West Coast $2009 Challenger - AWD Fiero Hybrid

Hey man this was a titanic undertakeing in my eyes. My hat is off to you. I don't even know how I am going to put the turbo on my car and I have 1509 bucks left. So great job really great job.

paypal sent

MrJoshua wrote: paypal sent

Not seeing anything and I've double checked my post above. Check the address you sent it to:

nashco at hotmail dot com

Thanks!

Bryce

Oops-fixing it!

As you may recall, my BMW came from your neck of the woods. I shipped it from Oregon to Florida and ended up spending about $850 one way. Just as a data point.

Congrats on the project. Awesome times 100.

Problem fixed!

PayPal sent.

And I had to choose between keeping my house or going to a race a thousand miles away. That's not being a wuss, that's keeping a roof over my head so I can try for later Challenges.

Thanks guys...I've already got about 10% of the total needed to ship the Fiero to Florida!

Bryce

Sorry that you didn't have any other competitors... My project went way over budget when the bottom end let go Next year.

Nashco wrote: First of all...all you guys who bailed for whatever reason, please don't bother posting any more "why it's ok that I'm a wuss" excuses in my build thread.

Nashco wrote: First of all...all you guys who bailed for whatever reason, please don't bother posting any more "why it's ok that I'm a wuss" excuses in my build thread. I GUARANTEE that I had more reasons not to show up to the challenge than you...but rather than whine about why I couldn't make it, I sucked it up and worked that much harder. So many people, including myself, asked for a West Coast event that I thought for sure I'd have at least a few good competitors to race against and share a margarita and a burrito with down in San Diego. It's a good thing my friends came out to visit and help out with the Fiero, otherwise that would have been a very lonely margarita. Secondly, I'd gladly bring the Fiero out to Florida for the REAL $2009 challenge if I had the time/money. I burned through all of my vacation time to attend the West Coast event and can't really justify spending another $xxxx to ship the car down to Florida and fly down. If any of you are actually serious about chipping in to fund my trip, that would be super cool... you can paypal nashco (at) hotmail (dot) com and I'll see if enough trickles in to fund getting the car trucked down to FL. If I get enough to cover trucking the car down, I'll buy a plane ticket and meet it down there for the Challenge. If I don't end up going, I'll refund you in paypal...and I think you'll all agree I'm good for my word when I say I'm going to do something. The car made it home last night. I put about 2500 miles on it round trip, including four passes down the drag strip, several hours in stop and go traffic, and several long mountain passes. I was really impressed that the car made the whole drive with only a few minor issues...of my last three road trips to CA, this one went the smoothest! The car was jam packed with "stuff" and passengers (Jessica was with me the whole drive). As you can see, this isn't a show piece, the car was made for driving! I ended up leaving town after the car show on Saturday. As I said to David, since I won the drag and car show by default, it seemed pointless to do an autocross against zero competitors over 1000 miles away from home. I'll do an autocross locally sometime soon, I'm interested to see how the front drive motor works out around the cones. I didn't even bother attending the autocross; instead, my crew and I headed to the beach, stuffed our faces with food, and enjoyed some fantastic SoCal traffic jams. After a long couple of days driving home with plenty of time to think about it, I'm a bit jaded with how things went down. I am really bummed that I didn't have any competition and even more bummed that Tim (Suddard) didn't think much of the car. Maybe I caught him on an off day, maybe he was pissed about nobody else showing and it came out in his general attitude, or maybe GRM doesn't think things like AWD Fieros are worth spending time on when there are Mazdas, Hondas, and BMWs out there. Either way, I busted my ass to get the car there and functional, and I take pride in the fact that I successfully followed through on what I set out to do. After all, it's not every day you hear of a DIY hybrid capable of cross-country travelling and AWD racing being built in three months for a couple thousand bucks. I'm trying to gather pictures and videos from my friends that attended and from Tim, since I was either too busy or too braindead to take many pictures over the weekend. I'll post some up as soon as I get them gathered. I also owe some updates on the last week or so of building, since I was so busy that I didn't have time to post updates. Stay tuned. Bryce

What a mess. Sounds like an awesome effort....too bad about the rest. Looking forward to the pictures.

I think the reward for winning the west coast challenge should be free transport to the east coast challenge

Timeormoney wrote: I think the reward for winning the west coast challenge should be free transport to the east coast challenge

Seconded.

That was an impressive 2500 miles Bryce. Be proud of what you built!

