911 Carrera RallyCross Project

It's been a busy few weeks for the CarreraRX. A couple of car shows, pace car duties and even a race!

First up was pace car duty at the Empire Hill Climb in Northern Michigan. Normally we get to run a few parade laps up the hill but due to time constraints caused by the number of entries fun was restricted to escorting the cars from down town to the base of the hill. This is necessary as most of the cars are not street legal but need to use public roads from staging to the start. There were plenty of interesting cars on display too:

The following weekend was our (now seemingly) once a year RallyCross event with the Detroit region SCCA. As these were only a few days apart we let the CarreraRX sleepin the trailer.

Made some new friends and got the car nice and dirty.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MPNEwy0ah5w

Last weekend's adventure was to the car show held as part of the Speed Ring festival at M1 Concourse. At just over a mile from our shop we really couldn't miss this one. The event was primarily a Time Attack weekend but we did come away with two awards for looking pretty while stationary.

The car is resting for a couple of weeks in preparation for posing about at the Lake Superior Performance Rally (LSPR) in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where it will get to meet non-other then Hannu Mikola! Should be fun.

RALLY LEGEND MEETS RALLY LEGEND

No, the guy on the left met the CarreraRX.

Last weekend we made our annual pilgrimage to the Lake Superior Performance Rally to hang out with our Group B rally car mates only this year there was a special treat laid on my the Guys from Dirtfish Rally School in the form of one Hannu Mikkola. Hannu was one of the first works Audi Quattro drivers and a true motorsport legend. Dirtfish also brought with them a replica of the MK2 Escort Hannu drove in Europe and a pristine Audi Sport Quattro. Hannu drove the Audi with us on Thursday up and back down the Keweenaw Peninsula then drove the Escort during shakedown, a couple of stages as course opener and then, again with us in the super special last stage in downtown Houghton.

There is a Flickr album documenting this occasion here.

Can't believe it's been so long since our last update. So much has gone by, like: it's another year now! So what have we been upto since we got back from LSPR? Well:

We replaced the door seals then took out the rear window and resealed it with a new gasket.

No rust, thankfully.

 
Then we added a map light for an upcoming TSD rally.

Replaced the voltage regulator on the altenator and the fan belt.

Then had fun doing the TSD rally which really didn't go very as we set our clock 17 minutes off so were consistently 17 minutes early at every control. We did set fastest time of day though LOL. Our spot lights also packed up as soon as we turned them on. Still, we had fun!

We also did a RallyCross. That's two in one year! It didn't produce any great pictures (or results) but some in car video.

https://youtu.be/PuWtzustB9k

What's next for the car? Well, we are definately taking it up to Sno*Drift rally again at the end of the month and, due to the rather frigid weather we've been having here lately, there might be one or two ice races on the cards. We've got a door rattle to chase doen and a rain leak from the front end to diagnose. We also just received our heater blower backdate parts but that might wait for warmer temperatures just in case it sucks. Stay tuned (subscribe).

The end of January saw our annual pilgrimage to the Sno*Drift Rally about 4 hours north of us in Atlanta, Michigan. Despite the name This particular Atlanta normally offers frigid temperatures and lots of snow but this more resembled its warmer namesake to the south. Much of the snow had melted and refrozen during the preceeding week making the roads an giant, elongated ice rink. Still, as we were only displaying our wares and the 911 it was not of much consequence to us, the warmer temperatures making it that much less uncomfortable standing around.

Here are some pictures from our weekend.

There are those who feel four 100W auxiliary lights are enough for a rally inspired 911, especially one that no longer sees competitive nighttime action. We disagree. Not out of some “more light is better to see by” rationalization but a bit more along the lines of “Oh, we scored some pristine Cibie Oscars for free” kind of thinking. That and we have had this one period picture of a Rothmans SC/RS with this exact setup festering away in our collective minds for some time.



So, you see, faced with this picture and free lights we really had no choice.



Fortunately the lights seemed to want to go in exactly the same location as the front bumper bolts. So it was easy to fab up some brackets. But first we had to removed the bumper's thick rubber strip and wrap the resultant indentation with BRAID Blue vinyl.



This fortuitously produced another location for a sticker!



Some quick welding on a bit of scrap resulted in some brackets!



And then we let there be (more) lights.





