So I went and bought a racecar... F500

In reply to Woody :

Sweeeeet

I had the same car,have the cogged belt drive and a few sprocket sizes for gearing changes in a box with a couple belts.

 Also a new in the box aluminum foot box thats required for road race which I would guess yours should allready have.

 I would be happy to sell either/all of it off cheap:)

I have a crush box, but spares are good.

Been working towards a chain conversion, but there is some temptation to grab your belt stuff if you have autox ratios depending on how cheap is cheap.

I have a front sprocket with a friend with a lathe right now, will have a good post at some point about the regear, ratios, and chain sizes.

Honestly I have no idea what the sprockets are worth but for sure they are doing me no good here:)

 I can go find and take a pic of what I have and and you can throw me an offer if you want.

In reply to kevlarcorolla :

Sounds good

Woody said:

In reply to Apexcarver :

FYI, I have contacted the guy with the fixer-upper.

The guy that has the “fixer-upper” is someone who I did a few car trades with. Craig is a really nice guy who seems to find all sorts of older race cars somehow. 

kevlarcorolla said:

I had the same car,have the cogged belt drive and a few sprocket sizes for gearing changes in a box with a couple belts.

 Also a new in the box aluminum foot box thats required for road race which I would guess yours should allready have.

 

 I would be happy to sell either/all of it off cheap:)

If either of you want to part with belt stuff cheap I would be interested.

The car came with logbooks, some interesting tidbits.

It has run in 3 or 4 runoffs.  

1995   Start 25th finish 20th 

1996  Log entry, cant find in results

1997 Start 28th Finsih 15th

1999 Start 27th Finish 15th

Lots of entries in the MARRS series as well.

As requested (by almost no lady ever) Naked Pictures (of my racecar)

The stand is rather nice for working on it.

On the ground, those are mopeds behind it for scale.

The thing about F500, those arent springs OR shocks. They are canisters containing rubber pucks. Think of them as highly developed bumpstops acting as the suspension. They work, it is actually a suspension. Another way of thinking about it, while other classes send their Penskies out for rebuild for an arm and a leg, I mosy over to the drill press and use a holesaw to drill a 2 inch diameter puck out of a sheet of rubber from McMaster Carr costing only a few bucks worth of rubber a corner. 

Single rear brake

Wont be driving it in these shoes. 

previous owner was in his 60's, his competition added the "old men drive slow" Otherwise, from bottom right. Ignition, Fuel Pump, Fans, Starater button next to digitron dash, Rain light, Pull for fire system, and brake balance

Glad I checked back in (after a few YEARS)!

I recently started dusting off my old Zink19, last run in 2003.  (Side note, don't buy rental property as it will consume all of your time.)  The Zink is now destined to get a Yamaha R6 transplant and a whole new rear end to hold it.  (I found a wrecked R6 with 8800 miles on CL for $500)   Thinking about running in A mod so I don't have to mess with restrictor plates and can weigh 175 lbs less.

So, just how many F500 cars are on here?  Both F500.us and Formula500.org are ghost towns though there is a F500 and FMod page on Facebook that has a little life... all these cars have to be somewhere!

In reply to triumph7 :

I'm surprised how many are on here. If I can help some resurgence that would be great. I have had a number of people who knew nothing about the class get rather interested after seeing my car. 

A class this purposely trimmed to be affordable should be so much more popular. Especially now that those scared of carbs, two stroke, and cvt clutching can do the 600cc motorcycle power option.

Awesome!!!

I wanna do something like this next year. Leaning more toward a CM car, but the price is sure right on the FM cars!

Good luck with the upcoming season, and I like that resistance shirt, I'm an EE ;)

Hate to ask, but possible to get tooth counts on the pulleys and a photo of the belt spec marks?

In reply to Apexcarver :

Sure no problem,probably be late tomorrow.

 I have the following pulley sizes,59mm,74mm,80mm,82mm and a big honkin' aluminum 11".

 Belts are used,good for a backup perhaps but not promising anything as mine was converted to chain before I got it.

So it looks like the rear axle bumps/droops and motion is taken up by the drive belt? Does it just not have enough travel for that to be an issue or does the output shaft have some way to follow the motion of the rear axle?

In reply to buzzboy :

Suspension is a loose term with these,sold mine because of the stupid rubber puck no rebound control "suspension".

 If you could put cheap motorcycle rear dampers at each corner I think these things would be transformed I'm sure.

Jack shaft is up by mounting point for the rear control arms so the length doesn't vary much in the suspensions range of travel.

Haven't had too much to do on the car lately.   

Have a query in with Mike Quadrini regarding new control arms to go to wider front wheels (I would violate track width limits if I just put wider wheels on). This is likely a project for next winter.  I think I have a source of rims lined up, I have extra centers, so it shouldn't be too bad.

While I fit in the car, I would use a bit more room. I noticed that the head rest was a decent bit larger than required by the GCR (I am keeping it RR legal), so I made a new head rest that lines up better and is closer to the limit, gained more than a half inch for my head to move back. 

I also installed a steering wheel spacer to move the wheel back closer to me so my arms are not stretched out as straight. 

First autocross is coming up this weekend, so I needed fuel.  Car was tuned for 100 octane, and I didn't want to mess with that yet.  Also I think my fuel cell isn't compatible with ethanol, so I bought a 5 gallon can of 100 octane Sunoco 260 GT...  for $65...  hoookay, looking at options. I think I can do 100LL AVGAS, which is right around $5/gal locally, now to find an airport that will let me...

First few events at least will be on older tires and still geared for roadrace (155mph I believe).

First event will be a postage stamp sized lot, should be interesting...   on April 6th I have a test and tune with BMW club (I talked with them, they will allow the FM) at Waldorf, but that should be interesting because they sealed the lot last fall.  

First event report...

It was 43*, engine ran great, but HOLY COW THE UNDERSTEER!   First run, I understeered into a cone wall, actually managed to wedge a cone under the front end which beached it enough that the front brakes did just about nothing...  That was alarming...

Got two more runs and tiptoed around to a thoroughly embarrassing time in the lower half of the sheets. 

Are the tires dead?  Just way too cold for them?

I need to do some setup work and will start with checking the front end alignment and readjusting the caster. You want something like 5+ degrees on these for the solid rear apparently, so that you somewhat pick up the inside rear. 

I may go ahead and stiffen the rear a step (adjusting motion ratio).  going to record the current setup, but I have a feeling that its very much a roadrace setup and not a autox one. 

Wider front tires have moved up the urgency list as well.  

Then again, I am asking myself how much was just cold tires.  Either way, I need wider fronts.  The width has to all go outboard from where its at (to clear steering).  Going from 10x6 to 10x7 inch rims for the front.  I am currently running Hoosier 19.5x7.5-10 rear and 19.5x6.5-10 front.  The rear is currently 10x8 and front is 10x6.  

Getting the rims is tricky..  I have custom machined centers, so I need outer barrels that will fit those AND clear the brakes. 

TQ midgets use 10" wheels in some series, notably ATQMRA which runs NJ/PA area. Also some mini-sprint cars, so look towards the circle track crowd.

Man, I'm gonna be following this one for sure.   Some kind of similar car has been on my want list for a while,   though sadly not on my "I can do it now" list.

-Hans

A straight locked solid axle rear takes a bit of getting used to and has a lot to do with your push on tight auto cross courses. Goes away on a higher speed Road Race Course.

In reply to Apexcarver :

Every Fmod I’ve seen autox had understeer issues.