Welcome to Bangshift Goes Racing! This is a multi-part series that gives a look into choosing, building, and racing a car on the cheap. Here, you’ll see the misadventures of my friends and I as we go through the process of taking a cheap car and transforming it into a race car with the eventual goal of racing in the “Trifecta of Crap”, which consists of the now-defunct BABE Rally, the 24 Hours of Lemons, and the Grassroots Motorsports $20xx Challenge. This first installment will cover choosing a victim..err…car for the build, and hitting the road.
A lot of great ideas can come from a bunch of guys sitting around drinking beers and bench racing. One night, sometime in the Fall of 2011, we were talking about what we wanted to do in addition to the Grassroots Motorsports $20xx Challenge, which we were knee deep into. My buddy Greg Stewart suggested trying out getting a sub-$500 car and competing in the BABE Rally, which is a road rally a-la The Cannonball Run or the Gumball, except with total turds that cannot cost more than $500. Oh, and this is a cross-country deal, spanning from New York City to New Orleans. It was also suggested that after this car was done with that ordeal, it would be turned into a proper crapcan racer to compete in the 24 Hours of Lemons and the Grassroots Motorsports $20xx Challenge. Yeah, that’s a lot of racing with a complete piece of crap as the centerpiece. But since we are gluttons for this type of punishment, we agreed to go for it! But what kind of car can you buy with sporting intentions for around $500?
We tossed around all sorts of terrible ideas, but we agreed it had to be a platform that they actually made things for. While it’s cool to build something weird and obscure, since we were rookies, we wanted something that you could go to your local parts store and get consumables and other parts for in case something happened in the middle of nowhere. We also wanted something you can fix with basic hand tools and a blunt object. With this in mind, we tossed around the idea of getting an 80’s Pony Car, a BMW E30, or maybe something older and Japanese, like a Celica or a Z car. After scouring Craigslist for weeks, a wild 1976 Datsun 280Z appeared! It was in Maine, in pieces, and very, very green. Greg had wanted to pick up an early Z since we were in high school, so this looked promising. The ad said it came with spares and everything to piece it back together. The price was actually a hair under $500, so we got in contact with the owner, hooked up the trailer, and went up there to check it out. Here’s what we saw!
Here is the car, as it sat when we pulled up. It was mostly solid, especially for a car that was hanging out in New England for a while. At some point, it was brought up from a southern locale to Maine, but it wasn’t as awful as some of the other cars we were checking out. We looked at another one that was skeletal compared to this one a week before, and it was double the money! It wasn’t perfect, though, and that was reflected in the cheap price.
The original 240/260/280Z is such an iconic design. There’s a reason why people loved these cars back then and still do now. Since this was a 1976 model, it received the L28 2.8L inline six. It’s a SOHC design, and it has multiport electronic fuel injection, which was exotic for the time. Going back to the “being able to fix it with rocks” comment I made earlier: This is a very simple EFI setup. In fact, they are probably easier to keep running than an earlier carbed 240Z. This one luckily had a 4-speed manual, although a 3-speed automatic was also available. A slushbox is almost criminal in a car like this!
Even though the car looks decent from a distance, there were spots like this all over the car. Stuff like this is why it was so cheap.
Z cars are notorious for rust, especially in the front subframe area and the floors. They do make replacement sections, but always watch out for bad repairs. This car had some hasty repairs done at some point, but since this thing was destined for crapcan racing, we figured we could deal with it.
After looking it over, we decided to for over the cash and bring this green booger machine home. Greg was the one actually buying the car, so he sealed the deal and we loaded it up. The car was taken off the road to replace the head gasket back in 2004, but the owner never got around to doing it. Also, there was a mishap with the timing chain that left it in limbo. The car came with a spare L28 long block just in case, and some boxes of odds and ends. Pro Tip: Buying someone’s abandoned project can be an ideal situation when you are looking to build a race car. Having an inventory of spares is definitely a plus, and when it’s factored into the original purchase cost, it’s a welcome bonus.
After popping off the head to do the head gasket, we noticed that there was this lovely mark on one of the cylinders. When the timing chain mishap happened, the piston and the valve had a brief make-out session. Ugh.
One word: UGLY.
It was determined that some valves were bent, so Greg decided to clean up the spare head that the car came with. Bonus points for getting the job done on the living room coffee table while his girlfriend (and now wife) was out!
