Hyperfest Report - Ouch

#1

Hyperfest started out great, but didn’t end up so hot for me personally. Saturday had some good mid-pack racing and jockeying for position and I ended up coming in 5th. Sunday started out great, I qualified 5th, but it went downhill quickly as I went off into the woods on turn three on my second lap. It looks like my left rear tire hit the inside curb and put my car into oversteer. I couldn’t get the car straightened out by the time I got to track out and dropped my right rear. The car quickly whipped in the other direction and after trying to correct, I realized that it was time to put two feet in and pray (and check to see that the wipers still worked :slight_smile: I hit the tire wall going backwards and it bounced up and landed on top of the concrete barrier behind the tires.

Luckily, for all of that drama, the car absorbed almost all of the energy as I barely felt anything when I hit and surprisingly enough I am not sore today at all.

Well as you can probably see by the damage, I won’t be back this season. Now I have to research my options to get a car back on track for next season. I know that some people have joined 2 cars together so that is an option as well as finding a new shell and swapping parts over. Any advice on options (and leads on donor cars) would be great.

Here is the video and pics (Scott – you have any better view of the event?)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2007946135039935227&q=spece30+wreck&ei=VapfSMfpHp2mrALSzqz2Bw







#2

Glad to hear you are ok. When I saw the car up in that spot it was of great concern. I figured once it didnt go red, that it was not too bad. Good luck with the rebuild.

Andrew Z
Drive-gear.com
Spec e-30 rentals

#3

Sorry to see this. I’m just guessing, but I think it would be cheaper/better to start with a new tub on this one. Try to find something that was parted out or doesn’t run for super-cheap. Swap parts over. Good luck going racing again!

#4

With the cost of doing the cage again and swapping all the stuff around, it may be worth a shot at salvaging that one first, but a new shell may be easier. You could spend a couple hundred having a frame shop pull it back out and see what you wind up with. If the trunk floor pulls out decently you can get a rt quarter/rear body panel cut from a junker and replace just that portion. The ‘frame’ rail on the underside would need to be sectioned in. It will probably be a 50/50 proposition from a cost perspective to reshell vs repair. Sorry this happened to you.

#5

It looks repairable to me. Remember this?

#6

Gasman wrote:

I was thinking about you and this repair when I frst saw Trent’s photos. I imagine that you cou;ld offer some advice to Trent. Also Steve, knowing what you know now (particularly what it costs to properly repair such damage) would you do it over again or start with a new car?

Trent - Glad to hear you are OK. The video and the photos are painful to watch.

Good luck with the repair/rebuild.

Don

#7

Don, I think it depends on how gifted you are as a mechanic and how much time you have on your hands. In my case, it was less expensive to repair the car than it was to build another one. The repair turned out great and I actually think the car handles better now. But who the heck knows, that may be all in my head.

#8

I was thinking about your’s too Steve. Obviously it can be done, but how could that be cheaper than a new shell (call it $500) and a new cage (call it $2500)? I understand not wanting to throw away an otherwise beautiful car, but for the rest of us with “normal” cars… :wink:

#9

Steve I did remember your endeavor and that is what had me thinking it was possible to fix that car. I can handle almost anything mechanical especially with help from the other TeamWTF?! guys and I am pretty handy with a welder, but I think that stitching two cars together is above my abilities and would have to ship it out. Likewise the same goes for the roll cage, I definitely want a pro to take care of that (it came in very handy this past weekend), so either way there are going to be some external labor costs. But I have to agree with Skeen that a cage would be cheaper than the work to put the 2 bodies together. Carter had made a good suggestion to call some votech schools to see if they needed a project to stitch the cars together which is another option to look at.

I have gotten some good leads on 2 early style 318 shells for under $500 and about $1000 for a complete 89 325is with mechanical problem.

I am leaning heavy towards getting the complete car since it is the same year and I can maximize the amount of spare parts between the 2 cars and minimize the amount of external labor.

#10

Glad to see you’re okay and all the safety gear did it’s job.
Good luck with the rebuild! It looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you, but we all know you’re up to the challenge B)

#11

If you want to buy a Spec E30 that is ready to rock, Stephen is selling his car. I will be exploring selling my car too, but not until he sells his.
-Vic

#12

victorhall wrote:

[quote]If you want to buy a Spec E30 that is ready to rock, Stephen is selling his car. I will be exploring selling my car too, but not until he sells his.
-Vic[/quote]

Brian Hair also told me about Stephen’s car, but a totally built car is probably out of my price range. I figure that with a good donor shell I can get back on the road for about $5K by recycling most of my car. The main cost would be a cage.

Sorry to hear you won’t be back in SpecE30

#13

Trent, so glad you’re OK, I had the next-car-back view of the incident and my heart sank when I saw the car bite in and head to the left towards that tire wall. I do have video, it might take me a few days to get it compiled into something uploadable, but I’ll get it up. Glad to hear you’re eager to get back on track; I’m afraid your current damage might be more than GRM stickers could cover up!

#14

It is good to hear you came out unscathed, that is a scary place to wreck, I had a buddy break his back there in a Formula Atlantic///

From what I see in the photo it looks like you did not have a tire in the well, the spare is designed to take some of the energy in a wreck, another reason not to run a bunch of weights back there…

Al

#15

FARTBREF wrote:

[quote]It is good to hear you came out unscathed, that is a scary place to wreck, I had a buddy break his back there in a Formula Atlantic///

From what I see in the photo it looks like you did not have a tire in the well, the spare is designed to take some of the energy in a wreck, another reason not to run a bunch of weights back there…

Al[/quote]
I was overweight by about 30 lbs and my ballast weighted 40 lbs, so I couldn’t take that out. So instead I popped the tire off of the rim and just left the rim in the well for ballast and lost 20 lbs… who knew I was going to have a rear impact right after I did that DOH!!! But I think that since the impact was in the right rear having a tire wouldn’t have absorbed most of the impact compared to a head-on rear impact.

#16

FARTBREF wrote:

How would welding weight (and reinforcement) to a wheel/tire in the trunk (and securing it with extra bolts to the tub) reduce it’s effectiveness as a crash-absorbing structure?

#17

he was probably looking at WTF’s picture without a tire mounted on the spare wheel and then extrapolating it to one with only weights back there.

GRMScott wrote:

[quote]FARTBREF wrote:

How would welding weight (and reinforcement) to a wheel/tire in the trunk (and securing it with extra bolts to the tub) reduce it’s effectiveness as a crash-absorbing structure?[/quote]