April 08 Wire Tuck

Our first order of business was...to perform a wire tuck. We wanted the engine bay and cockpit to be completely wire free, so without hesitation I began with the under dash wiring harness. I stripped the entire interior of all wires, and only left what was absolutely necessary. Next I moved to the engine bay where i pulled out the chassis wiring and moved it so that it goes through the fender. It was a lot of work but it think it will be worth it to achieve the look that we want.

March 08 Work Begins

So once the challenge was over Jimmy and I drove it around for a while, I took it to work a few times, and Jimmy made some good videos of it on the road (you can see those linked on your right), but eventually it started stumbling and running like absolute crap. We parked it for the winter, and it sat until March of 08. When i was finally motivated to begin working on it again, i went outside to push it onto the garage, and this is what i found!

Challenge Autox Pictures

Once we were in Gainesville, our first priority was to get the car ready for the competition. So Friday morning after waking up at 5am, we drove the car from the hotel to the track. It was about 15 miles, where Jimmy and i did some tunning. We basically adjusted the boost controller so the boost would come on smoothly. At the track we swapped our street tires with the Toyo RA1s, and did some last minute adjustments on the car. I took it out for a quick spin on one of the side roads, and it died on me! I had to push it about 1/4 mile back into the pits! After getting some help from jimmy, and poking our heads i the engine bay we discovered we had a huge vacuum leak. We plugged it up and were ready to run(we still had another vacuum leak that we could hear but couldn't find). I made a couple passes on the autox course, and at one point we were in 8th place!... That is until the professional drivers took the course. We ended up letting a few of the pros drive the car, and they really drove it hard. My time was about 2 seconds slower than theirs, and when the dust settled we placed in 11th on the autox course. Next up was the concourse portion of the event(pictures from last post). The drag portion of the event was rained out, so based on the concourse score and the autox score, we placed 11th in the final. We had a blast and learned a ton about what to do and how to prepare for the challenge in 2008, We have huge plans for the car(think lighter, more power and more grip).

The Day of the Grassroots Motorsports 2007 Challenge

After three months and no less then 400 combined working hours we had finally gotten the car ready. Both of us will say that it wasn't easy; Our body's reflected the hundreds of work hours that were devoted to getting the car to competition level. Although the car was still lacking a few more hours or work we were ready to take on the world. The event was held in Gainsville approximately 4 hours to the north of fort Lauderdale. Upon arrival we were quickly humbled by the massive amounts of incedible cars that we saw when we turned into the parking lot of the event hotel. Excitement became doubt and concern for our car now named the "dirtE".

The Week Before

As we got to within a week of the Grassroots Motorsports Challenge of 2007, things really started to come together. It was a very hectic time, we were working on the car every night until very late, but we managed to finish up all the loose ends.

We painted the entire front end of the car after fitting a later model BMW front lip.

We also put a fresh coat of black on the rear spoiler and painted the Borbets Bronze. They were nice looking wheels.

THis was our work space where we spent a good part of 2 months!

Our Interior was finished. We stripped it of any extra weight and installed some light weight door cards, and a couple gauges.

Turbo and intercooler were installed and the car was ready for competition.

Jimmy taking a break after a late night.

Our custom tow hitch fits perfect! We finished it the night before we left. Now we are ready to go!

Intercooler & Turbo Installation

Well, I found some more pics from our build. You can see the finished, stripped interior... we ended up covering the doors with some black matte board. You can also se a pic of the slotted rotors that came with the car(one of the few things we liked about the car when we bought it hahaha). The 3rd pic is our junkyard Volvo turbo. In the 4th picture you can see Jimmy and I fitting the intercooler, we ended up holding it in place withheavy duty zip-ties!

Final Build Before the Challenge

We dont have a a lot of pictures from the rest of the build, but basically, after gutting the car, and removing what we thought was a lot of weight(more on that later), we picked up a Volvo T3 TURBO (.42/.48.), an intercooler from the same Volvo 740. Also from our local junkyard, we sourced a TD manifold, and some JEEP Cherokee 27 lb. injectors. A buddy sold us some H&R springs, Another good guy sold us some used Bilstein shocks, Toyo R comp tires and used Porterfield break pads. We picked up a used APEXI boost controller and an AEM wideband gauge.

Weight reduction begins!

In early August of 2007, with only 2 months until the Grassroots Challenge we began work on the car. The first day of work begins by putting in new sparkplugs, a new timing belt, used distributer wires, and a bunch of other engine parts we sourced at the junkyard. At the same time as i did that, Jimmy began stripping out as much unnecessary weight out of the interior, including the door panels, headliner, rear seats, A/C heater box and sound deadening material. Its amazing how much stuff is in these cars!