Ah springtime, what a beautiful season. The snow banks are shrinking and no longer tower above me. Flowers are poking out from the dirt. The sound of birds and tires chirping fill the air. It’s a time when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of….motorsports.





Why, what is that over there?






Hooray, my car is once again visible to the naked eye! It was covered with snow for several months but that’s over and done with for at least 6 months. Now that temperatures are above zero I can start wrenching on it and god knows how much of that I’ve done on this thing.

Our fledging rallycross program is having its very first season this summer. The local drift club is supposed to be hosting events as well and the local chapter of the Porsche Club of America should have 2-3 autoxes like they usually do. Combine all of that with my second season of autox with the Winnipeg Sports Car Club and we have ourselves a busy, busy summer racing. So in preparation I plan to do the following:

-Install new front and rear sway bars
-Install new set of shocks and springs
-Replace front suspension bushings
-Mod the Watts links
-Replace the rad
-Fix the oil cooler leaks
-Refinish second set of wheels
-Weld new exhaust segment (mufflers plus over axle pipe)
-Rework ignition system
-Rebuild carb

That’s all the major stuff minus some welding projects on the side (strut tower bar, alternator relocator, etc). Of course there’s going to be a bunch of little **** that’ll eat up all my time and frustrate me to no avail. Don’t worry, I will be documenting the racing and build for everyone’s entertainment. So let’s begin our journey into the world of nonsensical curse words and bloody knuckles.





I don’t know which one’s more crooked, the fence or my exhaust. It rattles against the heat shielding constantly. The exhaust, not the fence. After flooding the car half a dozen times over the span of several days I finally got it running and idling. Now I just have to drive it off the front lawn, onto the street and eventually into the garage. I say eventually because the bolts holding the garage door opener to the door decided to go WHEEEEEE! and liberate the door from its horrible captivity. Fly, fly right into the concrete!




******* bolts.

I recline myself into the drivers seat for the first time in half a year. Mmm…just as claustrophobic as I remember. Pop it into reverse and slip the clutch…



Yeah.



Yeah. So the thread title is a bit misleading at this point. It seems the ground is still a bit too wet right now and I…can’t move. I tried lowering the tire pressure but that just resulted in more airborne mud. Stupid LSD, get me out!

So yeah, I have to figure something out. Expect sporadic updates until I finish failing my courses.

 

Dig Her Out Quitter!

 

Now there is an attitude I admire and can get behind. Good start on your write up and an appropriate sense of humor for things to come. Good luck with your season this year.

 

Bah! Use the wet ground as an excuse to do lawn burnouts.

 

Make your wife push while you work the accellerator

 

nice story man, i agree with not quiting and also using your wife to push you while your on the gas,lol,and also with the excuse for doing lawn burnouts but dont go to crazy!!seems like you got a lot of stuff to do, the faster you get it out, the faster you can do some work then have some fun!!good luck

 

nice story man, i agree with not quiting and also using your wife to push you while your on the gas,lol,and also with the excuse for doing lawn burnouts but dont go to crazy!!seems like you got a lot of stuff to do, the faster you get it out, the faster you can do some work then have some fun!!good luck

 

So there was a nice surprise when I opened the front door yesterday




























It's going to be raining/snowing for the next couple of days. No biggie, at least I won't be distracted with the car when finals come.

Hey, who said I was quitting. I'm just....savouring the experience

Thanks! Hopefully this will be entertaining AND educational. Edutainment, if you will.

As much as I like horticulture the idea of fixing all that is....not that appealing

LOL at the wife comments. Nothing of the sort right now, not sure how well that would go as I'm currently in university and living with the parents. And I don't know how good the realdoll is at pushing cars...

 

You could push while you put her on the gas. Or, just put her in the passenger seat and pretend to drive around . . . . .

 

^^^LMAO

 

Just force some old plywood scraps under your tires in the direction youll be driving out, once you get out of the hole and start moving you should be able to get it out of the yard as long as you baby it and dont lose momentum.
Ive gotten -many- cars unstuck this way.

