Eurotrash Motorsports

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 :)

So last week Jeff, Phil, myself, my brother Chris and Jeff’s friend the trunk monkey (ie. Pat) got together and started stripping the snowcross cars down.

Surprisingly, everything went great!  Phil, Chris and myself were able to stip the interior COMPLETELY out of the Festiva in about 45min :).  It definitely helped that we didn’t care about breaking anything.  We started by removing the back seat, and then continued to remove the carpeting, all interior panelling/plastic, glove box, trim, door panels, headliner, speaker wiring, and the rear wiper and wiper motor.  We finished by taking off the catback muffler since the catalytic converters weren’t there anyways!

While doing this, we learned something about the ol’ ford:  It’s more than just a two tone racer, its a FOUR tone racer!  The car was originally red, so the interior frame is now red.  While cleaning up the engine bay, we also noticed that the valve cover was painted PINK! So add that to the flat black and navy blue exterior, and we’ve got a thoroughbred race car!

Phil and I were extremely happy to find that the frame seems to be very solid, and has no rust at all.  We completed our gutting, and all that’s left in the car are the two front seats and the dash.  We’re guessing we removed easily over 100 lbs of junk from the car.  On top of that, Phil was able to find us some brand new winter tires, so we now just have to get them mounted on our 12×4.5in Enkei rims, and we’ll be ready for the track!

As we tackled the Festiva, Jeff and Pat tackled the NX1600 in a similar fashion right beside us.  In a race to strip the cars the fastest, we won (although we do have a lot less car to start with).  All the interior was removed except for the front seats and the dash.  Pat WAS disapointed when Jeff stopped him from smashing the t-top glass panels, but it was for the best.  Unfortunately, the Nissan was plagued with some rust around the rear driver side shock tower, so Jeff and Naresh are planning to reinforce the area with some sheetmetal.  A few days later, Jeff came back with Naresh to remove the muffler on the Nissan.  All that was require was a bit of sawsall ;).

All in all, it was a great night and we had a lot of fun!  We filled 5 big garbage bags with the little stuff, and had a pile around 4 feet high by 5 feet diameter of the big stuff from both cars.

Check out the gallery for pictures following the (un)build.  We’re almost ready for January, when we’ll be starting the racing!

Over the winter, Jeff and I were planning on taking a break from racing to save some money and pay some bills.  For the first month, this has gone pretty well.  Unfortunately (well actually, FORTUNATELY), while I was helping setup the snowcross track for the winter series at Capital City Speedway last weekend, I was given a proposition that I couldn’t refuse.

Another MCO member who raced with us this summer, Phil (he drives a 2009 Subaru STI!) was talking about splitting a car with someone to race the series with.  Of course, I couldn’t say no!  So we decided on a price limit and we both started looking.  There were tons of adds for civics, tercels, some golfs, and accords, but the one that really stuck out to us was a 1991 Ford Festiva!

With it’s massive 1.3L engine, it can put out a whopping 63HP and 73 ft-lbs of torque through its 5 speed gearbox.  Keeping those heaps of power on the ground are impressive 12 by 4.5 inch rims.  Our model already came fully race prepped – with half the body panels already painted flat black, a rear wing and a chin spoiler on the front.  Creature comforts include functional heat, lights, wipers, a comfy back seat, and two sets of rims and tires.  The only visible issue we have come across so far is the catalytic converters have been blown out.  For snowcross, who cares!  We’ll rip the exhaust right off!

At the price this car was listed, it was impossible to say no!  I was able to take it for a drive and it ran very well.  Phil has started shopping for some dedicated aggresive winter tires, and we can’t wait to get her ready for the track.  All we’ll need to do is gut a car a bit, and she’ll be ready to race!

Check out the gallery for more pics!