How I started going steady with Rallycross or The Evolution of a Rx7 rallycross Car

When it comes to racing and cars I have always been a player. Sure I had my type, manufactured in the 80's or 90's RWD cheep, but I never stuck with a particular car or racing discipline for long. I would set a goal, persue it, meet it, and move on. I wanted to try as many kinds of racing and types of cars I could. To demonstrate this, here is a brief car/racing history.

2004 purchased my first sports car,a $1100 944 off ebay, and did my first autocross.

2005 I sold the 944, got a MR2, and did a full season of autocross with the SCCA

2006 I did an autocross with SCCA and NWAA ( a small local club), taught at my first Teen driving school, raced my first rallycross and hillclimb, and then sold the MR2. I then purchased a WRX. I know, not my type

2007 I did a season of autocross with NWAA. No rallycross of hillclimbs this year because I owed on my WRX which I sold and bought my first house. I did purchase my old MR2 back

2008 I did some rallycross, sold my MR2, and built a SR20DET powered 240sx

2009 I made some minor tweaks to the 240 then took it to Bonneville to run in the 130mph club class

2010 Brought more tweeks to the 240 then a full season of rallycross in MR2

2011 I sold the 240, picked up a 85 Rx7 GSL-SE, and set it up for hillclimbing. I planned on running a full season but tore my shoulder. mInstead I managed to pull off a track day before having surgery

2012 With the shoulder fixed, I run the RX7 in the Northwest Hillclimb Association hillclimb championship. I made it to 5 of 8 events in 3 of 5 states. I lost the championship lead to a broken lower control arm in Bogs Basin ID. Dispite only making 5 of 8 events and geting the tow pick-up's fuel from my co-drivers company at $1 a gallon, I still spent twice as much mony as I can justify spending on racing.

At this point in my life, I relised that I need a long term relationship with a car and a particular form of racing. I have two criteria; it has to be fun and it has to be a cheap date.

As far as the car goes, I think my GSL-SE fits the bill. Besides, the cheepest race car is the one you already own. For the racing, rallycross has to be it. I can do a full season of local events and go to nationals in OK for 1k less than I spent on hillclimbs last year. This depends on finding a co-driver for nationals.

After all that, we come to the purpas of this thread; to document my adventurs in rallycross and to pass on what I've learned to anyone interested in the combination of rallycross and magical spinning triangels.

Please make it stop

Spell check is magic.
It sounds like you're having fun. Keep having fun.

In reply to icaneat50eggs:

This is a positive topic if you do not have anything positive to add fell free Not to post on it.

I've had to sit in grid all season behind an RX7 in rallycross. Damn, I hate the way RX7s sound.......

Now that you are a player in the world of car racing, please become a player in the world of spell check. :)

And let's see some pictures!

In reply to irish44j:

Working on some pictures

Awesome! More rallycross is always welcome, and the RX7 is a proven platform for it.

irish44j wrote: I've had to sit in grid all season behind an RX7 in rallycross. Damn, I hate the way RX7s sound.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2KZByFivwU

In reply to Knurled:

Great video that is the Shallow Pockets Rallycross Team Rx7 from over on the Dirty Impreza forum. Will MacDonald and Peter Remner drove it to a 1st and 3rd in the Mod RWD class at Nationals last year.

Yup. Also drove it home today.

Peter

Rallycross is more addicting than crack. Get dem pictures up, bra!

greggotgame wrote: In reply to Knurled: Great video that is the Shallow Pockets Rallycross Team Rx7 from over on the Dirty Impreza forum. Will MacDonald and Peter Remner drove it to a 1st and 3rd in the Mod RWD class at Nationals last year.

Don't forget the Miata driven to 2nd place by Christopher.

irish44j wrote: I've had to sit in grid all season behind an RX7 in rallycross. Damn, I hate the way RX7s sound....... Now that you are a player in the world of car racing, please become a player in the world of spell check. :) And let's see some pictures!

I get more complaints about the smell and the blue fog. (but I never seem to have mosqito problems anymore)

Winston wrote: Awesome! More rallycross is always welcome, and the RX7 is a proven platform for it.

Indeed! even with 4 blown shocks I managed to take FTD for the class in morning and afternoon heats over the weekend, lost 1st place by .4 seconds because I hit a cone on each parade lap lol 2nd out of 9 still aint bad.

I saw MR2 and rallycross in the same sentence. I'm watching...

EvanB wrote:

greggotgame wrote: In reply to Knurled: Great video that is the Shallow Pockets Rallycross Team Rx7 from over on the Dirty Impreza forum. Will MacDonald and Peter Remner drove it to a 1st and 3rd in the Mod RWD class at Nationals last year.

Don't forget the Miata driven to 2nd place by Christopher.

You and I should trade cars next year so we're both driving someone else's car so that way we'll both do better than car owner, uh, Evaneezer.

EvanB wrote:

greggotgame wrote: In reply to Knurled: Great video that is the Shallow Pockets Rallycross Team Rx7 from over on the Dirty Impreza forum. Will MacDonald and Peter Remner drove it to a 1st and 3rd in the Mod RWD class at Nationals last year.

Don't forget the Miata driven to 2nd place by Christopher.

It just re-assures that in SCCA RallyX the MR class stands for mazda rear wheel drive.

/waits for E30 owners to swoop in

Hear are pictures of some work I did befor Hillclimb season

Hear is the car as it is now in my garage with the LSD clutches laid out on the hood and no exhaust on the car.

