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Grenadiers

Keith Jones and crew, just got back from Las Vegas and the Chumpionship car race. The 1987 924S Keith built, performed great, no breakage, no leaks, no problems, and was a fun car on the track. Mid 60 temps, low humidity of course, some wind, lots of sun. The E30 cheaters and Miata cheaters won the top spots, because, well, they're E30s, and Miatas! No heavy rear torsion carriers, dinky brakes, not that they use them much, stripped lightweight cars they are. Out of 46, we came in 16th. Not bad. The track is outside the Nascar track, new asphalt this past summer, real sticky. Our Dunlop Direzza IIs did a fantastic job, lots of tire squealing around the corners, scared off some~! 17 corners, high speed sweepers, 2+ mile course, pretty sore afterwards.
First, a little sight seeing, Hoover Dam.

Typical chumpcar wrenching

Hot pit

Our car

Lambo pace car, first day.

Spectators

Front Straight, the quiet red toofah.

Driver Bob getting ready

Keith nursing the generator to life at our pit.

Our Rottie lowering the water level at Lake Mead.

Lots of fun, first day was a DE for me, front runners were 1:58 or so per lap, 2:17s for me, Keith did a 2:02. Second day, I did a bunch of 2:06s, and we basically held our spot that day. Too many laps down for higher, and we held off the too many laps down challengers. Crazy finish both days, dusk they call it. Did more actual 'racing' the second day for me, instead of giving up
the line. Lots more to learn~!
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'83 944 Track car.
'88 924S Track car.
'89 944 Turbo
2004 Winnebago Vectra monster RV
2012 Jeep Wrangler
2014 Kia Soul
2001 Ford F350 powerstroke

Cedric · Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 2816 Location: Sweden

NIce story!

I guess you are prohibited from running glass windows? But why not plastic/lexan windows?
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1980 924 Turbo
www.instagram.com/garagecedric/

Grenadiers · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 11:34 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure about the rules for that, I don't recall seeing any rear hatches out there. Here's a short video of another driving squealing his tires, at the 50 second mark is the right hand sweeper. The buildings on the left are a lot closer than in the video. Not much off-track exit area, plus, lots of gravel on the apex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcQXtd_v3_c&feature=youtu.be
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'83 944 Track car.
'88 924S Track car.
'89 944 Turbo
2004 Winnebago Vectra monster RV
2012 Jeep Wrangler
2014 Kia Soul
2001 Ford F350 powerstroke

fiat22turbo · Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 4040 Location: Portland, OR

Britain Smith and his team are running lexan on their ChumpCar 931.

More info on Team UBoot Rennen Werks ChumpCar efforts:

https://www.facebook.com/UBootRennenWerks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BwAAFDZFao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttk4PAEQT74

He used a heat gun and some ratcheting straps to bend a piece of plastic acquired from TAP Plastics over the stock glass hatch. Trimmed it off and its screwed (with large washers) and glued to the existing frame.

The side windows were fairly easy in comparison.

I suspect it would improve the aerodynamics a bit.

A front airdam and rear spoiler might help a bit as well (though maybe not as large as theirs)

Still that was a great effort and looked like a bunch of fun (a Facebook friend ran with Jim Morton and ended up winning the thing in their Z car) and another friend was running a Fiat X-1/9, not sure how they finished, I'll need to look.
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Stefan
1979 924 Carrera GTS (clone-ish)
1988 944 Turbo S (Silver Rose)

924RACR · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:56 pm Post subject:

Rear aero is very important; might consider in fact even throwing on a spoiler and splitter also made out of lexan. Easy to do, simple to brace with turnbuckles from the HW store.

Good work, keep it up!
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Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

KDJones2000 · Joined: 14 Sep 2010 Posts: 322 Location: Phoenix, AZ

Great pictures, Dave!

Here are some more pics and video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv39ExHDMOE

This year the rules for Lexan are terrible - to the point that you can't really do anything with it without getting penalty laps.

The 931 must be taking penalty laps if they are using a Lexan hatch, as it goes by the square foot (I think $3 per sq ft). We are already at the $500 "value" limit, so nothing can be done.

Next year however Lexan is free, so if we actually had some races to run, we would consider putting some in for the hatch/quarter windows.

SPEC requires the original hatch, which is where this car is trending towards...
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1987 924S SPEC car
Team Toofah Racing
1988 944 Turbo S