It was a simple challenge: Can you build a real race car for $1500? So simple, yet so improbable that when we issued our $1500 Challenge to our staff and readers several months ago, we anticipated that few would accept it. We pretty much envisioned the story as a closed competition among our own editorial staff.
Why Bother?
The short–and perhaps too cocky–answer is that if you have to ask why, you are reading the wrong magazine. The more lengthy and thought-provoking answer as to why we would put ourselves through this ordeal is that we wanted to see what could be accomplished with only a small budget.
Every time we tell our non-racing friends that we race cars on the weekends, the first thing they invariably say is, "My, what an expensive hobby." We wanted to prove (or disprove, if that turned out to be the case) that for less than a couple of grand you could buy, build and modify a car that would look and run pretty decently. The rules were simple (essentially, there were no rules): ·For a total cash outlay of $1500, you had to purchase, repair and modify any car of your choice.
There were some other rules thrown in (see the sidebar), but they were mainly enacted to keep the car,s somewhat safe, fair and streetlegal. We purposely left the rules loose so as not to stifle creativity. If someone wanted to do an engine transplant or engineer their own turbocharger system, that was fine with us as long as the car came in under the budget.
What to Build?
We spent much of the summer bench racing as to just what the hot setup would be for an event of this nature. First, the cars needed to be cheap, which precluded a lot of the popular and desirable automobiles out there. They also needed to be fast and, like a good computer, had to be easily and cheaply upgradable.
Logically, we assumed we would ge\ a cross-section of essentially three types of cars. First would be a variety of largely-forgotten, turbocharged hot hatches from the mid-'80s. This group would include cars like the Omni GLH Turbo, Colt Turbo and maybe even a Mitsubishi Mirage or Starion Turbo.
Next, it would only be logical to start with a V8, so we would have to have a few show up, despite the fact that just about any Mustang or Camaro in this price range would probably not be worth owning.
Who Was There?
Besides the three GRM staff members who elected to build $1500 cars, nearly 40 readers also embarked upon their own projects. Not all of the readers' cars made it to the final showdown, but it was neat to see others embrace our idea and run with it.
After the dust settled, 20 cars besides our own came to Central Florida for the Challenge; they came from as far away as Texas, Pennsylvania and Maryland. A few folks towed their $1500 Challenge cars, but most of the entrants drove them the entire way, arriving with their own interesting stories of late-night paint jobs and side-of-the-road alternator repairs.
Only one reader experienced major problems driving his $1500 car to the event: Texas' Paul Spencer learned that you need to check the transmission fluid before heading out on a big trip. Paul and his 351-powered Mustang eventually made it to the Challenge, but not before doing a transmission swap at Volusia Drivetrain, a local repair shop here in Daytona Beach.
Like the GRM staff, these readers took several different approaches to building a car for the $1500 Challenge. Their choices can be put into a few main groups by engine type: turbo, VS, rotary and naturally-aspirated.
Boosted Performance
Adding cubic inches and trick aftermarket parts can easily make more power, but both of these routes can cost money. And when money is tight, you need to look elsewhere–like adding more boost to a car that's already turbocharged.
Mike Kelley, a 23-year-old maintenance worker from Hatfield, Penn., took the turbo approach. "When you're talking bang for the buck, there's no other choice than a turbo Dodge," he explains. "Turbo cars are so easy to tune up, and these 2.2's are indestructible. Plus it's real fun to embarrass the high-dollar import boys with a beat-up, old Dodge."
Mike set out to find the cheapest, running turbo Dodge possible, and he found his car on eBay, the popular online auction house. "I won the eBay auction with a bid of $121," he says. "When I went to get the car, I found out that it smoked bad' I couldn't see anything behind me. The owner was so embarrassed for me that she let me have the car for $100 even."
Even though he had never done an engine swap before, Mike yanked the worn engine and installed a fresh, used engine and turbo that he had bought for $300. He also freshened the cylinder head and tweaked the turbo to yield more boost. "I used the same method J.G. did on his Omni [see sidebar]: It's a little brass regulating valve that you can get from McMaster-Carr (www.mcmaster.com) or Grainger industrial supply catalogs. They are about $6 and work amazingly wellsome assembly required. No spikes in the boost. Everyone who owns a turbo car should get one of these things."
To top it all off, Mike and his friends quickly repainted the car, using eight cans of flat black spray paint to do the job. Thanks to some careful shopping around, Mike came in under budget at $1183.02.
