My $2017 Challenge Experience

This is a thread in lieu of build threads because basically all the building happened in the last week. On the run up to the challenge I made several comments in these forums about resurrecting a Dodge van (DAJIBAN!) and planning to bring a Dodge Rampage for the pickup truck class. About one week out i got serious, and this is what happened:

Background: Some may remember that at the same time i sold and delivered my second Honda Insight to Mazdeuce (since repaired and resold to someone else) i also picked up and drug home a Rampage on the same trip. I had helped the PO build and source parts for the Rampage which was being built to promote a company at a show. It did get completed and shown but wasn't the builder's cup of tea past being a paying job to build, and it was ignored until something fell on it and damaged the fresh paint/bodywork and then sold to one of his friends. In that guy's possession it had the wheels stolen off of it and stopped running. He too lost interest and I eventually bought it for $400 hoping to do a VW TDI swap into it (which i have many parts for but not all). Then it sat. 

Also unrelated to the challenge, GF's father had an old 1994 Dodge conversion van that had been sitting for 5+ years. We (GF and I) had planned to get it running and help him sell it until we started doing some work that required us to drag tools all over the place and decided we needed a large enclosed vehicle for that. The broken van was free but looked like this a few months ago:

We got the van fixed up enough to use which required a bunch of normal old-car repairs like fuel pump, tires, minor wiring repair, ball joints, idler arm, swaybar endlinks, and maybe a few other things. All DIRT cheap on Rockauto.com. Of course, it being a Dodge van and actually a preferable body style (low roof, no massive rear overhang, 1/2 ton bolt pattern with better wheel options, and SWEET FLARES pre-installed) and in very good shape underneath the muck, i decided i had to modify it to my liking as well. That mostly involved getting shorter tires for lowering, lowering the front and rear suspension, and spacing the stock wheels out to fill the flares.  The lowering was done the week before the challenge. 

Here we have the 'break it loose or break it off' technique on some 24mm nuts that haven't moved in 23 years. 

Success! 

Chop Chop featuring GF's foot that held the spring still while i took the angle grinder to it. Not seen: The new slag holes in her socks. TEAMWORK.

So after determining that the drop shackles i bought cheap on ebay were the wrong style and that my right-angle drill and bits weren't really suitable for redrilling the front spring perch hole,  i kind of gave up and 'just' took out the overload leafs. This turned out to be pretty much perfect on the drop anyway, just a bit soft now. I'm going to come back around and re-do most of this lowering in a different way later. I'm picky about lowering, believe it or not..

Oh and did I mention that all my U-bolts and schackle bolts and pinch bolts came out perfect after 23 years, 5 of them sitting in the dirt, BECAUSE TEXAS? 

Ok, on to the Rampage.  My plan for the rampage was to swap on the wheels/tires from my Caravan (which i ran last year), swap on some more functional front coilovers my friend was donating, and clean the car. I got it 'running' well enough by sorting out some fuel filter issues, setting the timing, and stripping out all unnecessary vacuum equipment. It ran rich but WOT'd well enough and i figured that was good enough since the car was slow. Yes, i certainly could have made it blazing fast with a turbo swap i've done many times before,  but remember i bought this truck to diesel swap and never planned to sink time (least of all, money!) into the engine it had. 

Anyway, i decided to flat-tow it with the van, which meant i needed to buy another tow bar. Harbor Freight sold the last one they had in stock to a guy right in front of me, but come to find they had an open-box one missing one bolt that i got for $40. The better to subject every i-10 driver and bystander for the next 2000 miles to 2300 lbs of metal moving at 70mph with, my pretty! Turns out it mounted beautifully through the existing holes in the bumper cover and required no body mods. Not seen: Extra bolts i added for 'safety'.

The Rampage had already been lowered, partially with advice i gave the PO. It had an 'axle flip' (put rear axle on top of leaves instead of below) which i was on board with, and coilover sleeves on stock struts which i was NOT ok with. Reason being, you can literally bottom out stock struts and its STILL NOT LOW ENOUGH FOR VIGO. So, i put some 1g Neon Konis with coilover sleeves on it and got it properly low in front.

