I could flood the forum with like 6 different build threads, so I will just start by keeping it all in one thread.
I am a longtime GRM [3 decades] reader and have been racing myself since about 2007. I've done autocross, track days, circle track, road racing, rallycross, stage rally and even tested an open wheel car in France last year.
I took a break from racing after getting a double whammy of health issues in 2020 and 2021 [brain injury and a COPD diagnosis] but I am slowly getting back at it, mainly thanks to a confidence boost from getting into iRacing and doing it at a good level [by good, I guess I mean being faster than Oscar Piastri, Kevin Estre and others in various cars in the same session]
I figure I'll start this sh!tshow off with my latest project. Like many others I spend way too much time screwing around looking on Facebook market. In 2022 I had a hankering to get a stock car to go road racing with. I did some lurking on here and figured if I was going to look for a chassis, it had to be a perimeter chassis. I had a car saved on my saved list that had lingered there for what felt like a year. There were definitely better cars out there but this one for some reason had my interest. It probably had to do with the badass Oldsmobile Cutlass sheetmetal hung on it. It was 4-5 hours north of here up in Anderson, CA which I felt had to do with it's lack of movement. My wife wanted to go camping by a river so I somehow parlayed that into going to check out the car.
We camp and the next morning I drive across town to go check out the car. The story behind the car goes that it was originally built by Victory Circle chassis for Ron Hornaday Jr in 1990. Steve [the guy I bought it from] told me he had a chassis on order, but they decided to sell him the one meant for Ron because they were behind at the time. So to make up for it, they sold him that chassis and even helped him finish it and they rented out Mesa Marin Speedway to teach Steve how to drive and set the car up so that he could dive right into running Tour races that season.
Steve proceeded to race the car on the NASCAR Southwest Tour between 1990-1994. After it's time on the Tour, Steve ran many open show late model races with the car around the state. Around 2002, he stopped racing and mothballed the car. The car was listed as a rolling chassis when I went to go look at it, but Steve had a 355ci V8 that was built to SW Tour specs that was refreshed around 2000 by a shop in North Carolina that was also for sale. And he still had the old Tex Racing built T-10 he used for Sonoma when he ran the Tour. After checking out the car, I made an offer to Steve that involved buying the car, engine and transmission as a running unit. He still had the watts link and a few parts for setting the chassis up for road racing, but not everything so that was left up to me.
My space was full up with Volvos but Steve agreed to store the car for me for a few months, so I finally went and picked it up in October of last year. Got it home, and since it was unusually hot those few days I let the car bake in the sun so I could remove the vinyl a little easier
Shortly after getting it home, I finally was able to get a CT scan done on my elbow. You can see I have a little one 2 pictures above. She loves ducks. Back in September that year, we were at the county fair and I spotted a giant stuffed duck I wanted to win her. The game was right up my wheelhouse as a former pitcher - throwing baseballs at glass bottles. I absolutely brought the heat, won her the duck and managed to do something I never did in high school or playing at the community college level. I tore my UCL 
Somehow I avoided Tommy John surgery with months of rest and physical therapy. I put the Oldsmobile aside to work on and finish a few Volvos I had lined up so I could sell them and fund the build for the Olds.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I explored selling the Olds to put the money into my rally car and dirt hobby stock. A local friend of mine from said dirt hole, Fred Lind, is a fairly accomplished road racer who has raced stock cars on road courses plenty of times. He told me he had a friend that wanted to buy it and use his garage for a few weeks to work on it. Somehow, this conversation led to me pulling the for sale ad and taking the car over to Fred's to get started on swapping it over to a road course setup with his guidance [something I kinda needed]
No pictures of the work involved, but I had trouble a while ago starting the car. As it turned out, the fuel cell bladder was leaking. Also as it turns out - the bladder expired in 1995.....so the first order of business was ripping the ass off the car to get a new ATL bladder installed.
Second order of business per Fred's orders - rip the left front out of the car. Measure the various components [tie rod, lower control arm, strut rod, upper control arm] on the right and get the left matched up.
Next up, take all that useless 250 pounts of lead [as it ended up] out of the frame rail on the drivers side. It was easier said than done, that stuff was wedged and deformed in place. I made no progress with a jack handle and a 2 lb sledge over 3-4 hours aside from barely being able to remove 2 out of 4 bars that were on the ends. The center bars were stuck
I took a break for a day, but than noticed this big ass pipe sitting under my house doing nothing. It looked to be the perfect height for the rail. It got the two stubborn pieces out in 5 minutes. MVP
The seat that came in the car was a circle track special, but a unique one at that - a "ROCKNCHAIR" that was made by Craig Raudman's [former SW Tour racer] company as a high quality alternative to the other brands at the time. But I decided it would be best used on my iRacing simulator. I have had a Sabelt GT Pad from another project that I decided to use for this car.
It was an absolute pain in the ass to wrestle into the car without removing any bodywork [at least before I did it...] but it squeezed in once I removed the shifter. In just about the only position it can fit in, it fits my 6'5 frame perfect and is comfortable. Blind luck. My main concern was the halo hitting the main hoop of the cage. No such concerns, 1/3 to 1/2 of an inch is plenty.
After getting it mounted up, I realized I should have done this first. Cut a section of the door above the door bars and between the main hoop and the front support. I trimmed that out neatly, so that it will eventually go back in with a hinge to allow easier in/out capabilties.
I've got all the correct stuff for the left front on the way, but now I am figuring out a sway bar setup. Probably going to run a 1 3/4 inch bar, but I need to get the parts sorted first and how they are going to mount up and work but does not seem too hard
I'll be moving my way to the back of the car as I go along, but this is where I am at right now
