Left the Boxsters at Home...
 

This weekend we left the Boxsters at home and had some off road fun with the Beetle and one of my bikes (Yamaha XT 225).

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I've never seen a beetle with a snorkel before!

The snorkel worked well. Engine kept running fine. I think that these transmissions weren't designed to run for extended periods under water though.

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...and the 2,500lb Harbor Freight winches will not pull a 3,000 lb car out of a mud pit.

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They will if you have a snatch block or two and enough cable.
With two blocks you could lift or move 5000lbs. with a 2500lb. winch.

sad panda....

youre gonna have a hell of a time getting that radiator back to working condition lol. maybe dawn?

Looks fun. HooptieX is having an event at Redneck Off-road Heaven park in Ardmore,OK on Sept 18-19. My friend and I will be there with our boxsters and another friend with his Beetle that's set up like yours. Rick said he was going to meet me there too.

Wow, I heard about that event months ago, but had other commitments that weekend. Now suddenly my schedule may be open. The Dung Beetle probably needs a roll cage to be legal, but that's doable. The automatic transmission is failing, but a HootieX would be a good way to finish it off if it stays in gear. ...or maybe run another car. :dance:

I can't speak for HooptieX officials but the guy running the event is pretty relaxed about the rules. Pretty much have a helmet and you're good to go. Maybe weld some bars from the A pillars to the back and call it a day? Doesn't have to be pretty or even completely functional. Just enough to pass tech? It's being held at a large park. Even if it fails tech, you can still go dink around and have fun

Tentatively planning to arrive there Saturday afternoon to spend the night and run on the track on Sunday.
This car still runs well, but over pressurizes the cooling system. I'm going to dump some "K-Seal Ultimate Head Gasket Repair" in there and see if it fixes it well enough to get me around the track a few times. I have a factory hard top on the car right now and that meets the rules.
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This is about fun and not looking to compete, but what is your tire advice for this? I currently have 17" wheels and TW 100 tires on it.

Awesome. Re-71's are the tire of choice among the fast crowd. Anything with a very soft compound does well. I run Hoosier racing rain tires myself.

The head gasket sealer seems to be working. I got it mostly street legal (Oklahoma is easy) on Friday afternoon. The cooling system pressure seems a bit high, but it's not purging coolant. I put some fresh gas in since it was about empty of the 2019 gas that was left in it.
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I'll drive it minimally over the next two weeks, but enough to sort it out and have it ready. Hopefully it holds together and waits to die a proper death at the event.

My local Gambler 500 group has a very different perspective on the HooptieX than the RallyCross guys. I'm still deciding which way I want to go with this car.

Very off topic here but how'd you do the louvers in the frunk?

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Just drilled with a step drill, cut and bent them.
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This car just has a single radiator - front and center. I had a Toyota radiator for a while, but the single Boxster radiator with a manual switch did fine for 1/4 mile and runs through an autocross course. It's not an endurance car and the AC system is completely removed.

Playing with wheels and 20 mm spacers. The Reproduction Fuchs 15s fit the back, but need another 5 mm or so to work in front. I kind of would love to have 15" mud terrains and throw chunks of dirt around the track rather than go for speed with stickies. :D
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Fun thought, but probably going with 17s and 18s with 20 mm on the rear. Save the 15s with mud tires for 914 shenanigans another time.

That's awesome! Hoowf they clear the brakes? Is that a 2.5?

Throw a roof rack on there, and maybe the quad lights up front....I absolutely love that look

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I didn't think that 15s would clear the brakes, but these wheels do on the rear and just barely bind on the front caliper. That's using wheel studs and 20mm spacers. I just ordered some 25mm spacers to see what that does in front.

The car is a 2001 base ...with a 2.5L set up with the intake and throttle off a 2.7L.