After getting everything back together, and replacing the fuel pump, the car fired up for the first time in years! It blew a ton of blue smoke, which was concerning. After hours of letting it run, it just got worse. We suspected the rings to be bad. We were right.
Yeah, that’s a lot of oil. That will cause some blue smoke! With the engine still in the car, the pistons and rods were removed, cleaned up, and re-ringed. After it was put back together, the oil consumption issue was gone!
What you are looking at right there is a clutch slave cylinder. That rust nugget right there was probably original, and it was keeping the car from driving under its own power. Luckily, these are still available in your local parts store, and not too expensive.
With the car all back together, it was ready to take out on its maiden voyage. As it was putting around town, something weird was going on, and the car was chugging, like it was starving for fuel. Well, that’s exactly what was going on! What you are looking at here are rust chunkies from the inside of the fuel tank. The 1976 Z’s have a year-specific gas tank that no one reproduces, and used ones cost more than we paid for the car, so we flushed out all the chunks, cleaned the tank with acid, and called it good. It took a long time to get the grossness out, but we haven’t had a problem since.
So, with the car back together, it was decided that a good test run would be to take a nice road trip in it. So, how about one across the country and back? The BABE Rally was a point-to-point road rally that spanned from NYC to New Orleans, and to enter, your car had to cost $500 or less. Since the Z was in that price range, it was in! Greg and our buddy Rob hopped in the Z with some hand tools and off they went. This pic is a long way from home; it was on top of a mountain pass on the Tail of the Dragon somewhere in Tennessee or North Carolina. The fact that it drove there from the state it was in a few months before was pretty cool. But it didn’t complete the rally without incident.
Somewhere in Virginia, the Z had to go potty. It started peeing all it’s coolant out, leaving them to limp along until they found a solution. When they stopped for the night, they called around until they found one. A local parts store overnighted one to their store, and they swapped it right in the parking lot.
Here’s the old one along side the new unit. The guys even scrapped the old copper radiator and got enough back to cover their breakfast! Remember, this was a few years ago, before scrap prices took a nose dive. Getting a car that has readily available parts made the difference here. Yes, it had to be transferred overnight, but it was a part someone had on the shelf, and they only lost a few hours when it could have been a lot worse.
Here’s the Z sitting next to a car that actually completed the “Trifecta of Crap”. This weird looking Ford Escort has a total of 12 cylinders! Better yet, they aren’t all in one place! It’s running a Ford Zetec 4 in the front, and a 4.6L V8 sourced from a FWD Lincoln Continental in the rear. The rear engine essentially serves the purpose of a power adder and only fires up in short bursts, but when it does, the car starts hauling! I’ve seen it in action down at the GRM Challenge, and while very weird, it’s full of BangShifty awesomeness.
Somewhere in the deep south, the A/C on the car couldn’t hang with the muggy temperatures, so the guys improvised. They threw ice on the evaporator and made their own rolling swamp cooler! The excess water went out the evaporator drain, so it wasn’t so bad. Not ideal, but then again, this is a $500 car from the 1970’s and it worked.
I also wanted to mention that although the BABE Rally is no longer in existence, there are a number of other similar events being held every year across the country. The organization Asphault Adventures, run by Jim Thwaite (another “Trifecta of Crap” veteran, and I’m pretty sure he coined the term!) organizes events from time to time. There’s also a new one called the Chop Top Challenge, which may be a little more difficult, because you have to cut the roof of your car off to compete! That one is happening from April 1-4th 2016, and spans from Chicago to Miami.
After the BABE Rally was completed, the Z served as an autocross pig, a daily driver, and sometimes, it even served as a “truck” when it was used on multiple occasions to bring trash to the dump. But we weren’t done. In the next installment, we’ll see the Z transform from a streetable road rally competitor to a full race car as we prepare it for the 24 Hours of Lemons. Stay tuned!
nice…
That’s awesome. I love dirt cheap motorsports!
Two thumbs up…..WAAAAY up!
To get the most out of this project why not bring this car to Lebanon Valley Dragway wednesday night for the stick shift bracket class. Just need dot tires and mufflers. Lots of fun.
We could do that, if you wanted to wait an eternity for it to get down the track. Fast it is not! Ha!
We did think about slapping a turbo on it at one point for better straight line performance, but the L28 runs so nice that we didn’t want to mess with a good thing.