After mounting my wheels/tires it turned out i didn't like how the wheels sat in the rear wheelwell openings. The axle flip had left the axle a little too far to the rear of the fender opening, and just a smidge too low. I disassembled and rejiggered the rear axle/spring/block interface to move the axle forward just a bit, which also got me that smidge of ride height i needed since the springs are not parallel to the ground in that spot. Anyone see the problem with those shock bushings? I fixed that too (both sides..). I had to shuffle the axle side to side a bit to try to get those 15x8.25 wheels to fit without rubbing, and it still needed a little 'finessing' of the already-ugly fender lips to work.

That is GF running a 1/2" extension with a 36mm socket on it  to roll the fender lips while dad sits in the bed for 'compression'. 

Also had to screw with front coilover adjustments (camber slots, camber plates, ride height) and do a precision eyeball/tape-measure alignment afterwards. I felt that i had to use a little toe-in for towing stability since i was flat-towing it. I'm sure it would have autocrossed better with a little toe-out. 

Anyway, there's a washing machine in the garage that i haven't put to use yet that made a handy dry-erase board for challenge related tasks. You may notice that the only things i didn't mark off were getting a newer spare tire for the van (luckily didn't need to find out if the ancient one would hold up to road use), fixing a radiator leak on the rampage (it only leaked under pressure so i just made sure the system didn't pressurize before i made my drag passes), and fixing the rampage carb. That last one.. oof. That's ironic. More on that later.. 

Last year i managed to arrive at the host hotel at 5am Friday (race day) morning after a blowout and getting stuck in louisiana traffic for 5 HOURS, so we decided to leave pretty early this time. We got rolling about 530 am.

The van was towing very comfortably other than my imperfect wham-bam lowering job and the lack of an overdrive gear (yup, factory 3 spd in 1994..). But that didn't last long. I hadn't even made it to Houston before the van started losing power at higher throttle. A few things clicked into place mentally, such as that i'd recently 'heard' the fuel pump running for the first time since replacing it and that on a few occasions the van had seemed to lack power at high rpm (this thing doesn't see much high rpm). I realized i probably could have averted the current crisis by being a little more proactive and cautious. Suspecting a failing fuel pump, I had Esmii (GF) dig around in the back of the van for one of the two fuel pressure gauges i was carrying ("the one with the long hose, damnit!") so i could pull over and install it. Fuel pressure fitting is under the doghouse so i considered not even pulling over and just having her install the gauge while running, but i acquiesced to my better judgment and pulled over. Installed it, set the doghouse loosely on top and immediately saw the low pressure. 

It's showing ~18psi here but would go as low as 10 under throttle and spec is over 40psi, so..... Knowing we were heading into Houston and my max speed was threatening to go below the speed limit (UNACCEPTABLE) i got online and figured out which Advance Autos had a fuel pump and a fuel filter closest together, ordered them online with about $65 of super-couponing, and went to pick them up. Then, we found a shady spot in an industrial park where i unhappily dropped the bigass tank and got gas in my armpit and struggled and yelled a lot. 

It's not obvious in this pic but i am holding a fuel pump and i am supremely unhappy.  Anyway, after losing about 2 hours to this crap we set off again. We had planned to drive to Orlando on Thursday night to hang out with some relatives for a few hours, but this was throwing that into question. Van seemed ok until we ran into some crazy traffic in Baton Rouge and got off the highway to bypass. After much annoyance dealing with rush-hour traffic, we got back to the clear highway only to notice as i was accelerating up the access road that i had to add a lot of steering angle to go straight. Initially i thought this was a problem with the Rampage as i had just had to hop up a curb for stupid reasons involving Baton Rouge a couple blocks before. Turned out the left front caliper on the van was seizing and had probably been doing so for a little while judging by pad wear and heat marks. I pried the caliper piston back in to free up the rotor and then gently crimped the brake hose with vicegrips so i could limp it to the next Advance Auto. Let me tell you, with a bunch of wheel spacer on the front, having only one functional brake sure adds a lot of 'steering feedback'. Anyway, one store somewhat nearby showed a caliper in stock so we drove to it in rush hour traffic with a really exciting impaired brake system while towing. Upon arrival I found the front door locked! An employee inside made a 'sorry' gesture, but when he saw me sticking around to look at the posted hours (close at 6pm..weird) and then the time (5:59...) he came over to talk. I explained my situation and they let me in, restarted their computers and sold me a caliper. Huzzah! Then we installed it in the parking lot. 

