Eurotrash Motorsports

I finally got around to posting the videos from my lapping day with 3-Balls Racing last summer.   Check out the videos section, and enjoy!

Shawn

Last weekend was the second MCO snowcross event and is was quite a day.  Since Phil is in Florida on vacation, he donated his spot in the Festiva to my brother, Chris.  There was also a new driver in the Nissan – one of Jeff’s friends, Bobby, was racing as well.  They had planned on having three drivers, but unfortunately Naresh was sick and couldn’t make the event.  The event turnout was great – there were over 45 drivers, with 22 in FWD category.  It was also nice to see some more familiar faces from the summer Autocross series joining us.

Once again, the track was run in two configurations.  We were able to do three runs on the shorter morning configuration and 2 on the longer afternoon confiiguration.  Because of the colder temperatures all week and the lack of new snow, the track was much icier than last weekend.  Regardless, we all had a blast.

In the Festiva, it was sibling rivalry to the max!  Both my (younger) brother and I were competing (with me having more to prove of course, since I’m older!).  Since the times aren’t posted until after the track is changed, we can only guess how we did.  On my third lap in the morning, I pushed way too hard.  I was expecting the grip to be similar to my first two runs, but with all the other drivers brushing off the snow, there was more ice than expected.  With that, my lines were off and I carried to much speed in more than one corner (resulting in a few snowbank grazings).  After looking at the times, it turned out that Chris and I were neck-in-neck for the first two runs, but my last put him ahead by about 5 seconds. Crap!  Now I definitely had to step up my game!  After a freshly groomed track over lunch, I was one of the first cars out on the second track.  I was again expecting grip levels to be high, so I decided to push hard again.  The entire run was great!  Well, almost.  The last section of the track involved a long straight, then back-to-back tight right and left corners into the stopbox.  The car reacted perfectly to the first right corner, but I overestimated the speed I could carry into the left and I didn’t quite make it.  I ended up inches from a snowbank and having to reverse to get into the stopbox.  Since reversing is not allowed on course, I new my time wouldn’t count, and that I was out of the running for beating Chris.  At the end of the day when we compared times, there was a shocking surprise.  It turns out that my run had ended before I reversed – which means it was legal!  So with a huge upset, I ended up beating Chris by about 5 seconds!  Between my last 2 runs I was able to make up the time (that was close!).

In the Nissan, Jeff and Bobby were also competing hard.  Bobby, having never raced before, was just trying to stay alive, and he did so very well.  On his second morning run, he was faster than Jeff, but Jeff was faster on the other two.  It seemed as though Jeff was really getting used to the car and enjoyed the afternoon configuration, since he was 9-10 seconds faster than Bobby in both his afternoon runs.

Here is a summary of our times:

Bobby (#126) – 20th place – total time: 567.78

Jeff (#33) – 19th place - total time: 547.28

Chris (#91) - 10th place – total time: 496.43

Shawn (#915) - 9th place – total time: 491.11

The larger turnout brought a fiercer competition, and it was evident in our classing.  Our goal for the series is to get some seat time and to have fun, and in that, we were all tied for first!

We were also lucky to have tons of pictures and some videos from the event, so make sure to checkout the snowcross gallery and the videos section!  We also would like to extend a special thank you to the photographers from www.ottawaphotos.ca who were at the event and allowed us to post their pictures on our site.  Thanks guys!

Up until now, the only work that had been done to Caboose was stripping the interior and removing as many non-essentials as possible. In the process of doing that, we came across a fairly serious problem – MAJOR corrosion damage in the form of two large holes in the rear strut towers.

It was obvious to Naresh and I when we bought the car that there would be some issues with rust based on the condition of the exterior of the car but we didn’t expect it to be this bad.

Slightly discouraged, I went back to work the next day and started talking to some of the car guys about the situation and what the best way to proceed would be. Luckily enough, a very generous co-worker offered me his MIG welder for the weekend and said “Have at it!”