We even wired them up! It was easy though, as the original fog light wiring was still in place.



Then we took the car out to show off it's new jewelry to it's siblings.



We have a couple more rally oriented mods in the works. We'll fill you in soon.

In reply to teamilluminata :

Awesome! Love the new pair of lights. 

Are the Oscars the early round back ones or the newer flat back ones ?

californiamilleghia said:

Are the Oscars the early round back ones or the newer flat back ones ?

Round back.

As this project is basically finish we haven’t posted any updates for quite a while. However there has been some activity over the past months so here’s a brief overview.

We installed an intercom after borrowing one for that TSD rally.

While we were in there we installed these harness retainers on the roll bar.

Last July we did a photoshoot in Detroit with a local photographer who’s trying to get more work in automotive.

In August we received our new BRAID BST classic wheels. They look just like the ones used in period on the Prodrive cars.

Also in August we took the car to the famous Woodward Dream Cruise where it received a lot of attention.

Later in the year we once again used the car as lead car at the Empire Hillclimb.

A new event for Detroit was RADWOOD towards the end of September. We took the 911 along with both Quattros.

We even managed to squeeze in a rallycross last year too.

But then it was cyclo cross season.

One last outing in October at the local Porsche-Audi dealership. It was feezing!

In January we were forced to close our showroom/workshop and move everything into storage till we find a new home. No, of course, this won’t happen until this pandemic is over.

Hope we get chance to do some great things with the car in 2020.

Stay safe.

Annual (feels like) 911 update!

When we put this car into storage nine months ago we thought it would be there just a couple of months while we found a new building to operate out of. Well, then the world turned upside down and those plans were put on hold. We retreated to our various home offices in March and have pretty much been running the business from there since then. 911-wise we amused ourselves for the first few weeks recreating some past photographs of the fleet using our 1:18 models in the office:

And whatever this is called

That only kept us sane till about June but, fortunately, we live in a state that locked down pretty hard so our numbers got low enough we felt safe to venture out to some cars and coffee meets.

Then we got really brave and entered the car in the Empire Hill Climb scheduled for mid-September. This would require some prep: First off, proper roll cage padding. We went with Dual Durometer stuff as we still drive the car on the road without a helmet.
 

Of course it wouldn’t stay put so we employed some Velcro strips.

New tires, Toyo RA1

Replaced a window switch.

Had the brake calipers rebuilt, wheel bearings replaced and an axle boot replaced. Was too much to tackle in the storage unit.

And the clutch mechanism fixed

Then the Empire Hill Climb got canceled. The right decision.

Then last week we had an opportunity do a RallyCross. Everything was outside and Detroit Region did a great job of putting on a very safe event so we had a great time. It was fun to drive fast(ish) again, see old friends and even to drag the trailer with the RALIVAN again. Times: not so good, but we are very rusty.

So, what’s next for the car? Well, probably it will have been back in the trailer by the time you read this and is now ensconced in its new home. Yes, we finally have a new showroom and workshop! More on that later.

Stay safe.

Good to see it getting dirty again!

So cool to see it out again! You'll need to bring to Thistle Hill for good measure before tucking it away!

Hey, it’s nearly 12 months since our last update. Lets’ see what’s happened with the 911 rally car.

Well, big news, it got a new home. We moved into our new building last Fall. It’s got carpet!



Here’s a pano/overview with all its roommates:



You can see the whole album here, if you really do have no life: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmRa8Boy

We spent most of last winter fixing up the new showroom but come spring we started the usual round of cars and coffee type events where the car, as always, was warmly received, despite winter lingering.



We even got invited to an event at the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn. Look, no snow!.



We did do some work on the car though. We raised the fog light brackets for one thing. We really like the look of the car with these on but our original brackets were too low so we made some new ones and tidied up the wiring a bit.







Inspired by our success with fog lights we bit the bullet and ordered up a set of Rennline’s LED replacement headlights.







We’ve decided to paint the bezels satin black as matching the white has proven difficult in the past. We like the contrast.

Staying in tune with our electrical theme we installed a new horn. You’ll never guess what tune it plays.



Just this past week was the Woodward Dream Cruise which takes place a mile from our new showroom. We took that opportunity to try two new things. First we inaugurated the Woodward Rally Cruise (WRC) over three days where we gathered as many rally cars together as we could and went cruising together.





