Night Owl Racing - 2024 $2000 Challenge

Hello All,
I would like to introduce myself as well as my colleagues.

My name is Ethan Foster and I am the President and Co-Founder Night Owl Racing [NOR] at Kennesaw State University. I am teaming up with some fellow students and friends to make this happen. Our leadership consists of:

Ethan Foster: President and Co-Founder

Joseph Riggs: Lead Engineer and Co-Founder

Luke Vasquez: Vice President

ORIGIN STORY :
My brother, Matthew, was a big part of Wreck Racing at GA Tech (some of you may have heard that name). I didn't make it to tech and as a result, I spent most of my time on the FSAE team at KSU. That team taught me more information than I could hope to absorb. After going to the 2023 $2000 challenge in a rally-spec W123 Mercedes (built mostly by wr-ex racers), I began to understand just how much I needed this in my life. Fueled by an intense sibling rivalry, I began to dream nightly about my own grassroots team.

WHERE ARE WE NOW : 

After months of planning and staring at the ceiling at 2 am, the dream began to take shape. 

*Queue Rocky Style Motivational Montage*

Funny how life works, I just so happen to be working at a little company called Ampere EV that also employed Mike White (The HONG to our NOR). At this point, I was unaware of this heritage because I was about 6 years old when he was participating in this competition, but I have since been educated. 

Long story short, the start of Night Owl came along perfectly with a big cleanup effort at the Ampere EV warehouse. The White brothers stored a lot of ‘E36 M3’ there, so I scored all kinds of goodies that were being thrown in the dumpster. As I continued talking to ‘Poopshovel’, I was told “I think I may have a deal you’d be interested in.” He was right, I was interested. “I have this trailer on my property that has a Ford Festiva in it, we were going to do the competition with it, but life happened.” After dragging the trailer around for 12 years, the pile of ‘E36 M3’ was only worth $300 to him. It was perfect, a new race team looking to make a splash in the competition stumbled upon a car that was destined to go to the challenge, even if it is a decade late. The icing on the cake? It came with two, and I repeat, TWO steering columns!!! Also, a motor.

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/hong-norrth-2009-build/13066/page1/ 

That puts us in a place where we have a car, engine, seats(not originally included), a non-air conditioned garage, and a couple of KSU engineers. This should get interesting.

The Festiva in the trailer, as it has sat for 12 years

The motor, in the Ampere EV warehouse covered in spiderwebs!

Mike White (poopshovel) himself loading my engine for me 

The motor (with a friend) on a journey back home

The Festiva in the temporary Night Owl HQ

'Driving' is our fearless President (Ethan Foster(me)) and passenger is our Lead Engineer (Joseph Riggs)

'Driving' here is our Vice President (Luke Vasquez) and passenger is Terrence Lewin

Welcome to the party!

Looking forward to seeing you all in 2024.

Looking forward to you giving wreck some competition! 

Poopy is good peeps.

mgfoster said:

Looking forward to you giving wreck some competition! 

Wreck Racing gives themselves plenty of competition, and more often than not they lose against it :) 

Also looking forward to more college teams at the Challenge.

In reply to Night_Owl_Racing :

I too have retrieved a Turbo 4 cyl from the Ampere EV warehouse.  It's a cool place.  Good luck on the build following 

Forum is not taking my meme right now but, I just want to say, RIGHTEOUS!

Welcome NOR Racing.  Im glad the festiva found its special place. It should be a fun build. The car is super light !

So stoked the Rusteevuh's final resting place was not the squisher. I moved that thing & the motor so many times. I think tried to sell it here for $500 or trade for guns a few years ago(?)

I feel as though this build is divinely inspired...by the God of "what," I'm not sure.

Should be a rocket. I'll take a +/-100 bet on 1500 lbs. And/or Wayne & I will go to town with sawzall/hole saw/nibbler to get it there! 
 

Bring forth the era of the Hong/NOR alliance!!!

We had some intrusive thoughts…

There will be more information a bit later

We all decided to strip the rest of the paint from the car, but in style. I bought a cheap ‘wet sandblasting’ kit. It hooks up to a pressure washer and the other end goes in a bucket of sand. The result … seemed very dangerous. 

The paint is now gone

We then had the challenge of getting the car back into the garage. We had many ideas varying in complexity, then we remembered what we were dealing with. 

Our best guess is 600 lbs

Look! A GA Tech student can even lift it!

Around this time, we were at a point of no return. Luckily, we didn't think too much about it. 

Maximum safety can be seen in this photo

We will be cutting more out, but for now, we just cut the bulk of it so we could start thinking. 

We may be able to fit everything in here

The next step was trying to mount everything into the rear. After a considerable amount of research and a couple junkyard trips, we landed on a toyota camry subframe and suspension. In the junkyard, we decided it was a good idea to get some measurements so we could try to replicate this geometry in the Festiva. 

Unfortunately, we went a bit overboard

This is where we’re at now, more coming soon!

Well, that escalated quickly.

very cool build...popcorn emoji needed

hell ya!  mid engine Festiva!

!!

this is my flavor of shenanigans. The blurrier the line between genius and crazy, the better. 

mid engine swaps are the best! looks to be a killer project!

With the decision to put camry suspension in the rear, we now faced the task of figuring out front what front suspension we wanted. After scouring the depths of Facebook Marketplace (aka grassroots amazon) we found a 2008 mazda 3 for $450 that matched roughly what we needed.