And so I did :)

Now I feel that I should put a disclaimer before this next bit – my welding experience is limited to a 3 hour welding lab that I took two years ago while finishing my undergrad. Needless to say, the welds you are about to see are pretty atrocious. That being said, they are better than giant holes :P

So a couple of weeks before Christmas I went out to Shawn’s to work on the car. My friend Bobby, who couldn’t turn down the opportunity to play with a welder, also made the trip up from Montreal to help.

With a borrowed MIG welder (running flux-core) and two 2′x4′ sheets of 22 awg cold-rolled steel (sheet metal) we went to work.

We started by grinding the area around the two holes to smooth out the jagged edges and find some clean metal.

After taking some rough measurements, we cut out our would-be patch and set about welding it in place. Before sending me off on my way, my co-worker had given me a helpful tip about welding patches. He suggested drilling holes around the perimeter of the patch and filling them in to make a “home made spot weld.”  I must say, it was a great suggestion.

Having drilled one hole roughly every 2″ around the first patch, I sat down in the trunk of the Nissan to start welding. On my first spot, I blew a hole right through the interior body work. A quick adjustment of the current and a quick tweak of the feed rate and I was back to work.

Filling in the drilled holes worked very well. Unfortunately, tacking and sealing the edges of the patches didn’t work out as well. The metal was too thin and would just melt away when we tried to weld around the perimeter. To compensate for this, we drilled more holes in the second patch. This worked out very well.

All in all it was an amazing experience. I learned a number of things, one of them being that I can’t weld to save my life, and the other that welding is A LOT harder than it looks.

While the welds certainly aren’t perfect, they’ve already passed their first test in the form of our first Winter Snowcross.

Make sure to check out the Gallery page for more pictures!

It was about time…she spent enough time under the snow…

On first looks – piles of garbage inside the car – I had forgotten the amount of random pieces of interior that were left inside…In fact I thought I bought a car without the interior – instead I spent 2+ hours removing stuff from the inside and its still not done…

Here’s a few shots of the car before the work – as you can see the engine’s out already (read below) as its getting a new set of pistons/rods/bearings, getting bored to 83mm and stroked to 92.8mm (2L)….

In true EuroTrash fashion – there’s home-made sausages hanging in the garage :D

A quick look on the inside gave me a little scare…

Well…it had to be done…so I started ripping it all out with the carpet causing the biggest trouble…the brackets holding the dash in the middle are bolted to the frame all the way at the glass making them impossible to undo – some precision bending and elbow grease quickly solved that problem…interestingly enough the padding under the carpet on the Audi is part of the carpet itself as compared to some of the VWs I’ve put apart where the padding is a separate piece under the carpet…. Once the carpet was out it was easy to see that a bunch of water had accumulated underneath – apparently snow goes through car covers…In either case it was good I got the car inside – I’m sure it would have started rusting the interior sooner or later…

Once again – I bought a car with NO interior….(insert Borat NOT joke) NOT!

Once cleaned out – I got access to the wiring…I never thought I’d say this but this wiring scares me :) These cars have major amounts of electronics inside – there’s airbags all the way back to the C-pillar…Anyways – I will need to “edit” the harness of course – the main things to be left are tail lights / turn signals, headlights, dash….

TO DO list for the interior:

1. Complete clean-up (3 more airbags left, some brackets under the dash etc)
2. Extract wiring harness (door connectors, extra controllers, radio all need to be removed)
3. Strip sound deadening material (plenty all over the car – it will need to be removed
4. Remove doors and weight reduce (get rid of the glass / glass controllers etc)
5. Quick disconnect for steering wheel (preferably splined)
6. 2 Racing seats + brackets
7. Racing harness anchor points
8. Reinstall shifter

The good thing is I can work on all of that while the engine is being serviced…The biggest obstacle seems to be the door glasses – I want to keep them for the safety inspections, however I also want to be able to roll them up/down which means I need the mechanisms, which I don’t have…

Check out the Gallery page for more pictures and stay tuned for more info…

I recently joined the  Loop’d Hookit Network, a social networking site where athletes and competitors can post their profiles and apply for sponsorships from various companies.