The three-man team of Steve Thompson, Ryan Hulbert and Roman Kickirillo also went the turbo route with the 1983 Datsun 280ZX Turbo they brought down from their hometown of Franklin, Tenn. "After passing it daily on our way to work for two months· and gradually seeing it decay, we noticed someone broke the passenger side window, and rain began to infiltrate the former boulevard cruiser," they explain. "We felt chosen to rescue the car from its certain death.
"We called the number on the For Sale sign–the number left as the forwarding number had been disconnected. We finally located the owner from the registration left in the glove box and learned that the car had been abandoned as the owners fled to Massachusetts. We talked to the previous owner, and he indicated the car ran when it was parked, however it smoked like a stuck pig. He accepted our offer of $200, and we were off to the races."
Aside from having to thaw out the carpet, the team spent time (and some money) on making the car faster. Majestic Turbo of Dallas re-built the turbo ($425), and some junkyard scavenging yielded an intercooler from a 1987 Toyota Supra–which eventually split. While drowning their sorrows in a bottle of booze, the team had a revelation: the Jim Beam reminded them of JB Weld, a magical adhesive that could (and did) make their intercooler whole again.
"Adjusting the boost on the 280ZX was pretty straightforward," explains the team's Roman Kickirillo. "From the factory, there is a hose that is attached to the intake just after the compressor in the turbo–so whatever boost the turbo is making, this hose sees the same pressure.
"The other end of this hose is attached to the wastegate. When the pressure in this hose gets to a certain level, it pushes open a spring in the wastegate, allowing the wastegate to open and bleed off the excess pressure.
"To adjust the pressure, all you have to do is to bleed pressure off this hose before it gets to the waste gate. The basic concept is to simply put in a T-fitting with an adjustable valve on the end of the T that vents to the atmosphere. Opening up the valve to bleed off more pressure fools the wastegate into seeing lower pressure than the intake manifold is seeing."
Roman did point out one detail that most people overlook, however. This system works better when some sort of restriction–like an in-line valve–is installed in the hose on the turbo side of the T-fitting. This fitting delays the opening of the waste gate, yielding a slight boost spike, and keeps the system from venting off too much boost before the wastegate opens up.
"I was able to buy all the T-fittings and valves for less than $10 at Home Depot," he says. "It's• a lot cheaper than the automotive-grade stuff, and works just as well."
Ron Brothers, owner of Performance. Diesel in Daytona Beach, Fla., also went out and bought the cheapest, running turbocharged car he could find: a 1985 Nissan 200SX Turbo. He also considered a Mitsubishi Starion or Chrysler Conquest, but found the turbo Nissan in the local Pennysaver for only $350. Like other turbo owners, Ron made a few tweaks to produce extra boost.
He also spent some money on some new suspension bushings, new-old-stock Koni shocks and a set of Nismo high-performance brake pads. The car did not make much oil pressure when Ron bought it, so he installed another engine found at a salvage yard. "Junkyard parts are plentiful," he reports.
The turbo vehicle that probably got the most attention was the 1989 2.5-liter, turbocharged, five-speed Plymouth Voyager LE entered by Cliff Sebring Sr., Barry Miles, Cliff Sebring Jr. and Bill Cuttitta. Most of the other competitors didn't know what to think when they saw the minivan in the staging lanes at the drag strip, but they soon learned to respect the big, gray brick after it ran the quartermile in 14.3 seconds. Credit the Plymouth's nitrous oxide, an intercooled Turbo II setup and lots of tuning.
By the. way, look for an expanded feature on this and other Challenge vehicles in future issues of GRM. Some of these cars are just too cool not to get their own feature articles.
I'd Rather Have A V8
While we had a contingent of entrants representing the turbo world, a few guys did show up with cars relying on good, old fashioned American V8 power.
Paul Spencer led a small army of Soutl; African lads who hailed from Carrollton, Texas, and brought along a pair of Ford-powered pony cars. Paul entered a Mustang, while his brother-in-law, Siegfried! "Ziggy" Weber, brought along a Mercury Capri.
"Mustangs are light," Paul explains. "Parts are easily available and cheap. Car parts are very interchangeable and easy to work on." Paul says he also considered building a Camaro, but settled on the Mustang when he spotted the ad in the Dallas Morning News with an asking price of $400.
He started with a 1987 four-cylinder model for that price, however, which meant he had plenty of work ahead. To help finance the VS ·swap, he sold the original engine, transmission, computer, a/c system, rear end gears and radio. Then he installed a 35 l Windsor from a l 98 l Mercury Grand Marquis. "I pulled it out with a friend at the Pick+ Pull in Grand Prairie, Texas," he explains.