I threw in my 50 smackers. C'mon GRMers - espcially left coasters - pony up!

As for Tim Suddard's response, I'm sure that he was almost as bummed as you at the general fiasco of a situation. I'm sure that factored in his attitude. FWIW, you've already earned a place in the top half-dozen cool challenge cars in my eyes, and by the time it's all over may wear the crown. Kudos!

My last build update showed where I was planning on putting the batteries. I was hoping to reuse the Prius battery cases in that position, but it just wasn't meant to be. Caalon, Aaron, and I tweaked those battery cases for about a day before I finally threw in the towel and gave up on them and went back to the drawing board.

I ended up using 2" angle iron under the batteries to serve double duty. Each battery attaches to the angle iron with one small screw, which keeps the batteries from shifting around relative to each other. The angle iron also supports the weight of the batteries and is strong enough to meet NHRA battery mounting requirements. The angle iron is mounted to the chassis with several grade 8 bolts. Here's how things came out:

As you can see, the small battery pack ended up between the shifter and the big batteries. A lot of things factored into this, but I decided that this would make the battery box, high voltage wiring, and contactors more safe in the long run. I may end up changing things eventually, but for now I thought this was the safest route with the batteries on hand. Jessica had watched me assemble the big packs and was feeling bold, so she tackled her high voltage phobia and assembled the smaller pack for me. Jessica was a HUGE help in the last few days of building, I'm lucky to have her!

Speaking of contactors, I ended up completely rebuilding the contactor box to fit that small space between the a-pillar, the batteries, the dash pad, and the fender well. I was previously using an 8"x8"x4" waterproof box that Al had assembled with some heavy duty contactors. This time around I wanted to use a 6"x6"x4" waterproof box and the lighter duty Prius contactors. The Prius contactors came in the big battery assemblies I have been fetching from the craigslist wrecks, there are two per battery pack (one for positive, one for negative). Because the Prius contactors aren't rated for the kind of current this motor can pull, I decided to double up and use four (two for the positive, two for the negative). The output sides of the contactors are connected so that when the contactors are open, the two battery packs are isolated from each other. This took a lot of head scratching to figure out how to squeeze into that little box:

Once I finally figured out this rubik's cube, the covers can go on and it actually looks pretty clean and simple. This shows the insulated pass-through connectors and case that I sourced from Home Depot, surprisingly enough. In the end, this assembly was fairly cheap and looks well sorted, it just took some attention to detail. More importantly, this makes the high voltage wiring much safer because there aren't any exposed connections, the contactors getting damaged, etc.

It's not shown in this picture, but I should make note that there are also fuses in the middle of the battery packs so that both strings are individually protected. This way, in case something shorts out or is hooked up wrong, the fuse will pop instead of the batteries starting a fire. It also allows you to remove the fuse during service so that you have a lot less risk of shorting things out (or hurting yourself). This is very important! The fuses, fuse holders, and all the high voltage wiring to the batteries was reused from the Prius wrecks. Interestingly, it's worth noting that the Prius uses copper cables between the batteries and the contactors, but for the long wires that run from the back of the car to the front, larger aluminum wire is used. This is how the high voltage cables end up coming in and out of the box I made when it goes into the car.

Here's me doing final hookup on the battery cables. I went through and zip tied all of the high voltage cables securely, then zip tied the battery post covers securely over those. There's no risk of anything shifting around and shorting out.

Of course, now that I've given safety some face time in this post, now is a chance to show how I learn the hard way some times. I was showing Jessica how to use a razor blade to do some clean up work, and as it turns out I was the wrong guy to show her. Don't wield razor blades when you're tired kids, mmm-kay?! I've never cut myself so bad, there was blood EVERYWHERE. Fortunately I'm not squeamish. An hour of hand-in-ice, some butterfly bandages, a popsicle stick, and some painter's tape had me back in action. Of course, with only a couple of days of building left, I would soon come to miss that hand A LOT. I should have got stitches, but super glue works wonders and I didn't have time/money to be doing stitches.

While I buttoned up the final details on the mechanical stuff, Jessica took charge on getting things ready for paint. I stripped everything out of the front end (again...) and she masked everything off and started painting. We used some chassis black paint so that it would look like the factory paint. All of the attention to detail that we had put into the build was starting to finally take form...in that now nothing really looked custom.

