Night Owl Racing - 2025 $2000 Challenge| $2000 Challenge Presented by Tire Rack forum |

Night_Owl_Racing New Reader
8/27/24 6:47 p.m.

Night Owl Racing is back for the 2025 $2000 Challenge Season.

(2024 Season: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/2000-challenge/night-owl-racing-2024-2000-challenge/257811/page1/)

For this year we have new shop space, a new paint job, and most importantly a new transmission. Over the summer the team has regrouped and taken the time to sort out business related activities. After the failure of our automatic transmission in the 2024 competition, we carefully removed the auto and hastily threw it in the nearest dumpster. In place of that hunk of aluminum we installed a junkyard E153 manual transmission. It took its rightful place in the back of the car paired to a 3MZ from a ES330.

After mocking that up, we shifted our focus to the exterior. The once bare-metal body has now earned itself a paint job. We carefully removed the battle scarred widebody and hastily threw it in the dumpster next to the automatic transmission. After some light bodywork, the shop got turned into a temporary paint booth. After the fumes settled (in our lungs), we were left with a white car.

(Its blinding)

Next, the car went into the computer. The widebody was revived through CAD (Cardboard-Aided-Design), and perfected with CFD analysis. For the widebody this year, we graduated from angle grinding to CNC plasma cutting. Our metal of choice, aluminum.

(Its blinding)

So here we are.

wvumtnbkr UltimaDork
8/27/24 8:43 p.m.

Moar!

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
8/27/24 9:15 p.m.

berkeley yeah!

Mr_Asa MegaDork
8/27/24 9:23 p.m.

Love it.

Piguin Reader
8/27/24 9:32 p.m.

That looks amazing.

Recon1342 UltraDork
9/11/24 3:24 p.m.

Here we go again!!!!

Night_Owl_Racing New Reader
2/26/25 11:07 a.m.

Welcome back, we have been busy. Here’s a quick update of some of the more notable items that we’ve completed.

The car has lost weight

We felt that this Festiva was just too heavy for us. First, we un-sketch-ified the rear frame. This involved cutting the rear bar out and creating proper subframe mounts. We also used this opportunity to get rid of the un-needed structure of the car… who needs structure anyway?

Next, we attacked the front. The front end is already extremely light because there’s only a fuel tank and radiator. However, we felt that all weight is bad, so we bought a 3rd angle grinder.

Lastly, we stripped all weight we could from the doors, which were surprisingly heavy. We ended up cutting the weight in half by pulling the door bars out.

The car has gained weight

While we are all about cutting weight, we are also a team of students and most of us are actively trying to stay alive. Additionally, we realized that this will be many members first experience in a car of this caliber. For those reasons (and also chassis stiffness) we decided to do a basic roll cage. We bought tubing, a bender, and a notcher. This was way harder than we expected, I guess there’s a reason people make a career out of this.