Shortly after I joined, I began to browse through the various “auto” related sponsorships and came across an offer from Go Pro. Seeing as I already use their Go Pro Hero Wide camera to film the team’s autocross and my snow-x action, I figured it only made sense to apply.

A week later, I am happy to announce that I am officially sponsored by Go Pro!

SOOO Pumped!

Thanks Go Pro! Check out their products at www.goprocamera.com

Also check out the Loop’d Hookit Network at www.hookit.com

Well yesterday was the first event of the season, and the team and I had a great day!

After the initial prepping of the cars that we did a while back, no one had touched the vehicles.  I went to Canadian Tire on Carling Ave. to get the winter tires that Phil found on the festiva rims, but Jeff and Naresh didn’t need to since their car already had winter tires on it.

The day started off being very stressful as we found out thursday evening that the mufflers we ripped/cut off the cars we not legal, and the cars would not pass scutineering without them (due to noise and safety requirements).  So saturday morning, Phil, Jeff, Naresh, and myself went to work on both the festiva and the nx1600 to try and reinstall our systems.  Thankfully, my brother Chris felt motivated the night before and dug the cars of the snowbanks to give us a head start.  Thanks Chris!

For Phil and I, it was a fairly simple job as we were able to reinstall the cat-back exhaust, and then measure out the pipe that we were missing.  It turned out that we needed 54″ of pipe to connect the headers to the cat-back (the catalytic converter was missing, and the pipe had been cut just after the header).  For Jeff and Naresh, it was a bit more complicated because they had to cut their system up to be able to remove it (since all the flanges were rusted together).  It turns out that it wasn’t too bad for them either and after a short trip to Canadian Tire and about an hour of work afterwards, we had both our exhausts done.  On the nx1600 it made a huge difference in sound.  On the festiva, we discovered afterwards that not only were we missing a muffler, but that our manifold was blown out as well.  We also discovered that our battery couldn’t hold it’s charge, so we ended up fitting the battery from the BMW for this race.  Fortunately both cars passed the scrutineering and we were allowed to race!  It turned out that both of our vehicles drew a lot of attention from fellow racers as they aren’t cars that you see everyday.

We were warned that the day would go on a run-by-run basis as the mild temperatures did not bode well for the track.  If the track was too soft, we would risk breaking through the base to solid ground and thus cause serious damage.  Thankfully it wasn’t sunny and the track held up.  The organizers did a great job and intelligently changed the configuration after the first 2 runs to prevent too much damage at the same spots.  All in all, we each had 4 runs – 2 in each configuration.  The timing of the event is cummulative, so the winner is decided based on their total time of the day.

The first configuration was nice and fast.  Phil and I had a blast driving the festiva and we were extremely impressed with how well it performed.  After the first configuration was finished, Phil and I were in 4th and 3rd place respectively, with only 0.13 seconds separating us!!!  Jeff and Naresh ranked a bit lower, in 9th and 10th places, respectively.  The FWD class had 15 drivers, so we were pretty pleased with our results considering it was each of our first events!

The second configuration was a bit more technical and about 20 seconds longer than the first.  It was also way more fun!!!  The results for the second round we a bit more separated:  Phil was in 8th place, Naresh was in 10th place, Jeff was in 11th place, and I was in FIRST! I couldn’t believe it!  Adding up both rounds, here were our results:

Jeff – 10th place – total time: 430.54 -  distance from leader: +37.90

Naresh – 9th place - total time: 426.08 – distance from leader: +33.44

Phil – 6th place – total time: 406.47 (including 1 cone) – distance from leader: +13.83

Shawn – 2nd place – total time: 393.34 – distance from leader: +0.7

I think we were all pretty impressed with how well both of our cars performed, and we all had a great time.  There were a few photographers out there, and as soon as we get a hold of the pictures, we’ll post them!

