A team with no name goes racing.

Last Saturday Justin and I had a mini wrench day. I had taken apart the front suspension in preparation for upgrading to mk3 stuff. Bigger bearing, bigger rotor, slightly more available parts. (And provisions for ABS, which I have a spare mk60 setup that I keep pushing). I had been waiting for some parts from Ground Control that almost showed up once.

After another attempt, I received new ball seat washers for the camber plates and a top spring perch as the one that was in there was mangled to hell after bouncing around on top of an unbolted mac strut.

In a crazy hodgepodge of parts we now have a decently setup suspension;

Mk1 control arms with mk3 ball joints

Mk3 knuckles/hubs/bearings from a 2.0 4 lug car

mk2 early strut housings (the later cars used full assemblies) w/ KONI Race inserts and ebay threaded spring perches

I let Justin do the math for how low we were, how much travel we'd need/use and all the other fun junk that I am too ADD for. We're real close to the bumpstop on compression but we're also real close to fender contact. We've taken the assumption that the bumpstops will now be a consumable. Hopefully a rare consumable.

The old nonadjustable stuff and severely worn konis;

We then did a VERY rough corner weighting. As we can only adjust the front that's what we did. Again, Justin did the math because he's got the engineer brain.

I'm pretty sure that was before adjusting, didn't get a picture of after.

Then we got to the brakes. The mk3 knuckle has wider caliper mounting bosses so our adapter for the wilwoods won't work anymore. Justin did more more and he's going to draw up a bracket for me to 3d print and then we can worry about how to get a more metallic version. But we're on the right track! I have some bract ducts to route and then it can go back on the ground to see what condition the engine is in and hopefully get some seat time before the end of the year. Not race time but even autox or commandeering a costco parking lot late at night.

Not sure why that first drop onto the scales was ~15 lb lighter, but the weights eventually settled pretty consistently around 2305 lb. This is all with a little under 200 pound driver and not-full (1/2-ish?) tank. While we said we weren't going to chase 'perfect', where we stopped turned out we were within 1 lb of 'ideal' on each corner.

730      660

478      436

If we really wanted to get crazy, I think we could probably bump the left spring rates up (or rights down) by 50F/25R and balance out the L/R roll control.

And that is it. This past weekend Lucky Dog finished out it's Pacific Northwest Championship series at the Ridge and we... were not there.

It was just a lousy weekend schedule wise for all of us. One of our drivers got married (congrats) another of our drivers was officiating that wedding (congrats... I guess) and I was moving house. With the car's suspension upgrades not completed we decided the best course of action was to sit this one put.

There were 4 events with a total of 8 races. We managed to compete in 3 of those races. 4 of those races we chose not to enter and one of them we retired prior to starting because of mechanical issues.

Of the 199 cars eligible for the PNW Championship, we finished in 121st place.

Butt weight... their's moor.

3 of our team couldn't make it to the last race, but we have four drivers. A few weeks back I found a team looking for drivers for the ridge. They had an 80's Rabbit, a similar enough car. I got in touch with them and referred our drivers. A deal was struck and Henry would join team Hello Kitty for this race.

You know what they say, whenever one door closes another one opens, other than that it's a pretty good car.

We are eagerly awaiting the release of the 2025 schedule and rulebook.

Will our team of intrepid heros finally finish the Zippy Zonda or will they face another season in Shelly the Scirocco?

Place your bets now.

Finally got around to printing up the new caliper bracket that Justin designed. Almost perfect on the first go.

This lets us run a comparatively large 11.1" Corrado rotor on the newer knuckle instead of the little 9.5" rotor we were using. This coupled with some ducts and I think we should be okay on the brake/hubs front. Obviously we're going to make it out of metal now that we know it fits.

Well Halloween has passed us by and we now enter the long dark.

The current plan is to get Shelly into better fighting shape and continue to run her while picking away at the Zonda in the background.

I am awaiting material and a finished design for the new brake caliper mounting brackets so I can machine up a half dozen of them. The good news they are the same left to right, but I'm still a worrier. And custom part should have ample spares. I plan on making 6 brackets.

There is talk of ditching the weird mechanical injection in favour of a megasquirt MPFI system. would go a long way towards improving the performance.

The new schedule dropped yesterday. 5 events in the PNW championship including 1 new track.

The Championship will open on February 14th at Sonoma. We will probably skip this one.

April 25th Brings us back to the Ridge.

June 7th at Oregon Raceway Park

Then a quick turnaround to July 17th At Portland International Raceway.

Finally some breathing room before the season wraps up back at the Ridge on September 12th.

Will we make all of those? Will we make any of those? Who knows.

Sponsor wanted.

3 months of the off season have passed and have we been busy? No. Not really. We met up over the past weekend to point ourselves in a direction.

During the last season our biggest problem was reliability. specifically wheel bearings. We upgraded to mark 3 jetta units that are stronger and easier to replace. That nessesitated a new brake setup. With the new caliper brackets we would hop from a 9.5 to an 11 inch rotor. Quite an improvement. We'd just need a machinist to make the brackets.

Wait, I am that.

Unfortunately half the machines in my shop wet the bed at exactly the same time. Some searching and we found a shop that will make them at a reasonable rate. 

