TARP Blog

A few other ideas that came up while we were working on Wednesday night:

• We need to swap out the fancy wheels that came on the cars for steel wheels. While these are better looking, they aren’t very strong and could flat out break, especially if we got involved in some side-by-side contact while in a turn. We don’t want that.
• Unless we can find someone to sponsor really sweet forged wheels for us. Like these:

• The roll cage shouldn’t be a problem and won’t really require much material. We will probably fab up a rear strut brace when we do the roll cage too.
• There was some talk about putting a turbo on the engine. Grayson thinks that Jesse has a couple old ones sitting around, and since the exhaust would be easy to divert to run the turbo, it’s worth at least thinking about.
• We will probably build on a cheap cold-air intake out of sheet aluminum and rivets or something. That way we pull in clean, cold engine air from above the passenger compartment. just like the Audi R10 LeMans-winning car. Probably good for at least half an extra horsepower.
• Maybe we should put on an air-powered alternator too, just like Smokey Yunick did once upon a time? Free up 5-10 HP. At the speeds we’ll be going on this track, I doubt it would work though.
• I’d really like to build big old fender flares on the sides of this car, just like a rally car. Madness!

Engine Trouble, Knowing Is Half of the Battle!, MR2