Joey's Budget Rallycar: RallyX #10 - Oakshade Raceway

[Perfect Balance]

Are you missing some engine mounts? That engine looks like it's barely hanging on.

 

[Keef]

Appears to be missing a torque mount, probably on the rear? Make sure to get some nice hard mounts if they're legal for whatever class you plan to run.

 

[Takumi Fujiwara]

Have you guys kept receipts/documentation on everything you've spent?

If you really get it in under 2000 bucks, you should take it to Grassroots Motorsports's $2012 Challenge this fall. http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/events/2012challenge/

 

[Joey D]

The front motor mount was laying on the ground next to the car, it just needs the engine bracket to be able to attach it. The other two mounts are already on.

And the $2012 challenge would be fun and we would be close to that budget, but Florida is just too far for us. Also I'm not sure how the car would fair driving all that way. I feel like its pretty solid but it is a 17 year old car with a 12 year old engine in it that doesn't even belong there in the first place.

 

[hemisport15]

This may have been mentioned already, but what are the plans for the engine? Will it remain stock so it doesn't clash with whatever class you want to enter (which I'm not familiar with autocross rules) or are small mods allowed? The reason I ask is because I think that it would look/sound awesome if it had some color matched ITB's.

Kind of like this, but actually serve a purpose.

 

[Joey D]

The engine has different cams and lifters in it right now. We will probably do an intake when we do the exhaust. We also have a long tube header we bought off a guy for $10.

ITB's would be nice to do and would sound pretty epic, but right now we are just going to get the thing running then try to figure out where to go from there. And at this point we're in an open class for autocross so we are going to get owned, but we are still going to compete against each other.

 

[Thatman]

Cool stuff man.👍

 

[Takumi Fujiwara]

The front motor mount was laying on the ground next to the car, it just needs the engine bracket to be able to attach it. The other two mounts are already on.

And the $2012 challenge would be fun and we would be close to that budget, but Florida is just too far for us. Also I'm not sure how the car would fair driving all that way. I feel like its pretty solid but it is a 17 year old car with a 12 year old engine in it that doesn't even belong there in the first place.

I was thinking the thing to do would be renting a trailer. Neons are really popular cars with people who tow behind their RVs, so it should be on the easier end of cross-country towing. (Which isn't exactly easy, though.)

 

[Joey D]

Getting Ready for the First Test Run

So we worked on making the car driveable this week and finally fired it up today with some mixed results.

Got the rims wrapped in rubber, we went with the 205/50/16 Continental DW's since they were still sitting in my garage from when I had the MINI.

Cooling system all hooked up. Looks like an engine now!

Exhaust manifold installed.

Battery box mounted in the trunk.

Ready to roll!

And here's the first run!


Just admiring the scenery.

This looked like a fantastic place to park.

 

[coop500]

Love it wish I'd had a group of friends which were interested in cars back home!

Over here we'd get pulled in 2 mins driving the car like that. Or my neighbours would phone the police for "bringing down the neighbourhood" lol you can tell we are well liked!

 

[homeforsummer]

Nice vid. Good to see this progressing!

 

[SRV2LOW4ME]

Props Joey, its coming along nicely. 👍

 

[Bottoz]

Cool. What are you guys doing for suspension? Brake Pads? When's the first event?

 

[NLxAROSA]

Great video! 👍

 

[Joey D]

Thanks guys!

Cool. What are you guys doing for suspension? Brake Pads? When's the first event?

Stock for the time being, the brakes are brand new so we are going to burn through them first. The suspension is a little rough, but it'll do till we find something else.

====

Anyway, I'm in Ohio right now for work but my buddies worked on the car yesterday and got it running. The timing was off due to a couple bad sensors, so after a replacement the car fired right up. Here's another vid.

 

[Joey D]

Exhaust & Body Panels

We worked on the car some more yesterday to get it street ready. It now has plates and insurance too so we can drive it around and get a feel for it. The battery is pretty weak though so it has a tendency not to start all the time, but that will be rectified soon. Funny enough it died at a stop light when we were driving around and we had to jump out and push to bump start it in traffic...it felt like NASCAR

Summit Racing Glasspack

Off the manifold.

Welded up on the car.

Where it currently exits the car, we ran out of usable pipe but we are going to make it longer to the exhaust exits right in front of the rear tire.

Air intake fitted, we are going to build an airbox for it too for when we rallycross it.

Battery tray firmly mounted.

Putting the fenders on.

And the lights.

