$2015 Challenge 9c1 Caprice

... copied from the $2015 challenge FB page where I posted the other night. I'll probably continue to update there, but not much time for updates right now...

Pics in that thread!

Dan Zimmerman and I own a shop called North Coast Speedworks here in Avon Lake Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland). We started the shop on a shoestring in January of 2014 on the near west side in an extremely unseemly neighborhood (CPD literally found a murdered corpse at the end of our drive while we were there) and moved out to the burbs at the first opportunity (11/14). We currently occupy an antique three-bay service station on a corner opposite a crappy dodge dealer who hates us (because, I think, we occasionally have fun and they do not).

We initially started the shop with the plan to do euro service and our own hot rods and tuning stuff on the side. Paying bills was a different matter, and we ended up slogging it out with whatever came in the door. We bashed our way through eighteen frustrating months, putting pretty much any dime we made into bills and equipment, hoping at some point the venture would turn a corner. Back in March I got wound up about the GRM challenge. A friend of mine from up here ran it several years ago, and as a DSM guy I thought it was about time a proper entry from ohio came and put on a show. I found a car, started piecing things together... and then the shop got swamped.... (next year.... I have the car and I bought it right. y'all are in trouble.)

About a month ago Dan's big brother and best friend Colin collapsed at work. He was rushed to a hospital and life-flighted to another where they did a radical operation to save him. Part of his heart had exploded. He survived the surgery and for a couple weeks was slowly recovering, and at one point was out of the ICU and sitting up and doing pretty well... but the stress on his body was too much and his organs began to fail... we lost him last week.

Colin was a big guy, like a big jolly ogre. Jovial and outgoing, he made friends easily everywhere he went. Hundreds of people crowded his wake. Among other things, he loved cars. He won a demolition derby in an unlikely car (Dan can fill you in). The first "nice" car he bought was a used '94 9C1 caprice. About a year ago, before a trip to Africa, Colin signed the rusty leftovers of the car to Dan. It sat in the shop lot... until yesterday...

Colin's caprice hadn't run in several years. We dragged it into a bay, got it on a lift, replaced the fuel pump (like four friggin' times because... well... the sidebar here is that I hate chevys. because after a few years everything you touch on a GM breaks into three pieces... which was true in this case. So every time we thought we had assembled it some other piece had broken.... I'll be OK. really.) and fired it. Dan backed it out of the bay and immediately burned the tires down. It runs, no doubt about that. So, a few hours ago while sitting at the bar, we entered the 2015 challenge. We're coming. We're going to do everything we can in a few days to compete with a whale of a car. It's for Colin, and it's for Dan. And f*ck it, it's for me too. I like racing. So it's not a miata. Whatevs.

Is it a car we actually bought for cheap? No, not really. Can you buy a rusty, beat, not-running 9C1 for cheap? Yes, all day... but we didn't so we'd like a community opinion on the $ value of the car (we have our number, but let's see what people think). We think the crazy sh*t we're about to do fits the spirit of the event regardless. Here's a few pics of the car with rotten tires, a stinky interior, blown brakes, a disintegrating exhaust and a can of old paint. Also a pic of Dan taking his brother's car to prom many years ago... Expect it to look different. A lot different. Even by tomorrow night...

I should add, if anyone has booked too many rooms in the host hotel for any reason we will take one! Whatever you got. Otherwise we'll be staying with friends in town and making their neighbors angry with our ugly car and wrenching all night...

Man, awesome story, I'm so glad you guys are coming! I have no idea on the value, but I'm sure it's well under the budget cap.

Great that you are coming!

My Infiniti out of Sandusky area. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/i-need-help-with-a-salvage-auction-purchase-able-t/103085/page1/

Well my boss paid 1100 for 3 9cj cars to use as engine donors. They seem to be dirt cheap in this area once they rot out.

rusty? $300 base line value.