The five-speed T-5 transmission was a bonus find, Paul reports. He bought a 1982 Mustang as a parts car, but upon disassembly he found that it had been fortified with lots of better Mustang parts, including the late T-5 transmission.
Paul's primary competition for the quickest VS car came from his own family, as Ziggy entered a 1982 Mercury Capri. Not only was the driver part of his family, the car also used to belong to Paul. Since buying the car in early 1999 for $1200, Ziggy has spent some time and money on making it faster and lighter.
A set of used headers ($30), lower-ratio final drive ($80), and underdrive pulleys ($20) added a little more grunt to the mall block; totally gutting the interior didn't hurt, either. Ziggy wound up with a grand total of $1489.58 in his project.
General Motors had one V8 representative in the form of Sean Korb, a systems engineer with lnterpath. His 1975 Chevrolet Monza Towne Coupe, one of only 3500 California-spec cars produced with a 5.7-liter V8, may have looked a little rough, but Sean still had fun.
"It was a gift of love from my mother to me, as witnessed by several lawyers in New Orleans–turns out 'giving' a car away is much more difficult than selling it for a dollar," Sean reports.
"It got demolished during Hurricane Fran when a neighboring chimney fell on it, missing the Mustang parked in front and behind. It was then that I discovered that God hates Monzas."
After the chimney incident, the car languished in Sean's yard for a few years until the Challenge was announced. "I generously valued it at $250 in my budget. Any car is worth that if it drives, even if the brakes are shot and the car is dented all to crap." The rest of Sean's budget went to rebuilding and restoring the car: brake lines, bushings, ball joints, tie rod ends, master cylinder and so on. A set of KYB shocks ordered through a mail-order retailer showed up at his house the day after the Challenge.
Rotary Express
When we first announced the $1500 Challenge, a lot of people thought that a rotary-powered Mazda would be the way to go. We learned, however, that finding a decent rotary that still runs for less than $1500 isn't so easy. And our readers learned that finding one that would make it through all three rounds of the Challenge was equally tough.
Reinaldo Lopez gets credit for having the sole RX-7 to make it through the whole weekend, proving that sometimes a near-stock car is best. He purchased his 1984 Mazda RX-7 with an eye towards SCCA Improved Touring racing, but entered it in the Challenge before starting the conversion process.
For our event, Reinaldo took the $950 RX-7 that he found in a local Auto Trader and added a Rotocraft exhaust ($145), used exhaust header ($90), and brake cylinder seals ($7). He also had the radiator cleaned out for another $50.
Arkansas' Tim Spain brought a 1984 Mazda RX-7, but his team ran into some electrical problems between their arrival in Florida and the drag race. They did do a nice job of restoring and repainting the car, however.
Robe1t Ritchie and Thomas Alexander, two friends from Louisiana, entered a 1979 RX-7 not like the others, as it was a Japanese-spec, right-hand drive model. Rob explains how their search landed them with a unique find: "We looked for cars by scoping out the scummiest used car lots and the 'under $1000' column in the classifieds. The scummiest car lot in town is the Salvation Army's, which has a nice supply of vehicles they took in as donations. Most of these cars are barely suitable to be even a parts car, but some of them run and on rare occasions something nice turns up.
"A second-generation Scirocco 16v caught our eye, and we stopped to check it out one Sunday. We saw the RX-7 there also and resolved to come back when they were open. Next Saturday we were back, and both cars were sti 11 there.
"The RX-7 was in slightly better shape, but they told us it didn't run. We thought the Scirocco would be more competitive, but the RX-7 looked more fun as a toy, so we bought it. After doing the paperwork, we whipped out the cell phone to call for a tow truck. As we did this, the attendant said he thought it might run and tried jump-starting it. It fired right up, and we drove it home. On the way I tried all the switches, and everything worked including the a/c." Total purchase price: $500. Unfortunately, a new clutch broke while at the drag strip, essentially removing the pair from the competition.
The Sun Riders Miata Club, based on the West Coast of Florida, also planned on entering a first-gen RX-7. They bought an abandoned Improved Touring project and quickly got working on the car in a club member's carport.
Unfortunately they ran into some problems with our deadline in sight. "Some deprived low-life scum stole our 14-inch alloy wheels mounted with Toyo RA-I tires," the club's Jonathan Skinner told us. "They also stole our spare 12A engine! We filed a police report, but realistically nothing is going to happen, and we will not be getting our property back."