By the time we were done, rush hour SHOULD have been over, but it wasn't because apparently Baton Rouge. I have since learned that Baton Rouge has a worse murder rate than Chicago, which makes total sense to me after my time there. It took forever to get back to the highway, and all hope of visiting relatives on Thursday was dashed. We considered aborting the trip, but decided that the gauntlet had been thrown down and I was going to take it up. Here I am, ASE Master Tech (12 certs total, last one i passed was the HYBRID VEHICLE test for gosh sakes), automotive instructor for the last 3.5 yrs, mobile mechanic with enough tools on board to do almost anything.. If *I* couldn't make this thing work, what kind of standard would that set for all the people out there trying to do silly races and exciting trips with old/cheap/unlikely/'unreliable' vehicles and less experience/tools? Give up before you start? I felt like i'd be throwing the whole spirit of the GRM Challenge by the wayside if i gave up, and that was not about to happen! I have to embody, if not the grand success made possible by forethought and planning, at least the modicum of success guaranteed by unflappable perseverance! So, we drove on. 

We weren't done with tow vehicle trouble just yet. We pulled off for gas and food somewhere in Mississippi and upon leaving for the highway, i experienced a bad 2-3 shift flare. Once in 3rd i rolled into the throttle to see if it would slip and it went completely away (what people call neutralized). We pulled over again, determined that there was in fact still fluid in the trans, and thought about how long the drive back to Texas would be in 2nd gear (terrifying). I started driving up the access road again to feel out the problem a little more, and it went into 3rd gear and didn't flare or slip even under heavy throttle. Then i really had to put on my thinking cap. I pulled out my phone and looked up an 'apply chart' for the old Torqueflight. It has two clutch packs and two bands (and a one-way clutch). By looking at what 'holding elements' apply in which gears and comparing that to what gears you have functional you can rule out a lot of things that can't be wrong and zero in on what is. The only holding element that applies in 3rd gear but no other is the forward clutch pack. Since i knew that it was now engaging and not slipping, i knew the clutch pack itself was 'ok'. All my shift points were normal and all my other gears worked. By looking at the symptoms and the things that DID work i was able to deduce that the problem was probably limited to a shift valve in the valve body, and the valve body IS TECHNICALLY something i can take apart and repair on the side of the road (although i wouldn't recommend it!!). Therefore, we decided yet again to strive onwards!! We experienced no further trans issues.  

The drive from San Antonio Texas to Gainesville Florida is long and boring, but the worst part about it is Florida. Driving into Florida on i10 is mind-numbingly boring. Here in Texas we have less trees than i would like, but I finally realized that being hemmed in by them such that all the world that you can visually see are two walls of trees and a long straight road makes it difficult to stay interested in driving. Last year my teammate and I were really struggling in this section and ironically the only thing that woke us up enough to make it  to Gainesville was a blowout on my Caravan that scared the bejeezus out of us.  This year we were again rolling through the Florida panhandle after midnight and after ~16+ hrs of driving and decided the safest thing to do was to pull into a rest area and sleep. 

I lost a center cap along the way which was sad. Anyway, knowing we were still 4+ hrs from Gainesville not counting food and, get this, washing the challenge car for the first time since i've owned it, we slept in the van from ~1-4 am and then resumed driving. The sleeping in the van thing was something i actually intended to do on this trip because i've never actually tried it before and I wanted to see if it was decent enough that i could plan to travel that way if we took this van on some other low-budget adventures. The comfort is actually pretty good and somehow my 6'0 all fits sideways across the bed thing in the back. Upon resuming driving we discovered there were no more truck stops with showers directly between there and Gainesville, so we found an RV park and showered there instead. Then we ran both vehicles through a car wash and headed to the track, finally arriving about 11:30 am.  

