BlueInGreen44 wrote:
I've often thought a twin cam Saturn S series would be a fun crapcan platform. Light, simple, cheap, common, etc. Not sure how mechanically sturdy It would be though.
We did one. They aren't bad. We blew a HG during testing (we botched radiator mounts), and had subsequent failures on track that were ultimately all 100% our fault as bad mechanics. The cars still ran the whole time on the bad HG, turned laptimes near the front of the pack and finished midpack (we started with a 10 lap penalty also).
Others have had a lot of luck with them as well. They are durable, easy to work on, light, and have respectable performance in that price range. The weak point for repeated events seems to be front wheel bearings.
http://jalopnik.com/5450420/results-of-the-lemons-torture-test-volvo-alfa-saturn-the-most-reliable-500-beaters
I bought a low mileage, one year old, Jellybean Taurus for my wife back in the day and while it was a reliable car there was absolutely nothing about the car that made me think that I might want to make a race car out of it.
I once got a stock 94 Taurus GL to rotate under trail braking. Just sayin'.
Sorry about that, but I don't see any other topic or forum where I could type that statement and have it get anything other than, "Huh? What? So?" in response. I had to take my opening.
Yes, I am intimately familiar with this platform and have to recommend against it.
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The suspension geometry is crap. If you want to fix it, you'll have to fabricate everything. Seriously, they only even briefly made lowering springs for this car.
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The brakes are crap. You'll cook them in short order. There are no performance options. SHO brakes aren't much better.
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The transmissions are crap. Both of the cars you posted have Vulcan V6es, which means they have the AX4S transmission, which means they were defective when they left the factory. The internals are made of very cheap materials that warp from excess heat and essentially make the entire trans unusable. There are no easy manual trans swap options for either engine. All 4 manual options were never intended to be in the Taurus and are barely adequate for stock applications: MTX-3 (Tempo/Topaz), MTX-4 (1st gen/2nd gen SHO), MTX-75 (Contour/Cougar/Focus), and 1st Gen Mazda 6 V6 transmission. Also, all of these except the MTX-3 requires custom work unless you use the Duratec engine to get the bellhousing right. As you can guess (when's the last time you saw a manual Tempo) working MTX-3's are getting pretty hard to find.
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If you're going to do this, use a duratec. Not only is the manual swap easier, the engine makes more power, has a bottom end that can handle some revs, and comes with the much better AX4N automatic. The only issue is that it's a PITA to work on.
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Finally, and I repeat again, the chassis SUCKS. It's a wet noodle. Especially 20 years on. In addition, everything runs way too hot because of inadequate cooling.
Constantly replacing brake pads, brake lines, brake fluid, power steering components, and chewing up tires, just to run slow in a nose-heavy, push-happy wet noodle of a car, doesn't sound like a fun weekend at the track to me. It sounds even less fun if the trans takes a crap 5 laps in ending your weekend.
OK... I accept defeat.
We spoke for a while today and weighed some options. We came to an agreement on a GM S-series truck. S10, S-15, Sonoma, hombre. It's a car I've wanted for a while. He thinks they're cool too. Parts are plentyful and a starting index of 150-200 gives us room for an engine swap (vortec 4.3) and suspension upgrades. Pre-bent roll cages are available as well, so that should give us a big head start on building one.
It seems to be a better option than the bean.
AClockworkGarage wrote:
OK... I accept defeat.
We spoke for a while today and weighed some options. We came to an agreement on a GM S-series truck. S10, S-15, Sonoma, hombre. It's a car I've wanted for a while. He thinks they're cool too. Parts are plentyful and a starting index of 150-200 gives us room for an engine swap (vortec 4.3) and suspension upgrades. Pre-bent roll cages are available as well, so that should give us a big head start on building one.
It seems to be a better option than the bean.