GRM's Mike Ancas was an other rotary no-show. Mike's original plan was to drive down to Florida a few days before the $1500 Challenge and get J.G.'s old Mazda Cosmo running (again). After chasing carburetor problems all week, Mike finally loaded up the old Mazda and headed back to Pennsylvania. After further detective work, he found that his problem was bad apex seals, a common malady among rotary engines that sit too long.
All Motor, No Turbo
Our $1500 Challenge demonstrated that, for the most part, the non-turbo, four-cylinder path may not be the quickest one out there when a limited budget is required. Still, a few owners managed to build up neat, fun-to-drive machines for little bucks. At local events, these cars should still do well in an appropriate small-bore class. Plus, some people seem to prefer owning and driving smaller, more nimble imports.
When you're talking about small, fun cars, Volkswagens can never be left out of the conversation, and we had two of them on hand. Bowie Gray, a student at North Carolina's Elon College and a regular CarGuys school participant, entered his daily-driver I 981 VW Rabbit.
Bowie bought the car because, in his words, it was cheap, cheap, cheap. Plus he needed a daily driver since his Miata is now an Improved Touring car. The Rabbit changed hands for $500, and Bowie has spent another $500 on repairs and performance mods: used performance suspension parts, vented. GTI brake rotors, CV boots, half shaft, suspension bushings and tune-up parts. Among the build-up particulars, Bowie also lists one hour of lab?r spent putting out various engine fires.
Jason Ernst's original plan was to bring a 1964 Plymouth Valiant (slant-six, yet), but when time started to run ·out, he prepped his 1985 VW Jetta instead. He bought the car for $750, and like most ofthe participants, has an interesting story about how he got it. His involves a "relative of a friend who knows a guy who was deported back to Germany." Or something like that.
Besides the pair of Volkswagens, we also had two Yugos, one of which belongs to Texas' Jonny Pruitt. He bought the 1988 Yugo GVX four years ago for $200–he found the car while trying to find a relative's house–and has been using it as a daily driver and autocrosser since. While aftermarket performance parts for the car are rare, Jonny modified the stock springs to lower the Yugo while installing some new struts. Front and rear anti-roll bars were also installed, and some used race tires on used wheels are installed for autocrossing.
Todd Null of Daytona Beach, Fla., also brought along a Yugo, his being of 1990 vintage.
Even though they never got to install their custom turbo system, Jeremy Randolph and the Allen Motors crew brought down a 1991 Civic Si from their home base in Jacksonville, Fla. "It was a repo car with a blown motor," Jeremy says. "Mark [Allen] found it at an auction with a rod hanging out of the block."
They dragged home their $300 find and replaced the bad engine with a similar one from a 1991 Honda CRX Si ($300). A set of Acura Integra springs and some used race tires were also installed. "The car broke down on our way out of Jacksonville Friday night," Jeremy says, describing his trip to the Challenge. "Quick fix of the alternator fixed it." Now that the contest is over, they can get working on their turbo conversion.
Another car with turbo aspirations is David Hawkins' 1986 Toyota Cressida. He already has the 7MGTE intake manifold from a 1988 turbocharged Supra needed for the turbo swap, and also hopes to finish the job one day soon.
David ran the car in near-stock trim for the Challenge. "The Cressida was a fluke," he explains. "My true out-of-control obsession is MR2sI own 10." Basically, a woman from his neighbor's church gave the Cressida to David because the automatic transmission had gone bad. Since the car fell into his lap about two weeks before the Challenge, he quickly had the transmission rebuilt ($1385.86), installed some brake pads ($25) and came out to play.
David Grice also entered a near-stock daily driver, but that didn't stop him from having fun. "I always wanted to race," he says. "Finally had the chance with the $1500 Challenge."
David's mount is a four-door 1987 Chevy Sprint that he had bought from his parents for $200 in February 1999. "Cheap transportation/' he says. Since then, he replaced the carburetor with one donated from a friend, installed a $50 transaxle and added a set of KC Daylighters driving lamps.
For a while there, we weren't sure if any Z-cars were going to show up, but in the end we got three: the one turbocharged car plus two that were naturally-aspirated.
John Bonetti brought down a pretty cherry 1972 240Z from Charlotte, N.C. "I have been driving a GTI and 240Z for years," he explains. "I really like Datsuns, so I sold the GT! to finance the $1500 project and bought a 51 0."
Part-way through the 510 build-up, he found this white 1972 Datsun 240Z at an independent Nissan repair shop. He once again jumped ship, and for $1250 he had a clean, one-owner 240Z. The rest of his budget went to some minor tune-up supplies, including a battery, spark plugs and a small fuel line. This 240Z will eventually replace his other, rusting Z as his daily driver, he says.
