Almost Ready

Alright, So I've had some downtime, I couldn't make it to the race in June and the July race has been pushed back to August 4th. In the meantime I've created a campaign to help raise the money to finish my car and start racing in the Rally America series for 2013. I've drained my account getting my car to where it is now, but still need a little help to get everything finished. If you want to donate or know anyone who would like to help out I would appreciate any help that I could get. You can visit my campaign here: Let's Rally!

Until then here is a new video I made as a rally racing promo for myself. The video can also be seen at the campaign website.

Rally Baybay!

Had my first RallyX race today out at Pleasant Valley Raceway. It was freaking awesome! I took my navigator, Ariel Rose, even though she didn't need to do any navigating, so she could get used to riding in the car while flying around corners. On my second race around the track I was getting a little too cocky for a corner and took it too fast and ended up going off the track, but quickly recovered. The bead on my tire couldn't take the stress and popped, but after a good 1/2 hour I got the tire all fixed and running again to do a 3rd race around the track before I had to take Ariel home and go to work. Here's a few pics and a video for y'all to watch. Let me know what you think!

Vinyl Addition

Got my vinyl decals all created and on the car. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

Shoot Me Now

Another short post with a lot of pictures. Here are photos from my photo shoot with the car.

Roll Cajun

Got the roll cage all put in and ready to go. Looks pretty good if you ask me. I only had 2 days to do so I spent both days up until 6 in the morning trying to get everything finished in time. There are a few things I need to add to it, but it's fine right now for AutoX and RallyX events until I get into the Rally America series.

A New Look

So I got the car all painted, and I'm not gonna lie, its not the most amazing paint job I've ever seen, nor does it come close to it. But I do have to say, it looks pretty dang good for just being $30 worth of rattlecans. Its a rally car, not a show car. I'll be replacing door panels and fenders on it everytime I run into something so it doesn't need to look pretty. So here it is.

Stay tuned for more pics from when I take it out for a photo shoot.

I'm hooked

So this will be a short post with a lot of pictures. I got the tow hooks set up on the Escort. The front tow hook was hard to see in the pic, so its not included. Then I started to get some paint work done and I got the stock airbox that I found in the junkyard back in the car.

Make Yourself Comfortable

Well I got the racing seats in the car. I started out with retrieving some seat brackets from an Escort at the junkyard, and then bolted up some cross beams to get the seat to fit. This was no easy project, maybe if I had a mill it would've gone 2 or 3x as fast, but it took a few long nights to complete just using my hand drill.

And of course, right after I got the seats in the car and everything set up, I went to go reread over my rulebook and noticed my highlighted sentence "polyethylene seats are not allowed". Well crap. So these won't last very long, but they look good while they're there.

14 Blistering Hours

So yesterday I suddenly got the urge to drive down to Nevada. What!? That's right, randomly I decided to drive down to Summit Racing for two reasons. 1. I decided that the shipping costs for the parts I was needing would come to about the same cost as gas money for driving down there ( I was wrong, really wrong. But that's okay because...) 2. I needed a vacation.

Now, spending 14 hours total driving, just to spend 2-3 hours in Sparks, NV may not seem like much of a vacation to most people, but trust me when I say I say that leaving Idaho for a good 17 hours was worth it. Especially when I haven't left this state in 3+ years. Luckily the seats in my Explorer Sport are SUPER comfortable, and 14 hours of driving was no sweat. One thing I really do like about Fords is how comfortable their seats are. The only thing I had to do was make sure I stayed awake while driving...

...which was not a problem thanks to my assortment of energy drinks and snacks. The drive down there helped with all the beautiful scenery to look at. Look! I found Mustang, NV.

After the 7 hour drive to Sparks, I finally found Summit Racing, which was everything I hoped it would be and more!

 So the entire reason I headed down to Summit Racing was for Racing Seats for Bryci and to pick up the rollcage. Shipping for these items would've come close to $100, and I spent about $160 in gas. So yes, I did spend more, but I like I said it was worth the trip. Plus now I know that my Explorer can take the drive. I also found the stock airbox that I've been needing to get for Bryci, found that lying on the ground at Pick-N-Pull with the single Escort GT that was there out of 20 other Escorts, which was pretty lucky too because I left all my tools in Idaho!

Double Duty

Wow, I certainly got quite a bit done over the weekend. Right after I had finished gutting out the entire rear of the car I got a call from a guy from Twin Falls wanting to know if I still had the bucket seats for sale. So I headed down and took about 10 minutes to get the seats out of the car and sold them for $10. He got a great deal, because the seats were actually in really nice shape, they just needed to be cleaned a little bit, and I would much rather have sold them for only $40 than just end up throwing them in the trash.

So after I got the seats out I decided to start on the front half of the interior, since I wasn't originally planning on tackling that project for a while, but since the seats were already gone, why not? While I was tearing out the carpet and had the center console apart I noticed how long the shift lever was and decided that needed to change. So I got my grinder (I want to hug whoever invented the grinder, it takes care of EVERYTHING! For example this evening I used it to cut some unnecessary speaker wire, and also used it to open a plastic package because I didn't have scissors or a knife on me).

Speaking of using a grinder to cut open plastic packages, I used it to open up the hood pin assembly package I bought earlier this evening after I got off work. Got the hood pins installed and removed the factory latch.

After I was finished with the hood pins I returned to the interior and got the emergency brake fixed, the lap belts out, got the headliner out, and also removed the track that the shoulder belts traveled on. I'm Still trying to decide exactly what I'm going to do with the sunroof assembly. I can't decide whether to just replace it with a metal roof and keep the functionality of it, or just remove the whole time entirely and weld the hole shut. Tough decision.

So in summary almost all of the interior is finished. Just have to make a final decision on that sunroof, and get some racing seats in the car. Tomorrow I'll be working on the engine again, trying to start getting that water pump removed. I can't wait, I'm just such a big fan of how tightly they packed that engine in there.

Garage Queen

I finally got my garage the other day and got Bryci inside so I could start working on her. I've been working on her all day long and I have to say that I have made substantial progress. I got a lot more done today than I was expecting. I took out the radiator and fan assembly so I could have some more room to work in the engine bay. I honestly don't think they could have gotten that 1.8L any tighter in that engine bay.

I got the heat shield off of the exhaust manifold and removed the A/C condenser and all the piping with it. I still have to removed the A/C accumulator, but that doesn't need to be removed immediately, though I'm planning on getting it out of there as well before I officially get started on the water pump.

  After I got all that out of the engine bay I started to lose some weight off the back of the car (the A/C and accessories adding up to almost 75lbs alone), so I got busy ripping out EVERYTHING I could possibly rip out in the rear of the car.

Before

After

I've still got a lot of cleaning up to do. I have to remove the hundreds of feet of speaker wire that the previous owners had in the car. That's all that I got finished tonight, just removed all the interior panels, seats and seatbelts, then I had to go check out the Boise Roadster Show, but I've got tomorrow off so I'll post up what I get finished tomorrow.