it Tuesday to get a look at it and make sure it wasn't damaged, its good to wait a day to do this, I swear. And everything looked good, just a tear in the plastic bag from the box holding the bracket.

So the bracket wasn't quite as adjustable as we were lead to believe, and by that I mean its not adjustable at all. It did look nice and had the slider already installed and a nice wrinkle powder coat finish. The first two holes near the door lined up well, and I thought the other front one did, but not so much when I got the bolts in the other two. Its just a little bit off, but nothing a little dremel action won't solve. Now the other back mount looked a little weird. It had a bracket to line up with the seat belt bolt, but it didn't quite line up. Then I noticed another bracket on the bottom, that was covered by the slider piece. Luckily this one lined right up. And yes, the tag says its for a Supra, not an SC400.

Being the lazy bastard I am, I just set the seat in to try it and didn't bother bolting it in. Gotta save something for the guys to do when they show up Saturday at noon. I must say it looks nice.

So then what's a guy to do? Yeah he has to get in, try it, and hold the steering wheel and make VRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOM, VRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOM noises and pretend he's driving. Yes, I did it, and a took a picture to prove it.

And I completely admit this layout is awful, but I'm mad at the stupid picture loading, and had to try it out. So yes, its awful, suck it up, I'll do it different next time. Until then.

Timing Belt Repair

2010-01-29T07:50:00.013-06:00

On Wednesday this week, Greg and I worked on the the car a little more and got the new timing belt installed. The old belt is in atrocious condition, being very cracked, and clearly stretched. The new belt went on much tighter, and looks so new and clean.

Since this is a budget build, we bought an eBay timing belt that was a bargain but turned up one minor issue. There are three marks on the belt. One is supposed to be marked CL for the center (crankshaft) pulley, but it wasn't. That was pretty easy to figure out, but the bigger problem was that the marks for the camshaft pulleys was slightly off. There is a mark on a tooth on the pulley, and a mark that lined up with a tooth on the belt. If you think about that the belt mark would either end up on one side or the other of the pulley tooth. Crap. There was a paint mark on the pulley, and we decided to align the belt with that. Hopefully it's aligned properly and the car will run well, but if it's running poorly, we'll have to open this back up.

We put the engine back together right up until the point where we needed to install the fan hydraulic pump and it's idler pulley. Since we're removing the hydraulic fan system, we need to remove the pump, but at the same time, we need to keep the idler. So, we need to modify this part. Probably with a grinder. We'll save that as a side project for the next major build day.

BD-2 and Team Meeting

2010-01-24T22:57:00.010-06:00

So we had a fairly successful build day numero dos. That's spanish for the dos. Due to Soren's "eBay and PayPal" issue, the water pump didn't show up in time. Conveniently it was at Soren's house when we got back from the team meeting though. Speaking of the team meeting, that was a huge success. Thanks to Caz and the crew at Caztek for hosting and providing pizza. It was great to meet everyone and put names to faces.

Above is a new pile with 10 some pounds of sound deadening material. Strategically placed in plastic bags for easy weighing. There's a little left in trouble spots of the interior, but we'll need to get Ben's experienced "Dry Ice" technique to remove the rest of it. Unfortunately now our Lexus won't be as quite, so if we have a hard time hearing any of you while we're on our cell phones during the race, driving with cruise control and sipping our Starbucks, we apologize.

There was some debate on whether to leave the e-brake in or not. That debate is to be continued. We left the glass in doors for now, in case we get it running before Spring and want to test drive in the less then warm Minnesota weather.

We did get the moonroof out, which reduces weight and helps add head room. We'll probably rivot in or weld in a panel to close it off. Though I think we should put in plexiglass, for that open roof feeling. Maybe we should put in one of those sweet rally scoops. Those add like 50hp, right? Also note the picture on the right with the in-trunk fuel tank. At least there's plenty of room between the back of the car and it.

Well next up is Day 3 (Feb 6th), where we plan to do some seat fitment for the various sized drivers. Hopefully our two statistical outliers, Ben and Jason can show up. Soren and I may get the water pump in before then. Luckily Thor's cousin Uncle Louie was able to break the bolt loose for the harmonic dampener. Now we just need to pull that, and finish the disassembly. And now that we have the parts, we'll get it all buttoned up.

