|
 Its been a good run with our 1989 Daihatsu Charade in the 24 Hours of LeMons and Chumpcar World Series. We've finished 4 races, had a class win, and only failed to finish two races due to the same general problem. That problem was gearbox related: the first time the drain plug fell out, ruining the heat treating of 3rd gear and damaging the only unsealed bearing in the transmission. The leak caused a spin in turn 9 at Laguna Seca, bending a tie rod and sending us home most of the way through the day. A bearing replacement using spare parts brought the 'box back to operating condition, but sadly the 50+% over stock power being pushed through the box brought out the weakness of the damaged 3rd gear, causing total destruction. Through connections to Judge Phil, I got ahold of the transmission from this exact car, and it begins... Car Specs: 1989 Daihatsu Charade CLS 3door hatchback 1990 Daihatsu Rocky 1.6L engine 1994 Charade DeTomaso OE exahust header 5 speed manual Spec Stage 3+ clutch Koni Sport strrut inserts on the rear KYB Excel-G struts in the front (original Konis were damaged on track) PBR Metal Master brake pads cage by Evil Genius Racing Developing the car has been a lot easier than it should have been, mostly with help from jamal (Function Auto). We've had some pretty amazing laps, down to a well setup car and competent drivers. The alignment looks pretty aggressive (camber -3.4F -2.0R, Ftoe 1/16"out ), but has worked great for having good tire wear and wonderful cornering. I don't think there are many of the LeMons/Chumpcar vehicles that can out corner us. Probably helps that the Charade is down around 1500lbs and has 205/55/155 Dunlop Star Specs all around on 949Racing 6ULs. For this season, we are on our way for March 31st at Laguna Seca with Chumpcar, and hopefully another one or two events before we retire the car to pick up either mafoose's B13 Sentra SE-R with a SR20DET or maybe a 4th Gen F-Body since rowebot has a good LT1 and t56 in his garage. Discuss these options.
|
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 17:43 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2013 12:49 |
|
|
if you're looking for more/new drivers to buy-in later in the year (sentra era), i'm interested. dur can vouch for my idiocy. i'm totally down for helping gronk as well, but i'm in LA, not THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.
|
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 17:55 |
|
|
Wish I was close enough to help, looks like you are doing grand though!
|
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 18:00 |
|
|
Got the engine and new transmission in the car. Since I had it out, I did the timing belt and tensioner. I'm glad that I did, the tensioner spring (which only sets tension before you tighten the lockbolt so its useless after that) had dropped off its mount and was hitting the timing belt. I also took apart the alternator, it seems that the bearings are part of "Quality Remanufactured" and only last ~100hours at 10-25000RPM! We'll see if it holds, its been squeaky almost the entire time we've had it, and it hasn't really changed much.  fag magnet posted:if you're looking for more/new drivers to buy-in later in the year (sentra era), i'm interested. dur can vouch for my idiocy. i'm totally down for helping gronk as well, but i'm in LA, not THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Sounds good, a new car would really be a 6 person team event to help pay for the cost of building it. I do everything I can to keep this stuff under $1000 a person, and since we have a cheap car that doesn't eat tires or gas, we'll have to bump that up with a vehicle that will probably do both. DJ Commie fucked around with this message at Feb 18, 2013 around 17:41 |
| # ? Feb 18, 2013 17:36 |
|
|
Is it worthwhile grabbing an alternator off another car with a sewing-machine engine? I imagine Hondas are a little tougher.
|
| # ? Feb 18, 2013 17:42 |
|
|
DJ Commie posted:Sounds good, a new car would really be a 6 person team event to help pay for the cost of building it. I do everything I can to keep this stuff under $1000 a person, and since we have a cheap car that doesn't eat tires or gas, we'll have to bump that up with a vehicle that will probably do both. I might be interested in that later in the year too, after my marriage and what have you is done. I'll need something to keep me driving while I'm working on my spridget build. Are you planning on keeping to the California races mostly?
|
| # ? Feb 18, 2013 17:45 |
|
|
How are the chassis tears doing? Got that all welded up?
|
| # ? Feb 18, 2013 19:36 |
|
|
Mr. Wiggles posted:I might be interested in that later in the year too, after my marriage and what have you is done. I'll need something to keep me driving while I'm working on my spridget build. Are you planning on keeping to the California races mostly? I'd love you have you aboard, your experience with the Yugo and other cars means you're willing to put in work in hopeless situations. Hog Obituary posted:How are the chassis tears doing? Got that all welded up? Yeah, its as good as its going to be. These weren't made to have a cage welded in them and have such sticky tires. It won't catastrophically fail or anything like that, it will just get sloppy and not keep alignments as the firewall separates from the front more, and the rear suspension pickup points mounts stretch. A chassis swap is feasible, but I don't know if I could cut a cage out complete and weld it into another car and hope for it to fit. NLA bushings are really the killer here, also the fact I can't make it appreciably faster/lighter without spending big money that could go to a better car. Exotic engine swaps have very expensive axle modifications required, and the engine bay isn't really sized well for anything better. A 4G63 turbo with the FWD Eclipse gearbox might theoreticlaly fit, but I'd never be able to do any maintenance with it in the car, and the fact the engine itself is double the weight of the entire Charade powertrain: engine, flywheel, exhaust, axles and all. SR20 might fit, but why not get a real SR20 powered car (see my logic here)?