On a cold and rainy winter day...

After ripping of everything of value (including emblems) and spending far too much time working on this car, we found a better option. Granted, we gained many misc parts from this car, including a THIRD steering column.

Foreshadowing?

CRUNCH

Next we stumbled upon a FREE Porche 944 (posted on Facebook available to the public… for quite a while actually.) As great as this deal may sound, there wasn't much 944 left. With the roof, quarters, doors, and fenders missing the poor Porche was reduced to more of a 544. Despite the mangled mess of German engineering now sitting in the shop, we gained much from this deal. The primary gain was the front suspension that is about half the weight of the mazda suspension we were planning to use.

My favorite part was the cat urine 

Only the finest tools and most competent mechanics

CRUNCH

This makes us all excited

And that brings the physical work up to date. Although there has been lots of CAD work and engineering done, here are some examples.

Over the winter break, we worked hard to get the car on the ground. In the rear of the car, we have the Camry subframe mounted with a set of cross bars. Temporarily, we used the front Festiva struts with cut springs and fabricated tabs to adapt the Festiva shock towers to the camry knuckles. As of now, the bolt pattern forces us to use the beautiful Mazda wheels, but Porsche wheels are coming soon. 

Toyota Camry Subframe and Suspension

Custom Tabs To Bolt to Camry Knuckles

very complex and advanced techniques used here

In the front, you'll find Porsche 944 suspension and subframe. We fabricated some semi-temporary mounts attached to the front frame rails. These mounts will be adjusted in the future for improved ride height and suspension geometry. We needed the car to roll to aid in our shop relocation.

Porche Subframe mocked up

Porche subframe mounted on semi-temporary mounts

For the first time ever, our Ford Toyota Porsche Mazda Festiva is sitting under its own weight, which isn't much. Currently, there is precisely 0 suspension compression with the weight of the car. Only when we have the entire team jumping on the car can you see the suspension move. 

Mazda wheels are looking a bit fruity

This is the skinniest track width we can have ... GROUP B STYLE WIDE BODY INCOMING

The Festiva's Not-So-Little Brother (FEAT. Randy's right hand)

A quick side project that I took on was taking a torch to the bumper. It was the single most satisfying thing I've done in my life. Breathing the burning plastic fumes was justified by the talking cat that coached me through the process.

I miss his soothing voice

WHATS NEXT?

For us as a team, it's time to put it in gear… literally. Engine and transmission should be the next post. As the competition gets closer, posts should get more frequent,  progress will be faster, and classes will be skipped. It's just a letter grade after all. 

Night_Owl_Racing said:

It's just a letter grade after all. 

you know what they call the guy who graduates last in his class from med school?

Doctor.

\m/

Time for the motor...

oops

In reply to Thethanfoster :

3MZ?

In reply to maschinenbau :

yep

In the last post, we said the engine would be in before the next post… that escalated quickly. 

FRONT SUSPENSION : 

While the car did get onto the ground, it was much too high. I spent a day or so designing new subframe mounts to raise the subframe. This will allow us to lower the car without the front subframe touching the ground. 

To get the desired camber, we lengthened the control arms.

Add camber plates and coilovers

REAR SUSPENSION : 

When we put the motor in the car, it technically fit. However, the axles were blocked by the frame rail on each side. Additionally, the motor mounts also interfered. We explored our options and decided on the coolest option : Tube Frame. We chose to do this because of our immense experience building tube frames. (precisely zero)

First we cut out everything from the rear. Then, we cut more out. Then more. 

First we made some hoops

Then we got the tubes in place

Engine is in

Coilovers and camber plates

HERE WE ARE

Well. Everybody always tells you that the time will go faster than you think. I thought for SURE that we would be different. 

Although its a bit late, id like to wrap up this forum thread with a couple final thoughts :

First, THANK YOU to everyone who welcomed us into this community. The whole team was blown away with how great everyone in this community is and we all hope to add to it. 

Second, WOW! This competition is no joke. We all have much to learn. One big lesson that everyone learned is that if its sketchy, itll probably break. Its easy to watch some of the 'ledgends' of this competition get away with things that look sketchy, but its usually either something that can break with no real consequences or its much more thought out than it seems. We ran out of time on our build (big surprise) and there were a couple key components that were a bit sketchy. Mainly, our transmission wiring (more on this later).

Third, Toyota engines are not invincible, but are amazingly tolerant of some kids trying to blow one up

WHAT HAPPENED AT COMP?

We had one main issue : Transmission wiring

We chose an automatic so that we could bypass the engineering of a custom shifter and clutch hydraulics. What we forgot to do was make the automatic transmission work. It seems that the transmission had an issue with it beyond wiring, however, the ECU was not happy. This limited us to 1st gear hence our 30+ second drag run. Although the issue was transmission wiring, the larger issue was zero testing of the car. There were many smaller issues that surfaced as the day went by, such as a blown head gasket, leaky coolant piping, and self tolorancing wide body. 

Overall, The team and I couldn't be happier with our first $2000 Challenge experience. The Festiva will be returning next year and we may have a couple tricks up our sleeves (and we have a lot of sleeves)

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.  Regroup, recalibrate, and re-engage.

Never give up.  Never surrender.

Dug it then, dig it now, looking forward to updates.