Tire stencil from Condor Speed Shop
Tire stencil from Condor Speed Shop
Love it!
Road Atlanta battle scars.
Our Road Atlanta race started off with one of our teammates having to bail the night before departure due to health issues with his girlfriend. We picked up another local guy that night who had previously expressed some interest and was friends of a current teammate. It turns out the guy is a damn good driver and has a lift at his house! The hills of road Atlanta made it pretty obvious that our Miata's 160,000 mile engine is tired. Within 4 hours of bringing the car to our new teammate's HOUSE, the engine is out, the rear main seal leak is apparent, and the engine rejuvination has begun!
Got her detailed. First autocross scheduled for next weekend!
Can't believe I didn't put it together you were at the challenge. We've got to solve the username associations next year. I've missed meeting more GRMers by not putting 2 and 2 together.
Style 5's are the cats meow. I'm looking for a set for my E30. Can't decide whether to get a reworked set with 4x100 or swap to 5 lug. E36 looks awesome.
Rally racing in the Ranger! My lady enjoys riding co-driver. The long shift lever and heavy skull knob in the truck really shake around on the rough St Lucie terrain. Occasionally so much that it pops out of gear. Her job was to hold the shifter in 2nd while I steered :). I'll need to modify the lever a bit.
Nice work!
In reply to VWguyBruce:
Thanks for the kind words! A couple of years ago, the nametags at the challenge included the forum usernames. I think they did away with that last year for some reason.
I'm planning to upgrade the sway bars in the M3, which means the rear sway bar mounts need reinforcements welded in. So I brought it up to my buddy John who has some welding skillz and charges a fair price for his time. John is also the current national champ for MR Rallycross.
While I was at it, I brought the Ranger spare wheel and a few barbell weights from Play-it-again-sports (metric weights are cheaper!). The plan is to add some weight over the rear axle in the rallycross truck for more traction. Hopefully it works!
How do you like the Falken 615's? Great fun herd you have.
Lof8 wrote: I'm planning to upgrade the sway bars in the M3, which means the rear sway bar mounts need reinforcements welded in. So I brought it up to my buddy John who has some welding skillz and charges a fair price for his time. John is also the current national champ for MR Rallycross.
Hey, I know that guy and that shop looks vaguely familiar. 
You check out my POS circle track abomination while you were there?
4Msfam wrote: How do you like the Falken 615's? Great fun herd you have.
I've put about 1000 street miles on them and have no complaints, but I haven't really been able to push them hard yet for a good performance analysis. The choices in my size of 235/40/17 are fairly limited. The limited selection in this size and the relatively low cost of the Falkens compared to the others is what dictated my choice. The autocross I was supposed to attend the other weekend didn't pan out, but I'll try to give some impressions after I get to run hard on them.
hobiercr wrote: Hey, I know that guy and that shop looks vaguely familiar.
I did see the circle track rig. Looks cool! I didn't get to look at it real closely, though. Are you going to do some circle track racing, or have other plans for it? I've been considering grabbing one of the cheap 4-cylinder circle track beater cars that show up on Craigslist to give that genre of racing a try!!
Also, how you doin since the crash right at Challenge time?
Lof8 wrote:
I did see the circle track rig. Looks cool! I didn't get to look at it real closely, though. Are you going to do some circle track racing, or have other plans for it? I've been considering grabbing one of the cheap 4-cylinder circle track beater cars that show up on Craigslist to give that genre of racing a try!! Also, how you doin since the crash right at Challenge time?
Still recovering. Need to spend more time in the gym to build strength. Back at work full time and have started working on projects again which feels good.
No interest in doing circle track racing. That car is considered a modified mini and is still class legal although needing a thorough going through. I kinda got it to drop the drivetrain into the Alfa it was sitting next to but now I think I might get it running and set up to go left AND right for the Challenge. Shouldn't be to hard to get it running. I've got the needed gaskets and a carb rebuild kit, just need to find the time to do it. She sure is ugly though. If I get her cleaned up there still may be a market to resell to the circle track community. I kinda want to drop a 5.0/T5 combo in there though.