And over the weekend we attended the first annual Woodward Dream Show at the M1 Concourse consisting of a track day and car show with the some of the region’s top cars and builders. We even won an award and it wasn’t for Most Lights!





So what’s next for the car? Well, we are once again entered for the Empire Hill Climb which looks like it might actually happen this year and next week we are gathering some more old rally cars together and attending the Northern Worthersee show in Frankenmuth. Should be good times.

In reply to teamilluminata :

Who won for Most Lights?

At the risk of making you feel special here’s another update! In our defense, the car has been quite busy this last few weeks so we have quite a bit to share with you all.

In early September we took the car (complete with the whole dog and pony show) to Frankenmuth, Michigan for the annual Northern Worthersee (NOWO) European car show. Part of the incentive, apart from it always being a great event in a beautiful riverside setting, was the opportunity to for the car to hang out with its rally mates again.





It even won an award, something it’s becoming quite adept at.!



It’s interesting how popular these old rally cars are becoming lately.

EMPIRE HILL CLIMB
We’ve sponsored this event and used the 911 as a course car since it was revived about six years ago. We’ve since fell in love with it, the town of Empire that hosts it and the people that put it on, compete in it, volunteer to work and spectate. They’ve become like a family. So in 2022 we decided to take the big step and actually run the race! Well that didn’t work out as it was cancelled due to COVID but this year we managed to secure a spot. Of course we also took the dog and pony show up there as we forked over a fair sum in sponsorship money.

Though it threatened rain the evening before that didn’t materialize and Saturday was perfect. Nice and sunny with temperatures in the 70s.We were a little nervous as this was our first “Nomex” event. By that we mean we had never done anything with the care that required this degree of safety gear. The car was basically legal and just needed the typical prepping and an alignment at Munk’s, but we needed the aforementioned Nomex race suit, socks and gloves, a Hans device and arm restraints in addition to our usual helmet and lack of speed. Our goal was never to win but to “have fun and try not to suck”, as is friend’s motto. Well we managed that finishing 10th of 13 in our class. OK, we may have sucked a little but we did have lots of fun. A better, less sucky result was 6th out of 7 in the Vintage class. We were only about 3-4 seconds off the pace which, unfortunately, means we have to up our speed by about 15%!

PICS









RESULTS,(if you’re interested)
https://dl.motorsportreg.com/195308b7-2f59-4596-8cd2-d4aab4f90509/

We somehow managed to get thew car invited to the inaugural American Speed Festival, a Goodwood Festival of Speed type event held at the M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan. We immediately felt out of our depth in such company as these class acts:







Some people drove hundreds of miles to see these cars. Us; 1.5!

Fortunately they parked us next to a couple of hyper horse power time attack cars to make us feel more at home!



Halfway through the first day we felt we needed to get grounded so went to snuggle up to the RALIVAN for a parking lot comfort break.



The event schedule called for two days of exhibition laps on the track and a car show Sunday. Unfortunately Sunday was rained off but we had a great time on the track:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/CuJSX5O6tv4?start=1669

We did come away with a great souvenir too.

Every time I see this car I think of taking my rally cross car much further.

to something like this.....

OMG, Can’t believe it’s been 5 months since we did a 911 rally car update. I guess that will happen when it’s freezing cold outside.

After our adventures at the American Speed Festival in October the car sat for a while in the showroom. We did try to take it out a couple of weeks later but a fuel line decided to take a leak so we parked it most of the winter. We finally got around to fixing it at the beginning of February during a warm spell as we thought spring was upon us. Yes, we can be pretty naïve sometimes. The leak was at the front of the engine, near the bulkhead and, after struggling a little to remove the offending line we realized it was a much earlier repair that had failed.







Fortunately we had some braided fuel line in stock so it was an easy repair once it was out of the car.



Once assured it was not leaking anymore we dashed off to the local gas station to fill the tank with ethanol free recreation gas, our preferred fuel for storage. Needless to say the car got some stares which is always a pleasant surprise in the winter.



However, a few weeks later we were taking it all out again!

See, the car got invited to Autorama by the Eurotics car club. This is a fairly prestigious hotrod show in downtown Detroit’s convention center and one of the venues’s rules was for no more than 1/8 tank of gas in the car. There were quite a few other little rules we had to adhere to as well, none of which were in and SCCA rule book, as you can imagine. We had a set time to install the car on Thursday night so we trailerd the car down and set it up in its space.





