ChumpCar Racing
 

In January at the Minnesota Autosports Club awards banquet I was fortunate enough to run into Brandon Ranvek and another buddy of ours as they were talking about getting a Chump car together to race at BIR this summer. As luck would have it they were looking for a fourth driver and after a little thinking I accepted. Over the next few months we got ahold of a car, a 1985 Toyota MR2, and got to work.

After gutting the car, removing all of the unnecessary pieces including the sun roof, we put on brand new brake calipers with EBC Red pads up front, had Jeff the Alignment Guy make sure it was straight, installed a roll cage and got to work on painting it. In the spirit of ChumpCar and the 24 Hours of LeMons your team and car should have a theme to it. Without much thought we settled on Ricky Bobby's Wonder Bread car from Talladega Nights. Thanks to Brandon's hidden artistic talent he went to work and freehanded every detail on the car with nothing more than a pencil, ruler and masking tape.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._4029014_n.jpg

The race at BIR was this past weekend on June 5-6. We had to arrive on Friday for tech inspection and an instructional class.

http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs632...._7687740_n.jpg
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-...0_393660_n.jpg
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._4854728_n.jpg
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._1973295_n.jpg

Racing on Saturday began around 9am, scheduled to last 7 hours both Saturday and Sunday. We didn't know how long the car would last on a tank of fuel, if our tires would last or even how long we as drivers would last. Per the rules drivers can not spend more than 2 hours in the car at a time, and must rest for 30 minutes before getting back into the car. After some discussion we settled on just doing an hour a piece to start, I was to be the third driver.

Things were going well until I got into the car. We had been solidly in the top 4 for the entire race. The longer I was in the car the harder it was to shift. Eventually it got to the point where it was stuck in 3rd gear and wouldn't go into 1, 2 or 5, I was actually going down the track with the clutch out and shifting between 3 and 4 as if I had the clutch pressed in. I brought the car in and it was obvious there was something wrong with the gear selector. Brandon was up next, we were able to get the car out of gear so he got in and took off. He got it into 4th gear and just left it there, though between the high load and a small coolant leak it was soon overheating and he brought it in and we called it quits for Saturday.

We assessed our options and immediately got on the phone with a Toyota guru friend of ours that has been helping us along the way and secured a transmission in Lakeville. Another friend that we autocross with was able to pick up the transmission and bring it as far as St. Cloud, then our teammate's dad who was at the track with us drove to St. Cloud to bring the transmission home. Then came the problem of swapping transmissions. We did some talking to people and as luck would have it the owner of BIR was racing with us. He directed us to a building on the opposite side of the drag strip with a lift in it and said it was ours to use. We got to work and got the transmission out well before the new one arrived, then worked until just before midnight to get the new one in. Again, as luck would have it, as it was getting dark out a storm rolled through and dumped a lot of rain. Dragsters that were there for the bracket racing event began to come into the building for shelter and we made quite a few new friends who were as interested in our car and what we were doing as we were in their cars. Countless people offered us tools and a helping hand in case we needed it, people we had never met in our lives. It was a fantastic feeling, even shared a couple beers with them while we worked.

http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs602...._7181396_n.jpg
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-...6_622340_n.jpg

We removed a bunch of extra things under the car while we were there including the AC lines going to the front, some flimsy undertrays, and bypassed the heater lines to make bleeding the coolant system easier. We quick tested the transmission on the lift, bled the coolant and we were on our way, I hit the hay right around 12:30am and was up around 6:30am to get the car to the pits as racing was starting around 8:00am on Sunday.

On Sunday we decided to stretch our pit stops out to 1 hour 45 minutes which would leave the last driver with about 1 hour 30 minutes of driving to the end. Brandon went first as he has the least driving from the day before, then Dustin (first on Saturday), Doug (second on Saturday) and I was going to bring it home.

Again, as it was on Saturday, we were solidly in the top 4 again the entire race. Our stops were flawless and the car was running great. As the day went on the transmission seemed to not like its synchros and it was up to us to rev match to get it in gear.

