Chump Car - John Allen Special USFail1 Race Team Build

[Nygdup]

If nothing else, we look good!

[dinanm3atl]

Daytona. 14 Hours.

Awesome. The event was more or less a 'vacation' for most of our team. All of our wives came. Family came from all over(From Chicago to Orlando to Atlanta). We had a great time. Saturday was relaxed and fun seeing old friends. Raceday with those friends/teams was great!

We had found after the last race we didn't even have the motor we were claiming we had. So we fixed this and got a rebuilt head to replace the ETA head we had. All was going well and running in 10-20th place for the first few stints. Our normally slowest driver took us from 45th to 18th after his first pit stop(second stint). Was awesome. 3rd driver an electrical gremlin jumped into our engine bay. It seemed our AFM was acting up. We had to pit multiple times. Checked wiring. Run 3 laps. Comes back. Final fix? Our main mechanic got pissed at our antique fuel/air measuring devices given to us by BMW in the 80s and slammed the AFM and said "Send It". Magic... that worked the rest of the day. We were now in the 50s.

Rich ran the rest of his stint. I jumped in. No incidents except running out of fuel earlier than we thought while I was in the car. I did run the fastest lap of the day for the team in the 12-2 time period. Had one close call with a really bad dive bomb from a car. Almost were collected in the Bus Stop at two other times(Our 2nd stint and 6th stint).

Our final end to the weekend was a rocker arm letting loose in our newly rebuilt head. Let loose with ~5 hours to go. On an upshift. We had not been revving it out to max revs all day. 5.5K-6K. Shift at ~5800 rpm and grab 4th. Healthy engine to pit lane limiter just like that! Thanks for the good times everyone!


Fun starts ~20 seconds.

http://youtu.be/WYb50JsBypk

IMG_9230-2539765022-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



IMG_9129-2539763348-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



IMG_8797-2539762087-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



IMG_8578-2539760927-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



AWO_9685-2539757025-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



AWO_3355-2539753265-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



AWO_2099-2539742753-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



AWO_1238-2539739361-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



AWO_0737-2539736306-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



AWO_0890-2539736515-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr



AWO_0371-2539734565-O by Halston Pitman | MotorSportMedia, on Flickr

[Lof8]

I was out there watching and hanging with a couple of local teams. Your car looked great out there. I was damn close to having a drivers' seat in the "Catch Me If You Can" Integra, but a few factors kept me out.

Myself and a few friends are prepping a Miata for Sebring in September. Watch our for "Wolf Pack Racing" coming soon!

[irish44j]

still lovin' this thread. Hope to see you guys out at VIR, where you'll undoubtedly be flying past our lowly ETA

[Nygdup]

"WE" will not be at VIR this year. Too many conflicts.

However, it's starting to look like I will be at VIR co-piloting an E36 with Team SFR (more commonly known at TRM Tuning).

Sebring, however, is on the list for this year.

Daytona was a blast, even if it did end early.

Some more in-car from the weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY7vUwm6o5k

[dinanm3atl]

Was a damn good time! Can't wait for Sebring!

[Nick_S]

Just read this thread start to finish. These threads and the few Rally-X build threads are really inspiring to read. Love watching the build process and how grass roots it is for this type of racing. Also followed the build on FB. Keep it up! Can't wait for the next update.

[Nygdup]

We might get a small update this weekend, we might not.

Basically, all we're doing is unloading the race trailer, putting the car back into TRM Tuning's shop and prepping it for the engine repairs and address some small nagging issues. Any updates would be via cell phone cameras, so don't expect a whole lot!

[JCarp90]

This thread is so cool. I wish I could participate in something like this in my area!

[Nygdup]

This thread is so cool. I wish I could participate in something like this in my area!

Why couldn't you? ChumpCar is nationwide, so is LeMons.

ChumpCar runs at Hallett, Pueblo, Texas World, High Plains Raceway and Gateway Motorsports Park. Granted, none of them are CLOSE. But all look to be within a long day's drive.

[JCarp90]

Why couldn't you? ChumpCar is nationwide, so is LeMons.

ChumpCar runs at Hallett, Pueblo, Texas World, High Plains Raceway and Gateway Motorsports Park. Granted, none of them are CLOSE. But all look to be within a long day's drive.

I think it's more of the community in my area than anything. With the exception of a couple close friends, everybody kind of keeps to themselves.

Now that my S52'd E30 is running solid though, I'll start taking it out to Heartland Park in Topeka as often as I can... but chump racing would be so cool. When I buy a house in the next year or so, I'll have more space and I'll probably pick up a cheap E30 with the intentions of Chump or something similar.

Anyway, keep it up. Love this thread.

[Nygdup]

Sebring is three weeks out and (believe it or not) the car is prepped and ready to race. We're going to look at a couple of issues before rolling onto the track, but the car COULD run today if needed. It's nice having a car ready this order.

Special thanks to Wayne and Mike over at TRM Tuning for getting the motor back up and running so quickly after we got back from Daytona. It gave us a chance to focus on re-wiring the car and really cleaning up our dashboard.




Once that was done, it was off to the local car show. The Shed Fest, 2013. We might have had a little fun with our TRM Tuning's team cars :P




And another big thanks to Rob and Nicole over at The Consignment Shed. We discovered our rear calipers had gone to hell, so 2 days later we had a new set installed and the car was ready to roll.

That left one real project for us to tackle. Updating the livery to better reflect those of the Lotus F1 teams'.

[Dj Buttchug]

i wish I could get involved in something like this. great work guys

[Nygdup]

Start a team and never look back. Someone has to take that leap of faith, may as well be you.

[Balleristic31]

i wish I could get involved in something like this. great work guys

If I end up in sd for school next year lets do it... :D