The wheels are pretty odd at 15x8.5 and deep. I pulled them off of a rat-eaten 924 that I bought, then traded. I haven't found much info on them.
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If you're out to have fun (lots of drifting) then you'll want rock hard tires with high air pressure. To be fast with a rwd car you actually have to drive very conservatively. Drifting is slower. The fastest way around a corner is slow and steady. Don't let the rear end get out at all unless you're trying to rotate. You also want as low air pressure as you can get without losing a bead. Losing a bead is bad. I usually start off with around 27 psi and work my way down to 20 psi as the tires warm up and I get a feel for track conditions. Drifting on these tracks around here will eat up your tread real quick. As I said earlier, drifting is slower but man it can be soooo much fun if you get it right. This race isn't for points so I'm less concerned about being fast. I'll throw my good tires on to set a good time, but otherwise I plan on throwing some tires I don't care about on. I'm thinking about racing for times on Saturday and Sunday will be drifting and jumping day. I'm stoked to see you and Rick come out

I saw similar reproduction wheels when I was looking recently. I really wanted to find some fat ass 15s that I could throw some 26" tires on but I only found the super narrow version. The look is great thoughhttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...a8d49f7aa7.jpg

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Woody, I'm really looking forward to seeing you in person after all these years. I'm still unsure about the engine in this car, but I'll be there with something arriving Saturday afternoon and just booked a motel in Ardmore. I may have to make time next year to get into RallyCross. It looks like a lot of fun.

Ike, I just had some 235/75/15s mounted on them. That's about 29". I won't have time to see how far they are from fitting anything for a day or two, but I have a big hammer and a recip saw. Everything fits eventually. They are planned for my winter project 914, but I am curious if they can work on a 986 without major suspension modification. Pics when I give it a try.

If you have coilovers you may be able to Max out the ride hide and make em fit. Don't hit any bumps though lol. I can't wait to see those pics.

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I did a quick check on the rear wheel. With the car on the ground it didn't rub anywhere, but there was no space at the fender for travel. That would be a lot of fender to roll, but looking at what Truegearhead had done, I'm not scared to cut the 'excess fender' off.

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You're going to need to cut 4 inches to clear those tires. Smaller diameter tires will be a lot more fun as they're lighter and make the car quicker to accelerate. You'll have a harder time getting the rear end to swing out and just have a slower car with those tires. Generally the tracks here in this region pack down and are more like wet asphalt than muddy road. In my opinion those will be the worst tires for having fun or being fast.

Thanks, good info and pretty much what another local RallyCrosser said on the Grassroots Motorsports forum. I won't bring these to HooptieX, but I am going to fit the fronts just to see what it does.

For the event, I plan to have some sticky 17" track tires and a set of Khumo street tires that are TW 400 and pretty hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ775XUdVng
Here's video of the location where it's being held. These are small rallycross events but the Hooptie event will be 1.5 miles long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqLbwKf2aqQ
Video makes it look slow but trust me you're getting thrown around inside and it feels like you're going a million miles an hour

Thanks for the links. I watched those and some more that both of them uploaded. I'm gonna need to double up all of my structural zip-ties and put a pillow in my Sparco seat for extra padding.

I tried the 15" Fuchs style wheels on the front last night with 25mm spacers. They don't quite work. They bind just a little bit on the tallest part of the brake caliper. Those 235/75 tires would need to have the front bumper cover cut back at least an inch or so too.
In other news, I sold the Dung Beetle to another guy in the Gambler 500 group. I plan to build a '93 Miata up next, but the seller is having a hard time finding the title. If that sale doesn't go through one of my junky 914s or the 81 Scirocco will probably be next.

If I remember correctly, the calipers on the 2.5s are smaller than the later cars (16" wheels were factory option or standard, ok don't remember) and I wonder if they would work with that setup.

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Base model calipers are the same throughout the whole 986 generation and into at least the 987 that I know of.

Jon, You need to sign up if you're going to make it. Hooptie officials are having issues with the lack of people signing up. The event will still go on with or without them

Oops, I meant to do that earlier last week, but had thoughts of changing cars. I'm on now for Sunday and I'll let my other Gamblers know to do it asap. I'd sign up for Saturday too, but I'm working Friday night, off at 7 am Saturday morning. I may get to sleep or I could be working hard all night. Fridays are unpredictable.

