Team Battle Wagon 245 Champ Car

I realized I never posted about my chump car figured I could throw some pics up..
1991 Volvo 245 I bought it for $150 for parts and ended up building it into our chump car. The inside was trashed and the outside was not much better.. We have not been any nicer but its faster now..

Currently we have raced the car 4 times and 1 track day

Charlotte 1+1+1+1+8hour "NA automatic miserably slow but reliable"
Road Atlanta 14hour " Turbo automatic much faster but not reliable"
Daytona 14hour "Better Turbo and 5 speed Even faster and more reliable but still failure"
Atlanta Motorsports Park 7+7hour "More upgrades finished 11th on Saturday and DNF on Sunday"
Road Atlanta 14hour Champ car 2021 "Finished 17th in Class C"
Barbers Champcar 2021 8+7 "16th in class 20th overall and 5th fastest lap out of 71 cars"


Small rundown of parts and stuff
IPD springs, koni yellows, IPD front bar, Hawk Black pads, 60/.63 turbo, MSextra, S60 green injectors, walbro 255 intank feeding surge tank and bosch 044 feeding main rail, toyota w58 transmission, hybrid bell housing, POS GD Spec clutch, honda clutch master cyl, OMP driver seat, ATL fuel cell, welded 3.73 diff, 04-05 STI wheels, some fancy gauges, 940 radiator and intercooler, homemade roll cage, fire suppression system,







The Team



Remote oil filter and external oil cooler


Office Chair


Building a bell housing



STI Wheels


POS SPEC Clutch


Fuel system cover/firewall



Brake ducting





More build pictures HERE



-Sam

...

Looks like garbage. I like it!

T5 for trans?

Tom Wiley said:

Looks like garbage. I like it!

T5 for trans?

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RoadRacer4Life said:

Small rundown of parts and stuff
IPD springs, koni yellows, IPD front bar, Hawk Black pads, 60/.63 turbo, MSextra, S60 green injectors, walbro 255 intank feeding surge tank and bosch 044 feeding main rail, toyota w58 transmission, hybrid bell housing, POS GD Spec clutch, honda clutch master cyl, OMP driver seat, ATL fuel cell, welded 3.73 diff, 04-05 STI wheels, some fancy gauges, 940 radiator and intercooler, homemade roll cage, fire suppression system,

Click to expand...

.

Back racing after a 5 year hiatus. We decided late last year to take our Battle Wagon 245 back racing. Numerous improvements have been made in the area of handling and brakes. Our first race would be 14 Hour Road Atlanta Champ car race. Some of the rules have changed since the last time we raced so we have a good bit of room available for more upgrades. We had a test day on Friday before the race and after a few warm up laps we realized that the car was fairly solid. One of our team mates with the least experience made a mistake going up turn 5 and found the inside tire wall. Fortunately for us the car was already fairly ugly so the new dents were barely noticeable. The start of the race is a random draw and we started in 59th position overall but after 25 laps we were up to 25th overall. Unfortunately that was about as far up in the running order we would get. We as a team were very rusty and our number one goal for the race was to just finish so conservative driving was a top priority. After about 5 hours of racing we noticed we were down on power and boost. We pitted and noticed that the nuts that hold the turbo to the manifold had fallen off and needed a quick fix.



The vice grips worked great for about 2 hours and then we lots them. This was a bad idea and thankfully they did not go through anyone's car that we know of. Once the pliers fell off the turbo completely fell of and this put us in the pits for repairs for almost 2 hours. We got the turbo repaired and back out on the track just for the weather to start turning. The forecast had been for rain all day and a high of 48 but we were fortunate to avoid most rain until about 3 that afternoon. Once the rain started it only got worse as the temps started to fall. Around 5:30-6 the rain turned to snow and things got interesting. The race continued on until they called it around 6:45.



At the end of the day we were still racing and that was a huge victory for us. We know the car is not going to be completive in this race series but we had a great time. The plan is to clean things up and hopefully race at Barbers in December.






