Eurotrash Motorsports

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!

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!

Tonight, Naresh and I agreed on a name for our new NX 1600. After careful reflection, and in consideration of its colour, condition, and mission, we have christened the little NX, Private Caboose.

Yes, we named him after the lovable, if idiotic, Blue soldier from Rooster Teeth Productions’ hit series, Red vs. Blue.

It’s no Sheila, but it will do. Don’t expect any muffins though :P

Big ups to Rooster Teeth Productions! (feel free to send up a bumper stick and some free DVDs!)

Breaking news -I’ve gone off my meds again and, you guessed it, I bought another car.

Actually, that’s not entirely correct. What I should say is Naresh and I bought a car for snow-x tonight.

We spent the better part of Tuesday evening researching cars and sending out emails. We went to see three cars including the one we ended up buying.

The other two were:

1) A mid 90′s civic. The owner was kind enough to tell us that the shop had “hooked up my VTEC for me” and then referred to his civic as a “sporty” car…..yah -  The worst news is that he has managed to reproduce.

2) A 97 VW GTI. This car was actually pretty disappointing. We were expecting the car to be the “best value” given the price and the potential but this car had a lot of rust, blown struts, and the only lights that worked were the high beams, 1 turn signal, and 1 brake light.

In the end we ended up buying…..

A 1993 Nissan NX1600 with 195k  :) Turns out it belongs to an old friend of mine from high school who sold it to me for half of her asking price.

Check it out.

The car does have a pretty decent exhaust leak. I’ll let Naresh talk about how funny it was sitting in the passenger seat as I rev’d the car up to 5000 rpm.

When we showed up, the DS rear wheel was seized. We jacked the car up, sprayed some PB blaster, and went to work with the hammer (commonly referred to as the gentle persuasion). The parking brake finally gave up and we were in business. The car has two sets of tires too :)

I’ll let N post anything else he’d like to add :)

Check out the Gallery section for more pics.