Magic Triangle Chump Car

[D_Eclipse9916]

The Team:
Dj Fitzpatrick
Paul Galleron
Donnie Weymer

The Goal:
Have fun in spite of *trying* to keep a magic spinning triangle running 24 hours straight

The car:
1988 Mazda RX7, known as the FC

Backstory of the car:
Donnie has been a chumpcar official and driver for years. One of the teams he was on used an ex-SCCA IT car RX7. This car got punted into a wall at VIR, and I guess the owners had no motivation to build another one. Here comes us. We pick the punted car for cheap, and pick up another FC chassis.

In a moment of glorious stupidity, we decide we can build an entire race car in a day and a half. So, Paul and I head down to Donnie's in NC and work on this hunk of junk from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. We get a metric ton of work done in a small period of time. Needless to say it took a couple of days to get all the grime out...

Summary:
Five lug conversion---check
Replace diff&carrier---check
Drop/clean/replace fuel tank---tank
Replace fuel pump---check
Replace axles----check
Swap Calipers---check
Install new sway---check
Pull engine----check
Swap trans to new engine---check
Install new engine/trans---check
Replace ENTIRE car and engine wiring harness---check
Wire and mount kill switch--check
Gut doors---check
Replace brake and clutch master cylinders---check
Replace shocks with coilovers(including notching shock towers)---check
Fab and mount new radiator----check





Our first goal was to make Charlotte Motor Speedway for a shake-down of the car on the weekend after hyperfest (June 22nd). The first time we touched the car was June 1st weekend and Donnie and I both had to prep cars for hyperfest, and be gone all weekend for hyperfest June 14-15th weekend. We may not be smart, but we were ambitious. :lol:

Next Update: Shakedown of the RX7 and ShakeUP of Paul G wheel to wheel racing for the first time at Charlotte Motor Speedway

[JustinG]

Please remove lights from hood and fab a light bar. Thanks.

[Maengelito]

If I were to pick up a cheap car to race for 24 hours straight knowing that reliability would be paramount over everything else, I'm not sure that a 25 year old rotary would even be near the top of the list. Kudos on getting this put together. I'm looking forward to hearing about this and as Paul's instructor for his virgin track session, I'm looking forward to hearing about his "shake up."

[.RJ]

SPINNING DORITOS

[JustinG]

Someone contact VBD and see what kinda Nacho Cheese Doritos graphics we can get printed up.

[CaptainHenreh]

If I were to pick up a cheap car to race for 24 hours straight knowing that reliability would be paramount over everything else, I'm not sure that a 25 year old rotary would even be near the top of the list.

Wankels aren't inherently unreliable, they don't respond to boost very well but in NA trim they're not bad. Mazda's 787B won LeMans in 1991, prompting a wankel outlaw in the series. Granted, that's a 4 rotor 700hp race motor but there's nothing inherently unreliable about a wankel. You just can't treat them like piston engines.

[D_Eclipse9916]

If I were to pick up a cheap car to race for 24 hours straight knowing that reliability would be paramount over everything else, I'm not sure that a 25 year old rotary would even be near the top of the list. Kudos on getting this put together. I'm looking forward to hearing about this and as Paul's instructor for his virgin track session, I'm looking forward to hearing about his "shake up."

Update soon, hoping for some more pictures to filter through the forums so my updates arent just my blathering.

Funny enough, what is reliable on the street, is horrendously unreliable on track. And what is unreliable on the street is reliable on the track. At least, this is what I have seen and heard at chump car and on the forums.

Rotaries = terrible on street/NAs very reliable on track
Civics= reliable on street/blow up all the time on track in enduros
ford/GM small blocks = tough on street/blow up all the time on track
bmws = fall apart on street/damn tough on track
miatas = reliably slow hahah...always

Then there are the cars that I am like...WHY??!?!? but are hilarious
3000GTs, Saabs, kias, volvo wagons, you name an oddball car and its there.

[D_Eclipse9916]

If I were to pick up a cheap car to race for 24 hours straight knowing that reliability would be paramount over everything else, I'm not sure that a 25 year old rotary would even be near the top of the list.

Wankels aren't inherently unreliable, they don't respond to boost very well but in NA trim they're not bad. Mazda's 787B won LeMans in 1991, prompting a wankel outlaw in the series. Granted, that's a 4 rotor 700hp race motor but there's nothing inherently unreliable about a wankel. You just can't treat them like piston engines.

Funny enough, the Grand Am RX8s are really reliable and tough and won their championships in due part to reliability.