Another Datsun 240Z, a red 1972 model lovingly restored by Phil Kime and Bev Howe specifically for the $1500 Challenge, also showed up. Phil originally looked for an IROC Z28, but after his three-week search proved fruitless, he settled on the Z.
While John started with a nice, clean -car, Phil and Bev started with a car found in a barn near the battlefields of Gettysburg, Penn. "The car came with a truck-load of parts that all needed to be put together," Phil says. They paid $400 for the car and an additional $ I 00 for the parts.
Once home, they completely disassembled the car and started their work, with much of it centering around the removal of rust. The floor and one frame rail had to be replaced–after Phil first learned how to weld–and then they laid down a fresh coat of paint, which looks very good when you consider that they had never painted a car before. They figure they have at least 25 hours in the bodywork alone, although they spent only $1637 cash in the project. To get back under budget, they sold off their bumpers and a/c setup.
Another car that looked as good as it ran belongs to Dead Clown Racing, a team comprised of Mike Guido, Alan Smyth, Chris Smyth and Kevin Blackett. Joining them were four kids: Josh Hayzlip, Nathaniel Gross and Josh and Justin Blackett.
Mike Guido, who has quite an extensive background in professional and amateur road racing, used to be the man behind Drug Free Racing, a program which featured the World's Fastest Clown (a.k.a. Mike). Mike says the program was the number-one-rated drug prevention program m the U.S. elementary schools. "Then corporate America killed the clown but not his creativity."
Creative is a very good way to describe the Dead Clown entry, which took a bunch of unloved junk and became a professional-looking MG VC. "It was given to me as an MG Midget, but to be politically-correct in the '90s and not to offend any midgets, the VC stands for vertically challenged," Mike explains.
The donor car came from his UPS driver, who needed to get it out of his yard to meet property codes. "It was free, small, complete, light and free," Mike explains. He had received a second free Midget a few weeks before the announcement of the Challenge, so things were looking good. The rules state that a fair market value must be assigned to anything donated to the cause, but from personal experience we know that free MGs are out there-especially ones piled high with junk.
Since both cars came. with junk engines, Dead Clown Racing installed the complete running gear-engine, transmission and rear axle-from a Cosworth Vega into their MG. The engine was set back as far in the chassis as possible, and the Vega rear axle just fit without needing to be narrowed.
Giving the engine a little boost in power is an old nitrous system bought for $50, and a pair of old Stromberg Triumph TR6 carbs with home-made velocity stacks (muffler tubing). Covering the car is a coat of school bus yellow paint. Why this color? The team found an unneeded can at a body shop.
Cheap But Not Easy
Perhaps a better subtitle for this story is "How Fast Can You Go Wrong For $1500?" We found that it's very easy to make project killing mistakes when you're working within an extremely tight budget. And our extensive project-car experience was not necessarily a leg up on things: while we are far from rich here at GRM, it has been a long time since we personally have been this restricted when it comes to budget. (Our normal budget for a project car is a still-restrictive four to six times our paltry $1500 figure.)
We're used to being able to just buy most low-buck hop up tricks, once we discover what it is we need to make our project car go faster. The $ 1500 Challenge forced us to get creative. It also forced us to swallow a lot of frustration.
It was a real pain in the rear to know how to fix something correctly, and not have the budget to do so. For instance, when we fixed the transmission on our SVO Mustang, we were devastated by the news that we would need a new clutch and pressure plate. These parts would get replaced as a matter of course on most project cars, even if the original pieces were still in fairly good condition, because conventional wisdom states that while you have the transmission out (a big job), you might as well put in a clutch, too (a very easy job with the transmission out).
On a $1500 project, nothing is conventional. Things that we would usually have just hired someone to do, we just had to do ourselves. This exercise really put the "grassroots" back into· Grassroots Motorsports.
Parts Cars, The Secret Weapon
The smartest competitors (spelled, those with room at the house and a forgiving significant other) read the rules and immediately purchased a parts car. The Challenge rules allowed entrants to purchase one or more parts cars, trade or sell anything they wanted off the car, and then sell the carcass. The only caveat was that they couldn't make money on the whole deal.
We structured the rules this way so that competitors couldn't buy five Spitfires for $300 apiece (totaling $1500), sell $3000 worth of parts off each one (totaling $15,000), and then go buy themselves an E30-chassis BMW M3 for the event.