Ian spent some time fabbing a set of cooling ducts to keep everything running well.

That should help.

The other problem that reared it's head in Portland was an intermittent loss of power at the top end. It's coming and going leads us to believe that it is either fuel or spark.

Our car is equipped with a Bosch K-Jetronic CIS fuel injection system. 

Correction: it was. The Jetronic meters fuel in much the same way a toilet does. So we took it and placed it over there...

Up for sale if you want it.

The key to this change in direction is this glorious fuel rail.

This will allow us to run a megasquirt for true sequential fuel injection. 

This will also allow us to run a coil-on-plug setup for spark.

I don't know if this will make the car faster, but it will certainly allow it to live up to it's full potential.

Awesome, should be a nice upgrade, although I do have a soft spot for k-jet.

Some wiring is getting done. Some, not all.

It's been almost exactly a year since this little yellow car blew into our lives and it looks like it's going to stick around. For a while anyway.

Progress is progress. we're about 5 weeks out from the first event and giving ourselves an 80% chance of making it.

The brackets Justin designed work well and the car has a full suspension and brake setup once again.

With any luck this should put an end to our bearing woes this season.

We gave the car a once over checking all the safety gear. The windownetsstillhave a year, the seat has a few, the belts are still good.

Unfortunately the fire system, having been bought early on for the Zonda, is expired and needs to be shipped back for service and re-certification. A major oversight on my part. No reason I shouldn't have noticed that after last season, but here we are. 5 weeks shoulder enough time for into make the trip, by ground, since it's a pressurized cylinder.

Fingers crossed.

This just leaves the big project the Megasquirt swap, another project we wisely waited until the last moment to start.

Diamonds can only be formed under pressure.

The bulk of the wiring is complete, the injectors are in place, and the fuel system is almost plumbed. waiting on a few more fittings.

With the K-jet out of the way it opens up all kinds of space for the intake. we've kicked around a few ideas but I think for the time being we're just going to mount up a basic cone filter ehind the driver's headlight.

removing the broken lamp and swapping the outer lamp to the inside, then sticking a duct behind the outer light should ensure a constant supply of cool air.

To let the megasquirt keep track of where it is we will be using a crank trigger wheel spaced out with a custom machined aluminum spacer, unfortunately, not machined by me.

Unlike the more complex  brake caliper brackets, these were a relatively simple part. A cylinder with a 1 inch hole in the centreand four equally spaced holes around the sides. Rather than 3dprint a prototype for test fitting we just sent the design off to have it machined.

So... that didn't work. The crank pulley we are bolting through does not have equally spaced holes. one is slightly offset. Thanks VW.

I modified one of the adapters we had on hand with a drill press so that we'd have something to start tuning  with while Justin sent off the new design to have it machined.

Welp... apparently Tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language or whatever. because these parts are significantly more expensive than they were last week.

Great. 

Again.

The jury-rigged part is installed on the car as a stop gap and we're creeping closer to getting the car fired up. Then it will be up to Henry to get a good tune in it.

Watch this space.

Just read through this thread for the first time today. A part of me really misses the track day hustle when something goes wrong. Most of me doesn't though. 😂 

Just an FYI, if your fire bottles look like they won't be ready in time, new bottles can be shipped by air through UPS. I used to have to send bottles red label Saturday delivery to racetracks almost every weekend through the summer. Was not cheap, but better than losing a whole weekends worth of expenses because someone forgot to put the safety pin back in.

Another garage day. The team met up to try and get Shelly ready for a race just two weeks out.

The fire bottle arrived with it's new 2027 cert, and that's the end of the good news.

The take 2 redesign of the pulley spacer at new and improved tariff pricing arrived and it too was incorrect. The offset bolt pattern was again drilled as an equally spaced pattern. It appears the mistake was on their end so hopefully they'll just fix it.

Without time to eait for a proper one I headed over to the drill press and, using the 3d print as a guide, drilled the proper bolt pattern 45 degrees out.

The new hubs and uprights led to some geometry changes for the steering. We would require new tie rods if we were to have any hope of aligning the car. Jeremy made a few parts runs but found nothing that would work. Justin managed to find a way to search oriely's inventory by spec rather than by application and we managed to find 3 likely candidates. 

The first was too long.

The second was too short.

But the third set was just right.

Just to be kind to future us I'm going to post this here.

Hello future us. Stuffed it into a curb huh? Figured you would eventually. Hope everyone is OK.

Back to now now.

With the new fuel system we figured a new fuel pump was a good idea. We figured the easiest way to drain the tank was to just let the old pump drain it into a can. A hose was attached to the regulator and run down into a jug.

It was... loud.

It eventually drained and we pulled the pump. on a whim we decided to check the voltage going to the pump. Jeremy threw a meter on the now bare wires and Ian flipped the switch.

We learned 2 things.

#1: our pump was seeing about 3 volts.

#2: our car has a lift pump in the tank.

Jeremy quickly let go of the wires and scrambled out from under the car as it hosed him down with gasoline like a startled frog.

Good to know.

With 2 weeks to go it isn't looking likely that we will make the first race. We probably could, but It might be a better idea to button it up and hit the second event with a properly tuned car with a track day of two under it's belt.