-Sam

Cool another race wagon!

I had two spec clutches previously in my getrag swap many moons ago that did the exact same thing. They're excuse was mute.

Texas240 said:

I had two spec clutches previously in my getrag swap many moons ago that did the exact same thing. They're excuse was mute.

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Yep ditched the spec setup and running a sachs pressure plate and ACT clutch disk


https://www.summitracing.com/parts/ACL-6224207


Hopefully it proves to be better than the SPEC.

Texas240 said:

I had two spec clutches previously in my getrag swap many moons ago that did the exact same thing. They're excuse was mute.

Click to expand...

RoadRacer4Life said:

Yep ditched the spec setup and running a sachs pressure plate and ACT clutch disk


https://www.summitracing.com/parts/ACL-6224207


Hopefully it proves to be better than the SPEC.

Click to expand...

Yeaaaaahhhh, don't use solid clutch hubs. They almost always shear at the rivets.
I've had nothing but success with Spec products, and a pile of burned up ACT clutches. YMMV.

culberro said:

Yeaaaaahhhh, don't use solid clutch hubs. They almost always shear at the rivets.
I've had nothing but success with Spec products, and a pile of burned up ACT clutches. YMMV.

Click to expand...

Mine was a sprung hub clutch disk that did that twice. The rivets they use are subpar

Texas240 said:

Mine was a sprung hub clutch disk that did that twice. The rivets they use are subpar

Click to expand...

Interesting.
How long ago was this?
I should say that I've never used as off the shelf clutch package from Spec, but a custom one every time.

RoadRacer4Life said:

After about 5 hours of racing we noticed we were down on power and boost. We pitted and noticed that the nuts that hold the turbo to the manifold had fallen off and needed a quick fix.

Click to expand...

I have had this problem for a while. I have tried many different solutions. None have worked. If you figure something out, please share. I'm about ready to weld the hot side to the manifold.

Copper lock nuts with studs safety wired together - fail
A286 studs with stage 8 locking nuts - fail

I have not tried Nordlocks, that's next with A286 studs.

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Some nice pics and vids from this weekend.

Air under tire! Sweeet!

How did it compare to the sea of Porsches?

Thanks for that romp on the track! Is that the 2jz powered car? Really fun to see you handling the wagon around those turns. You got that thing handling very predictable and stable. Tearing up that track!

Edit:Ok nice to see it's redblock turbo powered.

I love this car. Just watched the most recent video.

Bump for who did the Bilstein revalving, and did you get specs on them? Dyno sheets?

What turbo is that? do you run a gasket between the turbine housing and the manifold? I had the same problem on my autocross car, when doing a track day in particular, that the turbo kept trying to fall off the manifold. standard t3 flange, gasket, M10 studs. On the lemons car we ran the volvo style flanged T3 .63 turbine housing on a '90+ with the original M8 studs and it never gave us any issues.

Nordlock are worth a shot.

towerymt said:

Bump for who did the Bilstein revalving, and did you get specs on them? Dyno sheets?

What turbo is that? do you run a gasket between the turbine housing and the manifold? I had the same problem on my autocross car, when doing a track day in particular, that the turbo kept trying to fall off the manifold. standard t3 flange, gasket, M10 studs. On the lemons car we ran the volvo style flanged T3 .63 turbine housing on a '90+ with the original M8 studs and it never gave us any issues.

Nordlock are worth a shot.

Click to expand...

I need to look at my turbo from my race yesterday, but I believe Nordlocks and a286 m10 studs solved it for me.

rb92673 said:

I need to look at my turbo from my race yesterday, but I believe Nordlocks and a286 m10 studs solved it for me.

Click to expand...

Good to know.

The rally car is still having issues. I'm about to order some 3/8 inconel studs (where did you get the a286 studs at?). The Norlocks and Ti studs were the best so far, but still had some issues, and that's with using a Nissan T3 flange gasket as well.