Despite this caveat, our readers and staff members got quite creative. We bought a really ugly 1985 Mustang GT for $400 as a parts car for our SYO Mustang, then took the steering rack, bigger anti-roll bars, several interior trim pieces, the rear hatch (which was much less rusty than ours) and several other little pieces. The total of what we got was certainly worth more than the $400 we paid. When we were done with the carcass, we sold the seats for $150 and the remainder for $250. The net result was that we got tons of stuff for our car using no budget whatsoever.
Was this fair? We thought so, as most of our budget-oriented readers tell us they operate in the same way when building their project cars on the cheap. As with every aspect of this exercise, the thinking was that if the "average Joe" can do it, than we can do it, too.
Mike Kelley, who entered the flat-black Plymouth Sundance, also used the parts car rule to its full advantage. He bought a turbocharged 1987 Dodge Shadow for $400 and used the rims, tires and Mopar Performance computer on his Sundance. He then sold the remains of the Shadow, pocketing a cool $900 in the process. (Don't worry, he played by the rules and only put $400 back into his Challenge budget.)
Paul Spencer, builder of the Ford Mustang, spent $200 for a 1982 Mustang donor car which gave various bits to the project. He then swapped the donor car's engine for a set of used BFGoodrich race tires and Mustang I 0-hole alloy wheels.
Jason Ernst used two parts cars in the preparation of his Volkswagen-a$ I 00 Jetta GU and a $150 Golf GTI. The Jetta GU donated its springs, KYB rear shocks and rear emblem (the latter being worth five extra horsepower, he says). He then grabbed the vented rotors, spark plug wires, front struts and front seats from the GTI.
The $2000 Challenge?
The $1500 budget figure was rather arbitrary; in fact, we just liked the way it sounded. Plus, that figure seems ridiculously low for building a performance car, which makes for good editorial. But soon after we began our quest, it became obvious that with just a little more time and money, we really could have put together some even cooler cars. Our readers felt the same way.
If he had had another $500 to spend, Sundance owner Mike Kelley said he would have bribed more people to come help out. Koni adjustables in the rear and a roll cage would also have been nice, he said, as he'd like to continue racing the car in the future. Ron Brothers, builder of the Nissan 200SX, said he would have bought some serious tires. Capri pilot Ziggy Weber said the same thing.
The minivan crew said they would have used any extra budget to purchase the Mopar Performance Super 60 package-or taken the wives to the beach. "Mopar Performance offers a kit for the later '87 to '89 Turbo II 2.2 engines that will make about 305 horsepower and 300 ft./lbs. of torque-without the NOS," reported the team's Bill Cuttitta. "The kit includes a new computer, turbo, cam, injectors and some other odds and ends, and costs about $1800 new, but in our case, we'd not get a turbo-cuts the price in half right there-and buy the other stuff used off the Internet.
"We probably wouldn't have made it to 300 horsepower on the $500, but we would have been close to an honest 275. A good shot of NOS on top of that, and who knows how fast Mini Me would have gone?"
"Our problem was time, not money," explained Rob Ritchie, one of the owners of the Japanese-spec RX-7. "If we had more time, we would have fixed more of the small problems like the speedo cable and HVAC system. Some decent high-performance brake pads would be nice, too." He also said a nitrous system would have been cool.
Datsun 240Z entrants Phil Kime and Bev Howe said they would have used the extra budget to rebuild the cylinder head and install a good cam. Racing springs would have been nice, too, they said.
Bowie Gray, owner of the 1981 Rabbit,_said if he had an extra $500, then he would have actually spent the whole $1500 allowed by the rules. He figures an eight-valve, two-liter Golf engine could have been installed if he had some extra cash.
Lessons Learned
We knew that the $1500 Challenge would be a learning experience for both the magazine staff and the other entrants. Turns out we all learned lessons in both automotive engineering and life.
"The whole thing was a learning experience!" exclaimed Mike Kelley. "I've never dropped/swapped a motor before, and I've never had a car in that many separate pieces before." Mike also learned some other lessons: "Landlords don't enjoy cars up on blocks in the driveway. Neither do the local police."
Paul Spencer, whose Mustang was rather rough when he got it, also awakened to a few facts. "Never start with bad bodywork or rust-never!" He also found installing doors and removing body panels to be very time consuming.
Sean Korb said prepping the Monza taught him a few things about car restoration: "With the right color, you can paint a car for 10 bucks." He also adds this important restoration advice: "A car can be thoroughly cleaned out with a leaf blower." He also encountered his share of mechanical problems, and now knows that it's hard to bleed brakes with a bad master cylinder. "My vise and grinder kick ass!" he also learned.
