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!
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 The Escort has a fuel cell that will probably need to be modified to meet the ChumpCar rules, and the belts are very out of date.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 The Cobra seats are a little narrow for us wider guys, the belts are out of date, and the window net is not SFI, so most of this will need to be removed or replaced.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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
