Chump Car - John Allen Special USFail1 Race Team Build

[CRH_E30]

John Allen Special BMW E30 325E ChumpCar Chump Car LED Exterior Light by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr

12 volt LED ribbons?

Seems like it'd be kinda distracting, but it looks awesome!

[dinanm3atl]

Correct. Need a way to ID car at night. Very common in Chump and actually in Grand-AM and such as well.

[dinanm3atl]

Made it to the Wal-Mart parking lot near the track. Sleeping and getting into line at the gate early tomorrow AM!


John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 01 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 02 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 03 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 04 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr

[Lof8]

Dude, so awesome! Good luck to you guys. I'm envious!

[silence]

Good luck!

[Don Stevens]

Good Luck guys - Having followed your build and having built a car in the past I understand that at least some of you feel a sense of victory just getting to this point. Congratulations and have fun.

[dinanm3atl]

Car is ready. Time for bed. I have the first stint tomm at 1030am. Follow live timing on www.chumpcar.com and timing upper left. Eastern region.

[dinanm3atl]

VIR 24 - New Team - Terrible results lead to the best weekend ever


The John Allen Special team is a few BMW E30 nerds that decided to go racing. We started on the car in November of 2011 and this was our first event. Showing up at the event I cannot remember how many people came up and said they were following our build on Facebook, Bimmerforums or some other internet location. People that I have only had 'debates' with on the forum were jovial and happy to have a fun conversation. This started while we were parked in line waiting to get into VIR. People are offering advice and simple conversation for the noobs. We all had huge smiles on our faces as we rolled into VIR. Our first taste of Chump racing is a positive one and we have not even made it into the race track yet!

As many know our results were downright terrible and not anything that we were hoping for. We came with a strategy to preserve the car and just get everyone to drive. Then kick up the pace and turn consistent laps. We have an ETA(m20b27) and no chance to turn fast laps but knew we could go off the much heralded ETA reliability. Unfortunately that reliability was not so hot on our ETA. The car has been in my posession for a year and before that 2 years of a friend. We never did any maintenance. It just keeps asking for more abuse. We clean it up and put in the wrench time and it pops the main belt off and leads to losing the water pump which overheats the car and melts... yes melts the engine.

Now coming from Atlanta that sucks. We got about 1hr 30min of race time. I started the race and have to say that was the best time ever. It was simply awesome. Although we were slow and I was short shifting to save the car to hand it over to the other drivers it was the most fun I have had on a race track. I have done a lot of HPDE and track days in much faster BMWs but this topped them all! And I was only in the car for an hour! I did my best to just turn our laps and let the guys and gals racing do their thing so hopefully I was not in anyone's way. With that said I cannot wait to drive again. I handed the car over and we were off again.

Our 2nd driver simply did not notice the rising temps and it eventually let go. At the time we did not know this and the car was towed in. We all rushed from the pits and ripped the car apart. This is where my instant love for ChumpCar started. In the span of about 2 hours we figured out the damage was terminal but the support from everyone in the paddock was amazing. First we get someone to loan us a belt to test. Then we get some gaskets from another team. As we continue to work more and more teams and people come by to wish us luck getting back out. Many more offer up help. More than we could ever hope for given the situation. The car was dead but our love for ChumpCar could not be stronger. We had planned and carried a lot of heads. Going over with the co-captain I think the only spare we did not actually end up having to fix this issue was a bottom end. Rarely see a failure there and not so soon. A lot of new parts were installed and did not think to carry a new main belt but another team quickly came to our aid. Unfortunately we could not get the car back out there.

In the end we loaded the car up about 330-4pm and rolled out back to Atlanta. It was a somber by ride home but the mood quickly went from dissappoinment to a discussion on how awesome the event and atmoshphere was. ChumpCar is awesome and the people are great. There is not much to say outside of that! We will be back at the Atlanta events this year. Plan to add more! Just want to say thank you to all the people that were so friendly! It was an awesome weekend and we cannot wait to get back! Obviously not getting everyone into the car was super dissappointed but photographing endurance racing is what I do for a living. I was really upset that we were not out there and I could not shoot into the night. I will have a photo up with some shots from Oak Tree and the race start from Turn 3(lent my camera to co-captain). Wish there were more but not this time.

Here is a short recap of our weekend. Thanks again... huge smile on my face!




John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 12 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 13 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 14 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 08 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 07 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 05 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 06 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 09 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 15 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 16 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 10 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 17 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW 325E E30 ChumpCar Chump Car Race Weekend 11 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr

[Lof8]

Sorry to hear about the engine failure, but I'm gld you guys still had fun. Good luck at future events.

[silence]

Same here, sorry to hear about the disappointing news... Better luck next time!

[dinanm3atl]

http://youtu.be/EnPe8l-XoEE

[Nygdup]

Some pictures from today for those who DON'T follow us on Facebook. Remind me again, why aren't you following us on Facebook again? (https://www.facebook.com/JohnAllenSpecial)

Last weekend we pulled our spare motor out of a parts car. Today we spent our afternoon pulling the blown motor and prepping the spare. Hopefully we'll be back up and running in a week or two!

Also, Halston was out of town and Trevor unavailable, so photos are compliments of myself and my iphone. Sorry for the lack of quality!

Thomas prepping the new motor:


Chris laying down on the job, again.


Portable shade. That sun was killer today.


Old motor is out.
[imghttps://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/561688_462906303742535_473007045_n.jpg[/img]

Desolate engine bay.

[silence]

do you still need motor & trans mounts?

[dinanm3atl]

Have not decided yet. I was out of town for the past two work days.

[dinanm3atl]

M20B25 power. Finished at 1:30am. Started around Noon. Had to take a few trips to the parts store for assorted items. Fixed/swapped clusters. Updated some interior parts. Etc. Awesome day with good guys.

When it fired it immediately after doing a couple dry runs/priming the system. We were very excited! Next race in just over 5 weeks! We are running in the Southeast Chumpionships!



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 02 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 03 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 06 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr


CRC comes through with boxes of parts! Awesome. And our spares corner... well a small portion of them!



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 04 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 05 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr


While I swapped parts of the clusters around so we have a 7K tach, old fuel gauge and new temp gauge... Chris runs AMS. Might as well practice the next track right?



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 07 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr


Late night wrenching...



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 08 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 01 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special BMW E30 325i Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car 09 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr