Update:
So the car survived the first actual race event, and held up well (as far as I can tell).
First, pictures:
With the fun part out of the way, now the results:
I finished 6th out of 9 in my class, just 6 seconds behind Josh (Irish44j) who has a lot more seat time than do I. I do have a more powerful car, but his is prepped better. All in all, the event is really hard to compare because they used the water truck a toff times throughout the day. I had 1 run in total dry conditions that they wiped out because they watered down the track mid-heat, so I had to re-run. Other times they watered the track but did not give re-runs, so the dry times were allowed to stand.
In the end the event was fun and the car seemed to hold up well. We really felt the difference in swapping from a 2.93 open diff to a 3.73 LSD. It made the car so much more fun to drive. We had no power to the ground with the 2.92, and the car had no control to boot. With the 3.73 LSD we had full use of 2nd and even got into 3rd, and the car had much more control in the wet/loose stuff. There was even a section that was grass- often wet (fun for a RWD car with a lightened rear end).
We have really looked at the car and what it needs, and have a fairly solid plan for future action. We need to:
Get the fuel pump setup corrected,
Remove the heavy and ill-fitting (but brand new) OEM-replica ANSA exhaust (with cat-delete and possibly a side-dump)
Replace all of the worn shifter bushings (we have all of the parts)
Replace the upper strut mounts (and the control arm bushings and ball joints)
We are also waffling on what to do about the motor. The car has 217 but the timing belt is fairly new, but we found a 150K M20B25 from an other '87 that we might buy to swap in. It has a trans and comes with a new clutch. Before the diff swap I was hell-bent on a motor swap, but with the 3.73 in the rear, the car has enough power to handle the 3 tracks where it will be driven. In the wet, that power is all wasted, though in the dry it might be nice to have the improved accelleration. We might buy the motor and just keep it as a spare.
So the car survived the first actual race event, and held up well (as far as I can tell).
First, pictures:
With the fun part out of the way, now the results:
I finished 6th out of 9 in my class, just 6 seconds behind Josh (Irish44j) who has a lot more seat time than do I. I do have a more powerful car, but his is prepped better. All in all, the event is really hard to compare because they used the water truck a toff times throughout the day. I had 1 run in total dry conditions that they wiped out because they watered down the track mid-heat, so I had to re-run. Other times they watered the track but did not give re-runs, so the dry times were allowed to stand.
In the end the event was fun and the car seemed to hold up well. We really felt the difference in swapping from a 2.93 open diff to a 3.73 LSD. It made the car so much more fun to drive. We had no power to the ground with the 2.92, and the car had no control to boot. With the 3.73 LSD we had full use of 2nd and even got into 3rd, and the car had much more control in the wet/loose stuff. There was even a section that was grass- often wet (fun for a RWD car with a lightened rear end).
We have really looked at the car and what it needs, and have a fairly solid plan for future action. We need to:
Get the fuel pump setup corrected,
Remove the heavy and ill-fitting (but brand new) OEM-replica ANSA exhaust (with cat-delete and possibly a side-dump)
Replace all of the worn shifter bushings (we have all of the parts)
Replace the upper strut mounts (and the control arm bushings and ball joints)
We are also waffling on what to do about the motor. The car has 217 but the timing belt is fairly new, but we found a 150K M20B25 from an other '87 that we might buy to swap in. It has a trans and comes with a new clutch. Before the diff swap I was hell-bent on a motor swap, but with the 3.73 in the rear, the car has enough power to handle the 3 tracks where it will be driven. In the wet, that power is all wasted, though in the dry it might be nice to have the improved accelleration. We might buy the motor and just keep it as a spare.
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