I didn't realize it back when I was still knee-deep in junked Celica parts, but there's a certain satisfaction from building a car that's going to be destroyed by a team of equally psychotic car nuts. Call it SCC team building.
With one week left to get Project Lemons ready for the 13-hour endurance demolition derby, we still had to resolve our drivetrain, suspension and brake issues. Plus get a roll cage worthy of this $500 beater race (see SCC, Feb 2007). So our mad panic continued at an even more frenzied pace. With the car already gutted, fluids changed and coolant hoses replaced, we took the car down to MD Automotive in Westminster, California, for some help with the heavy lifting.
At this point, we weren't quite sure how much more we had to tear into the car, but just on general inspection, we figured on a new clutch, CV joints, and some as-yet-undetermined bug in the brakes. The only way to tell was to put it on a lift and break out the impact wrench. Even though we had blown almost all the allotted $500 on just the car, we figured the judges wouldn't be able to tell if we replaced the clutch or a few other parts with OE items. Besides, we were sure everyone else was up to the same trick. So a new Exedy clutch and rebuilt axles were ordered and installed with the help of Mark Dibella at MD. The value of this lemon surprised us again when we inspected the flywheel and found that it didn't even need resurfacing.
Engine mountsWhile the tranny was out, we also realized the rubber in the front engine mount had ripped all the way through. In the spirit of SCC and the Lemons race, we just pulled the front and rear mounts that take the most engine motion and filled them with automotive window adhesive. With the help of a heat gun, the rubber had set enough to be mounted back in a matter of hours. It's a cheap but effective fix that also took out a lot of slop from the steering feel and made the car easier to throttle-steer on track. Like polyurethane engine mounts, the filled mounts do transfer significantly more vibration through the chassis and steering column, especially at lower revs.
Braking on the cheapNext to cooling, brakes matter most to a race car, even a slow one. With no idea what the conditions would be at Altamont Raceway, we took the safe route and fixed the brakes.
The steel four-point roll bar was fabricated overnight by Alex Pfeiffer of Battle Version, attached to the floor near the B-pillar and stretched back to the rear wheel wells. We added only one harness bar onto the diagonal support, so we could throw in all the support gear.
Again, the cheapness of the Celica ST was a welcome boon. The rear brakes were drums and no one makes aftermarket rotors or brake lines for this model. We didn't even bother replacing the shoes, since all the bias is up front. From our desperate calls to sponsors for inconspicuous aftermarket performance parts, the guys at Powerslot provided pads from its corporate partners, Hawk brakes. We got two sets-one for each day- of Hawk HP Plus pads, the best compromise between street and mild track use in terms of rotor wear. Although Hawk offers full race pads (like the Blues), they might have upset the brake balance too severely and possibly sacrificed overall stopping ability, since the front tires would do all the work.
To save costs, we tried to salvage the original rotors by turning them down. But the warping was so severe that by the time we finally got them flat, there wasn't enough material to keep them from warping again come race day. We decided to fit a new set of rotors and kept the old ones as back-ups. The entire system was also flushed out with Motul RBF600 synthetic DOT 4 brake fluid, which we've found to work well under repeated track beating. One squishy brake pedal run around the block told us the master cylinder was dead too, so that was replaced.
Overnight Roll CageThe organizers of the Lemons race were smart enough to separate safety equipment, brakes and tires from the original cost of the car. But while we had leeway to build an 800-point demolition survival cage-we only had one day budgeted to come up with the safest rollover protection we could find.
Unsurprisingly, no one in their right mind was up to taking this job, except one of the craziest, yet most reliable fabricators we know: Alex Pfeiffer of Battle Version. We sent the car to G-Dimension in City of Industry, California, where Pfeiffer and his welder are based, and asked for a six- to eight-point roll bar that tied into the door bars and rear shock tower supports.
Overhead hoops were omitted, since I didn't want to wear a helmet for the six-hour drive to the track. Pfeiffer looked the car over, grabbed the keys and with the demented grin of a mad scientist, shooed us away, declaring: "It'll be ready tomorrow before lunch."
We were probably better off fixing the rip in our engine mount by filling it with automotive window sealant than buying a new mount, since filling it also stiffened the mount, taking unwanted motion out of the front axle |  |  |