Another rallyx in the books and I'm slowly getting her dialed in. The added weight over the rear was a big help. I'm considering removing or lessening the front lift. And I want to get the front camber closer to 0. I set it up at -2.5 degrees based on my previous road racing experience, but after considering the physics, this is probably not the right thing to do in the dirt. I feel like the outside edge of the tire needs to be able to dig in and do most of the work.
Anyone care to give some rallycross front alignment advice?
Also ordered some new Bilstein 4600 shocks to replace the blown units in the rear. That should further assist with traction.
That was a rough course last weekend. 6 or 8 debeads on the final turnaround. The big rut at the beginning of this video was a little scary too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywl1w8KP4S8. Can't really complain with a two and a half minute course though.
Will you be at the FIRM for any of the events this month?
In reply to ojannen:
Yeah! There were definitely some rough spots. I only saw 1 de-bead, but I did leave after my 2nd heat runs because my worker station had been eliminated with the afternoon course layout. Did they all happen at the end of the day?
One of the things I love about the Ranger is the larger tires and huge ground clearance. I literally don't care about any of the rutting or rough spots - i just barrel through at full clip! :) Its fun!
I thought the course designs were awesome at this event. The morning was long and technical and the afternoon was short and fast with nice sweeping corners. I was originally planning to bring my red Miata to this weekend's track and rally event at the FIRM, but a buddy planned a weekend getaway at Ginnie Springs (awesome place to tube the river with beer in hand and camp!) I'm going to try to make the FIRM event later in the month.
The ranger is pretty awesome. I need to work something out suspension wise to stop bottoming out so much in my car.
Most or all of the debeads were the front right wheel hitting a rut at the end of the course. That part was mostly the same morning and afternoon. I know that in our run group Lee's Volvo and Chris's Neon both debeaded. I heard several while I was working, mostly on that FWD Subaru.
Now that you mention the specific cars debeading, I do remember all of those. :)
As for bottoming out, that certainly takes some of the fun out of rallycrossing. You can feel the course kicking the E36 M3 out of your car. I experienced a bit of that when rallycrossing the miata. The DC region seems to have a lot of BMW rallycrossers, including 5-series guys. Maybe you could get in touch with them to see what they're doing.
Just read this thread for the first time. I love that you are having fun in lots of different areas of motorsports. That's the way to do it.
Side note: Your Honda is awesome. I had a Honda nighthawk CB250 that was turned into a café style and that was more fun than the sportbikes I had. 25 hp wringing its neck in all 5 gears is such a blast.
The added weight to the spare was a significant help, but traction for acceleration is still my limiting factor. And since I'm cheap, new rubber for the rears only of the rallycross ranger for now. I've got a rallyx at the FIRM this weekend and rumor is that the course will be a bit different and longer than previous events.
crankwalk wrote: Just read this thread for the first time. I love that you are having fun in lots of different areas of motorsports. That's the way to do it. Side note: Your Honda is awesome. I had a Honda nighthawk CB250 that was turned into a café style and that was more fun than the sportbikes I had. 25 hp wringing its neck in all 5 gears is such a blast.
Exactly! "slow bike fast" is the motto. Its light weight makes it more fun too.
New Bilsteins in the back too!
I attended a fun rallycross at the FIRM a week or so ago. Their events really kick ass - There is varied terrain and high speeds on the asphalt sections. I had the Ranger up into 4th gear! I think my welded diff is starting to E36 M3 the bed. The truck no longer chirps the tires on tight asphalt turns, instead it sends a jolting thud up through the driveshaft. I jacked up the rear of the truck, when turning one wheel forward, the other wheel stays still for about a half rotation before the diff locks and it starts moving. I can launch in the dirt and still get two nice turf marks, so it seems to be doing what its supposed to, but I think a beefier 8.8 Explorer rear end is in the future.
I also ordered some traction bars to help stabilize the rear axle under acceleration. As you can see in the second to last photo below, the truck suffers from some fairly dramatic axle-hop under certain conditions.
Your rear end souds like it is in serious trouble!
If you welded it, it should definitely not move independently even for a second.
I wouldn't drive it without pulling the rear apart and fixing or replacing first.
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