We had a humorous time getting registered with Ed (Higginbotham) as we discussed our budget. I really didn't spend any new money on this build other than on a pack of washers and a $9 set of bumpstops that i only needed because i was hauling a motor back to Texas in the bed of the rampage (more on this later). Anyway, we got our goodie bag and got started stickering up the race car. Pat Culkin and I applied the main door stickers and thought we were doing pretty poorly at it. That was before I saw what the rest of you did! Eesh! I feel like when GRM staffers consider which pictures of each car to put in the mag, they probably have to consider which side of the car has the least-badly applied stickers. We then went to tech where my 100% factory battery hold-down system failed tech. I borrowed a ratchet strap from John Hoopes (thanks!!) that got us through tech. 

We were already getting a pretty late start at the Autox, a fact which became very clear to me when on our first run the car lost power pretty much every time I turned the steering wheel. All of our 'testing' of the car before the even happened on two-lane country roads where I realize now i wasn't swerving back and forth hard enough. The car had never done this during those drives. So, back to pits to do what I had always wanted NOT to do: Spend a bunch of time dicking with a carburetor on a motor i didn't care about.

Believe it or not, in the whole 15 years that i've been basically working on cars for a living, i've never had to do much work on carbs. Everywhere i worked that carbs came through always had someone who was more experienced with them who took the job, and my personal vehicle history hasn't included too many carb cars. A few years ago i decided that I was annoyed about that hole in my knowledge so i started reading up a bit and learned the basics of how carburetors work (which is actually very simple) and even went so far as to put a wideband on a carb CRX so i could do some real tuning.  Quite a few people came up to us to shoot the E36 M3 about the rampage while i worked on the carb, and many of them had owned rampages in the past! We got some pretty good carb theory help from a couple of semi-local guys who own a shop and said they come to spectate every year. Anyway, I managed to fix three different things wrong with the carb, but it took a good while and we didn't get back to the grid until ~2:30 when most people were taking fun runs. I got one run where i had throttle for 'most' of the course and got a 42.0. I was excited about that because it was my first real pass and the car didn't even work the whole time. Unfortunately, the next one was worse and the car stalled at the end of the course and i actually coasted it off the course and most of the way back to my parking spot. It seemed to be that the electric fuel pump (which was poorly wired and even more poorly 'mounted' by the PO) had stopped working, but it started working again almost as soon as i noticed it was off. Knowing that there was a good chance I wouldn't find a smoking gun in the wiring or be able to replace a failing pump in the time left, i just checked a few basic things and left it alone after taking only 3 autoX runs.   

It's ironic that I came with the attitude of not really caring how the car performed because i assumed that even if it ran right it would be nothing special. What actually happened is that the car did well enough even while not working right and with no laps under my belt that it made me wish i could have made 'real' runs. I could easily bench race the car into the 40.x's in my head after running 42.0 in the way that I did. Mazdeuce and I shared a laugh about this phenomenon of not being the competitive sort until you belatedly realize you could be doing very well if you tried. As it stood, our one semi-functional first lap was apparently sufficient to beat the vast majority of the 'trucks'. I think the only ones that beat our '100hp except when it's not running right' Rampage were the turbo rampage on R-comps, the converted Q45, and of course the converted Miata.  

*If anyone has or has seen pictures of my car on track, please hook me up! This thread sorely needs more pics!!*   

The drags went about the same. After one pass where the float bowl ran empty half way through third, we were back in the parking lot screwing with the carburetor. Was it the fuel pump having issues, or the float level? I didn't know but adjusted the float level since it was what i could do. Every time we worked on the carb we had the blessing of people keeping us company with conversation and banter. This time we got to have a good talk with Blair Warner, who i'd only just met although he is a good friend of a good friend (both live in PA) and who it turns out has built several different carb setups of this old dodge 4cyl. Many laughs were had as i dropped parts and we made jokes about how slow carb builds on these engines were, and then it was back to the lanes. My second pass the carb didn't start acting up until RIGHT before crossing the traps, so it was 97% good run and turned out a 17.6. This was already slightly better than i thought was a safe bet, so we called it right there. Since we didn't get to hang with relatives on Thursday night, we were going to try and drive to Orlando and do it on Friday night. Again, a similar thing happened. I didn't realize how many people were in the same ballpark as us in the drags, or i would have tried to race them for hilarious photo ops! There were way over half a dozen people we could have had good races against (at least three of them were Miatas..) and that's not even counting the people who only went slow because their cars didn't work or actually exploded. 

