4 cam tbird
Club Member
As many may already know, some guys I work with and I built a car to run these types of races. For those that don't know what they are, they are endurance road course races for $500 cars. The $500 budget is imposed on the shell, powertrain, drivetrain and suspension. You can replace brakes, tires and wheels without it counting and the cage, race, seat, harnesses, and other safty equipment and driver comfort type things don't count against your $500 either. So it isn't completely cheap, but you need 4 drivrs so you can have 4 people to split costs between.
We ran our first race this weekend with the Chump Car organization at Iowa Speedway, which is a 7/8 mile oval with an infield road course. Really fun track, much different than a dedicated road course, nice change up. Running through banked turns is sweet and it provides room for 3 and 4 wide passing, which is crazy. Whole new respct for NASCAR drivers and the faith the put in one another.
Our car (E30 BMW) is really, really fast. We found one sway bar mount was broke when we got there and fabbed up a new one with some steel strap. The other one broke a couple hours into the race and we just kept running. The car was body rolling pretty hard but still turning top 5 lap times. Fast laps don't win races like this though and we had some major fuel pick up issues, couldn't run much longer than half a tank and our fuel stops also took longr than we would have liked. Things to work on for future races. Then our race was actually ended when the fuel filter came loose from it's mounting and resulted in a fire. Driver at the time got out quickly and without any harm and the car wasn't damaged outside of needing a new window net and some roll bar padding. We'll replac harness too just for precautionary reasons. No damaged wires or anything like that even. The safety crew at a track like that gets to a car on fire faster than you can believe and they got it out quickly.
We ran as high as 6th before we started having worse fuel issues that required attention and cost us an hour. We're definitely switching to a fuel cell because everything about this car's fuel system SUCKS! everyone running one was struggling with that aspect of their car. The fire was then about 10 hours into the race and then we were done.
Chump Car allows incidental contact without black flagging both cars, unlike 24 hours of Lemons. We got tagged in the left rear in the tight corner after dropping into the infield and shoved into a tire stack. Got us a broken bumper end, a dent in the right quarter from the tires that popped out with a couple of slaps and some yellow paint from the tires. No biggie. We could brake much better than most and had to be very careful in that area because people would try to follow our brake points and they just simply weren't able to do that.
I had a Caprice spin out in front of me at that point of the track once. I was momentarily worried the track would be blocked but I snuck by behind him.
Racing door to door with people and fighting through traffic was a blast. It was crazy my first session getting out and doing it. It took that session to get used to it but I got pretty aggressive my second driving stint. I had fun running track days before and will keep doing it for more track time but running these races is so much more fun. Despite our issues and not being able to finish the couple of sessions I did get on track were well worth it. I can't wait for the next race we are going to run, 24 Hours of Lemons at Gingerman in July. I would recommend to anyone to get together a group of guys, track down a cheap car and start building. It isn't easy but what that is really worth doing is?
I got home late last night so the pics are still on the memory card. I'll work on getting some up tonight.
We ran our first race this weekend with the Chump Car organization at Iowa Speedway, which is a 7/8 mile oval with an infield road course. Really fun track, much different than a dedicated road course, nice change up. Running through banked turns is sweet and it provides room for 3 and 4 wide passing, which is crazy. Whole new respct for NASCAR drivers and the faith the put in one another.
Our car (E30 BMW) is really, really fast. We found one sway bar mount was broke when we got there and fabbed up a new one with some steel strap. The other one broke a couple hours into the race and we just kept running. The car was body rolling pretty hard but still turning top 5 lap times. Fast laps don't win races like this though and we had some major fuel pick up issues, couldn't run much longer than half a tank and our fuel stops also took longr than we would have liked. Things to work on for future races. Then our race was actually ended when the fuel filter came loose from it's mounting and resulted in a fire. Driver at the time got out quickly and without any harm and the car wasn't damaged outside of needing a new window net and some roll bar padding. We'll replac harness too just for precautionary reasons. No damaged wires or anything like that even. The safety crew at a track like that gets to a car on fire faster than you can believe and they got it out quickly.
We ran as high as 6th before we started having worse fuel issues that required attention and cost us an hour. We're definitely switching to a fuel cell because everything about this car's fuel system SUCKS! everyone running one was struggling with that aspect of their car. The fire was then about 10 hours into the race and then we were done.
Chump Car allows incidental contact without black flagging both cars, unlike 24 hours of Lemons. We got tagged in the left rear in the tight corner after dropping into the infield and shoved into a tire stack. Got us a broken bumper end, a dent in the right quarter from the tires that popped out with a couple of slaps and some yellow paint from the tires. No biggie. We could brake much better than most and had to be very careful in that area because people would try to follow our brake points and they just simply weren't able to do that.
I had a Caprice spin out in front of me at that point of the track once. I was momentarily worried the track would be blocked but I snuck by behind him.
Racing door to door with people and fighting through traffic was a blast. It was crazy my first session getting out and doing it. It took that session to get used to it but I got pretty aggressive my second driving stint. I had fun running track days before and will keep doing it for more track time but running these races is so much more fun. Despite our issues and not being able to finish the couple of sessions I did get on track were well worth it. I can't wait for the next race we are going to run, 24 Hours of Lemons at Gingerman in July. I would recommend to anyone to get together a group of guys, track down a cheap car and start building. It isn't easy but what that is really worth doing is?
I got home late last night so the pics are still on the memory card. I'll work on getting some up tonight.