After some swearing and a new 3ft section of wire we got the headlights to work as well.

And here's the exhaust sound clip, it's really quieted down now so it's within the legal noise limits.




We did a test drive too which I filmed but I need to get it uploaded to YouTube, so maybe tomorrow.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

Is it me or does the engine not sound smooth/ just wants to turn off... kinda sputters.

 

[Joey D]

We are still working the original fuel out of the tank which has been sitting in there for a while.The engine also needs to have the idle adjusted too since it's set pretty high which is probably causing some issues too. There's nothing wrong with the engine though, it got a chance to stretch it's legs yesterday afternoon on the highway...let's just say it rides really nicely at speed.

 

[194GVan]

you dont see too many 1st gen neons on the road anymore, much less in this color. Props on giving it a new and exciting life.👍

 

[Joey D]

Thanks :tup;

And it's looking like the car's first "race" is going to be a TSD rally on June 9th. It's 120 miles down the back roads of Michigan and starts late afternoon, which means twilight driving. I bought a set of 5 55W 6" rally lights today for $45 which will go on the front of the car to make night racing easier.

I'm doing the first event and the other guy that did most of the building of the car is going to be my navigator. It should be fun!

 

[Joey D]

Looking Like A Car

We did some more work tonight, mainly swapping the gas tank to one that's plastic and not rusted through. We also put the bumpers on, installed some hood pins, threw on the strut tower bar, installed something to listen to some tunes in for long drive to race events and put some stickers on too.

We discovered the brake lines aren't in the best of shape either and one actually blew out while we were testing them. So we are going to replace those before we drive it any more. Shouldn't be too hard, we just need some free time.

 

[Eric.]

While you're at it, put in some high temp brake fluid. I'm using ATE Superblue in the MR2. There's also an Amber version that is the same stuff apart from color, so you alternate colors to know when you've completed a flush.

 

[Joey D]

While you're at it, put in some high temp brake fluid. I'm using ATE Superblue in the MR2. There's also an Amber version that is the same stuff apart from color, so you alternate colors to know when you've completed a flush.

That's not a bad idea and I'm going tomorrow to pick up the brake fluid after work tomorrow so I'll be sure and get the high temp stuff.

 

[Eric.]

Hmm...I don't know if you'll find it stocked anywhere for sure. I ordered mine from Amazon.

 

[Joey D]

Hmm...I don't know if you'll find it stocked anywhere for sure. I ordered mine from Amazon.

Pep Boys and NAPA both have high temp stuff, but after looking it's cheaper on Amazon by about $5. I have a Prime account too so free shipping so it shouldn't be a problem. We probably won't get to the car till after the holiday anyways.

 

[Eric.]

I was installing a new master cylinder and stainless steel braided lines when I used the fluid. Filled it up with some cheap Prestone fluid first to get all the air out, then flushed that out with Superblue.

 

[Joey D]

Hasn't Lost Any of Its Neon-ness

So the car is, or rather was, working just fine and we were out driving it all day. Car worked like a champ, even after a bit of hooning in the parking lot of a buddy of ours shop (legal hooning FTW). After a long day of driving we were headed back to park the car and it started to play up. The temp gauge rose a bit above normal so we turned the heat on full blast and made our way to the nearest gas station. Everything was fine, but we let the car cool for about 20 mins just to be safe. The temp gauge was back below where it should be and we set off again for the garage since there was obviously something wrong.

Well about 5 miles down the highway the temp gauge went from normal to very high in only a few seconds. We exited right away and the car started smoking on the off ramp. We killed the engine and had enough momentum to make it to a Home Depot parking lot where the car promptly blew coolant everywhere.

So we called in help and got 4 gallons of water brought to us and after the car had cooled down we filled it up again. The car wouldn't even think about starting. It almost seems like it could be a head gasket but there isn't any sound evidence to prove that. So we called in a Jeep and towed it back to the garage. Hopefully Tuesday we can figure out what's wrong.

Oh and you know, because race car!

 

[Joey D]

So my buddy tore apart the car today, it was for sure a head gasket failure. Look like the head will need to be machined too since it was warped in the process. There is some concern something happened in the bottom end too, but we will know more tomorrow when another buddy of ours comes over and looks at it (he's a Neon nerd).

 

[Blackbird.]

Aw damn! That sucks, that's gonna be a bit of work.

 

[homeforsummer]

Whoops. Always the risk with getting a used engine I guess, can never quite be sure how solid it is without pulling it to bits.