1970 Ghia GRM Challenge car (now with post Challenge update)

[sbpickup]

We (Aaron my 14 year old son, Al my father and I) have been building a 1970 Ghia to take to the Grassroots Motorsports 2006 Challenge. For this event we have a budget of $2006.00 to buy and build a car to compete in 3 events. The events are concourse show, drag race, and autocross. We have no hopes of winning with this car, but plan on having a lot of fun.

The project is moving along, so we thought we would throw a few pics up.

Its still UGLY, but we made good progress this weekend.

The dash is in and wired.
All the electrical is fixed.
The broken shock mount is fixed.
The seat is installed.
My dad spent a few hours unbending the front bumper.
We also put the lip back on the pass. side front wheel opening.
Did a ton of other things needed to get the car inspected.

The only thing left to do for inspection is mount the harness.

Its been driven up and down the alley behind the house a few times and it "feels" fun.

We can not wait to get the mechanical stuff done. We are all ready to move on to making the car look less rat like.

Our first autocross is Sunday. We are looking forward to seeing how we do with it.

Pics:

We also picked up what should have been our primary car last weekend. We did not find it until it was too late to change directions. It also would have been a shame to make a race car out of it. The budget is right though as it sits its $800.00 $600.00 without the nice wheels. This one is going to be Aarons first car when he turns 16. He is 14 now so he has a good head start on it.

[Gary]

I like that tu-tone Ghia. Maybe when you're done autocrossing it you all can make it into a nice driver. Let us know how you fare with it in competition. I bet the car receives a lot of looks.
_________________
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)

[70 140]

That looks like fun. Were you having problems with the hood flying up, or are the pins just for looks? You could always sell the bumpers on the green car and add $400 more to your budget

That orange car has cleaned up quite niceley. Paint thinner will strip the crayon marks off the glass.

[sbpickup]

double post

[sbpickup]

Thanks Icy! I wasnt sure if I liked it or not when it was bought, but after looking at it for a few months I dont think I would change it. I have really grown to love it.

Everything we do to the car we should be able to "undo" at some time. The exception being the tach hole in the dash. We have a replacment dash to fix it in the future if we wish.

With a little luck the car will be tagged and on the street end of the week. I REALLY want to start driving it to work

[70 140]

[sbpickup]

[Achilles3588]

Love the fact that you are making it your son's first car. He'll know somethin' about cars when you are done with that project.
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Larry V.~
'91 Syncro Doka 1.9L TDI 'AFN'

[sbpickup]

Well it may be slow and ugly, but its now legal to drive on the street! The Ghia passed inspection today with only a minor glitch!

On to paint and body work!!

[72Coupe]

I am very happy for you and your son. I bought our coupe for son's high school graduation present. over the past year we have worked on it's restoration together and the bonding experience has been priceless... The nice car is a bonus. I can only hope that this experience brings you even closer to your son.

Best Regards,
72 Coupe

[sbpickup]

Thanks for the kind words 72!

We will be pulling one more car from the barn in the near future. It is a 1967 Ghia coupe and it will be my fathers car. So we have 3 generations of our family working together on the 3 Ghias. Its very special to all of us that we work on them together.

Sean

[KGCoupe]

[vwdmc16]

cool projects, sound like great fun.

I really must say I detest that green ghias dash. what's with that?
_________________
"Fiberglass is for boats and race cars-Steel is real-fix it right the first time"-Wolff

'72 Ghia: http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n146/vwdmc17/100_1964.jpg
'72 Honda Z600
'81 Delorean

www.EVILGENIUSRACING.com

[sbpickup]

KGCoupe:

I still have that scoop around here some where. Maybe we can make a deal on it!

I dont have any pics of the 67 as of yet. As soon as I get some Ill post them. That will be it for a long while. The three of them will keep the three of us busy for some time.

vwdmc16:

[vwdmc16]

oh well excuse me if I give the impression that i'm a purist. i'm far from it, just look at a pic of my ghia below.
but I do insist on trying to keep it stylish and tasteful, and sorry but a flat black sheet dash on such a beautiful and curvaceous car such as a KG is just a bad mix. but it's your car and i also believe people should be able do do whatever the f*ck they want to do to their cars. the stock ghia dash isn't perfect and the modified one in my car isn't perfect either( i want to remodel it to accommodate more gauges and some A/C vents without looking too cluttered)

there are plenty of cheap tricks to do on a car like this with a small budget. hell you could engine turn the dash face with a drill and wire brush wheel then clear coat it. that's cheap and unique, but whatever it's your car mate

cheers
_________________
"Fiberglass is for boats and race cars-Steel is real-fix it right the first time"-Wolff

'72 Ghia: http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n146/vwdmc17/100_1964.jpg
'72 Honda Z600
'81 Delorean

www.EVILGENIUSRACING.com

[sbpickup]

[70 140]

Congrats Guys.