You have to think, a spinning, less moving parts, and incredibly good harmonics at high speed (where a race occurs) sounds a lot more reliable than a up/down, liftered, valvetrained piston engine at the same high rpm. Lemons aand Chump seem to have proved this is true. (we are talking crapcans here).

[Maengelito]

If I were to pick up a cheap car to race for 24 hours straight knowing that reliability would be paramount over everything else, I'm not sure that a 25 year old rotary would even be near the top of the list.

Wankels aren't inherently unreliable, they don't respond to boost very well but in NA trim they're not bad. Mazda's 787B won LeMans in 1991, prompting a wankel outlaw in the series. Granted, that's a 4 rotor 700hp race motor but there's nothing inherently unreliable about a wankel. You just can't treat them like piston engines.

I was under the impression that the FIA was requiring 3.5L engines at the start of the next year but were allowing cars that had already been running in the series to still compete back in 91. I'm not sure what the politics involved were but I think the decision for the engine to be "outlawed" and was being phased out before it won Le Mans that year. I'm no historian though so I could be wrong. :dunno:

I do hear that the RX8s had to be wound up frequently and driving them at regular speeds isn't great for the engines so I guess it makes sense that it would do well when living at 7k rpms for long periods of time.

[D_Eclipse9916]

I forgot to update this at all!!!

We went down to Charlotte Motor Speedway for our "break in" to see. We went down to charlotte and scaed the bejeezus out of Paul Galleron for his first race.
Race Format: 4x40 minute sprint races on the SHORT course
The car was downright sketchy and hellacious at speed. Paul managed to spin it 3 times even driving it easy in 25minutes before coming in. We thought this was just Paul shaking off newbieness, but it turned out not to be. I found out by having to drive the car next. The car was a handful, the tires were chunking and were like plastic. I have never driven a car that wanted to kill me so bad. So much for trying to use these 5 year old falken azenis....
Video of me trying desperately to even keep the car beneath me. It was so bad, that even slowing down didnt help, so I just kept going...

(fun at the beginning and especially at 9:25)
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/69396149[/vimeo]

So we switched tires to newer "older" tires and realigned it for the rest of the 2 sprints that Paul and Donnie drove. Helped immensely. The car was now very easy to drive and actually had :gasp: grip! We managed 2nd in the sprints in our class.

Then for the 10 hour enduro on the LONG course. We were doing well at the beginning but then our exhaust fell off. Yes...fell off. Between the heat and the brutal slammings of infield to outfield transition. Brought it in, welded it back up and went back up. Then about an hour in I notice fuel streaming out the side of the car. I bring it in. Our fuel vent was stuffed up and had been sitting next to the exhaust. Turning our gas tank into a fuel boiler hock: We brought it in and decided to quit before turning ourselves into a toasty bomb.

[Jake]

5-year-old Azenis?

Good god, man, do you have a death wish?

[Evan]

5-year-old Azenis?

Good god, man, do you have a death wish?

the ones I sold you may have been older than that :lol:

Looks like fun! Let me know if you need another driver 8)

[D_Eclipse9916]

5-year-old Azenis?

Good god, man, do you have a death wish?

the ones I sold you may have been older than that :lol:

Looks like fun! Let me know if you need another driver 8)

We are always looking for drivers. We have already booked our VIR renter but we will probably want a renter for Road Atlanta in February.

Heads up though, rentals are not cheap. It is $1000-1500 for a rental seat in chump car in anything that will last the race. We have been doing discounted rates ($1,150 for VIR 24 hour), ($750 for VIR 2x8hour); but that price will be going up next year now that the car has been pretty damned reliable and fun.

When chumpcar fees are $1000 a race, we burn through $400 of fuel, $250 in towing fuel, $650 in tires, $200 in brakes, and then all the general maintenance for running a car 24 hours straight, all the sudden rental prices dont seem so bad. Engines/trans becomes consumables when a car is ran for 24 hours straight.

Then again, you get to do this (night racing :thumbup: )
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://vimeo.com/72735679">https://vimeo.com/72735679</a><!-- m --> password is "angry dorito"

[.RJ]

What is the safety gear required for a chumpcar race? I presume helmet, suit, shoes, gloves, underwear, HANS?

[D_Eclipse9916]

What is the safety gear required for a chumpcar race? I presume helmet, suit, shoes, gloves, underwear, HANS?

Helmet
SFI-rated Suit
Gloves
Shoes
Socks
only underwear if you dont have 3.2.5 or something specific
Hans is now required I beleive/or will be next year.

