Hi all. As you all know I entered the free Capri XR2 I got into a 24 Hour of Lemons race. It took us until the last minute to get it running correctly, but here is a brief story of the preparation:
Car Story
-Picked up car, $0, in town.
-Car had new timing belts and belts in passenger seat, with instructions on how to change the timing belt. 20/15/20/15psi compression.
-Pulled head, everything looked good. Sent to machine shop, pulled motor anyway to put new rings and bearings in.
-Factory head was cracked, I found a Miata head, had it pressure checked and ground true, and swapped the XR2 stuff over to it (kept the miata lifters)
-Reinstalled motor after cleaning all the parts the best I could. New oil pump, new water pump, gasket set, spark plugs, Spectre Air Filter, repaired radiator, same rad hoses, new clutch kit from ebay, new fuel filter, remove a/c compressor
-It started right up, didn't test too much.
Race Prep:
-Remove dash, heating/cooling, carpet, noise insulation, seats, glass. Cut door panels out, side impact bars out, removed top, pulled airbag. Only the seat, pedals, steering wheel, shifter left.
-Change all rotors and calipers, Axxis brand pads, replace all wheel bearings (safety)
-Installed custom roll cage: 1.5 x .120 DOM steel. Installed racing seat and seat belts, wired in kill switch. Aftermarket oil pressure and boost gauges, as well as GPS Data Acquisition system for the track.
-Order 12 tires and 8 wheels from tire rack. CHEAP Sumitomo HTR 200 185/65R14 for $54 each, cheaper wheels.
-Exhaust, custom 2.5" turbo back (safety, doesn't count towards cost, $230
-Alignment (used $10 offset bolts to gain negative camber, screwed the toe up, got it aligned, $40)
-Oh shit, car runs like shit, 5 days to race. Turbo blown, intercooler FULL of oil, bad gas in tank, intake cam off a tooth, injector plug dirty as shit. Replace, clean, clean, adjust, clean, car runs great.
Race Time!
Kick car out of trailer, fill it, head out on track. Car runs awesome, except a complete lack of shock damping.
High speed corners are scary, low speed corners are slow, but still .88g peak w/o pushing the tires too hard.
We were hitting 100mph on the straight shifting at 5000rpm. Aftermarket boost gauge was showing ~11psi, factory gauge showing ~7.5psi. Great power, no lag, huge amount of urgency down the track.
I drove an hour, and in that time only one person passed me. It looked like we had about 2-1/4 hours of fuel in a tank taking it easy. I notice lower oil pressure (35-40), I pull in to let team-mate drive. He is out for 7 laps, a huge plume of smoke appears, we lost another turbo. We call Russ and Rocketman, end up pinching the turbo oil line off, letting it seize. Off to the "race." We are incredibly down on power, only hitting 65-68mph top speed now. Slowest car on track, including a 70's station wagon. We forge on as we are still gaining places just by being out there.
After 65 laps of a 2.55 mile track (165miles), a rod ends up letting go (just knocking) at the 4.5-5 hour mark. We shut it down, exhausted and out of funding and ambition to find a miata block and swap it in through the night. 49th out of 58 drivers, epic fail.
The plan now? Rebuild and try again. I'm pretty sure on the sustained uphill high Gg corners we were starving the oil pump. I am going to build a baffle system in the oil pan to keep oil around the pickup tube. I am going to port and polish a bit, change a lifter I suspect is bad, and find a turbo from a DSM car and fab it up ($150..)
All in all, a successful test day, its too bad it happened during a race.
The winners had 305 laps (778 miles). That is a long way to drive nearly flat out without something breaking. We'll get there, though.
Being nice to the tires:
