Chump Car - John Allen Special USFail1 Race Team Build

[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.

[silence]

Good luck!

[Lof8]

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

[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

[dinanm3atl]

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

[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]

Finished... just need to mount the race tire/wheels. Rich made our spare bins. Started loading the trailer! Then tested the final 'mod' to the care while we removed all coolant and bled the system.

So excited!



JAS Work Day 11 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



JAS Work Day 11 01 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



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

[Nygdup]

Man am I tired!

[canakami]

Very cool project/progress!

Subscribed.

[dinanm3atl]

What a crazy two days. Lordy. I am BEAT! 10am to 10:30pm and Rich and Rob didn't finish wiring until 11pm. The weekend started off with working for a few hours with Rich(Co-Captain) on some basic items. We worked up what battery tie-down/box setup we were going to do. Mounted the strap setup for the homemade cool suit cooler. We made a list of items to be done. The biggest item was knocking out the headlights. We have quad projectors with 35W HIDs. Not sure more light is possible and keep it legal. Turns out the high beam bowl/mount was NOT designed to hold a projector. So how comes the metal tools. Let's make it fit!

Final result is very good. We have full use of the factory bowl/adjuster. End result will be lows/highs on separate relay circuits. Night time driving should be fun!



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



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



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



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




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



So yes... we basically have E36 eBay style lights on our headlights. Only we have decent projectors. The Lexan should provide good protection and we can run the covers all day and pull off the film for the first night stint! Next up was addressing the brakes. PFC08 up front and PFC06 out back. Rotors are new outside of an auto-x. We have backup PFC06 and a full set of rotors. We also figured out that at an HPDE we melted the plastic hub rings for our basic race wheels. Luckily our sponsor Motorsport Hardware came through with metal hub rings. Combined with our sweet studs we are good to go! Our dry rain tires are on and ready! Star Specs on backup wheels are ready if it rains!



John Allen Special Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car BMW E30 325e 10 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



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


Easy install actually... new wipers. Which provide "Reliable Performance". So rain should be no issue huh?



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


Next up was interior install and clean-up. Cool suit and mounting. We have hoses run. Pump inside. This is run off a relay circuit with a switch on the dash. We are really proud of the end result here. The shirts were made homemade as well. Rich's mom sewed them up for our. We have total(6 shirts) kit in the 100-150 dollar ballpark.



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


Next up was getting the dash back in. Then Thomas jumps in and starts to zip-tie everything. Which is how you fix E30s! Cage fit great with Technica Motorsports and only minor trimming and the dash was back in. AND it uses the factory mounting points so the dash is in fact bolted in. Worked out great! It doesn't move and now our cluster is back in and secure. Great work!



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



John Allen Special Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car BMW E30 325e 12 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car BMW E30 325e 11 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car BMW E30 325e 16 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr


This we are ummmm - Content with. Turned out better than we originally thought. We are not welders and do not have a welder. So straps, rivets and silicone will be out permanent sunroof replacement. It works and is very sturdy. Touched it up with some premium spray paint...



John Allen Special Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car BMW E30 325e 18 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr


Then the fun part. At this point most of the mechanical work is done. The list is less than an hour or two of work and this thing will be loaded onto a trailer and off we go! Rob is a trained low voltage electrician and he is also one of our sponsors with the Consignment Shed. He came over and spent a lot of time getting us setup with a switch panel(we broke many panels of plastic drilling) and he wired everything up. We need to clean up the install but all works. All is on relays and fused circuits. We could not have asked for more. We even have a little goodie wired up...



John Allen Special Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car BMW E30 325e 15 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car BMW E30 325e 17 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



John Allen Special Technica Motorsports ChumpCar Chump Car BMW E30 325e 19 by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



Stay tuned for one more update. We will post before we roll out to VIR. Once there we will give a link to live timing! In less than one week I'll be waiting to take the green flag. Beyond excited! Do not forget to follow our facebook fan page. We will have a lot of mobile uploads going on during the race!

https://www.facebook.com/JohnAllenSpecial

[dinanm3atl]

We have a 325e chump car, we call it ChumpE. We've done a 24 hr race(placed 4th) and a 14 hour enduro(placed 9th of over 100 at Daytona)... We beat every other e30 out there, they all had b25s... Why did we beat them? ...because gas mileage. With the b27 you ca. Get a full 2 hrs of track time before a driver change.
Great build. Good luck!

And this is part of our reasoning. Turning laps and running the entire time ends up with solid results. Last year a team that has now podium'd with a B25 ran a B27 at this same race and finished 17th. We would be ecstatic with a 17th! Our single and only goal is to take the green and take the checkered under our own power.

While we have a race mechanic from a professional team, some really good garage mechanics and more... we are very green. First car we have done like this to this point. And when we get down to it we actually did built this whole car in a basement and garage. We are really proud of it and just want to finish.

B25 will come... Road Atlanta is a home track for me. I feel I can run with most people in full speed at this track. So B25 will be fun there.

We discussed long and hard whether to swap to a b25. We finally came to the conclusion that with the 6 drivers we have all being newbs, the last thing we wanted to be worried about during our first race was engine reliability. The eta's lower rev limit is going to keep us out of trouble we hope. We hope to place well by running the full 24hrs, not being balls-out fast.

That being said, we already have a b25 sitting over at Technica Motorsports getting prepped and hopefully we'll have that dropped in before our race in October at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Worst case, it WILL be in the car for Road Atlanta.

Woah there RICH! Not sure who you are calling a newb...

Not sure my years of HPDE will offer any sort of real ChumpCar advantage. We are all green here so the ETA will just help us turn consistent laps. For this first race, as Rich said, it will just help get out feet wet. We already jumped into the deep end with a 24 Hour race first try!

And the ETA is downright more reliable. Less revs and less stress. As said we just want to finish.

[silence]

We have a 325e chump car, we call it ChumpE. We've done a 24 hr race(placed 4th) and a 14 hour enduro(placed 9th of over 100 at Daytona)... We beat every other e30 out there, they all had b25s... Why did we beat them? ...because gas mileage. With the b27 you ca. Get a full 2 hrs of track time before a driver change.
Great build. Good luck!

[Nygdup]

Never clicked on this till today, nice job! Quick question though, why not b25 swap it? I see you mentioned it, cost? You would gain quite a bit of top end. Better yet a b27i conversion. Would really help after 3rd runs out, I know ETA owner all my life sigh...

We discussed long and hard whether to swap to a b25. We finally came to the conclusion that with the 6 drivers we have all being newbs, the last thing we wanted to be worried about during our first race was engine reliability. The eta's lower rev limit is going to keep us out of trouble we hope. We hope to place well by running the full 24hrs, not being balls-out fast.

That being said, we already have a b25 sitting over at Technica Motorsports getting prepped and hopefully we'll have that dropped in before our race in October at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Worst case, it WILL be in the car for Road Atlanta.

[F34R]

Never clicked on this till today, nice job! Quick question though, why not b25 swap it? I see you mentioned it, cost? You would gain quite a bit of top end. Better yet a b27i conversion. Would really help after 3rd runs out, I know ETA owner all my life sigh...

[dinanm3atl]

Boom!