I was just browsing through April 2007's Grassroots Motorsports, and I saw at least two pictures of you and your ghia. It also mentioned you had won an award - Nice work on taking a dead car and turning some heads

I recognized that scoop right away.

[sbpickup]

Thanks so much! We had a blast, what a great event. Coverage in Grassroots Motorsports was just icing on the cake!

Here is a picture of the Ghia on course:

I had forgotten about this thread, here is our post Challenge update:

Well the 2006 GRM Challenge is in the books! We had a couple minor events during the tow to Florida, but nothing serious. We are all now well over any fears we had about flat towing long distance.

We arrived on Thursday for the kick off party. It was much fun. Its a great event with even cooler people. We were one of only 2 air cooled cars there. (first 2 in event history) the other one was a '69 beetle. It was a very pretty race car.

There was no actual party this year on Thursday night which was at first disappointing, but it gave us all time to walk around the parking lot and meet people and see what they brought. It turned out to be way cooler than a party would have been.

Friday was the Autocross/Show portion of the event:

We Concoursed in the AM and Autocrossed in the afternoon. We hit the concourse tent early to try to get to the judges before they burned out. They were all very receptive of the car. It went much better than we thought it would with our lack of prep.

In the afternoon we autocrossed. It was my first event on r's and only my second in the Ghia. Each team got 5 runs. There are also pro drivers available at the event if you wish to use them, but there runs in your car count toward your 5.

FTD was a 43.925, times ranged from 43.925 sec to 57.313 sec. We ran our 4 runs with a best of 50.993 slow but not last place. After our 4th run we were told we would get a rerun due to a timing problem. I ran the next run hard and picked up time until I hit 2 cones. After returning to grid we decided since we were given a rerun and I seemed to be stuck around a 51 that we would use a pro driver. Alan McCrispin jumped at the chance to drive the ghia for us. He loves to drive the odd cars we were told. He got in the car and ran a 49.5 first time out, but coned giving us a 51.5 making my 50.9 our best. The beetle ran a 53.294, so we beat that.

Saturday was the drag portion of the event:

So we were dreading the drags. Our goal was not to finish last over all or in any event. If we were going to fall short this would be the event.

We arrived early and did the only thing we could think of to better our chances. We removed everything we could from the car to get it as light as we could. We figured the bug again would be the only car on our level. We are not sure what the weight of the Beetle was, but his was stripped, gutted, and cut up pretty good.

For our first pass of the day (my first drag race ever) we ran the kick off pass of the event against my good friend Andy Nelson (builder of the last 2 events winning drag cars. This year’s car was a missile. It set a new Challenge record of 10.57. We ran a 18.551 to his 10.64.

Our next pass was heads up against the Beetle. We slowed up a bit, , but beat him.

Our next run was again with the Beetle. I cut a .051 R/T, then blew the 1-2 shift, and watched him step 3 car lengths on me, but we ran him down and beat him again.

We ran a couple more passes for fun, but never improved on our 18.551.

By then the CV joints were getting noisy, so we pulled the axles and loaded the car up for the 900 mile pull back home.

The best part of the weekend was the Awards Dinner Saturday night. Each year they give out a Challengers Choice trophy. This is awarded by popular vote of all the entered teams. We were just floored as we listened to the MC talk about this intriguing and inspiring car only to hear our team name read. Placing well in the event would have been cool, but earning the respect of our competitors was just priceless!

In the end, we did not finish last in any event. We placed 63 out of 67, in an un prepaired mostly stock Ghia with r tires. We are sure we can do much better after a year of development. So now we have a base line to start from.

Here are our Challenge Pictures

http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q79/sanyarcosean/2006%20GRM%20Challenge/?start=all

Thanks for all the kind words, support, and encouragement you’ve all given us. We look forward to running the event again next year, and being competitive!

Sean

[freekazoid]

Have any side pics of the car with the scoop? What a great idea. I have a WRX myself and never thought of it.

[kingkarmann]

That sounded like great fun. Thanks for sharing and keep us in the loop on you and sons progress
You said you had forgetten about this thread. How in the hell did 70 140 remember it ?
_________________
"Depression is a malfunction of the instrument we use to determine reality.”

Mike Gerson

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