The rules stipulated a 10” x 20” floor covering and some sort of barrier around the display so we got creative:



Unfortunately the show took place during a particularly busy period for sales so we basically dropped of the car on Thursday and picked it up Sunday night. It did get on TV though.



Driving out through the gathered crowd was fun though and we did get to drive the car home, after replacing the gas of course.



What’s next for the car. Well on April 23rd we are hosting a Woodward Rally Cars (WRC) and in June the car is scheduled to be zero car at a tarmac rally in Kentucky! That should be interesting.

In reply to teamilluminata :

I definitely saw the car pop up in some youtube videos from that show in the background.

In reply to teamilluminata :

C251ahp legend in UK used to belong to Tom Hammond who towed his Sport Quattro sprint and hillclimb car with it . Google the man or the registration for more info really nice bloke as well

This thread needs more updates and more rallycross.  I need it to inspire the big bucks I'm tempted to drop on a full JDM drivetrain for my rally car dream project. 

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

Tell Detroit region to hold more events!

...a phrase I never thought I'd say.  They usually ran one per month year-round, with the sites more north or south depending on time of year.  (Winter events have to be more north to avoid having a puddingcross)

Since displaying the car at Autorama last April we haven’t done much with it or to it this Spring except for a few mods and fixes and taking pictures of it in various parking lots parked next to various interesting cars.

Of course, we changed the oil as it hadn’t been done for 12 months which probably equates to about 1000 miles. This seemed to precipitate a new or perhaps increased oil leak from some place yet to be determined. There has always been an oil stain on the underside of the engine around the area of the oil cooler that was never really wet. Now it’s wet. It’s not serious enough that we need to find the source and fix it immediately but is serious enough that we need to place a piece of cardboard under the car when we park it in the showroom.







As the car is scheduled to be used as zero car in an upcoming tarmac rally in Kentucky, we bought some Terratrip headsets as we will have an experienced codriver in the car. They worked great but we soon realized the intercom needed to be moved so we could reach it while strapped in.





We also replaced the faded TIM decal on the frunk as we were installing the livery on the new RALIVAN at the time. Looks a lot better.



We then adjusted the heater fan cable as it was beginning to not give us full blast all the time. This required some creating mechanicing:



We then tried to replace the upper steering column bushing with a sleeve designed to be retrofitted but found someone, probably us, had installed one already! We backed out of there and will address it later. Not before we did this though.: Double fail!



In between these fixes and tweeks the car got a younger sibling:



A 2005 Cayenne S that we will be doing some interesting things with. You can read about it here: https://teamilluminata.com/blogs/timsyberia

Meanwhile we took the car to various events including a couple of Woodward Rally Car (WRC) meets at our building. Yes, the car has reached a new low in that it only drives a few yards to cars and coffee events now.





At least the events at M1 Concourse we took it to are a mile away!





On a lighter note, and for no particular reason we did capture this moment of creative branding:



Not very exciting stuff but we hope to change that by the next update so stay tuned.

Summer In The City: More preparation for the Plenty of Tarmac Rally in Kentucky: Organized the frunk, mostly so we could put two helmets in there. Never had to do that before.





Of course, we forgot to take pictures with the actual helmets in there. But we did get a picture of the relocated jack!



Then the rally got canceled due to lack of entries. Which actually proved to be good luck as the town that was to host it got washed away in a flood on the very weekend of the event! We hope everyone is OK.

So, we carried on with our plan B of displaying the car at various (very) local meets, the major ones of which were orchestrated around the Woodward Dream Cruise. If you’ve not heard of it, Google it. It’s a week-long car circus in August that culminates in a massive cruise along 15 miles of Woodward Avenue in Detroit and is just mad. We organized a series of Woodward Rally Cruises (WRC) with the Woodward Rally Cars (WRC) and then took them en masse to M1 Concourse’s Woodward Dream Show where we parked as a club. We also got to cruise Woodward together which was really special. Of course, the pictures don’t do it justice but if you get chance to attend one year do so; you won’t be disappointed.









For our next outing we plan on taking the car way further than a mile and in the trailer too! You won’t want to miss this.