I don't have any pictures from under the hood when things were finally assembled, I'll have to get some soon. I do, however, have pictures and video from the drag strip. This was my first pass down the 1/8 mile, 9.36 at 69.7 mph. Compare that to the "Grand Challenge" car in the other lane that was almost a full second slower with a faster trap speed. Launch much? The car was pulling 1.9 60' times with horrible mismatched all season tires. Cool!

Last, but not least, here's some YouTube action for you from the drag strip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYu298Qdy7w

Bryce

Keep the updates/build pics coming Bryce!

How many donations and how close are you to having what you need to make Gainesville?

Does anything need to be done to the car before it goes East?

Yikes...sorry to hear about the turnout for the event. As pissed as you may be, I can't imagine how much $$ GRM lost doing this event.

Hope to see the car in FLA.

JM

P71 wrote: Keep the updates/build pics coming Bryce! How many donations and how close are you to having what you need to make Gainesville? Does anything need to be done to the car before it goes East?

So far three people have donated. You, Kreb, and MrJoshua have each ponied up $50. Thanks a bunch guys!

I still want to redo the coolant hoses, clean up the low voltage wiring, and do a full detail on the car. The under hood area could use some heat shielding, but that's a minor detail that I may or may not get to in the near future. I'll be tackling most of this stuff in the next couple of weeks, whether the car is going to Gainesville or not, so that I can use it as a daily driver in any mode I choose (gas only, hybrid, EV only). My goal is to drive the car to work in EV-only mode some time next week.

Bryce

Make that four, another donation just rolled in this morning. Thanks Tim!

Bryce

Congrats on making it down there and back, Bryce! You've done Portland proud and have showed up all of us out here on the West Coast whether we planned to compete or not. My hat is off to you and I tossed a bit into your Challenge fund, too. Hopefully I will see you out at rallycross, ChumpCar, or some similar event before too long.

Bryce,

I will detail the Fiero for you. I have a multi-speed polisher, multiple grits of foam pad, multiple compounds, the works basically. I actually detail show cars on the side. That's about the only thing on your car I feel qualified to do!

David Chong, and the SDrevs people should make evey one that wussed out at the last minet fund the transportation to FL. He said 30+ cancelations at the last minet, didn't he?

Nashco, that car is awsome! If I can swing it, I'll send a few clams for the transport cost too.

Transporting a vehicle is expensive. It would probably be cheaper to trailer it, or even rent a truck and trailer if you don't have access to one. Sure, it's a long, crappy drive, but it's doable. Anyway, best of luck!

Bryce this is "The Other Guy" as I was the other competitor in the WC $2009 Challenge. I can't really say why no one else showed up. My Challenge car was built almost entirely by myself alone in my garage. I think I had the gas tank bouncing off of my face installing a fuel pump about the time you were tearing down the drag strip (great times BTW!). The build officially started a month ago and finished the day of the Concours competition. I drove down to La Cocina in Ramona hoping to get a look at your very impressive car. Unfortunately by the time I showed up everyone had gone home. Some might question the sanity of driving a just completed car 180 miles at night but hey I'm not the smartest guy in the world!

I managed to make it to the autocross and was the only competitor for that event. It is too bad there wasn't more competition and the event wasn't advertised. I borrowed a friend's lift to drop my engine in and had several people ask why I was building the car. They became very excited about the idea to go racing on a limited budget. As to say who would have actually done something I don't know. The parking lot was however occupied by at least one derelict Miata and E30 BMW.

I look forward to seeing further development of your car and hope to see it in the future.

BTW my entry was a '95 Mitsu Mirage with a 4G63T (Turbo Talon) engine swap, fully rewired with the Talon harnesses, EVO8 suspension, and a whole lot of zip ties. A fairly simple approach in comparison to your amazing car. I was 50/50 on whether it would blow up but it ran like a champ.

The donations keep coming in, thanks a bunch guys! We're up to $255, a decent chunk out of the shipping bill.

16vCorey wrote: Transporting a vehicle is expensive. It would probably be cheaper to trailer it, or even rent a truck and trailer if you don't have access to one. Sure, it's a long, crappy drive, but it's doable. Anyway, best of luck!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I burned through all of my vacation time at work driving the car down to San Diego and back. I don't have any problem driving it down to Florida if time wasn't an object, I just don't have that kind of time. Several people said they want to see the car compete in Florida, and the only way I can see that happening is if I ship the car down and back.

bluesideup wrote: The build officially started a month ago and finished the day of the Concours competition.

Yup, too bad you didn't finish it a day earlier and show to the drags, I sure would have liked to have at least one competitor!

Bryce