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Well, we didn't wind up
doing to well overall.
Lots of
people said they liked the spray paint job, or told me I should’ve
taken the left over money under $1000 and painted it. I did, but I had
to drive it in the rain 2 hours after it was painted....with a real
spray gun by the way. That was just the start of the frustration.
Now,
everything mechanically on the car had come out, more or less, the way
that I planned. I spent a total of $880.xx and was all set to go for
the highest finishing car under $1000. Ok, now the only thing holding
me up on the car was the intercooler. I bought it with the end pipes
cut-off of the end tanks, the previous owner was going to turn them in
a different direction and re-weld them. Long story short, a month
later I had the intercooler back from someone who said they would weld
it up for me, still untouched. Next, I ask a garage-mate (roommate, but
for a garage, maybe that’s the correct term for that relationship)
who had just purchased a TIG welder to do it, he says no
problem, I tell him the challenge is about a month away. So I kept
reminding him and a couple days before the challenge he lets me
know that the type of rod he needs to weld it won't be in until too
late, wonderful. If I had known then what I know now, I would have
realized that was total bullshit, as I could have driven ten
minutes to the welding shop and picked up exactly what was needed.
Anyhow, I'm pretty naive, and like to think that people are generally
willing to help out others, so I took his word for it. So,
with (what I thought) were no more options, I took the mild
steel intercooler piping that I had already fabbed up (At the time, I
could MIG weld steel with my machine, but not Aluminum),
I took the end pieces and hammered them into the intercooler
holes, then sealed the little gap all the way around with JB weld:
The car
got to Gainesville raceway about 2 pm
Friday (My brother and I drove straight through, direct to the raceway.
To my surprise, he skipped out of work early, took Friday off, and
he rented a truck and trailer. It turned out very wall, as
I got to avoid driving in 40* rainy weather with no heat/ ac/
muffler) The slicks went on, and of course the race gas pumps were
closed, great, so I couldn't boost to 22 psi. So, I turned
the MBC down a bit since I had to run on 93 octane squirrel piss, and
right off the first launch the pipe came out of the intercooler, JB
weld and all. The best time I mustered was a 15.4 with black smoke
pouring out all the way, only getting 8-12 psi or so. After that, there
was no better time than 18's. So much for the mid to high 12's I
expected. We wasted the last few hours at the strip duct taping and
zip-tying to no avail. We were exhausted, even though we really wanted
to fix the car; we ended up falling asleep at the hotel since we had
been up all night driving, so we missed both the welcome party and
Friday evenings events. Saturday, I woke up late for the
auto-x. I decided that instead of trying in vain to seal the
nightmare of a problem, I would just would bypass the
Intercooler and turn down the boost; I looked for a while for a
good hardware store and had no luck. I went back to the raceway to make
sure that I got the car through concourse before noon,
it went through (I guess the judges hated it), then it's back to
trying to bypass the intercooler so I could at least run it though
the auto-x. So, eventually hardware is purchased and PVC pipe ends up
being used. I got the PVC all buttoned up and I go and run it
through the parking lot for a test......well, I guess PVC isn't as
strong as I gave it credit for:
Well, I
eventually get the PVC
bypass sealed up and working ok by 3:30, enough time to go
on over and get in one or two runs before the auto-x ends at 4. I dove
on over, and asked someone where I should line up? Yeah, it ended
early, so I guess schedules don't really mean anything in this case.
Nonetheless, I guess I'll be back next year.
I
find that to be one of the most frustrating parts of life; having to
rely on other people to do something for you. The one skill I didn't
have to complete the car (the ability to weld aluminum) comes back to
bite me in the ass, and now I have a year to think about it. The worst
part of it all was that I was working the whole darn time to fix it
that I never got to watch one drag race, one auto-x or have a look at
any of the crazy cars that were built for the event....which is really
why I went, oh well.
Please feel free to use the above as a
guideline of how to NOT have fun at the challenge. I'll definitely do
things differently the second time around.......like build a much
better car (Edited after the $2005 challenge: I only built a
marginally better car, but I definitely had loads more fun.)
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