Before we dive into the technical stuff, I figured I'd provide some background. Many of you had a hand in this (knowingly or not), so it's only fair to provide the rest of the story.
I spend too much time browsing through Craiglist and various motorsports forum classifieds just to see who's selling what and for how much. This can be dangerous when you're just looking for something “interesting” versus something specific. One night back in late April I was scrolling through the GRM $2016 classifieds section when I saw the subject line “85 Camaro AS Race Car -$1000 - NMNA - Columbus”. Quite frankly, I skipped over it initially because:
- I have limited (if any) space to work on it.
- This is the busy season at work, and free time is nearly non-existent.
- If asked, I would probably identify myself more as a “Ford guy” than a “Chevy guy”.
All perfectly good reasons not to add another non-running doorstop to the stable, especially one that will occupy 16' of prime real estate for an undetermined amount of time.
After the third or fourth time passing the ad by, I decided to take a look, because racecar. Hmmm – sure is yellow. Craigslist ad is still active, and the mechanical bits mentioned in the ad sound interesting, especially at the asking price. It does look like it's been sitting for awhile and will require a fair bit of time and money to get back in shape. Besides, see the points 1-3 above.
Naturally, the more I tried to talk myself out of it, the more interested I became. The replies in the thread saying that it looked like an amazing deal weren't helping. I realized I needed an intervention to stop this idea before it took hold. I reached out to my buddy Sarisongroup who I've known since pre-school to see if he could head this thing off. Ironically, I reminded him a week earlier that I get vehicular ADHD, and to stop me if I started veering off-course from the Civic rallycross/TSD build we were working on. Asking your best friend who's also a big-time gearhead to stop you from buying another project car is probably like an alcoholic walking into a pub and asking the bartender for help. To paraphrase the Stones, you'll get what you want, but it may not be what you need. Sarisongroup agreed that it was a killer deal, and offered up his Cummins Ram 3500 and a borrowed flatbed trailer if needed, as well as willingness to sign on for an 18+ hour roundtrip road trip to retrieve it.
So, figuring conversation wouldn't cost me anything, I texted the number in the ad. Jay was selling it on behalf of the owner, and we traded notes back and forth across the day. He said it had been in storage for awhile and that the engine turned over but wouldn't start. He sent me a picture of the engine build sheet and confirmed it did have logbooks, but had someone coming to look at it that night (EvanB?). I was getting more interested, but was hoping (praying?) it would be sold locally and become someone else's project. I asked for scanned copies of the logbooks to be sent over if it didn't sell, and waited. Email came through later that evening. The car was still available, and scans of both of the logbooks were attached. E36 M3. Specs for the cage look overbuilt, if anything, and having the original logbooks may allow it to be grandfathered by SCCA and NASA.
Ahhh, but there's one last opportunity to nip this in the bud. My beautiful, intelligent, sainted wife. Surely she will take one look at this and put the kibosh on this craziness. To frame this correctly, I have a F-350 Super Duty for work/DD, the aforementioned Civic just purchased in January, and three motorcycles. I have a two-car garage that looks like a bomb went off in it, and in 18 awesome years of marriage, I can count on less than one hand the number of times Mrs. Rotaryracer has parked in said garage. Oh, and it's the week before Mother's Day, when all good racecar projects are purchased. The spousal veto HAS to work, right? Nope. “Sure, if you want it and it's a good deal, go for it.”. Berkeley.
Time to put up or shut up. I've somehow passed every usual checkpoint, have a “grassroots-sized” motorsports slush fund at my disposal, and an old racecar in need of help. I wasn't really looking for a new project, but apparently a new project was looking for me.