Brand new bumper, ready for action!

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...

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!

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...

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

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

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...

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.