The next race it scheduled for next sunday, so stay tuned for more results coming up!

EDIT: here are some teasers - We’ll be updating our gallery with new pictures as they come.

Shawn

Naresh and I were able to record some video of our first snow-x event. The video can is posted as the featured video on the homepage and can also be found in the VIDEOS section.

Hopefully next event we’ll be able to share the camera between cars and get some video from all of us.

Cheers!

Jeff

What a week!

When we had stripped the cars, Shawn and Phil noticed they had a massive exhaust leak due to the fact that they were missing a cat and a good portion of their midpipe. Naresh and I noticed we had a leak coming from the bottom of the flexpipe. It turned out that the flange had actually broken off the midpipe and now there was about an 8″ gap between the two pipes.

Figuring that we wouldn’t need the exhausts, Shawn and Phil removed theirs. Naresh and I actually had to cut ours out due to severely corroded hardware holding the pipes together.

Well at the end of this week, the team found out that if we did not have a functional exhaust system on our snowcross cars we wouldn’t be allowed to race!!

Given that we found this out merely 2 days before the event, we were a little stressed out. After a dozen or so phone calls and even more text messages, we all met up at Shawn’s Saturday morning before the first event. The plan was to reinstall the systems and then patch them as required.

After doing some quick measurements, Naresh and I figured we needed ~10″ of pipe. Shawn and Phil on the other hand needed almost FIVE FEET of pipe (FIVE!). Confident that we knew what we needed, we all packed into Phil’s truck and headed for Canadian tire.

Phil and Shawn bought portions of straight pipe while Naresh and I purchased an 18″  Flex pipe and we all purchased a number of clamps.

I’d like to say that we got the pipe diameters right the first time, but I’d be lying. Lesson learned – don’t trust Nissan forums. The OEM exhaust pipe diameter for a Nissan NX1600 is 1-7/8″ not 2″.

When all was said and done, we had two quiet(er) cars and less than an hour to tow both cars to the to the track to get scrutineered!

It was close but we made it :)

Last weekend, I was finally able to replace my radiator.  I found a used rad from a fellow MCOer who sold it to me for a very reasonable price.  The rad is in reasonable shape, although it had been plugged once.  I was told that it shouldn’t leak, so I’m going to hope for the best!  The overflow tank looked brand new, so that was promising.

The first thing to do when removing a BMW radiator is to remove the mechanical fan from the water pump pulley.  The fun thing about this is that when you try to unscrew it, you turn the pump as well.  So after jamming the pulley with a screwdriver, I was able to get it off.  After that, it was as easy as disconnecting some hoses, draining the coolant (and making a big mess while I was at it) and then pulling the rad out.  Installation of the new one was just as easy.  Since my my car will not be moving during the winter, I decided not to refill it with antifreeze.  I tried to keep as much in the engine block as possible so as to leave as little air in the system as possible.  In the spring, I will be draining the whole system again to fill it with distilled water, so I didn’t want to waste extra antifreeze just for storage purposes.

Also, I didn’t bother reinstalling the mechanical fan as I will be purchasing an electric fan to replace it.  The electric fan will be temperature controlled and will draw less power from the engine (through the alternator as opposed to spooling off the water pump).  It will also be a higher flowing fan to get as much cooling as possible.  With the electric fan, I’ll be getting a performance thermostat that will open at a cooler temperature.

So that was it for yesterday!  As always, check out the gallery for more pics.  On a side note, my new clutch and flywheel are coming in any day now, so hopefully within the next month, I’ll have the tranny swapped as well.

Also, stay tuned as the snowcross season is about to begin!  The first race will be on Saturday January 16th.  I hope you all had great holidays, and that the New Year will bring safety and happiness at the track for all!

Shawn