A team with no name goes racing.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

Javelin said:

In reply to birdmayne :

It sucks that RRL folded

Can't tell if serious, given your E36 M3ting all over them in the locked thread.

I am serious. Their *racing* ideas were great! Their law breaking not so much. If you think it's E36M3'ing on them for covering that, well then I dunno what to tell you. They could have easily gotten that straightened out but we have no idea what was going on behind their closed doors.

But there's no need to get yet another thread all drama llama'd, back to Datsun!!

How are you guys planning on getting it from Reno to Tacoma?

Do any of you know Ben Cort? He has a black and gold Z that's an FP AX / TT car and he does a lot of suspension stuff with it.

Javelin said:

How are you guys planning on getting it from Reno to Tacoma?

 

Do any of you know Ben Cort? He has a black and gold Z that's an FP AX / TT car and he does a lot of suspension stuff with it.

Don't know him.

We've been tossing out different plans and ideas for the last 2 weeks I think. Basically two tow rigs. Two teams of at least two guys. One team in each truck. But we can't seem to coordinate a weekend together that's not at least a month out. And we're all impatient as hell.

In reply to ian sane :

I'll ping Ben and see what he has laying around. He just took all the 4-lug stuff off of his car.

I have a tow rig but not a trailer or a lot of time. I also have an outdoor spot to hold a car if you need to park it in-between for awhile.

Javelin said:

In reply to ian sane :

I'll ping Ben and see what he has laying around. He just took all the 4-lug stuff off of his car.

I have a tow rig but not a trailer or a lot of time. I also have an outdoor spot to hold a car if you need to park it in-between for awhile.

Thank you sir! We are hoping to get the logistics resolved quickly, so we can get to the important stuff like stickers and vinyl and aero. 

Might even put an engine in it at some point.

Javelin said:

How are you guys planning on getting it from Reno to Tacoma?

 

Do any of you know Ben Cort? He has a black and gold Z that's an FP AX / TT car and he does a lot of suspension stuff with it.

I think I've seen him run at the PIR autocrosses. I remember a pretty rad black Z-car driven by a younger, sorta hipster guy. 

I figured I would post this here too. A forza render of a livery concept that would work with the green that's already on the car. Based on the "Doug" flag that represents our beautiful bioregion.

birdmayne said:

Javelin said:

In reply to ian sane :

I'll ping Ben and see what he has laying around. He just took all the 4-lug stuff off of his car.

I have a tow rig but not a trailer or a lot of time. I also have an outdoor spot to hold a car if you need to park it in-between for awhile.

Thank you sir! We are hoping to get the logistics resolved quickly, so we can get to the important stuff like stickers and vinyl and aero. 

Might even put an engine in it at some point.

Oooh. Stickers.

Vehicular acquisition always starts with a grinder, right?

In reply to ian sane :

Hopefully it doesn't end with more of the same. 

A bit of a delayed update:

Early Friday morning I drove to Henry's (dr_strangeland) house to drop off my van for kid hauling duties, and the two of us headed over to Ian's (ian sane) house in the Rover to pick up the trailer. As seen above, there were some... issues... with the locking hitch pin that were quickly resolved with a grinder. Hitch and replacement locking hitch pin installed, and a bit of gawking at some of the awesomeness in and around Ian's garage, and we were on our way.

It wouldn't be a proper road trip if a couple things didn't go wrong. The Rover's air suspension has apaerntly been acting up a bit. After our first fill up with the trailer attached, the ride got noticeably worse... Namely in the front.

It turns out that the front air ride would give us some degree of trouble throughout. Fortunately, most of the roads were smooth enough, and seats comfortable enough, that it was never a major issue.

Aside from the first splash-and-dashes, our first major stop was for lunch in Sutherlin, OR where Kelly's Cozy Corner caught our eye.

Where upon we were greeted by one of the regulars there.

And had a number of rather interesting menu options to choose from... Unfortunately, we agreed that the Ball Park Burger would have not been a good choice for staying awake while driving, and we never did find out what the "Homemade Goop" was.

All filled up, the car and us, onward we went.

There was breathtaking scenery all along the way. From mountain vistas.

To dystopian burnt out forests.

Speaking of which, there were also some controlled burns going on not far beyond there. Who knew that controlled burns were one of the best smells ever, like a blend of cedar and campfire.

There was even a little snow as we reached into higher elevations.

And a lovely sunset as we worked our way down into Reno.

We didn't get into the hotel until after 9, and headed out to grab some dinner. By time we wandered over to Flowing Tide No 2 (I didn't have the heart to ask what happened to No. 1) it was after 10... Happy Hour... So we each got a much larger plate of nachos than expected for our $7... Apparently nobody told this place about inflation.

Up early the next morning, and we took the road out towards Virginia City. Turns out the seller basically lives along the road that Henry is looking forward to eventually hillclimbing. More great views on our climb up to 6k'. 

While Henry may be game for it, i'm not so sure I want to try to average 90mph up this road.

