I'm Bringing Guacamole to the Challenge in 2024

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Don't let me distract you from Tommy Boy.

AxeHealey said:

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Don't let me distract you from Tommy Boy.

Sometimes a distraction is needed. Helps recharge the batteries.

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Very true.

The wheels fit great. 15x7 Nardi Torino made by BBS bought the set of 5 (with 5 center caps!) for $200. Just like that, Guac is wearing 205s.

Edit: Mini Monster Truck

Edit #2:

To get the hatch glass and side windows out, should I just be really patient with a heat gun?

Second work break was testing my bashing method to be able to weld in the door bar plates. 

First, a scissor jack under the floor. 

Apply MFH.

Wonderful. 

I weighed all of the roll bar material that I bought for $160 and it came to 95.4 lbs. I'm guessing 25lbs or less is going to go into the car. I think the extra weight and rigidity will be worth the ~$40 budget hit. 

Speaking of $40, I found a front strut tower brace that I just need to find time to pick up.

This was a good weekend. I shot over to Patrick's on Saturday and got to meet Stampie, Lil Stampie and XLR99. Today was Guac day.

A friend came for the whole afternoon to work on the car. He even brought a TV so we could watch the St. Pete race in the garage. 

I started into the door bars while he began trying to get the quarter windows out. We decided we'd try to get the windows out without breaking them. Maybe someone would want them to help with recoup but also we just wanted to avoid the mess. He was doing a great job with a sawzall cutting through the adhesive. Once the two sides and top were done, I climbed inside and started slicing the adhesive while he was pulling the window. All was going well until... pop! It wasn't. He started into the other side and almost immediately nicked the glass from the inside and, POP! Another one. At this point we decided we may as well suffer through getting the windshield out and cleaning up all of the glass after. It wasn't enjoyable but it's done.

I got the passenger side door bar and plate fit and ready to weld in. The floor needs a little precision bashing first though.

But here's the big news!

The roof section with the sunroof is definitely heavier than it looks but I think it's clear now that there is no chance we'll hit the 1,500 lb mark. Either way, I'm totally excited.

We have a door bar. Both the plate and bar itself have the normal combination of my truly halfway decent welding combined with boogers. It makes me glad I didn't do the cage in Sven. Maybe one day I'll be good enough but man these angles and tight places are extremely difficult. No E36 M3 dummy!

Does this thing have a life after the challenge?

Is that main hoop Mini specific, or some universal off the shelf deal?

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Not planning on it. At least, not in my ownership.

Nukem :

I'm guessing it's Mini specific but I also think it's intended to be bolted in but someone welded it. It has a Sneed Speed sticker on it but I have no idea who actually made it. 

Door bar two, in. This side really fought me.

I really wish they extended a bit further forward but it is what it is. The two bars and plates weighed in at 20 lbs total so that's $33.54 added to the budget. I have some ideas for extra bracing so that may go up. For now, we're expected to get 4-5 inches of snow over night so Guac is back in the driveway so my daily isn't buried in the morning.

Budget as the car sits:

$675 purchase

$50 steering wheel adapter

$33.54 door bars

$50 steering wheel (haven't traded down for the no-name one yet)

$5 shift knob - this still feels high as I really can't see any market value for it

$160 wheels

$973.54 total. I picked up the $40 strut brace a couple weekends ago but it's not on the car.

I've done a couple sketches of what I'm thinking for extra bracing. I'm thinking I'll cap the B-Pillars and use two channels that came with the roll bar kit to tie the main hoop to the B-Pillars.

I'm also considering adding a bar from above the driver's head to the bottom of the other rear bar that lands on the crossmember that goes across the trunk.

As for in the trunk, maybe two smaller bars that go from the wheel wells to bottom of the rear bars. Not sure.

In reply to AxeHealey :

I'm liking this vision and was great meeting you.

In reply to AxeHealey :

what were you saying?  I got distracted by diffuser sketches

In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :

Wow, nice work with the roll bar and chop top. Door bar plates do indeed suck to weld, and I also had good luck using a jack under the floor pan to bend it into a reasonably flat shape. Can't believe how high it sits now! What's the plan there, just spring chop til it's right?

For reference, here is how much spring I had to chop to make Roll-ovalon sit right after all the weight reduction. And it got 4th in autocross on 315's.

In reply to maschinenbau :

Thanks! I like that our strategies for cutting the roof off a car are in line. That must make us the same kind of crazy.

We're thinking we'll try just chopping the springs first, like you did, but a full set of cheapo"fully adjustable" coilovers is only like $320 so we may end up there. 

I need to get Hatchet spun around to do the driver side disc conversion and Guac was covered in a few inches of snow last night so... more dreaming. 

Here's what the top of the chopped B-Pillar looks like. 

My thought is to cap them off with the cut pieces from the door bar plates and attach with the pieces of C-channel that came with the cage kit or a smaller diameter bar that was also included.

I got one of the plates mostly trimmed to size. I think it'll work well. I may slit the plate to be able to weld through to the support inside the pillar as well.

This is awesome! Looks great.  I think your tie in plan should work.  

Also I really like your sketching.  The direction looks promising.

In reply to AxeHealey :

Very nice.  Planning to trim down the C-Channel so it sits more flush with the cap, then weld down the side of the B-Pillar?

Instead of slitting a handful of holes drilled along the profile of the middle guy should be sufficient to plug weld it and get 95% of the benefit with 15% of the effort.

Sooner or later I need to bring my MINI to the dance...

AxeHealey said:

I've done some flow visualization on a... ahem... "common" track wing that was ~65inches in span, and mounted to a hardtopped convertible on 40inch wide mounts.  Between the mounts and the endplates, there was a lot of flow disruption on the outter portions of the wing.

It's hard to tell, because it's a sketch, but I'd reckon your wing is probably less hanging off the mounts than 12"?  If so, I'd recommend (this being a challenge build and all) that you try to go with a bigger span (and run a shallow angle)... or that you try to make the mounts further apart and make them "endplate points" instead.

In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :

I'm thinking that a car with the top hacked off and it's rollover protection exposed may have a lot of flow disruption.