While not specific to his Honda Civic Si, Jeremy Randolph picked up some general car prep rules. For example, he said, don't start building the car three nights before the competition.
Bowie Gray, who has more experience with newer Japanese cars, said playing with the VW Rabbit was an interesting experience. "It's old, and I'm broke. I drive it every day; little things keep breaking, so it's nickel and <liming me to death."
Sponsors, Prizes and Thanks
As you can imagine, you can't pull off an event of this magnitude without a few sponsors. We kept the prizes modest because we wanted to give the winners something for their trouble, but didn't want huge cash prizes. We felt that if there was actual prize money involved, it might taint the low-key, fun-oriented nature of the event. We did, however, reason that a few types of merchandise would pair really well with the different events in the Challenge, so we turned to our good friends at Kumho, Red Line Oil, NASA and Griot's Garage for our prize. lineup.
For instance, many of the participants were entering the $1500 Challenge to build good, low-buck race cars that could be autocrossed and run at the drag strip. What more does a race car need than fresh race tires? So Kumho donated a set of race tires–any model in any size–to the overall winner.
The entrant with the fastest time at the drag strip received a coupon good for a free case of Red Line synthetic motor oil and gear lube. The fastest autocross car got a coupon good for a free entry to a NASA oneday driving school along with a one-year NASA membership. Griot's Garage provided a$ I 00 merchandise certificate for the entrant whose car won the concours.
We also need to thank AAK Racing Graphics, the company who made up the fantastic Touring Car-like number panels that every entrant used. In addition to helping us keep track of the Challenge participants, these number panels added a touch of class to the event. As several competitors soon found out, strategic placement of these panels also saved quite a bit of time.with the touch-up brush. We figured the panels also made good souvenirs from the event.
Thanks are due to the good folks at Orlando Speed World for allowing us to host the drag racing portion, of this event at their facility. Their staff is extremely friendly whether you're driving an import or a domestic. Besides the drag strip, the Orlando Speed World grounds also house an asphalt oval, motocross frack and BMX track; the oval track is the site of their infamous school bus figure-8 races:
The Central Florida Region SCCA also deserves a public thank you for doing a fantastic job of hosting the autocross portion of the event. In fact, a modified version of the autocross course used for the $1500 Challenge has become the official GRM test track. Look for more on this subject in the news section of the magazine.
Once we added the concours to the competition, we felt we needed some real, professional concourse judges. So we got some. Kirk White, who has 30 years in the exotic car business and has entered cars in the world-famous Pebble Beach Concours, was our main man. He also has a ton of experience in judging exotics. He was joined by Jim Kelsey, managing director for Daytona Beach's Klassix Auto Museum, Harold Brewer and "the ever-colorful Popcorn." No one knows Popcorn's real name, by the way. "Two judges and two kibitzers," Kirk explains.
The Drag Race
At 6 p.m. on Friday, September 24, our $1500 Challenge participants started rolling into the paddock of Orlando Speed World's ¼-mile drag strip. Our plan for the drag racing portion of the event was simple: Each competitor would turn in their quickest time slip. We didn't care who did the driving, as we were more interested in the car's ability and not the driver's.
Since a lot of the cars had been completed in the days (and hours) immediately before the event, most of the competitors used their first runs to tune the machines and figure them out. The guys running nitrous also seemed to need a few runs to get their acts together, debating where on the strip to open the bottle. Without the benefit of slicks and a real suspension, too much gas at the start would lead to a burn-out of biblical proportions.
As the evening progressed, the cars fell into three distinct groups: the fast, 14-second cars; the pretty quick 15-second cars; and the rest. As most anyone would guess, the turbo, NOS-enhanced and V8 cars reigned supreme at the drag strip, with the pair of Ford VS-powered machines, the turbo minivan and the MG VC roadster dipping down into the 14s.
The 15-second bracket contained a lot of the other turbocharged cars, like the turbocharged Datsun 280ZX and Plymouth Sundance. Two cars prepared by GRM staffers, J.G.'s Omni GLH and Tim's SVO Mustang, also cracked into the 15s, and while not turbocharged, Phil and Bev's red 240Z was in this group as well. The rest of the competitors, which includes pretty much all of the nonturbo, four-cylinder cars, filled up the 16-, 17-, 18- and 19-second brackets.
