Duel purpose rallyx/ autox car

My Cavalier was $400 running. Its fun to take a beat up car and just not worry about damaging it and would suggest it to anyone.

We've had a brand new A4 driven by an older gent, several 2010+ WRX/STis, about 30 other subies (mostly daily drivers), 7 e30s, a few RX7s, a couple MR2s, some VWs, and even a beautiful Peugeot 505 running this year on summit. Last event there was an e90 BMW there and he didn' t damage anything.

To my knowledge, the "damage" for the year from course has been a skidplate on a lowered e28, some fender liners, an STi front clip, and a broken CV axle on a subie of some sort. There have been some mechanical problems, but those mostly seem to be on older cars and not "because" of the rallycross, but just because of hard driving in general.

And that's a whole season of 50+ cars per event....with no serious damage and at least half of every field are peoples' daily drivers.

Main thing is just dinging up some paint, getting everything muddy and/or dirty, and maybe debeading a tire.

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I rallycross a 1985 BMW 318 wiht stock engine, mostly stock suspension (except Bilsteins and some reinforced mounts), stock springs, LSD, and mostly gutted interior. HAven't had any problems other than my cat substrate breaking up and clogging the exhaust at one event. I also plan to run the car in some autocross next year (with star specs). It sits tall and leans like a mofo, but should be fun with some thicker sways.

N Sperlo wrote: My Cavalier was $400 running. Its fun to take a beat up car and just not worry about damaging it and would suggest it to anyone.

How do you drive it home if it breaks?

Buying a truck and a trailer and a house to store it all at just to save a few thousand bucks on the fun car seems rather... expensive. Plus $60-100 in fuel to get to and from events driving a car is bad enough, doubling that to feed a tow rig would alone blow my budget!

This car dominated MR at the Nationals. It's not a $500 beater. It also drove to Tulsa and back... and I've been driving it to work every day. Finally parking it because it's supposed to get below freezing and they may salt the roads.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6T5kwM4dgQ

N Sperlo wrote: My dirt track cavalier rally-crosses just fine, but I think during an auto-cross, it would drive like a drunken donkey with his testes tied up.

after a very crappy 12 hour work day, that made me feel better. my wife doesnt get it, but im still laughing.

and to the OP: make sure to mark your camber bolts in two places for each strut (different colers each) so you can get the alignemnt back after the swap.

or run a middle of the road package that could potentially work for both.

In reply to Knurled:

The owner of the track is a nice guy. It stays there. I drive the street legal car to and from the track.

EDIT: doh....totally just realized that I seem to have confused part of this conversation with a totally different conversation that we've all been having on the local rallycross board with a new guy looking for a rallycross beater.

if you're not already ignoring me, please do so now.

back to the OP, you might be interested in knowing one of our locals drives a rusty old scirocco :)

Rally cross courses run from nice hard gravel/clay to what resembles a plowed field. So ground clearance comes into play. In general a rallycross car should be higher than what is the norm for an autocross. Dual purpose cars are a compromise.

Knurled wrote: How do you drive it home if it breaks?

AAA :)

Also, this thread needs moar downforce!

i don't know what i did but formatting = fail so never mind

wrongwheeldrive wrote:

Knurled wrote: How do you drive it home if it breaks?

AAA :) Also, this thread needs moar downforce!

Nope. Needs more upforce.

N Sperlo wrote: Nope. Needs more upforce.

I'm starting to get the rallyx bug. Wish there were more running near me, but I'm betting Atlanta is the closest.

It doesn't matter what you bring, just go rallycross. Then, take that car to the autocross and go.

The important thing is to get out there and have fun. Until you do that, you won't know what you're going to need to do to your car to make it competitive.

You can do both on a 100% stock suspension. You'll be less competitive in an autocross with that setup, but a stock suspension is fine to start with in rallycross.

Here is the car in question. It has been repainted since then.

Brett_Murphy wrote: The important thing is to get out there and have fun. Until you do that, you won't know what you're going to need to do to your car to make it competitive.

Bears repeating.

93EXCivic wrote: Here is the car in question. It has been repainted since then.

Pretty sure you'll be just fine.

Also, what you'll need to do to make your car competitive will depend on your driving style and the facilities themselves (muddy? hard pack? gravel?)

You get the idea.

I went out with my stock 2.5RS (automatic) and had a blast.