FYI, this is a rally car, you've already gone above and beyond....

 

Yeah, but with PP being all paved now, I've got to keep up with all these road race guys who wash and wax their cars. Besides, how many rally cars have you seen with 10.5" wheels?

Dave

 

The body looked good in primer, so I went ahead and broke out the red paint once again.



Turned out ok, but painting in a garage isn't the same as painting in a paint booth. Ended up with little bits of dust in the paint, so to smooth the surface I started with 800 grit and moved up to 2500 to finish it off. Ended up pretty smooth, so lets hope its good!



I need to send a big THANKS to a friend of mine for swinging by to help out numerous times and for all the tips/tricks. Turns out that building two custom Redbull SoapBox cars from scratch makes for a bit of an expert. So, that wraps up the body work portion of this project, check back later for updates on the next part of the project or if you're local and want to get your hands dirty and see how it all gets done, give me a shout.

Dave

 

Nice -

I've built one Redbull soapbox car - so I'm halfway to expert.

 

looks good Dave!

 

Amongst other things...pretty sure you're there!

 

What kind of paint are you using and where did you get it? Color matched or?

 

I just picked up rattle cans at Home Depot. The paint isn't great, finish even worse...but the good news is I don't plan on leaving those panels on the car anyway, so I'm not really caring how good/bad the color match is.

FWIW, the red in the pictures on the rest of the body is vinyl wrap, so not even the OEM rally red.

Dave

 

We're excited to announce that Enkei Wheels has joined our team as a sponsor for the 2012 season. As some of you who've been following our progress for the last couple of years know, we've been running 17x9.5" NTO3+M and those wheels have put up with a ton of abuse.

Last year on our race-day run we crashed into a guard rail about half way up the course. We broke a shock:



We cracked the splitter, lost a headlight and a side skirt:



We cracked a rim:



We flatted a tire and actually lost it about 1/2 mile from the summit:



We pressed on to the finish...and even drove it ~15 miles back down the hill!



That's one tough wheel in my book! So for 2012, wanting to be able to stick some additional rubber under the car, we selected the Enkei RPF1 wheel in the 18x10.5" size. Happy to say they've just arrived and the wheels look fantastic, they're huge but are still nice & light!



Once again, big thanks to the guys at Enkei wheels for supporting grassroots racing teams as we tackle the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb!

Dave

 

I'm sooo jelly right now. Congrats on the sponsorship!

I suppose those only come in +15 eh?

 

Yep, that's what we picked up. I know we're giving up about 5mm worth of space for a tire on the inside with these, but with the new widebody kit, I think we'll be ok and may even play around with track width using some small spacers.

Dave

 

In the rear you're giving up at least 25mm(1") worth of tire. With that widebody you could be running 11.5's and 315 Hoosiers. Then you could run an A6 tire and not worry about overheating it.

Just my 2 cents.

 

I was running 17x9.5" ET38s the last few years. With a 275 BFG I had to run a spacer so the tires didn't rub on the control arm. I think a 5mm spacer would've done the trick, but I think the smallest ones I had were 7mm From those handy wheel calculation guides, I'm seeing that the 10.5 ET15 has the inner edge pushed out 10mm more than the old wheel I was running. So, if my math is correct, I've only lost 3-5mm on the inside when you consider the spacers I had to run.

Now, if we're talking about those super fancy extra clearance control arms you're making, maybe the story is totally different. How much extra room do those give...and is the coilover spring then the limiting factor on inner tire clearance? And of course there's also that other issue of having $$$ for even wider wheels. Seems like once you're above 10.5" the costs skyrocket.

Thanks!

Dave

 

yeah with the control arms you can go inboard a bunch more. I haven't come to the limit of hitting the coil over spring yet. Running a 6" spring is a simple solution though. I've got 18x10.5 +38's on my car with no spacer and I can fit my finger between the wheel and the link.

CCW Race classics NEW from ccw are 2100-2300 dollars IIRC. So yeah they're about twice as expensive as Enkei's (which I've run and really like), but you can get the high numerical offset that you need and any crazy width past 10.5"

if it were that easy/cheap to put 315's on Evo's wouldn't everybody be doing it?

 

Cool, thanks for the info! Post up a pic of that control arm if you'd like.

For now I'm happy with the 10.5" wheels and since I'm fixing body damage and using a body kit that didn't quote additional clearance, I wanted to play it safe this year. Once the new panels are made, I'll have a much better idea of what I can stuff under the car...of course there's the whole issue of weight/drag vs. grip benefit to weigh as well, and most on here seemed to think that 285 is about the most you need on an Evo.

On the springs, I'm running a 6" tall spring with 2.5" tall helper/tenders to make sure the wheels get pushed into the ground until they bottom out. Guessing that's going to mean that I'm not able to sneak the tire under the springs.

Dave