At the end of the evening, Mike Guido's Dead Clown Racing took the top drag honors with a 14.122-second run, which is about six seconds quicker than a stock Midget. The minivan finished a close second with a 14.303 despite nitrous problems. (As a side note, once the van returned home and had its nitrous problems fixed, it ran a 13.05 @ 106 mph.) After Round 1, chalk up one win to the MG.
The Concours
On Saturday morning, everyone gathered for the concours judging. The purpose of this part of the Challenge was simple (and maybe somewhat self-serving): We didn't want a bunch of junky-looking cars showing up at the event. A junk heap on the cover of the magazine hasn't proven to help newsstand sales, we have learned. We did want to keep the Challenge's emphasis on speed, though, so we awarded the concours less overall points than the other two events.
Our judges awarded points based on the cleanliness and integrity of the modifications. For example, cars didn't lose points for having gutted interiors, but they did receive a low score if the gutting was not done neatly. Color-coordinated duct tape was preferred over the standard stuff.
The judges also considered how much time and money had been spent on making the whole package presentable, and that's where the Dead Clown Racing MG VC once again did well, taking first-place points. The Mini Me minivan, Ziggy's Capri and Phil and Bev's 240Z also scored well in the concours. The judges made specific mention that Jeremy Randolph's Civic engine was incredibly well detailed, considering he only used Armor All. Head judge Kirk White noted that car's engine was clean enough for Pebble Beach.
The Autocross
After the concours judging, everyone moved over to the autocross site. To test the agility of our entrants, we scheduled an autocross competition at the "skill pad" at Brevard Community College. Besides autocrosses, this piece of pavement is used for police training and karting schools, so it features no light poles, oil slicks or any of the other distractions found at some sites.
The course flowed well and was quite representative of the average autocross course. If any complaint could be levied, it could be that the course favored horsepower over handling. As few of these cars had huge amounts of either horsepower or handling, it turned out that no one car was dominant.
Multi-time Solo II, Solo I and ProSolo national champ and all-around nice guy Danny Shields was our "spec" driver for the autocross portion of the Challenge. After participants autocrossed their own cars, they had the option of having Danny take a few runs. Multiple drivers (in addition to Danny) were also allowed because, once again, we were really trying to measure the car, not the driver.
Thanks to a tropical storm that was moving into the area, the autocross was run under both dry and wet conditions. Fortunately, everyone got to make a few runs in the dry. As might be expected, no one went any faster once the rain started to fall.
In the end, the Mustang SVO prepared by GRM's Tim Suddard took the overall top time of the day with a 35.941-second run. Philip and Bev's 240Z finished right behind, taking only 36.036 seconds to run the course. Our next two finishers were J.G.'s Omni (36.389 seconds) and the MG VC Roadster (36.395 seconds).
The Award Winners
After two dizzying days of competition, the final scores were totaled-and to no real surprise, the Down Clown Racing team took the top honors, thanks to their dominance at the drag race and concours. The Mini Me minivan finished second, and Ziggy Weaver's Mercury Capri rounded out the top three. These may not be the cars most wannabe racers fantasize about, but it was a trio of excellent examples of what enthusiasts on a budget can accomplish.
The $1500 Challenge recognized a host of other accomplishments, as well. The Mini Me crew won the Best Engineered/Spirit of the Event trophy, and Paul Spencer's Mustang transmission snafu earned him the Biggest Failure trophy. (In all honestly, we were expecting more–and more spectacular-mechanical DNFs.) The Longest Drive award went to Jonny Pruitt, who drove his Yugo all the way from Texas to Florida and back–with no problems, thank you very much.
In truth, the end was pretty soggy. The tropical storm had moved in big time by the end of the pizza party and awards presentation, and by nightfall, several inches of rain had fallen in the area. The true and final test was yet to come, as the intrepid Challengers each climbed into their chosen $1500 mounts and started the drive home in some of the most torrential downpours ever encountered in Central Florida. This would be the ultimate test: After a solid weekend of drag racing, autocrossing and just driving around, would these low-buck steeds still have what it took to take their owners home?
By Monday morning, the reports were all in: everybody had made it safely home. (Though Tim did have to battle his own incar fountain, thanks to a hole in the floor that allowed water to spring off the flooded roads and into his SVO.) Best of all, everybody had such a good time, the campaigning has already begun to make this an annual event.
As it turned out, despite a few roughlooking entries, we had quite a selection of well-engineered, well-built cars that could make decent daily transportation as well as great weekend warriors. Yes, we ·had one overall winner, but the fact is, most any of these cars would make quite serviceable racers and daily drivers. And as any gearhead will tell you, any time you can build a car worth owning and racing for just n$1500, you've automatically won.