I FREAKING KNOW THAT CAR. you guys are right by the ford plant next to DQ right? i almost stopped last month and inquired if you would sell the caprice, sitting between miatas and e30's and stuff, i was on electric blvd doing a kitchen right around the corner. the service at that DQ is painful, by the way.

looking forward to meeting you guys, sounds like we need to be friends. i have an ls swapped 95 impala ss and my dad has a 93 roadmonster woody wagon and a southern fresh 92 roadmonster sedan that i picked up. i'm down in medina county.

see you in gainesville, i'll have the white/black 240Z

Value? priceless , therefore my number is 86. Do it like a boss. A "big jolly ogre" boss.

Ha. Yeah it's been sitting out there since we got here. Stop by anytime, we're here working!

clevelandaudio wrote: I should add, if anyone has booked too many rooms in the host hotel for any reason we will take one! Whatever you got. Otherwise we'll be staying with friends in town and making their neighbors angry with our ugly car and wrenching all night...

Dude, you need to get that thing to the hotel parking lot by Thursday afternoon, you'll have a nonstop supply of helping hands till ???? They asked us to shut it down @ 1AM last year, but we were trying to get a car with no exhaust, to fire up on megasquirt and were getting a few backfires out of it.

I stopped at their place today and saw the Caprice. Value is scrap. Patgizz says $300 and I agree. These guys are very much GRM. We had a good chat. I shared as much as I could and we discussed a few mutual friends we have.

So.

Five days and two guys does not a race car make. As it turns out.

We gutted the interior, shelled three doors and welded the rears. I tore down the top end of the motor and built some ported aluminum LT1 heads out of a couple sets. Got the top end back together and got full-length headers to fit and clear (no, I won't tell you how we did it and it wasn't easy) and fit 3" chambered muffs into nascar pipes. We yanked the rear end and tore it down for the disc backing plates, moving them to a posi rear end we had. All of it was rusted and everything took four times as long as it should have. Dan rebuilt the brakes... every piece of the brakes, except for one line and the master. We spent a bunch of time patching holes we made in the firewall, but also a lot of holes nature made in other parts of the car. We replaced the rusted front shocks with mono-tubes and cut the 450lb/in 9c1 springs two coils to get the ride height in the right place. Drag tires mounted on stock wheels, A7's on truck 17's...

And then, rear end back in the car, I spent hours making some billy coilovers I pulled out of a junk BMW fit because A) they fit the budget and B) the stock perches had previously been cut on the posi rear for a hot rod. It sucked a ton of time. About 10PM last night we had it on the ground on four wheels, about 2am we had it running and moving...

There were still a laundry list of little issues, including tuning, alignment, hood fasteners, seat mount, N02 system... and we were beat as hell from a five-day thrash with almost no help. If we had one more day we'd be coming with a competitive car, but with a 14 hour drive between us and the challenge we had to call it.

We're bummed to have missed out this year, and the chances we will bring the caprice next year are pretty much nil. We've already got plans to continue building the car well beyond the budget cap and use it to make owners of shiny new muscle cars wonder why they can't quite catch that big black lump with our shop logo on it. I hope to turn our attention to the DSM I have stashed for next years event, and really show up to run.

I couldn't be more proud of where we got with it. We weren't terribly off in any assessment of what was involved with a five day panic build, other than we grossly overestimated the enthusiasm of our friends to lend a hand. Live and learn. The funny thing is, Dan's brother Colin was the missing guy. He was always the guy to help out when you needed it, he'd have made the difference for sure. Regardless, I think he'd get a chuckle out of the sh*t we did to his old car in five days... and it'll see a lot of track time in the next year or two, no doubt.

I hope the event is a blast. See you next year.

Damn. Was really interested from the story of the car and what you guys were doing. Would like to see pictures of the car when you get it to a solid state like what would have been seen in Gainsville.

Was hoping to see you guys. Let me know if you need insight on the build, ive had b bodies for the better part of the last 18 years. I'll dropby the shop next time I'm in avon lake