|
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 01:28 |
|
|
DJ Commie posted:A 4G63 turbo with the FWD Eclipse gearbox might theoreticlaly fit, but I'd never be able to do any maintenance with it in the car, and the fact the engine itself is double the weight of the entire Charade powertrain: engine, flywheel, exhaust, axles and all. SR20 might fit, but why not get a real SR20 powered car (see my logic here)? You racecar a loving Charade, you're not allowed to claim logic or sense as an excuse. Also, I vote SR20DET into something silly. Preferably with an ultimateforce header.
|
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 06:29 |
|
|
I like to think the Charade is the perfect spirit of crapcan racing. Take a total boring car, throw a boring engine in it, and some sticky tires. Fix what breaks, evolve what you can, and do it all with nothing to instruct you how to do it. I love Charades (I'd love another one as a daily, Subaru fuel economy sucks), but I can't guarantee its durability and reliability by strapping a turbo on it when I can spend the same money on a better car that I can put all that energy into all over again.
|
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 07:18 |
|
|
 SR16 pistons in a SR20
|
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 18:22 |
|
|
DJ Commie posted:I'd love you have you aboard, your experience with the Yugo and other cars means you're willing to put in work in hopeless situations. Great! I'm in for races in the second half of the year.
|
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 18:24 |
|
|
ultimateforce posted:
CR up or down?
|
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 19:55 |
|
|
Up and no one will ever know! SR16 pistons with DE head will net you around 12:1. SR16 pistons in a VE head should be somewhere between 13:1 and 13.5:1. ultimateforce fucked around with this message at Feb 19, 2013 around 20:32 |
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 20:29 |
|
|
ultimateforce posted:Up and no one will ever know! Question: Is it worth raising CR in an engine and not turbo charging or lower CR and turbocharge?
|
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 20:35 |
|
|
I'd rather have the turbo. And how do we feel about more downforce for seca?
|
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 21:09 |
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Question: Is it worth raising CR in an engine and not turbo charging or lower CR and turbocharge? Well, the factory SR20DE FWD transmission is trash so I'd stick to NA with Lemons rules.
|
| # ? Feb 20, 2013 00:15 |
|
|
I've been thinking about doing this with a CRX. Wanting to go more towards rally though. I figured out how to get fafsa to pay for some rally driving classes and most likely the cost of a CRX, without any decent parts though.
|
| # ? Feb 20, 2013 04:21 |
|
|
Have you seen the state of CRXes now?
|
| # ? Feb 20, 2013 13:41 |
|
|
GreaseGunner posted:I've been thinking about doing this with a CRX. Wanting to go more towards rally though. I figured out how to get fafsa to pay for some rally driving classes and most likely the cost of a CRX, without any decent parts though. Rally is obscenely expensive and the bang for the buck isn't really there compared to LeMons/Chumpcar. I'd rather rally myself, but the costs are a factor of ten higher probably, and the classing system favors a totally different approach and professional setups with part-number searching. ultimateforce posted:Have you seen the state of CRXes now? Seriously. There are so few second gens around, and the first gen wasn't a good car in pretty much any way.
|
| # ? Feb 20, 2013 15:52 |
|
|
If you want to hear my plans on a B13/B14 based Chumpcar email me.
|
| # ? Feb 20, 2013 16:03 |
|
|
ultimateforce posted:
Done and done!
|
| # ? Feb 21, 2013 01:36 |
|
|
Thinking about changing races to the April 20-21 Chumpcar 24 hour race at Buttonwillow, which isn't even 100 miles from me.
|
| # ? Feb 23, 2013 04:39 |
|
|
Guess who paid up?! Contraband!!! Everyone else do the same.
|
| # ? Feb 28, 2013 17:04 |
|
|
 Das Volk has paid, awaiting check. Are we doing the March 31 Laguna Seca 6.5hour race or are we doing the 24 hour Buttonwillow race April 20-21???!?! We can do both theoretically, but that is a lot of work.Bought a set of injectors for cheaper than it would have been to have mine cleaned/balanced.
|
| # ? Mar 5, 2013 19:37 |
|
|
We should ask if they'll let us run Laguna with the 3 drivers we have (at a discount of course) to shake the car down since it's been sitting. That way we know if anything needs doing before the 24hr race.