This is my car at the Larison Rock Hillclimb

Jerry wrote: I saw MR2 and rallycross in the same sentence. I'm watching...

an AW12 MR2 finished 2 seconds (out of 600) behind me last weekend - and I was 10 seconds back of the winning RX7 (2nd gen). Both me and the MR2 messed up our last run, else we both probably would have finished closely tied for 1st :)

And I just hate behing behind the RX7 in grid because if I'm behind him in grid, he's ahead of me in the standings for the season :(

fidelity101 wrote:

EvanB wrote:

greggotgame wrote: In reply to Knurled: Great video that is the Shallow Pockets Rallycross Team Rx7 from over on the Dirty Impreza forum. Will MacDonald and Peter Remner drove it to a 1st and 3rd in the Mod RWD class at Nationals last year.

Don't forget the Miata driven to 2nd place by Christopher.

It just re-assures that in SCCA RallyX the MR class stands for mazda rear wheel drive. /waits for E30 owners to swoop in

Can't talk at the moment.....I've only won one of three events this season so far, and the RX7 in my class has won two.

So I finally got some time to work on the Rx7. There are several things that need to happen before my first event at the end of July. I have to finish freshening up my LSD and reinstall it, build new exhaust and fabricate some skid plates. As I am still waiting on some of the parts for the exhaust system to come from Summit and Mazdaspeed has not yet approved my application so I can order LSD parts, I started on the skid plates. I was hoping to use aluminum but could not find it at a decent price so I salvaged a skid plate of a F-250 and was going to install it instead. I needed some angle iron to fabricate mounting points so I stopped by a local machine shop to see if they had any I could buy. They had the angle iron and also a 4'x4' sheet of .25 aluminum sheet that was left over from another project. The owner said he would sell me the aluminum I needed for $2 a pound so I went home and made up a templet of what I wonted to build. I brought the templet back to the machine shop and not only did the owner sell me the aluminum cheep but he transfered my templet to the aluminum cut it out and made a 45 degree bend in the front lip for me and for all that he would only take $40. Turns out he builds hot rods as a side business and wonted to help out a fellow car guy.

Hear are the dimensions of the skid plate if any one would like to use them. It covers from several inches in front of the oil cooler to over the tie rod but you cold make it longer if you wonted. Mine weighs 14 lbs but if you used thiner aluminum you could get the weight down some. Hear are some picture of the reinforcing work I did and the mounting points I fabricated.

Hear is the skip plate with the mounting holes drilled.

Hear is the plate mounted on the car.

Ok so hear are my Jr. fabricators. Every seven year old should know how to weld. My daughter wonted some welding lessons to but she has a broken hand and I kept having visions of her cast caching on fire. So she will have to weight.

I got some more time to work on my Rx7 this week so I fabricated my self some new exhaust. I did not have a lot a cash to spend on it so I just bout the basic components and built it my self. I used two 6“ radius 90 degree mandrel bends some left over 2“ exhaust tubing two resonators and a high flow cat from Flowmaster. I topped it off with a Supper Trap S/C. I am not a accomplished fabricator or welder but my work is passable for what I need it for and should last for quite some time. I used sections of the mandrel bends for the larger radiuses and to fine tune my angles I just made several cuts 90% if the way throw the tubing bent the cuts closed and welded them up. This worked quite well but the end product looks a little like a hack job.

Hear is a picture of the mid pipe and end section of the exhaust as well as the Supper Trap muffler I used. Hear is the system under the car. This is a heat shield I built to keep the Supper Trap from melting my bumper cover. I am having to reroute and re-plumb the air tube into the exhaust as it hangs to low for off road use and my high flow cat did not come with a air tube connection. I have to have it connected to stay “Emotions Legal” for the prepared class and the 5th 6th ports on my motor are operated off the back pressure from the exhaust.

I finally got my Mazdaspeed membership squared away and the parts for my differential are on the way. I went ahead and ordered the parts to build my suspension. Basically I am using Knurled’s National Championship winning suspension setup without the panhead bar as a starting point. I will be adding adjustable coil sleeves front and back so I can run 2.5“ I.D. springs all around. Thanks to Knurled for maintaining his thread on Special Stage all of the good information he has collected has really been helpful to me in planing this build. With my current dampers I can’t run the spring rates I would like to so I will be soft all around for this year. 175 lbs front and 125 lbs back. This should be OK for this year and for the first two or three events of next year but by the time it drys out I hope to be able to run 250 lbs front and 175 lbs rear. I would like to do some experimenting with different spring rates for different track conditions as well as progressive vs linear springs. I can only do two events this year one the end of July and one in September. Fortunately they are both two day events so if I run both AM and PM every day that will be like running eight events but mutch compressed. I will also have a co-driver at both events witch should be help full. I just hope the car holds up.

Wow it has been almost three months since my last post and so much has happened. My suspension build finely came together two days before my first event of the year. Hear are some of the highlights.

The front suspension was pretty straight forwards, cut off the old spring perch and weld on a new one, once you have determined the location that results in the range of adjustment you need. Slip on the coil sleave and spring add the upper spring perch and reinstall. The car already has Tokico Illumina adjustable shocks but when I has them off the car I found that the rebound was not adjustable anymore it just stayed at the softest setting when you changed the settings.I am pretty sure that this is from a small off track adventure I has at the Mary Hill hillclimb last year but compression adjustment worked fine. It will have to do for now.