Team Stampie $50 Q45 Challenge build

23 inch tires ??? Are you running SM7s on a car that large?

In reply to DeadSkunk :

Why yes we are. You can't win in life if you don't take risk and it's down to ~3000 lbs. Plus who else is going to show up claiming they paid $3.33 a tire?

In reply to pimpm3 :

Thanks.  We've worked harder this year than any other year.  

What do you do when you have a paint booth you no longer need?  Sounds like a good reason to build a bar!

At that point it was about to rain and Lil Stampie needed dinner. We'll finish it tomorrow. 

What time are you heading in Thursday?

We're going to try and leave at 8am. 

Finished building the bar.

Load up. I think we're ready. 

Competition is over just have the awards banquet now. We finished the two autocross courses in 16 place. It's tight with only 2 points separating 9th place to us. It's down to the Concours. We got good feedback and several people were taking pictures of our "note" system. In an attempt to not forget we put circle stickers on the fenders and radiator cover. Then a string from them to the part I wanted to cover. It allowed me to not forget but also kept me on track and not kick myself for missing something. Only bummer was one of the number panels pulled some of the paint off the rear passenger door. We'll have to touch that up but for now I think I'll take a nap. 

Who was the better Q45? 

In reply to John Welsh :

We beat Andy by two places in the autocrosses.  Pimpm3 was in between us.  Always seems close with us three.

18th in morning autocross.

14th in afternoon autocross.

7th Concours.

11th overall.

1st in half budget.

In reply to Stampie :

Congratulations!

(seventh in Concours? WOW!)

In reply to Indy-Guy :

Thanks, we tried something different this year and I think it worked well.  We scored 18.8 out of 25 which was way above what I hoped for.

Oh and I want to thank Pete Gossett. He's our Suspension Guru that I've been referring to. When they announced no drags I went to him and in an evening we worked out our game plan. At the Challenge he did our shake down runs and then talked to John our pro driver. Without his help we wouldn't have gotten this Infiniti to handle as well as it did. He also was able to give me a cheap/free game plan for future handling mods. Thanks Pete you really helped us. Sorry about the seat beating you up. 

Congratulations and thanks for a great build thread! 

In reply to Stampie :

Thank you guys - it was awesome to hang out with the cool kids & I'm glad my input helped out!!!

Regarding my arm, it didn’t hurt at all, I just happened to notice it Saturday morning. It’s much less purple now though. 

I always like to do a report card. 

Man this Q45 just keeps getting better. Every time I think she can't improve she does. We showed up at an autocross event with a car that usually does better in the drags. We finished autocross in the top half and finished ahead of several Miatas. The biggest compliment I got was from the pro driver telling me several times "man your car out accelerates the GA Tech car!" Concours went great. Yes the paint job helped but I think I finally figured out how to present the car to the judges. 

Improvements needed:

• We had major issues with damping. That needs to be fixed first.
• We can remove more weight off the front. 
• We did nothing to improve the drags obviously but I think we would have been top ten if the drags had taken place this year. 

Thanks for the compliments and the help. 

In reply to Stampie :

To expand on Stampie’s comment:

• We had major issues with damping. That needs to be fixed first.

I took the first autox run so I could debrief our pro driver - for those not aware, we only get 4 pro driver runs per course, so we didn’t want to waste one of their runs if we needed to address issues with the car, or if there were certain “quirks” that we needed to warn them about. The power steering has also been deleted, and I wasn’t sure if it would cause problems on a couple right spots on course. 

Knowing that Stampie upped the spring rates significantly, but still had the stock shocks, I expected we may be underdamped, but I absolutely DID NOT expect what happened...

There was a rough patch of pavement at the end of a slalom into a tight left turn, which then crested the center of the lot, followed by a right. I expected there may be some washboard effect of the bumpy area, and there was. I was shuffle-steering to get setup for the right turn, when all of a sudden the steering went completely light. Keep in mind the deleted power steering, so when this happened the wheel went almost full-lock to the right. At that moment it grabbed & jerked the wheel hard back to the left. I pulled hard right to counter it, at which point the wheel when light again, going back to the right. It caught me completely off guard & was a complete bizarre experience. 

What we figured out was even though there’s no abrupt bump there, the seam in the pavement dropped a couple inches over a couple feet. The combination of speed, the crest of the lot peaking at the same point, and our blown shocks, caused the front tires to bounce like basketballs as we crossed this point. However, because the driving line was slightly different on the reversed afternoon course, it wasn’t nearly as much of a problem then. 

It easily cost us 2-seconds, even on Jon’s fastest run. It looks like that would have moved us up about 10 spots in AM runs. 

That transition between the two pavements really upset the Datsun all 3 years.  Its really easy to be going one direction then hit that and be sideways or plowing straight ahead.

Forgot to mention that we failed tech. While a little embarrassing it showed that at least tech is being taken more seriously. Tom came up to me and said the battery was loose. Sure enough it was and I'm willing to bet that's the first time my battery had been touched at the Challenge. No big deal I'll just take the top bar off and shim it with cardboard. Oh E36 M3 my teammates left to get ice cream and the tools are locked up. I ended up rocking the battery back and forth until I could slide the card board under the top bar. Once they came back I took off the top bar and fixed it so that you couldn't see the card board as much. 

It’s okay to fail tech, it’s a learning experience.  Just don’t fail on something so big you just towed to Gainesville for nothing 

I've failed my own car while running tech due to a loose battery. 

I thought your presentation style this year was brilliant and I expect to see similar systems in the future by a lot of people. 

Have you thought of graphics/design for next year? With the orange base the car has the potential for the magazine. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

I have and I might.  Problem is I think I'm going to hold some of my ideas on that for the next build.  

I for one have always had fun with our Q45 rivalry. Although I could technically replace my engine and transmission under budget this was the last year of the Ute for me. Then again I had to hurt my car a last year to beat you in the drags. 

In reply to Andy Neuman :

But we can continue with our RX7 rivalry.  As is normal we took totally opposite approaches. You are doing an engine swap on the RX7 and I'm doing a body swap on the 13B.