Rallycross Beretta

93 Beretta. 2.2 and a five speed. It needs an engine, it lacks a title, the interior is totally gross. But I only dropped a hundy on it, so what the hell. My cousin/hetero life partner is building and racing it with me. He has a replacement engine that needs a home. I plan to run it SF class so it won't be build as much as a repairing and refreshing. I will try record my progress here.

This will be my first adventure in rallycross (or any competitive motorsports for that matter) so I will have plenty of questions. Feel free to give as much advice as you want, or redirect me when I'm doing something dumb. Thanks.

http://m.imgur.com/a/IfVv1

Try that I guess

Well berkeley it.

Somebody killed a 2200? Must have run it out of oil or snapped the timing chain.

Pics

In reply to BrokenYugo:

Thank you Mr. Yugo. I tried the pics three different ways and couldn't make it happen.

The engine has what sounds like a rod knock. It gets louder as the engine warms up.

I wholly approve of this build. The Beretta/Lumina may not have been the most inspiring cars to drive but the basic underpinnings were pretty robust. Plus, it's not like you have to worry about ruining a car that might be worth something one day.

Check the pushrods before you discard the motor, I saw a 2200 Cavalier with a broken pushrod that made a rod-knocky sort of sound.

One junkyard pushrod later and it was sweet as a nut.

I had a Corsica as a Rallycross car for a while. The soft suspension made it probably the most comfortable car I've raced.

I did have problems with it eating front wheel bearing assemblies, although it seemed to be solved when I stopped buying Timken branded ones.

How in the world do you kill a 2200.

Guy could probably break an anvil in a sand box.

In reply to Knurled:

I couldn't kill a 2200 and I once killed a 5S-FE, in an auto trans Camry!

I prolly seen about a bizillian J-cars with 2.2 engines at the salvage yard. Never really looked twice at the engine but I figured they were overhead cam. To my surprise, they are push rod engines.

Sounds like this might be an easy fix.

We had a bad rocker arm on our 2000 Sunfire 2.2 - replaced and A-OK

You know, after hearing all this I may need to pull the valve cover and check it a little better. It was also running like crap, which I thought seemed like an open egr valve, but it could all be a valve train problem. I would love to not have to pull the engine.

In reply to Doc Brown:

It's pretty much a truck engine, pulls about the same from 4000 to 6000, mine didn't seem to mind being an anger outlet for years. All I did was put a timing chain in it (they seem to only be good for ~100k) and run high mileage 10w40 oil. A cam would probably wake one up, but they only came in GM crapcans and S10s so I don't think anybody bothered. Should make a fine rallyX beater engine.

Knurled wrote: How in the world do you kill a 2200. Guy could probably break an anvil in a sand box.

I was wondering the same thing. I beat on mine pretty hard and after I sold that car to my sister she once went 16,000 miles on an oil change. It shrugged it all off. May not have been a powerful engine, but, man, was the 2200 tough. Supposedly it is fairly interesting with boost though.

In reply to NickD:

The thing that is weird is, it has beautifully shaped ports and 44mm intake valves. By the numbers, it has a lot of potential.

You know how they all got head gasket leaks by #4 cylinder? Everywhere I worked, we had a policy of not worrying about it until the coolant stain became an actual flowing leak. That might take 50-90k miles from the time you first notice the coolant drool. So, a co-worker had a 2.2l something or other, the head gasket finally went into river mode, so he yanked the head, and it looked like a bomb had gone off in cylinder 3. The valves, chamber, and piston top were all beat up. SOMETHING got into the cylinder and stuck around to beat the hell out of everything before blowing out the exhaust. He owned it for a few years by this time and nothing unusual had ever happened on his watch, so it was something that happened with the previous owner.

New gasket, new bolts, slap it together, still ran fine...

In reply to Knurled:

Mine did that after I got it a little hot burping a new radiator. It would only drip on cold days, then I put a bottle of bars leaks in it and that held up for like 2 years until I sold it.

I'm one of the few weirdos that like Berettas, so I'm stoked to see this happen.

I high five this build. 2.2 5 speed GM combo is a thumbs up. I also recall the Z26, GTU, and GTZ packages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Beretta

Funny Beretta story. Back in they were new a guy was racing a GTU or Z package car at Waterford Hills. He hit some of the high curbs in the esses and the car ended up doing a pirouette on its nose coming down hard on the back wheels. Both back stub axles broke and the wheels popped off. So the guy is sitting there getting his brain straight while sitting on the track and realizes he has FWD. He starts the car and it drags itself off the track. I don't think anybody else had to hit the brakes and the corner workers just had to gather up the two back wheels while the race continued.

Question; is adding aftermarket gauges legal within the rules of stock class? This car came with a Speedo, fuel and temp gauges. Thats it. I would love to add a tach and oil pressure gauge, as long as it doesn't bump me up a class.

Looking at the rules for this year, section 3.3.C.4 makes it look like the oil pressure gauge would be fine as "protective equipment" but I'd say there's a chance the tach could run afoul of that by giving a performance advantage, even if it does also potentially help you protect the engine from damage.

Edit: FWIW, I doubt anyone locally is going to go after you for installing a tachometer. I put a factory tach in the gauge cluster of my Subaru Legacy years ago, and I don't think anyone cared, but I can't remember if the rules were worded similarly back then.

gearheadmb wrote: Question; is adding aftermarket gauges legal within the rules of stock class? This car came with a Speedo, fuel and temp gauges. Thats it. I would love to add a tach and oil pressure gauge, as long as it doesn't bump me up a class.

Gauges are explicitly legal in Stock, as they qualify as comfort and convenience items, as long as they are strictly gauges with no other purpose (no rev limiter tachs or boost controller boost gauges). I requested a rules clarification in '10 or so and this is what I was told.

Not that it'll matter, really. Locally we've allowed some silly things to run in Stock, mainly because nobody else really runs in that class locally, so just have fun. But if it is a National level event (Challenge or Championship) then you need to declare every way in which your car deviates from stock on the class inspection form, and if you want to be kind to the people working the protest committee, you'll annotate everything with the section of rules that you feel makes it legal

Which brings me to the "fun" at Nationals sometimes... Amazing what people will try to pass off as "stock", or the BS things people will inspect on other peoples' cars to bump them out of Stock.

I guess if anyone objects to the tach I can tape a grocery bag over it or something like that.

Seriously. Don't sweat it. Absolutely nobody will care.

The person who does tech locally said it was okay, one of the people on the rules committee and who gets hooked into assisting the protest committee (or outright being ON the protest committee) at nationals is telling you that it's okay...