Getting into the car for our final stint on Sunday, Dustin fueling
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._5465979_n.jpg

Strapping in with Doug, Brandon and Dustin taking a peak under the hood to make sure we weren't leaking anything as we had a coolant leak the day before that we fixed
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._5975196_n.jpg

Dustin, Brandon and Doug looking on as I drove past the pits
http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs602...._2013279_n.jpg

Thankfully I was last and know how to heel-toe downshift and rev match so that much wasn't a big deal, though as time went on the brakes began to go away. With about a half hour left I finally figured out that if I double pumped the brakes they worked great, though by then I was just taking it easy and trying to bring it home in one piece.

With 20 minutes left in the race and my stint the sky opened up and rain began pouring down. The track had standing water in a couple places, but thanks to RainX on the windshield and brand new silicon wiper blades I could see just fine. Unknown to me at the time we were in 3rd place because the car in 4th had just been black flagged for passing under yellow with an emergency vehicle nearby. Once the rain came I was still passing cars, but the cars that were catching me at the time were no longer catching me and we were even. I crossed the line to double checker flags, I looked over and everyone on the team was standing on the wall and cheering. One cool down lap, came into the pits and find out that we had finished in 3rd, about 30 seconds ahead of 4th place.

We got ourselves a cool trophy, a bottle of Chumpwine and a check for $250.
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._5146679_n.jpg

This is the most fun I have ever had in a car and it has been entirely worth all of the time and money spent. We have an awesome team, a pretty good car, and are fortunate enough to have something like ChumpCar to allow us to do wheel to wheel racing on an extreme budget. Now we look forward to racing at Iowa Speedway at the end of June.

Shake and bake!

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Looks like a blast! I have always wanted to try something like this. Lets see some more pics of that trophy! lol

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Baddass dizzle! So awesome, great pics, great story!

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Wow, that's awesome! Congrats on the third place finish! Sounds like a pretty awesome time. I would love to try something like this out some time.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Sounds like a blast. Congrats to you and the team!

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

That sounds like a great time!

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Awesome story, sounds like an absolute blast. Looks like you know which component you need to work on for next time.

So did you ever figure out what was up with the brakes? Better not have been the calipers.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Congrates on the great finish! the stories and the fact you guys finshed with even a payout is awesome. How many teams finished out of the field?

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

BTW, what kind of fluid were you guys running in the tranny?

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Nice job, congrats! Hope you work out the tranny and brake issues for Newton.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Congrats guys!! That sounds like a lot of fun! Good luck in Iowa!

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

That looks like an awesome time! Love the t-shirt too.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

I did some reading on MR2 forums and read that you need to bench bleed the master cylinder, whatever that is. I haven't figured out what that means yet.
On Saturday there were 26 that started, I believe only 15-18 finished. Only 18 started on Sunday.
We put in the only thing we could find, Royal Purple 75W80. I too am wondering if we put in some Redline if it would fix it.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Awesome thread!! Nice job guys!

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Sounds like fun. Do you think road racing is more fun than cone dodging?

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

MK1FTMFW!!!

What version of the 4age are you guys rocking in there?

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Slow Pokes was there on Friday and by chance my friend Oleg was there with his S4, so I rode with him for about a half hour. It opened my eyes and it's a lot safer than I realized (ie. you have to be retarded or have something break to have an accident), so now I'm looking forward to getting up there sometime, but right now I'm eyeing a session with the BIR Performance School. They both have their pros and cons, but for as cheap as autocross is I can't give it up, seat time is seat time.
Just whatever came in there in 1985, the 16 valve engine, looks identical to this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tion_4A-GE.jpg

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Douchefuck Tom Evoatcha doesn't agree with you :D

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Both Tom and 05 MR (Matt) were there, Matt was actually racing but their car broke. I saw Matt after the race on Sunday and he seemed pretty excited to see us get 3rd and told Brandon and I that we drove well.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Very well written. I'm sure you'd enjoy a day with BIR Performance. It's tough to not have fun when hanging out with a bunch of other car nuts...