Down a washboard dirt road (Ian, take the back way) to his house, and we were there. The car we had come to pick up was in the garage on jack stands, not at all ready to load.

It turns out that he wanted to complete as much of the remaining critical welding as possible before releasing the car to us. So a quick change of plans and we were going to be bringing the parts car home this trip. The tail lights were also somewhat controversial amongst the team, but more on that later. The car has its good side.

And its not-as-good side.

But it will be headed to a good home.

The area looks really pretty. It's like a less green version of the PNW. 

I'm so very antsy to see this thing in person and start putting it back together.

Also, is that lift....not bolted down?

We worked out way down behind his propery to find the parts car. Along the way were a variety of old Z cars stashed behind various clusters of trees. First was a Z32 2+2 parts car for his current race car build, but sitting just to the side of our parts car was this unassuming project.

Turns out it has an R32 GTR rear suspension... Oh yeah, and an R32 GTR complete front clip welded in under the stock sheet metal. This will eventually be an RB26DETT powered AWD street machine. Tearing ourselves away from this to focus on the parts car, we pulled a trnamission and a couple of diffs from their storage spot in the engine bay and loaded a couple boxes of miscellaneous spares into it.

Having both come from the rust belt, we were actually impressed with how solid it actually was for a parts car... Despite the front end damage and 'perforated' foot wells and rockers.

Now to get it back up the hill. Luckily the seller had an answer for that... He was going to bring it up with the skid steer, of course. A bucket mounted hitch/ball and a tow strap later.

And away we went. Henry got the honors of 'driving'.

All loaded up with parts car and spares (oddly, no pic) and we were on our way. Heading out of the neighborhood, we saw this piece of oddly saveable looking 'yard art'. To each his own, I suppose.

Having only taken a couple hours of our morning, we decided to get an early start and head for Medford, OR to make it an 'easy' drive back to Tacoma on Sunday.  Here's the pic I later grabbed of everything all loaded up, after we had arrived in Medford.

I'm not normally one to post a lot of pics of food, but Henry pointed me this direction on the menu when we grabbed dinner at The Point Pub & Grill.

It's the Mac Daddy Paddy Melt. Soooo good. "Seasoned beef patty with caramelized onions, bacon, house made BBQ sauce, pepper jack cheese, and our famous macaroni and cheese on grilled sourdough."

On our final leg Sunday, I found a possible tail light solution that doesn't have us putting OEM tails on a race car.

Measured by highly calibrated fingers, those trailer lights are practically the same size as the stockers.

So 3 days and ~1600 miles later... We've got a parts car.

ian sane said:

Also, is that lift....not bolted down?

Don't get all holier than thou, Mr. "My lift is fully imbedded and recessed into the floor".  

Besides, it's fine... He's got a GT40 kit on top holding it in place. 

birdmayne said:

In reply to ian sane :

Hopefully it doesn't end with more of the same. 

You just haaaad to say it. We were probably about 30 seconds of more failed attempts to get the alternate locking hitch pin off, from it exactly ending with more of the same.

Don't forget the parts car's resourceful wiring solution.

In reply to ian sane :

I've seen (and done) worse. Likely will again at some point. 

Looks like the floors are shot on the parts car. How does the rest look?

I've also never gotten as much attention with a car as we did hauling that ratty old fenderless parts roller around. We couldn't hardly get out of the truck without somebody approaching us (or turning around to come back and approach us) to ask questions about it and/or tell us stories about their time with one... I can only imagine what kind of attention the actual race car will attract.

You guys are on a way cool adventure!

In reply to Driven5 :

I can attest to the amount of attention a Z on a trailer will attract. I imagine we'll get plenty of people stopping us for story time when we haul to events. 

I can't wait to see the reactions of purists when they see a Honda V6 under the hood!

In reply to birdmayne :

I think it was when we met up with Tim (thatsnowinnebago) and Jeremy (Buckets) for lunch in Vancouver on Sunday, sorry I neglected that part of the story guys, we talked a bit about how easy it would be to keep the car registered with collectors plates. This would legitimately allow us to be able to do some basic testing and tuning on the street... As a side benefit, we could easily drive it to the occasional cars and coffee or whatnot too.

This last weekend our team mechanic, resident beard aficionado, current HQ and all around ok guy, Iansane made a run down to Reno Nevada to bring home the actual race car. 

The trip home at 60+ mph is the fastest this car has gone in a few years. And the more time it spent on the highway, the lighter it got, which doesn't sound bad until...

It appears we need a right front fender. 

The car is home, so now Iansane can get to work. The rest of us (Team with no name Racing) are hoping / expecting that he will have it running and 100% perfect by the end of the month. So there's that... 

More pics from Iansane:

I imagine that reality will set in and our search for the perfect engine will take much longer than we hope. (Anyone have a J32A2 from an Acura CL / TL type S laying around?) In the meantime, there is some welding to do, a dash and fire system to install, a windshield to replace, some minor body work and fender replacement. I won't be surprised if we don't make any events this year, but we will at minimum spend some time (and money) rebuilding one bad ass, tried and true, race winning car.