July 2016 Fiesta of the Month Winner - RAAMaudio

[M-Sport fan]

2.5 years is a drop in the bucket the way the years fly by as we get a bit less young, percentage wise you are catching up daily in fact

YES, and don't I KNOW it! (Although I try to at least stay somewhat fit in my aging process with cycling {I was a competitive road/track racing cyclist in my youth}, and daily walking. )

I WISH I would have come across that built LS1 deal you did, I might have considered keeping my '00 Z28 if I did.
(Was it a carbed/Victor single plane setup, or the factory style, but with an aftermarket FAST LSx intake manifold, injected deal??)

 

[cinderbike]

About time! Glad to see a local win.

 

[RAAMaudio]

Thanks

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The LS had a stock manifold but not sure which one now, bigger injectors, aluminum rails, bigger TB but still had room to for more head porting, etc....the cam was a bit much for the street, part of why it would rev so high. It was overbuilt then detuned to spec power levels for the class it ran, redline lowered etc so they could run one engine the whole season. I bought their spare when the rules changed and required a stock LS3 which they were not happy about to say the least. The race with the same LS1 build, full season, put in the spare for the next season and rebuild the current engine and raced for a few years without a single failure. A very smart engine program in my book

 

[FromChaos79]

This car is rad, Congrats RAAMaudio! Lots of unique custom work and probably a mean track machine. Dream build im sure.

 

[RAAMaudio]

Thanks
I have actually built far more radical cars than this, some track only some street/track, one street/track/audio competition that was a multiyear project but overall this is the most fun car I have had since my 10 years of 510 Datsuns starting in 1972

Looks like I will be putting it up for sale soon though

 

[M-Sport fan]

How much more weight could be pulled out of your FiST with a TOTALLY gutted (UN-streetable?) interior (with or without fixed mount, racing shell seats), and would it more than offset the added weight of an SCCA/NASA certified full cage?

 

[RAAMaudio]

Tough question to nail it down completely but from prior experience I can at least point out what needs to be done at different levels.

1) If building the car to a specific class can make a difference in how much weight the car must maintain and what parts must remain like dash, even front door panels, etc....and how much cage it would require.

2) If building to what you want to do and then just running whatever class you had to then you can do pretty much as much gutting as you wish. There is a lot more weight than just the full interior which is quite a bit to remove, sound deadening, a ton of excess wiring, some lessor mods but it does add up like unneeded brackets, longer than needed bolts and studs. Also air bags which are pretty heavy, my car has a sunroof so that can be quite substantial, also air conditioning, heater core, etc....if get really into it lexan windows in the rear, window acutators, trunk latch, even door latches. One can build a minimal legal cage and end up much lighter than my car is now.

3) Tying in the cage to the strut towers, rear suspension pickup points, stronger door area, some can be done with smaller tubing. Also it would be easy to be under 2500lbs so .095 DOM
in 1.75" would be plenty strong and lower in weight though 1.5" might meet the requirements. I have a nice tubing bender, notcher and dimple dies I will be selling soon

I built a Scion TC, caged with some removeable elements, CF/Kevlar roof, 18x9" wheels, foam filled chassis, two race seats and harnesses, nearly full interior kept, sound deadened, boosted, wing, splitter, etc....and it was 275lbs lighter than stock. It did not start out much heavier than the FiST when I bought it new.

There is a thread on the forum about a race build that might shed more light on how low the car can go down to in weight but I imagine 2300 lbs may be doable.

 

[M-Sport fan]

OK, thanks!

I took for granted the removal of the air bags BOTH because most sanctioning bodies FORCE you to remove them by their safety rules (at least for wheel to wheel competition), and also due to replacing the steering wheel with an aftermarket race version (the Sparco carbon fiber spoke/rim suede covered #385 model would be NICE, but over $800.00 to save a few grams, YIKES! ).

Also, the totally tied-in cage completely negates ANY need for the various suspension braces so popular on this site, and their questionable functionality.

 

[FromChaos79]

RAAMaudio will you be parting the car or selling as a whole?

 

[RAAMaudio]

The car is far to modded to part it out and I have no shop anylonger as full time RVing now.
I will be able to sell some parts individually and determined by what the buyer wants on it.
It will be a damn good deal especially when one considers the hundreds upon hundreds of hours I have put into it

Quite sure I will be selling it as soon as I get my dually sold and buy a different truck.

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I had the Momo Race wheel in my Tacoma for 8 years or so, I installed one in two of my other street/track car builds as well, I prefer function over form and they worked great. Suede wheels I have had always became smooth pretty quickly so not worth it to me.

Absolutely on the braces, not needed and do little anyway, my take on parts is if not proven to make the car faster it makes it slower, purely physics at play.