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

bench bleeding is where you hook the output lines of the MC back into the resovoir, and you just pump the MC until all the air is out.

Do you know why there was a yellow in the rain? I ask, because I think I caused it :) I went off pretty fast on turn 5. Missed the tree line by under 10 feet. Everything was good though, i got back on course and finished the race. I hate racing in the rain, I had no idea how hard it was raining and that track was greasy.

Paul, car #49%

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._7671031_n.jpg

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Saturday or Sunday? I drove the last part on Sunday in the rain, that was wild. I had fun, it was challenging, especially with shitty brakes, a transmission without synchros and Falken RT615s that were hard as rocks. Wish I had known you were there, I would have come said hi. I've found out after the fact that a lot of people I know were there. Will you guys be at Iowa on June 26-27?

Here is the track map for people that have never seen it.

http://www.trackpedia.com/mediawiki/...IRShortMap.jpg

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

on sunday. It was wild. Our car was severley underpowered (90 some hp stock, and we're only making about 75% of stock compression). I was barely able to hit 100 on turn 1/2. Your MR2 looked pretty good, and seemed to handle the twisties pretty well. You had some solid drivers too.

and yes, see you at iowa!

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Haha dude, the MR2 is rated at 112bhp, and I doubt it has anything close to that. We were only hitting 90mph through 1-2, 95 if we had a car to draft. It was a blast to drive regardless, it's a damn go kart, I wasn't braking at all for turn 5.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

haha, ok fine. your car definitely pulled on me in the straights though :D I just didn't have to let off at all thru turn 1/2, our car handled quite well.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Crazy. That Mustang was slow as balls as were a couple of the other smaller cars. The BMWs were no contest, and the SC400 was a straight line monster. My first lap on Saturday I went through 2 at about 80% because I wasn't sure what to expect out of the car, then the next lap I hiked up the skirt and went for it. I was damn surprised it held on, must have been the wing. :lol:

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

I'm pretty sure 1 or 2 of those BMWs had some little secrets under the hood. That lumberjack BMW sounded monstrous.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Yeah, I'm thinking a major part of your issues were fluid based. I'm not sure if swapping fluid now will fix anything, but if you use the Redline or something the tranny likes better from the get go(on a new/different tranny), I'm assuming you'll be better off. Could also look into trying to retrofit some kind of tranny cooler on it.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

They beat themselves, two or three black flags, all for passing under yellow or while an emergency vehicle was on the track. The first time they came in the driver was fuming, he asked the tech guy, "Well how long are you going to hold me?" The guy pauses for a second, looks up at the scoring tower and radios in, "He wants to know how long we should hold him for." The driver sank in his seat. We all laughed.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

^lol.

Sounds like a blast, congrats on the finish again.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Looks like you had a blast.

So my wing helped you guy out then

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

The road course isn't cheap, especially if you consider the tires as well. Hazen is an instructor for the HPDEs. If you don't request to be with someone else, they might give him to you since he has an evo himself.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

The car was super stable in the fast turns so I can only imagine it helped. I'm kind of afraid to try it without the wing. We didn't paint it in case you're worried, that's just vinyl over it.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

The driver of the red E36 paid $800 in a non running state. Getting it running certainly adds a lot of value. It has bilsteins and stiff springs. In what way is that a $500 crap can? The tech people gave people way too much leeway, methinks.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Yeah, there's no way an E36 BMW is worth $500 in any way. E30 I can see.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

I'm jealous Matt, congrats on the 3rd place finish.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Video from Saturday of my teammate driving. This was his first time ever driving on a road course. Top speed was about 90mph through turn 1 and 2. The track was wet at the time, but it was beginning to dry up.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz-WvcN_n2g&hd=1

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

I actually haven't gone any faster than that in my Evo out there, yet. I have spent my time focusing on the corners and the racing line. The driver in this video was off the line in a number of turns.

At an HPDE it's a lot easier (of course) since they put cones out to show you where to turn in.

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

Looks like fun!

Re: My ChumpCar experience
 

I need to do that.