HooptieX was a lot of fun. Of course, this is now off topic from the off-topic topic since I did bring a Boxster, but I might as well finish it out. I finally met Woody in person and had dinner with him and two other Texas racers on Saturday night :cheers: . Woody's car had seized the engine before I arrived on Saturday after doing about 2-1/2 laps.
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On Sunday morning my car ran pretty well. For me this was about playing with the car and learning more than trying to be competitive. On one lap, I had a good spin and just kept driving through it out of the thick dust cloud. When the dust cleared my rear bumper was still there. Someone was nice enough to bring it to me. My technique got better through the day and I ended up lowering my tire pressure to the low 20s on Woody's advice. Grip was much better.
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I had lunch with Rick (Redtele58) then got three more afternoon runs of the track before my engine seized. I made it all the way to parking and as I started to let up on the throttle it stalled hard. I could not get it to crank at all after that.

I would not recommend doing this with your pristine 986, but I actually had more fun on the dirt than I did on a paved track at DEs. My car was rough and my engine was bad when I started the day, so no regrets. Here's an aerial view of part of the track. It was about 1-1/4 miles total. Some parts were getting very rough by the end of the day.

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Now this car gets set aside for a while while I catch up a few other projects.

It was great hanging out with you two again. I'm glad to see you had so much fun. Sorry to hear your racing got cut short too. How many laps did you get in? I only stuck around to watch you run the first lap as my friend and I needed to pack up for the 6 hour trip back home. I was happy to see you weren't out there driving like an old man. You were laying into it pretty good. My friend took these two pics before we left.
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This is about 5 seconds before my motor seized up
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I wasn't counting, but it looks like I got eight runs. The 2+ minute ones had multiple spins (and were the most fun).
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I really wanted to break into the 1:40s. For the last few laps I tried adding V8 Power, but my front struts were completely shot at the end and it was bottoming hard.
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That guy with the MR2 was awesome and somehow got down to 1:43.9. That Cayenne GTS was quite impressive too for a Pig. Makes me wonder if I should get a flood salvage GTS and gut it...

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I stole enough stuff from other peoples uploads to make a video:
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I got a Fiero. Really. but...
 

Back to Off Topic. I have never had any respect or love for Fieros. I thought; 1980s GM attempt at making a sports car without really caring about what they sold to customers. According to Wikipedia almost one out of every 500 Fieros produced caught fire. Most of the fires were attributed to connecting rod failure: "60 percent to 90 percent of the rods produced do not exhibit defects." This means at least every 1 out of 10 rods produced were defective and possibly 4 out of 10 were also defective. I could go on, but lets just say that it has never been on my shopping list.

That is, Until a Hollywood stunt car driver posted an ad for a friend's car on another forum. The basic platform is a Fiero, but it is highly modified. This car was used around 2006 - 2010 as a camera car. Dubbed the 'CineRacer' it was used to shoot chase scenes and car commercials. Since it filmed scenes for 'Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire' I think that it is safe to say that this car is 'Chuck Norris Approved'.

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The last job it was on, shooting a commercial at Texas Motor Speedway, the engine started to smoke. After finishing the shoot, it was parked in a warehouse and has sat there ever since. It was offered for $900. The driver's seat costs about $900, the car is 'built', it is complete, it comes with lots of spare and extra parts, it has a cool history, and is enough 'not Fiero' that I really love it. I'm going to get it running properly again and give it a new life. I'm thinking Rallycross car and entering it in next year's Grassroots Motorsports $2,000 Challenge: https://2000challenge.com/ .
I'm not planning a build thread here, but I'll post updates from time to time. Feel free to share Fiero tips and knowledge. I'm not a 'GM guy'. :dance:

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LS4 and 6 speed from a Pontiac G6

That would be nice, or even a supercharged 3800. For now I have too many other projects so I'm planning to work with the 2.8L 6 that's in it. I do see a couple salvage G6s on Copart and I'll watch for a good one to part.

Both the LS4 and 3800sc are good cheap motors that are capable of 500hp. I prefer the LS only because there's such a huge aftermarket support for it. The 88 was a good year as they attempted to put a better rear suspension on it. I had a brief fling with Fiero's and bought one. I never did anything with it.

Then there was a Gambler 500 Rally (An arguably $500 car running 500 miles of back-road checkpoints) that I needed a car for so I got a slightly wrecked CR-V with a bent frame.
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Luckily my son-in-law got me access to a frame machine to get it bent back into shape. A quick paint job in the driveway, some accessories bolted on, and a little work with a Sawzall and sledge and it was ready to go...
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Now I think that I can spend a couple months focused on the Fiero and some Boxster projects.