This is not a history of Speedchimp Racing and does not detail the build of our race car or our exploits on the track.  For that kind of stuff, visit the Speedchimp Blog.  This is just a place to briefly share some of our thoughts and experiences.

In no particular order....

~ Never assume that your spare transmission is going to fit in the car.  Actually, never assume that shift levers are interchangeable.

~What is worse?  Working on a race in freezing temperatures (<32) or working on a car in hot temperatures?  It may be a toss up, but I absolutely ache after working on the car in the cold.

~ It takes about 20 hours, 2 3'X3'X1/8" sheets of ABS, a bunch of rivets, and miscellaneous pieces of aluminum and steel to scratch build an air dam.  Depending on what your time is worth, it's probably cheaper to just buy one.

~ Gear oil is some of the foulest smelling stuff to every spill on a garage floor.

~ Installing a seat should be a piece of cake, right?  Wrong.  We have at least 12 hours invested in our seat installation, and it's still not right.  Getting closer, but not there yet.

~ Just won an auction for a new intake manifold and carburetor setup on ebay.  Primary purpose is not to make the car faster, it's to make the car easier to tune.

~ We now have two Mazda 12A rotary motors.  Our prime and a backup.  Interestingly, one motor is a 4 port and the other is a 6 port.  What does this mean?  The biggest impact is that intake manifolds are not interchangeable.  Is this going to be problem?  Who knows?  But probably.

~ 13 months to build a race car shrinks to 8 months to build a race car in a staggeringly short amount of time.

~ So, if we decided to get rid of the rotary junk alltogether.... V-6? I-6? I-4?

~ Wing material has shown up.  What happens if the wing is effective?  It's not impossible that the wing will make downforce and if it makes a lot, the uprights need to be strong enough to support it.