Dirt track FWD racing

My brother was in town so we took a trip out to some dirt track oval in Indiana with my dad. Noticed they had a FWD class for 4 cyl. cars. Looked like fun and super cheap to do. Pretty much stock 4 cyl. cars stripped of their interiors with a cage. The cost to race is a $20 pit pass, thats it! Here's a link to the rules.

http://www.thundervalleyracing.net/hornetrules.html

Does anyone currently race these "hornets" or looking at doing it next season? Looks like cheap fun.

Why this?

NO HONDA, MITSUBISHI ECLIPSE, EAGLE TALON, CRX, PLYMOUTH LASERS WILL BE ALLOWED. said:

I can understand the AWD models, but the fwd?

Circle track rules often don't make a lot of sense, but it's probably for the same reason that many tracks don't allow Camaros in street stock. If they did, every car would be a Camaro.

If Hondas were allowed, almost every car would be a Honda, and it would drive up the price of being competitive. Something you don't want in an entry level class.

"Twin Cities Raceway Park

2010 HORNET RULES

General: American or Foreign front wheel drive cars with a max. wheelbase of 104 inches.

NO HONDA CRX, MITSUBISHI ECLIPSE, EAGLE TALON, PLYMOUTH LASERS WILL BE ALLOWED."

The same rules from there sister track. Can't figure out if it's a typo or not. I'm going contact them about this. There was a four door civic there but it wasn't running.

I also don't get the whole talon,laser,eclipse deal.

Because V8 rear wheel drive cars are not a dime a dozen amymore.

Knobs up front, skinny balognas in back and drive it like an ice racer.

Why not?

Many local dirt track rules are from the stone ages. The promoters are just not up to date. Some still specify letter series tires. Racing a FWD car can be fun.

iceracer wrote: Many local dirt track rules are from the stone ages.

Or just plain stupid. A mini stock car at my local track lost a wheel. The right front rim fatigued, and ripped right through the lugs. The next year, every car had to have 1" (wrench size) lug nuts. I tried to explain to them that the angles were different between non-racing rims, and the 1" nuts, but they said it didn't matter. The big nuts would prevent wheels from coming off.

Some cars i thought would be good racers are

Escort gt, 92 + prelude, accord, contour svt 4cyl ?, neon, escort zx2, sentra ser

Get an Omni, Shadow, or other 2.2/2.5 powered Dodge, and kick everybody's ass.

dankspeed wrote: "Twin Cities Raceway Park 2010 HORNET RULES General: American or Foreign front wheel drive cars with a max. wheelbase of 104 inches. NO HONDA CRX, MITSUBISHI ECLIPSE, EAGLE TALON, PLYMOUTH LASERS WILL BE ALLOWED." [...] I also don't get the whole talon,laser,eclipse deal.

Coming from someone campaigning a '97 Talon in 24 Hours of Lemons, I understand this. Once de-scuzzified of the bloated interior, even the FWD DSMs are cheap, fast and reliable.

dankspeed wrote: Some cars i thought would be good racers are Escort gt, 92 + prelude, accord, contour svt 4cyl ?, neon, escort zx2, sentra ser

Oooo, an SE-R on a dirt track with its VLSD would rule, all the while not looking a bit like anything more than a base model Sentra.... At least, until the track figured out what an overdog the car would be and then ban it.

They are assuming that all Eclpses,Talon,Laser are allwheel drive and or turbo charged. The CRX is not a 4 passenger car which some specify.

i would love to do this in a escort gt, neon acr, or sentra ser

Get an Omni, Shadow, or other 2.2/2.5 powered Dodge, and kick everybody's ass.

These classes almost always specify no turbos. Neons are almost always popular in them.

It's possible to make a tbi 5spd omni as quick as a neon, but not easy on any of the other fwd dodges from that era.

Must resist the urge to do this to my car

a lot of the local dirt tracks around here have classes like this. from what i gather, early Escorts and first gen Neons pretty much own the class.