We use a NASCAR style connector for radios

[D_Eclipse9916]

After our Charlotte run-down, we got to work getting the car ready for the VIR 24 hour. This is a 24-hour straight race on VIR's Grand East Course.
We brought in a renter who had racing experience, so we thought we would do great.

Paul and I tore into the car to get the car running right. It always had a funny idle and would break up in the 3500-4000 range. Since we did such a quick swap for the Charlotte Race and the tight deadline, we never messed with it. It ran, (better than it not running).

1st thing we noticed was the fuel pressure regulator was blocked off. We hooked that back up to a vacuum source.
2nd welded up an entirely new exhaust to the car to fix the bottoming out of the previous one.
3rd we bought one of these Jegs panels and wired it all up. This is a really cool panel that I will be putting in my race car as well. Really clean way to clean up any switches

4th we put in a catch can, and did a nut and bolt of the car.
5th we wired up some auxilary lights in preparation for the dark at VIR. You are limited on the brightness, so these fit within the rules. (we would find out that NOBODY follows these rules)

Now we were ready for VIR, as much as we would hope!

Morning of the race, 165 gallons of fuel in the back of the truck, no idea how this would pan out.


Start of the race! About 10 minutes in our car comes stumbling back in. Not a great way to start 24 hours. We suspect coil packs as it is breaking up while hot. Switch coil packs - go back out.
10 minutes later, car back in.
Switch spark plugs/fuel filter - go back out
10 minutes later, car back in
Swap TPS to known goodo ne - go back out
10 minutes later, car back in.

At this point we are frustrated and done for. It is now 2 hours in and nothing to show for it. We knew it ran before, so I begged Donnie to go out one more time as I disconnected the fuel pressure regulator.

Car doesn't come back in...wait what? Don't ask me! Car runs better with fuel pressure regulator having no vacuum source, and continues to run.
Things go great for the next ~12 hours. We are really slow on our pit-stops but are making up good ground. After the 2 hours trying to solve the running issue, we were in ~102nd place. Our hopes were dashed by the 2 hour delay in getting top10. Now we had a new goal top50. Being 34 laps back, we had very very little chance of getting there. But this is 24 hours! anything can happen.

Beggining to be night out


So it was Paul G., Donnie W., Me, Renter, Ryan Farrell. We had a scheduled pitstop somewhere around 3am in the morning. Paul just sat down to take a nap as he was exhausted. I had done the previous stint, and Donnie was coming in to swap seats with the renter. We send Farrel to get the renter. Donnie comes in with the car....where is our renter? Donnie and I 2-man team the fuel...renter still isnt there. Ryan comes running back. Renter just wants to sleep. We considered quickly our options.
Donnie just got out of the car, by the rulebook he couldnt go back out.
Paul was sleeping, not dressed in racers stuff, and would be at least 10 minutes to get him into the car. He also was a bit more exhausted after having never driven a race car before in this environment. He wouldnt last.
I had to jump back in the car. I had gotten 5 hours of sleep the night before, woken up at 5AM to get everything ready, had already done 3 stints totalling 5.5 hours of driving in the car and it is 3AM in the morning. Now I had to go race for another 1.5 hours.

Lesson learned, we need to stick to our sleeping schedule, everyone skipped out because "they werent tired earlier".

However, we had moved ourselves from 102nd place to 52nd after my stint. A whopping 50 places. We only had a few more to go for our goal.

After my stint, I went to sleep. In moments of coherence, I would hear "overheating", car is loud, etc.

I would catch about 3 hours of sleep, ready to catch the last 2 hours. During my sleep, the car had loosened bolts on the exhaust flange and was hanging loose. That was fixed, but more worryingly, the car was drinking coolant and overheating. We trudged through the next hour and a half with refills of water anad just kept going. We were finally in 51st spot. 15 minutes to the checkered flag and our car dies. We were enough laps ahead of 52nd place to secure our spot in 51st. At first we were disappointed, and then through a reshuffling because of penalties we were awarded 50th! Ecstatic and happy, we went home with a list of must-haves and wants.

[FlaakCM]

I'm surprised no one commented on this. Amazing write up. Sounds like you guys are having a blast.

[D_Eclipse9916]

Thanks! Yup we are trucking along. We had a very good weekend about 2 weeks ago at VIR, and was running as high as 2nd till we got into a bunch of contact and got grounded by the Chump Car officials. I'll to get a write up of that soon.

[BFisch06]

I'll to get a write up of that soon.

Please do! I watched part of the event on Saturday and didn't realize until the next week that the gold RX-7 was yours.

[Senor_Taylor]

Still waiting on that writeup