We went to Orlando, good times visiting relatives were had, and we had a great time meeting people and talking about the cars during the concours. An especially good time was had during the valve cover racing. We had front row 'seats' on the back of Ashyukun/Rob's turbo rampage (great meeting you!). Something about watching the kids, and the hilarous commentary and banter from the adult peanut gallery (my life has been partially inspired by Waldorf and Statler from the Muppets) made that whole part of the day a beautiful thing. 

One of the last things we did was load up a Miata engine into the back of the Rampage. GRM'er Yupididit recently moved from California to my hometown of San Antonio Texas and hilariously bought an engineless miata before he even finished unpacking. He bought a Diesel Excursion and a car trailer for the purposes of the move but they've immediately become live-in 'enablers' in the best spirit of a typical GRM "should i buy this" forum thread. We were able to get him a Miata engine, convertible top, and a few other goodies from North Carolina all the way to Texas by way of Florida through the magic of GRM!  Thanks to Dusterbd and team for running it from NC to FL, and to Georgia Tech for lending their engine hoist. Not only that,  we had a fallback plan in place to get it back to Texas in case my hoopty train broke (shoutout to Mazdeuce, again). Did i mention i have less than $2017 in my tow rig and challenge car combined?  GRM is a nexus of camaraderie, acceptance, and hilarity in the car world and I thank everyone who showed up in any capacity to be a part of that vibe. 

The trip back to Texas was uneventful. We left Gainesville early, slept in the van again and made it back to Texas at about 7:30pm local time, right at the edge of consciousness again. Slept 10 hours Sunday night and a similar amount Monday night. We had a blast and are already planning for next year! 

Damn, your drive is already Homeric and you haven’t even gotten to Gainesville yet. Subbed for the next post. Will there be any Harpies or plagues? 

Wanted to stop in to say I loved the truck (and the van), I'm sorry I didn't get to say that in person. I think my copilot Ian did chat with you guys for a while.

Robbie, we went by your truck and did talk to your teammate for a good long while! Talk of broken cars despite being professional technicians was all very relatable and made for excellent commiserating! Sorry we never found you this year! 

Thanks for sharing! Some of us not directly involved but watching from the bleachers online are interested in what competitors like yourself go through. Seems like most of the discussions here on the forum and in the videos center around the same few vehicles/teams over and over.

Wow.  What an adventure getting there.

Also, Advance Auto online coupons FTW.

Dropping a fuel tank from a huge van on the way to Florida is something that would've pissed me off lol. It's weird I hardly ever heard of a Rampage and never seen one, I saw my first one a few miles from my house and immediately thought it was Adam. 

I'm loving that last pic though! Cant wait to get it in the car. Yes, GRM is a great group of enablers and the most helpful folks on the internet and in real life! Even my wife is impressed by the way they folks here help each other out. She also enables by simply not caring what I drag home. Looking forward to attending my first challenge next year since this is the closest to Florida I plan to live lol. 

It was great meeting you in person finally after so many text messages back and forth trying to diagnose and fix things on my Rampage! I really appreciate all the help (both so far and doubtless even more over the coming year...), and wish there had been more I could have done to help with the problems with yours...

Im just adding a pic because i didn't have a single good pic of this thing because i suck. Anyway, here it is. 

In reply to Vigo :

I have a few pics.

You should write for magazines but you should take more pics.

LOL

My son hasn't stopped talking about how cool your "racecar truck" is lol. 

yupididit said:

My son hasn't stopped talking about how cool your "racecar truck" is lol. 

Hah, cool! You should take it and take him racing in it, then. Or in the unlikely event that i actually make it to a local event before then, i'll give you a heads up so you can bring him out. 

Lol I don't have the space for another car. He'd love that though!

I just meant borrow it for a race day. Or however long you care to, although it's not currently street legal. My only goal for this thing up til i get parts to complete the diesel swap is just to autoX it as it sits. 

That's dope. I gotta check and see if they let little kids ride along.