Vigo wrote:

Get an Omni, Shadow, or other 2.2/2.5 powered Dodge, and kick everybody's ass.

These classes almost always specify no turbos. Neons are almost always popular in them. It's possible to make a tbi 5spd omni as quick as a neon, but not easy on any of the other fwd dodges from that era.

I know about the rules, I've raced mini stock, butI guess I'm not up to speed on the 16V cars being allowed. At our track, the 2.2/2.5 stuff smoked everything

The races I watched were littered with saturns, some neons, and a few cavaliers/sunfires.

What dodges came with a 2.5 and what are the hp/trq numbers?

Wiki says 95-99 neon sohc engine had 150hp/135tq

dankspeed wrote: What dodges came with a 2.5 and what are the hp/trq numbers?

Shadows and their offshoots, like Plymouth Sundance, Duster, a few of the slightly larger models had it also. Seems to be easier found in the family friendly versions like 4 doors. Had one in a 4-door Shadow w/AT.

dankspeed wrote: The races I watched were littered with saturns, some neons, and a few cavaliers/sunfires. What dodges came with a 2.5 and what are the hp/trq numbers? Wiki says 95-99 neon sohc engine had 150hp/135tq

Don't overlook the mini-van for a stealth swap. "Hey! What do I know? Its all factory!"

dankspeed wrote: The races I watched were littered with saturns, some neons, and a few cavaliers/sunfires. What dodges came with a 2.5 and what are the hp/trq numbers? Wiki says 95-99 neon sohc engine had 150hp/135tq

2.5 TBI had 100hp, not sure of the TQ.

DOCH neons had 150hp, when running premium, lower with 87, IIRC 130ish. SOHC 130hp

Stock rating on a 2.5 tbi was 100hp/135 tq. I did some REALLY basic mods to one of mine and calculated it at 115hp based on trap speed. The bottleneck is the throttlebody itself.. I believe it is only around ~40mm throttle bore. I got my tbi 2.5 aries to do ~17.0@77 in the 1/4. The 0-50 area is REALLY strong but the lack of flow takes over past that. If you spent a lot of time in that low speed area it would run a lot faster than the numbers suggest.

The sohc neons were mostly rated at 132hp.. I think 95s were rated at 136 due to a different cam. But, putting a bigger stock throttle body on it is worth a handful of horsepower and looks completely stock. Again, if you are mostly keeping it below 60 mph i think the sohc actually has a big advantage.. IF (important note!) they have the same tranny. The sohc had a 3.55 diff ratio and the dohc had a 3.92 ratio. I put a 3.92 trans in a sohc and ended up with something that again felt faster at low speeds than 1/4 mile numbers would tell you. So long story short, if you took a sohc neon and put the 3.92 trans and the bigger throttle body on it, you'd end up with something that looked completely stock but would be noticeably quicker at low speeds than a stock dohc neon. For comparison, i think the neon throttle bodies range from 46-52mm on a 2.0 versus the ~40mm on a 2.5 for the older tbi.

To the OP: racer33 here on the board does a lot of roundy round. Shoot him a PM. He's a super-nice guy.

Personally, again, I'd like to see more of this kind of stuff in the magazine. Sure there are no right-hand turns, but it's aggressive, wheel-to-wheel racing with HUGE bang-for-buck factor. Just sayin'.

I would guess a ban on Hondas and the DSM triplets has to do with the aftermarket development for both chassis- it's ridiculously easy to make either car a world beater for minimal dollars, and it would force the people running alternative chassis to either go to DSM/Honda, or spend gigabucks to keep up. That being said, no one said anything about the colt/mirage/summit triplets..... or any early 90's Hyundai.

I did some rallying (the jersey jump) in a 1988 hyundai excel. While pig slow on pavement, it held it's own on the dirt due to light weight and lack of grip on the faster FWD cars. Dirt + FWD + left foot braking = lots of tail out fun