Well it kinda happened in a hurry and I got very few pics on the way, but Sparkles (if you've ever removed a butyl glued rear window you will know why she is now named sparkles)is now a racecar. A pretty good one too. Well , was until she was introduced to the familiar turn 4 wall of evergreen raceway. I had been chasing a bunch of stupid electrical gremlins and didn't start race car transformation until less than two weeks before the race, March 22. They announced a 800$ to win, plus 200 bonus for the highest finishing "true gut and go Enduro car" with no cage and race seat. There are some pretty well prepared racecars out there that take away from the gut N' go cheap thrills of it. That saved me the need to finish the car with a cage, so I finally got the gremlins sorted and I went balls out evenings and stripped it and fabbed the side rails and harness bar. The driver side "rub rail" took awhile since I made it removable. The harness bar is all **** I had around. Parts of an elevator, a handicap ramp. Basically removed somewhere near 300-350 lbs out of the car. I was up to like 200 weighing everything and I was running short on time and kinda stopped with the scale. One seat was 67 lbs then front door gutting. The rears were like 30# of **** each so fronts with speakers should be over 120 and rear glass, plus a bunch of little ****, clips brackets trim. I still have AC system, sunroof track and everything plus the 67# seat , hoping to get another 120+ out of it. It's quicker by a good bit already.
I got it done(ish/enough) with some help from my dad and cousin and my friend Mike. I registered extremely late like 5 days before so I was 38th to start of 44 cars. Drizzle right before the race made it slick, but I drove the crap out of it. Drifting it nicely if I pushed to hard but it was very controllable even when I got pushed here and there. Drove it to 9th in 30 laps. I have live telemetry in the car on the race monitor app but it's only good for red flags. I was 9th last time I had a chance to see where I was. Battled a little bit back and forth with a guy twice around 5 or 6th I guess and then got by him, lots and lots of traffic happening. I'm 4th at this point. There was a big melee/traffic jam on the back stretch and I avoided it way down on the apron and apparently I ended up in first. Took the lead on lap 37 , I led for 8 or 10 laps and the guy that won the last race T.J.got by me in traffic. I got back by him after a couple laps, and drove away. Up to this point on telemetry the only car that had turned a faster lap even on their best was the one guy that got by me. The track never got fully dry, with no slippery messes while I was still in the race, my best lap was a 18.87 on like lap 39 but there was a bunch of oil down/kitty litter. Up to this point T.J. who has won like 4 of the 10 or so races in the last few years had only run one lap faster like a 18.75. His car is dialed, that was the first 50 laps Sparkles has ever been raced. Zero alignment, shocks on the car from it sitting for years. Got spun out by a lapper on lap 52 in the lead. Then he clipped my left front on the way by and broke my tie rod[emoji1751][emoji2959] then I did dumb **** and limped it for 2 laps to hit the guy back. Blasted him then the flappy left front decided it was his turn to drive and I hit the wall pretty hard. Crap.
So now I'm 83% done fixing it. Bent the rearward front control arm pickup point a little bit. The lower control arm did an amazing job collapsing like a German engineered champion to keep frame damage pretty damn minimal considering the shot I gave the wall. It was so cooked, the lower rear section of the control arm which is basically an L attached to a straight control arm was now 90° to the rest of it. Caved in the fender/headlight area and shoved the rad suppprt enough to break it. Stupid plastic bs. Yanked the body with my forklift and a tree. Stretched suspension back with my lift and some chains/binders. I installed eccentric alignment bolts from a r129 and ovaled the hole to operate correctly as far as I can possibly go without modify the pickup points. There is 0 ways to adjust camber or castor on a w202 stock. It handles very good but it needs a bunch of camber put in because it rides high as **** now plus I crashed it. I was struggling with some understrrer off the corner and it was blazing the inside tire with an open diff which is no good. It's got great potential. I'm installing r129 outer tie rod ends and 19mm tube/sleeves instead of the spindly 12mm solid rod it uses currently. It's gonna be fun once the rear gear and LSD get installed. manual coming I hope. I have to put my race seat and cage in before it goes dirt racing for the summer. Hopefully it may be ready by the 25th.....
Had a bunch of prying and beating the last couple evenings after work along with some welding to get stuff tight and stiff like it would have been before it got push. The frame took it pretty well. But the rear mount is unsupported and layers of sheet metal. Probably moved in like 10-15mm. Just enough to see it wasn't quite level like the other one. The eccentrics would have been getting done anyway so it was going to come apart anyway. It's so dumb you need a special bolt to get like .3 of camber with the factory setup, and there is a r129 carcass w/suspension with the m120 in it, so it's donating. There's about 14mm of movement total now and it will go back to factory still. I'm reassembling it with the new arm tonight.
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