Bugweiser74
Bugweiser74 New Reader
5/25/21 2:27 p.m.

Alright so those of you who dont know this car was one of the $2000 Grassroots challenge cars, IT HAD NO SPRINGS!!!, someone had taken them out and used "washers" yes you read that right washers to set the ride height on the car. So that means the car only had what air was in the tires for suspension. After that challenge, that I was not there for, the car sat and from my understanding had a few different owners until a friend of mine had it and wanted it gone. He had it for sale for next to nothing, it didnt sell cause of the obvious. The car had zero interior, no suspension, and no luxury items what so ever, other then power windows that worked, yes they worked how that happened i'll never understand. So I got the call about the car and after some talking I ended up picking it up not having any idea what I was going to do with it. Well, I had started doing scca rallycross and my wife was interested IDEA!!!!. So I got to work putting it back together, thankfully enough it came with the springs so I could raise it back up to stock height. So thanks to some cheap rock auto Stuts, ball joints, tie rod ends, and valve cover gasket the car was able to be driven again. However, it had no seat belts and the seats werent really bolted in. This brought me to a very interesting problem, so I had an old circle track car that was basically no longer useable but it did have a roll bar in it and seatbelts, so what did I do, cut out the roll bar and put it in the corolla, mainly so I had a solid anchor point for the seat belts and in the event my wife ended up rolling it she had some extra protection. So, we rally crossed the car with scca and later found out that this car is somehow competitive in the MOD FRONT class, dont ask me how i dont know, the car after all is a 1.6l automatic 1997 toyota corolla. We ran the car for about a year and a half and the only things i ever had to do to it was another set of front struts and had to put a gas tank in it from where the strap rubbed thru and was leaking fuel. We had a lot of fun in it but wanted to move on. So another friend of mine had ran the car a few times and wanted to get into rally, so we gave it to him and he ran it a few times but decided he wanted a manual trans. He went and purchased another corolla that is a manual transmission, so i of course wanted the car back and to be 100 percent honest will never let it go again, My wife and I have way to much fun in this car and it is super cheap to fix and to run, no I wont sell it, No I wont give it away again. This right here is what its all about, having a beater car that is going up against built vehicles and being very competitive doing so. Big thanks to the person who allowed me to aquire this car and yes, i know i owe you a few steak and beer dinners

Bugweiser74
Bugweiser74 New Reader
5/25/21 2:30 p.m.

yeah i know i mis-spelled remember

Lof8 - Andy
Lof8 - Andy SuperDork
5/25/21 2:41 p.m.

Hey Britt!!  Corolla was flying this weekend!  I did not realize that this was the no-suspension Challenge car.  Thats funny!

sleepyhead the buffalo
sleepyhead the buffalo Mod Squad
5/25/21 2:46 p.m.
Bugweiser74 said:

yeah i know i mis-spelled remember

Looks right to me.

and yes, I do remember.  There should be a write up about it on the forum somewhere.

Tom Suddard
Tom Suddard Director of Marketing & Digital Assets
5/25/21 2:56 p.m.
echoechoecho
echoechoecho Reader
5/25/21 5:19 p.m.

AWESOME!!!!!

that was my car that I took to the challenge, (hope you know the car had/has no thermostat). for some reason it kept over heating on my friend he took it to get fixed but nothing they did worked. they thought it had a blown headgasket. He sold it to me for junkyard price at the time. I figured it ran well enough when cold I can get a few runs at the challenge then junk it. I removed the thermostat and it no longer overheated. lol

the rest is history 

Im really glad to see it live on!

 

Bugweiser74
Bugweiser74 New Reader
5/25/21 7:00 p.m.

In reply to echoechoecho :

Still has no thermostat, runs like a champ, been 2 years I think now, never even gets close to overheating.... been super fun, fans are hard wired... oh I did put a rad in it cause I accidentally put a hole in the rad

David S. Wallens
David S. Wallens Editorial Director
5/25/21 7:40 p.m.

Dang, that's awesome. Always happy to see Challenge cars live on. 

Robbie (Forum Supporter)
Robbie (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
5/26/21 10:38 a.m.

This is one of my favorite challenge cars from one of my favorite competitors! Very happy to see it keep on rocking in the free world. 

DeadSkunk  (Warren)
DeadSkunk (Warren) UltimaDork
5/26/21 11:29 a.m.

In reply to echoechoecho :

Did it have no suspension at all, or was it running on the bump stop alone? I remember watching it bounce across the parking lot during its autocross runs.

echoechoecho
echoechoecho Reader
5/26/21 4:39 p.m.

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

No springs, riding on the bump stops with a stack of washers to get the right ride height. 

Vajingo
Vajingo HalfDork
5/26/21 4:47 p.m.

In reply to echoechoecho :

That's wild. Must've felt like a go kart

Tom1200
Tom1200 SuperDork
5/26/21 5:34 p.m.

Forget F1, forget Indy, forget Le Mans or WRC........................get yourself a beater car and drive the hell out of it son!

I love beater competition cars........the fact that your wife loves to flog it makes it even better.

For loose surface the automatic probably helps out.

 

Jerry
Jerry PowerDork
5/27/21 12:52 p.m.

I remember that from my one and only Challenge (so far) 2017.  Made me think of doing the same to a cheap MK1 MR2.

You'll need to log in to post.

Our Preferred Partners
2nSiWEv8UMX2vRaDqx12Mkl9JsC1dOEoektodWvltOnhpiOvOTQNanw69ZzkKc6i