Testing the 87' Coyote powered Road Race Cougar at Summit Point

03'Darin

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All depends on what you call expensive. This car is rather expensive to run due to the weight and hp. Consumes tires, fuel and brakes pretty quickly. 6 mpg racing. So the dual 8 hour races at RA we ran about 1300 miles. That works out to $735 in fuel. Used up 4 tires and have a 5th thats about half (good for a test day). Also went through 2 complete sets of brake pads for about $1000 Now that doesn't take in to account travel expenses (850 miles each way), lodging or food. Now we had 6 drivers so we split that 6 ways. Sounds like a lot but when you figure how much actual seat time you get for the money, its probably one of the cheapest road race options out there. Now if you run one of the lower hp cars that weigh a lot less you'll cost those costs by probably 75%. They consume very little fuel, tires last much longer and so do brakes. However the fun factory compared to driving this Cougar VS one of those small bore cars... well there's no comparison.

Champcar doesn't require any experience. There are a lot of the small bore teams that rent seats. So it's arrive and drive basically. I think there are seats available for just over $1,000. There was a BMW M3 in our class that rents seats. From what I understand those seats are $3,000 a weekend.
 

aoc racer

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Talk about a sleeper!! This thing is awesome. I live seeing non mustang fox bodies making an appearance in the racing community!
 

03'Darin

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Talk about a sleeper!! This thing is awesome. I live seeing non mustang fox bodies making an appearance in the racing community!

Seriously we have a steady flow of people coming to our pit or garage at each race event commenting about how awesome the car is. That was our build strategy. Basically a restomod race car.



People see the car for the first time and I'm sure they're like.... look at that thing... while they chuckle under their breath. Then once they see it run they are in complete awe. If you watched my video I posted just during my 2 hour stint I had 2 different cars over shoot the braking zone from me catching them and closing quickly under braking. The car for how heavy it is will still out break most of the cars we race against. Better yet is we run manual brakes and of course no ABS.
 

03'Darin

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Thought I'd add some more updates.

Since the Road America race I posted about last we have run Indy (dual 10 hour races) and AER Series at Summit Point (dual 9 hour races).

I had mentioned about the tranny issue at the RA race. When we got the car back to the shop we almost couldn't get the car in and out of 1st gear when it was running. We swapped the clutch master cylinder thinking it was bad but still had the same result. So we bled the line several times with no improvement. So we swapped in another MC thinking that maybe the one we used was also bad. When we were bleeding the line again we discovered that pressure plate was moving when we pushed the clutch. Here the bolts that hold the pressure plate to the flywheel had come loose. Knowing that we had used loctite and torqued them we decided to buy new bolts.

Next event was Indy. Tight and mostly flat course. Not a good fit for our big, heavy car. Turned out the trans shifting issue showed up again. Interesting thing is each time that happened its after roughly 14 hours of run time on the car. Before we pitted to address the issue we got wrecked. A car was trying to overtake us went way too deep in the braking zone basically t-boning us. Right front fender, bent the spindle, pass door, right rear quarter, right rear tire and wheel and broke the sway bar. We fixed the car (pressure plate bolts were loose AGAIN) but were obviously well out of contention.

At the shop we ended up using a set of the locking bolts designed for headers. The ones with the splined head and the locking tab.

Next event was just a few weeks ago at Summit Point WV. This event was with AER (American Endurance Racing) Series. This series classes cars strictly by lap times. There were 56 cars at the event. They break down 5 classes. We ended up qualifying 18th overall and 8th in our class of 15 cars. That put us in group 3.

Saturday race was cut short by 1 hour due to lightning. The course closes if there is lightning within 6 miles. Probably for the safety of the corner workers.

We finished 6th overall and 2nd in class.

Sunday we were again grided 18th overall and managed a 7th overall and another 2nd in class.

Car worked great! We got 17 hours out of the Falkens! Summit is hard on left side tires so we swapped them left to right after saturday and they made it.

We were the ONLY American car in the entire field! Not just our class, the entire field!

We're done for the year now. Winter plans as of right now are to cut some weight (car weighs 3,400 without the driver) with tubular front k-member, coil overs and trimming excess metal off the car.

Here are some pics from the weekend:
 

03'Darin

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That was our first thought. But after we broke 2 drill bits trying to drill our first 2 bolts we started brainstorming for other options. Our one team member came up with the locking header bolt idea. We put 24 hours on the car at the Summit event and none of the bolts came loose.
 

598

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Skipping the fall RA race? Was hoping to catch up. We run the 91 escort GT. Much slower.
 

03'Darin

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Congrats on the trophies

Thanks! Very satisfying to have the only domestic car there and end up with the results we did.

Skipping the fall RA race? Was hoping to catch up. We run the 91 escort GT. Much slower.

I LOVE that track! That was our first time there. I've run a lot of different tracks and that is now my favorite. It's Watkins Glen on steroids.

I'd love to go back but not for Champ. Being an EC they have their hand out to gladly take our entry fee but want to treat us like the red headed step child. Being at Indy in the drivers meeting and having pretty much the entire group clap when the Champ officials announced EC wouldn't be scored during the race pretty much ended my days with Champ and EC. I think we had 12 EC cars at RA and they couldn't even give us a trophy?? Seriously, it's not like we run at a reduced entry fee than the cars that are scored and given trophy's.

Sorry, rant over..

What color was your car?
 

598

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White with the BMW stripes. We did it to mock the Bimmers with the early paint scheme, but all in good fun.
 

03'Darin

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White with the BMW stripes. We did it to mock the Bimmers with the early paint scheme, but all in good fun.

That's cool!

How far do you guys travel to run? Have you ever come East to race?

This endurance road racing is the best value for the money track time wise and it's a ton of fun SId. Time to get to work and put a car and team together!
 

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