|
| # ? Mar 5, 2013 19:49 |
|
|
Das Volk posted:We should ask if they'll let us run Laguna with the 3 drivers we have (at a discount of course) to shake the car down since it's been sitting. That way we know if anything needs doing before the 24hr race. Seca as a shakedown sounds fine to me, I think a 3 driver team is allowed.
|
| # ? Mar 5, 2013 21:23 |
|
|
Yeah it is. The rules have been updated to reflect that. There was a bit of a miscommunication last year on that and not everyone was clear. It was ok last year too. I ran the NYE event with 3 drivers. One person ends up getting two stints. You can even make that work if you blow sound and spend 30 minutes in the pits working on your exhaust. Good luck getting a discount though, I'm pretty sure that event is operated at a loss as a draw to get people to come try chumpcar. Ohh btw, make sure your muffler isn't hollow. We managed to keep running after welding a left exit on the muffler and shifting early up the hill by the sound meter. Mine was comically empty before we fixed it last week.
|
| # ? Mar 5, 2013 23:35 |
|
|
i have no idea how to drive turbo cars, but it's probably easier to not blow up a modestly boosted motor than a 13.5:1 cr engine built on a tiny budget.
|
| # ? Mar 6, 2013 04:16 |
|
|
fag magnet posted:i have no idea how to drive turbo cars, but it's probably easier to not blow up a modestly boosted motor than a 13.5:1 cr engine built on a tiny budget. High revving puts far more load on the rods than forced induction, call it a bonus for forced induction. parid posted:Good luck getting a discount though, I'm pretty sure that event is operated at a loss as a draw to get people to come try chumpcar. Knowing about our double DNF at Seca last two times, Cathy made me a deal on this one and the April 24hour race I couldn't really refuse. edit: I just thought about it and realized that the budget isn't really setup for 3 drivers, so unless people are coming up with an extra $300 each, I don't see it happening. DJ Commie fucked around with this message at Mar 6, 2013 around 05:32 |
| # ? Mar 6, 2013 05:10 |
|
|
I can give you a loan as credit to a future race  (since I can't make it)
|
| # ? Mar 6, 2013 06:27 |
|
|
Cathy is good people. You need a 4th driver you say. How much and whats your seat like (american rear end sizing)?
|
| # ? Mar 6, 2013 17:04 |
|
|
fag magnet posted:i have no idea how to drive turbo cars, but it's probably easier to not blow up a modestly boosted motor than a 13.5:1 cr engine built on a tiny budget. It's already been said, but the RPMs are usually what grenade an engine.
|
| # ? Mar 6, 2013 19:23 |
|
|
parid posted:Cathy is good people. You need a 4th driver you say. How much and whats your seat like (american rear end sizing)? If we use the previous seat, its plenty big for a goon. Its a Corbeau street seat of some kind. I had hoped to change it but a 4 driver race isn't really feasible. Maybe next car. ultimateforce posted:It's already been said, but the RPMs are usually what grenade an engine. Absolutely. The stress (on the rod) of pushing the exhaust out is quite beyond any compressive loads, and the faster the rod goes, the higher the force.
|
| # ? Mar 6, 2013 19:27 |
|
|
yah, unless the sr20 has particularly strong rods, the turbo is almost certainly the better option ... but that's why you should k-swap  in all seriousness, consider me in, but only after i finish my thesis (latter half of the year)
|
| # ? Mar 8, 2013 05:50 |
|
|
It looks like I'll only be able to do Buttonwillow with time constraints, so if you're interested in that, sounds good! I need a 2" oil pressure gauge with an ELECTRIC sender, and since the Harbor Freight one is discontinued (someone have a sender from one I'll give you $$$ for it), I'm trying to find one that is decent and cheap. I'd prefer white background on it, much easier to see during daylight.
|
| # ? Mar 13, 2013 19:35 |
|
|
Do you still want/need drivers? I'm interested if so, plus I have a truck+trailer
|
| # ? Mar 14, 2013 21:50 |
|
|
aventari posted:Do you still want/need drivers? For the Buttonwillow race? Absolutely. I'll send you a message on Facebook.
|
| # ? Mar 14, 2013 21:52 |
|
|
cool 
|
| # ? Mar 14, 2013 22:04 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2013 12:49 |
|
|
Registered for the Buttonwillow race, paid the $250 deposit. Luckily the awesome garages are available for rent, I'm trying to get #3 like we had last time. Das Volk is working on a rental RV, that parked behind the garage last time was completely awesome and would make a 24 hour race a lot less uncomfortable. Looking for more racers, if aventari joins in we'll have 2 more spots open!
|
| # ? Mar 21, 2013 04:50 |
|