 

Good writeup. Hope your season goes good. BTW, how'd you get all the quotes in one post..lol. I haven't figured that one out yet.

 

haha i was gonna say that! that technique is famous for getting trucks/cars out of the sand here in hawaii.

 

Yay, I'm back! The lack of precipitation and soaring temperatures (8 degrees C, yesss) gave me an opportunity to finally get my piece of **** sweetheart off the front lawn.

The weather and lack of operation always makes the first start a bit tricky. It's pretty much pull the choke, crank it, glimmer of hope that it'll actually start on the first try, engine dies, cursing, crank it with the accelerator to the floor, engine dies, pull the plugs, crank the engine to get the gas out, spray oil into housings, put in a set of dry plugs, crank it, car starts. Note that I usually have to go through several cycles of deflooding before the car starts.

With the car finally running I sat down and let it warm up for a couple minutes. I moved my head around and scowled at the fact that it brushes against the headliner. I had an opportunity to drive a friends FB (no sunroof, cloth seats) and my god, I actually had headroom. Let me tell you, the possibility of autocrossing without having to tilt my head sideways is quite appealing. I'll figure something out later.

Now time to turn my car from a giant lawn ornament into something that can move. Reverse, slip the clutch aaaand almost. I was able to lurch it back and forth but not enough to get it out of the ruts. I guess the car sunk in when the ground thawed out. After jamming some plywood underneath the rear wheels and slipping the ever loving christ out of the clutch the car leapt free from its grassy shackles. The lawn is angled a bit and I got precariously close to the fence. After some maneuvering I got the car onto the street. Did I mention I was wearing boots and stalled it about 6 times?





Yeah, I guess trying to move the car before on wet grass wasn't very smart. Wheelspin FTL





Another pic of the aftermath. Ah crap, another thing for me to fix.





She looks a lot happier now, happy enough to pee herself. Argh, have to track down that rad leak. I went to the carwash after to clean off the mud and bird crap. The lack of power and strange exhaust note made me wonder if my dumb *** messed up the spark plug wires. And I did. After correcting that little error and messing around with the idle the car seems to running awwright. Now to start collecting supplies, more updates to follow

 

ROTFL!! Happy enough to pee herself, I love it! Subscribing!! Thats a sharp lookin beater!

 

Hey, glad to see that people are enjoying the buildup. Pre season tech inspections were yesterday. Pretty basic stuff: battery tie down, seatbelt, suspension checks, etc. Just a quick look over to make sure wheels or fenders aren’t going to fly off on the track. A fellow autocrosser was letting us use his parking lot for the tech.





Hooray, the car started!





Everything looks good.





Halfway there. It was a gorgeous day out. During the 15 minute drive I saw a blue FC convertible, 500SL, and a ’32 Ford coupe with a blinged out engine bay. Yep, spring is definitely here.





Here we are and in one piece no doubt. Most of the regulars were there. There’s a boosted Civic, Mazdaspeed Protégé, and track prepped Camaro hiding in this picture. The purple FB to the right belongs to a friend of mine. Man, what I would do for those wheels/tires.





A fast Talon, JCW Cooper, 350Z, and 964 in this corner. Note the rusty 4 door Corolla. He’s got a 20V 4AGE plus some other goodies in it. Not sure if it’s boosted yet. Everything checked out fine (although having a fellow mazda owner doing the inspections didn't hurt). I also got a free go carting pass to boot.





Decided to bring some stuff to work on to, well work. Windows are a bit sluggish so I decided to take the switches apart for a nice cleaning.





One switch apart. Some electrical contact cleaner and it’s looking good as new. Now to put it back together.





Fan-*******-tastic. Some tabs broke off from the inside. Damn, maybe we have some epoxy here…





Ah screw it, I’ll fix it later. I’ve been using one window switch for a while anyways. More to follow tomorrow.