knate

Blue Bayou Racing

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In this saga we start with Hawaii 2-4-Oh (KA24DE hatch):


And continue until today's version of Blue Bayou (VQ30DE, race suspension, aero, big brakes, fuel cell):

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Have you ever wanted to get sucked into a hobby that requires a large portion of your time and money, then delivers all of its rewards in a just few bursts per year? With endurance racing that's what I got myself into. You can read here about all of our success and failures, as well as some tips and tricks we learned over the years with endurance racing. It is an absolute blast to do and I highly encourage you to check it out!

I've been meaning to write a build thread for years.. and have just never gotten it together. Now that I have a ton of material, I guess it's time to make up for it. We started with a KA hatch, then KA coupe, then swapped to VQ30, then race suspension, aero, brakes, etc... We've always been a bit behind the curve in horsepower compared to our competition, but we've still managed to be quite successful over the years with such a great-handling platform.

How it all started for me:

As a kid I always thought Lamborghini's and Ferrari's looked cool, but was never interested in how they worked or how fast they were. But as soon as I got my driver's license, suddenly I was interested, and started learning everything I could about cars. My very first car was a 1985 Nissan 200SX, a rear-drive four-cylinder. This was a true 80's car, with a digital dash and voice prompts ("Fuel level is low.."), like the picture below.. complete with the bar-graph tach.



The 240SX was the next obvious car to become interested in, as it was like my first car only better in every way. My 200SX was angular in every way, yet the 240SX was smooth and new looking. I got my first 240SX in 2002 while I was going to college, a car that I still have. This car eventually developed rod knock, which turned into putting in the 2.0 turbo engine, paint/etc, bigger turbos, blowing that up, and eventually an LS1 that is still in the car (used primarily for drifting).



By this point, I had done various autox and track day events, as well as gotten into drifting. I had always been curious about racing, but in the Northwest ITE was the closest my car would fit into SCCA at the time and that would be way outside of my budget.

Building a Race Car:

In 2009, ChumpCar held their first race at Portland International Raceway and this got the ball rolling. A friend, my dad and I kicked around the idea of building a race car, and since we all owned 240SX's that was the logical choice. Rear-drive, cheap, and we already had plenty of spares and leftovers. In 2011 my dad agreed to let us use his stock daily driver. We got a roll cage donated by building the car at the PIR swap meet in the ChumpCar booth (Thanks to Russ at Racetech!) The downside was this meant leaving the car alone until about a week before the race, then trying to go from street car to working race car in a matter of days. Below is some of the last minute prep in the garage the day of tech. We chose the name "Hawaii 2-4-Oh", and everything was absolutely down to the wire including installing our fire extinguisher in the line at tech.

TECH TIP #1: Figure everything will take at least twice as long as you expect! When building a car there are always unexpected twists and turns that pop up.





Maiden Voyage (4/9/11) - 7 hours - Portland International Raceway:

We had various failures in our first race, as to be expected in a car that had never been on the track and just barely slapped together. Our car ran too hot, our brand new fuel pressure gauge just started leaking right out of the gauge face, I thought the car caught on fire when our brakes started smoking, and my dad pit when he couldn't see out of a fogged visor thinking he couldn't open it. This was my dad's first ever time on a race track, and he entered a race track that was hot! Very intense, not the best way to do it! We finished 28th of 56 teams and had the 17th fastest lap time (1:39.9). Not too bad for a first outing!

TECH TIP #2: The race track is unforgiving; if a part can fail, it will on track. Replace ALL hoses and belts, and anything rubber that you are able to. It's really sad to see someone spend hours putting a junkyard engine in a car, only to have a hose under the intake manifold end their race.





Mysterious Failure (4/10/11) - 7 hours - Portland International Raceway:

For the second race it was sopping wet, a pretty typical condition for Portland. Nathan Feigion was in the car and you can see where the drifting experience really pays off. Unfortunately while he is driving the car suddenly loses power, and we spent hours trying to diagnose the issue. The car didn't want to rev over 4000rpm unless you gave it easy throttle, which led us down the path of fuel filter/fuel pump/exhaust restriction/etc. In the end it turned out to be a failed ECU, which we didn't have a spare of. After borrowing a spare from Paul Newman's Revenge (thanks guys!), we were back on track. We finished 41st out of 52 cars at this event. We had a blast and all loved it! My dad had rented his race gear, figuring he would just do this first weekend and we would rent out spare seats. However after the weekend, he decided he wanted to race with us every time.

TECH TIP #3: Bring spares of everything you can fit! It's like the Umbrella Effect, if you bring it then you probably won't need it.





The Long One (10/29/2011) - 12 hours - Portland International Raceway:

This time we had a chance to get the car prepped for the event, which was good as this would be our longest race at 12 hours. We had a laundry list of things to do, building a new exhaust/lexan windows/gutting weight/etc. We were using an open trailer, so the door windows actually got reinstalled after the race to keep the interior from getting too soaked. We had installed a new light setup, HID bulbs in Hella projectors. This actually worked surprisingly well. One thing we tried was hanging a tinted piece of lexan of over our wink mirror, but this was a flop. Headlights would show up in multiple mirrors plus the tinted plastic, so even with one car behind you might see 6+ white dots in the mirror. This was enough for me to decide to get rid of the wink mirror and move to a convex mirror. We were running factory brakes with Axxis Ultimate brake pads, and we found their limit. We ended up having to swap pads during the race, pulling it off in 12 minutes. It's not fun changing brakes when they are this hot! We still managed our best finish yet at 14th place, and dropped our fastest lap from a 1:39.9 to a 1:37.4!

TECH TIP #4: For night races, put a piece of masking tape (or two) across the top of your visor. You can block the rearview mirror when needed, but easily look up and check the mirror.

Our custom headlights:



The brake pads..



This is the custom rear lexan we put in, this definitely helped reduce drag on the car!



Here's a pumpkin that I carved for a contest at this race.. Frankenstein in a crash helmet:



Left to right: Ken, Nathan, Nate, Dave







The Soaker (10/30/2011) - 6 hours - Portland International Raceway:

My dad (Dave) started the race, and struggled in the wet conditions. It was sopping wet all day, so drifting experience really helped here. We had a reasonably clean race and managed to bring it home with a 7th place, our best finish yet!



Lots more to come!

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