Yes, S10/Hombre. Haven't done Chump, but have logged countless laps in LeMons on an S10/Hombre platform. Ping forum member Sonic for technical details (I'm not much of a mechanic), but I can tell you they're fun. Never going to set fast lap of the day, but you can make them handle better than a pick up should. Driving them is a whole different kettle of fish than driving something like a Civic (which is our other car). The Civic is a scalpel where the S10 is a sledgehammer. You have to "throw" it around the track, relatively speaking. You also have to make sure that both rear wheels stay planted, as it wants to pick up the inside rear...remember there's not much weight back there. Besides having issues getting the power down when exiting a corner, not having the rear well planted can make for some spooky handling. We've done a fair amount of suspension and brake upgrades. I know some of the bits are from the Olds Bravada. The 4.3 doesn't like to rev, I think our shift light is set somewhere around 5k rpm, but I shift something like 4200 because by then you've used up all its' got. Shifter takes patience, you can't rush it.
S10; 2012-2015 - R.I.P.
S10/Hombre 2.0: 2016-current
I'd suggest getting one in the longest cab / shortest bed combo you can find. That should make the weight distribution slightly less awful.
BlueInGreen44 wrote:
I've often thought a twin cam Saturn S series would be a fun crapcan platform. Light, simple, cheap, common, etc. Not sure how mechanically sturdy It would be though.
I would love this. I've owned about 7 S-series saturns over the year and at one point I'd even "collected them all" owning an '94 SC2, a '95 SL1 and a '94 SW2 at the same time. I also owned a '91 SL1, just because so few of them still existed.
I just don't think I could sell my buddy on the idea.
as for mechanically sturdy. I drove my SW2 close to 300K miles. And I abused it. I sprayed it into the 13s and bracket raced it every weekend.
I was right...
I brought up Saturn and was immediately shut down.
"no" he says. "I won't have it on my property... No combination of words will make that car less uncool. I'd rather campaign a Camry. I'm not having ugly FWD E36 M3 box in my life. I'm certainly not pouring hundreds of hours of my life into one."
This is coming from a guy who thinks it's OK to be seen driving a Miata. But if He's footing a 1/4 to half the bill I suppose he gets to have a say.
Milano. Go with an Alfa.
Hook up with the guys who run them (apparently incredibly well), and follow their lead.
RWD, Italian styling, and INCREDIBLE noise.
alfadriver wrote:
Milano. Go with an Alfa.
Hook up with the guys who run them (apparently incredibly well), and follow their lead.
RWD, Italian styling, and INCREDIBLE noise.
Truth!
Somehow, one of the most reliable cars in lemons....
wvumtnbkr wrote:
alfadriver wrote:
Milano. Go with an Alfa.
Hook up with the guys who run them (apparently incredibly well), and follow their lead.
RWD, Italian styling, and INCREDIBLE noise.
Truth!
Somehow, one of the most reliable cars in lemons....
It's funny how that works, isn't it? There used to be a black Milano (I think it was a Milano) that ran LeMons. Fast as E36 M3, and sounded oh so sexy as it passed me.
Klayfish wrote:
wvumtnbkr wrote:
alfadriver wrote:
Milano. Go with an Alfa.
Hook up with the guys who run them (apparently incredibly well), and follow their lead.
RWD, Italian styling, and INCREDIBLE noise.
Truth!
Somehow, one of the most reliable cars in lemons....
It's funny how that works, isn't it? There used to be a black Milano (I think it was a Milano) that ran LeMons. Fast as E36 M3, and sounded oh so sexy as it passed me.
Well, the Alfas were made to be strong, especially when well maintained at looked after.
They are not made to live through attrition- as in rusting- both for the body and the wiring.
Other cars are more robust to long term usage.
And there are some tricks that are pretty easy to improve some of the parts, that somehow never made it back to the factory for upgrades...
On a related note there was a Biturbo at the Watkins Glen Chump race that performed solidly. I think it may have beaten our reliable Honda.
I fully believe that these might be the worst vehicles ever manufactured. They are useful for target practice and thermite experiments only.
Our 1st-gen SC2 is the perfect 7-hour enduring car for a 4-driver team because it will go 1 hr 47 min of green flag racing on the OE fuel tank. Plus other reasons. We took a 1st and a 2nd at BeaveRun my first weekend with the team. We had podium finishes at TWS and MIS.