Build Day 2 Approaches

2010-01-22T11:34:00.003-06:00

Tomorrow's a big day! Build Day number 2 and the "mandatory" team meeting at Caztek. It'll be the first time some of the people meet, and serve as the kick-off for the season. The new timing belt and tensioner pulley's are here and ready to rock. As you can see, the new belt looks quite a bit better.

Hopefully the parts Soren ordered get here. His PayPal mix up with an eCheck could postpone some assembly. But there's no shortage of other work to do.

Build Day 1

2010-01-18T19:32:00.007-06:00

On our first build day, we wanted to get most of the interior pulled and replace the radiator. Danielle and Charles joined Greg and I to work on the car. Charles and Danielle worked on stripping the interior while Greg and I worked on the engine. We discovered pretty early on that the timing belt was severely cracked an in desperate need of replacement.

The interior came apart well with about 80% of the work complete in less than a day!

Bumper Repair

2010-01-18T19:26:00.003-06:00

This is crap-can racing, so replacing mangled body panels is not appropriate. But I can't stand the idea of an ugly car, so I decided to put the front bumper cover back together, Frankenstein style, with pop rivets. I think it's coming along fairly well.

Assessing the Damage

2010-01-18T19:13:00.005-06:00

I decided to pull off the bumper cover and assess the front end damage. One of the first fun discoveries was the hair still stuck to the bumper.

After I decided to ignore that I pulled the bumper and start disassembly. The aluminum bumper was destroyed, which really showed how hard this hit was, but the only real damage otherwise was the broken radiator. Turns out there was a big hole in the radiator, so it was clearly driven dry. Hmm, that's not good. Hopefully it wasn't overheated and damaged.

Finding the car

2010-01-18T18:39:00.007-06:00

The night before Thanksgiving 2009 I found a craigslist ad for a 1992 Lexus SC400 that had hit a bear for $700. The SC400 is a V8 powered luxury coupe. I had been looking at cars like the Lincoln Mark VII as a car with good power and a lot of weight reduction opportunities. The SC400 met those needs, plus it was a top of the line Toyota, so I figured it would be a well built and reliable car. I had resigned myself to finding a safe Honda, but still wanted a V8 and rear wheel drive. So, on Friday, I called the owner and took a look at the car.

It ran well, but had a broken radiator and was leaking coolant, so it was a brief test drive. In talking to the owner, he claimed his girlfriend was driving at highway speeds in Northern Minnesota when she hit a small bear. The damage looked like mostly cosmetic damage, which is pretty amazing for a bear hit. Even a small bear. I decided to consult with the team about purchasing the car and after discussing it, they agreed that they would support purchasing this car.

So, Saturday morning I called the owner back and made an offer. He had a second set of wheels with decent tires on them, and I offered him $550 for the car and $150 for the wheels and we made a deal. I came buy with my trailer and found the owner a bit upset at having to sell his car, but the deal was completed and I took the car home.

Welcome to Team Bear Patrol

2010-01-18T18:18:00.002-06:00

Last year I was introduced to ChumpCar as an alternative to the popular 24 Hours of LeMons series. The LeMons Series seemed like a really cool idea: Buy a $500 car, add a roll cage, and drive it in a 24 hour endurance race with a team of drivers. It's affectionately known as crap-can racing, and I think it's a grand idea!

The problem was there were no LeMons races nearby. Then ChumpCar came along with two races within 4 hours drive of the Twin Cities. Woo Hoo!

After talking with friends, we decided to pool our resources and start a team. Initially it was Greg, Erik, Jeremy and I, and we've since added Ben, Jason, Danielle, Caz, and Matt along with several support folks to help us along. We plan to race at Brainerd and Iowa in June 2010, and if things go well, we'll road trip down to Florida for the Chumpcar race at Sebring, home of the 12 Hours of Sebring, in September.

This blog will chronicle our team's adventures in crap can racing.