1995 S10 Build for Endurance Road Racing - Thr3ve Racing

Okay guys, myself and a couple of buddies bought this truck strictly to do endurance road racing back in 2012. Our plans at the time was to race ChumpCar (www.chumpcar.com). The premise of ChumpCar at the time we built it was that you should be able to buy a $500 car off of Craigslist and build it safely (safety items not included in the $500 - cage, belts, seat, etc). Over time the rules have changed a lot in ChumpCar, but mainly, there are a lot of Neons, BMW E30s, BMW E36s, Miatas, old Nissan Z's, Mazda RX's, etc. Our expectation was never to be able to win with an S10, but our goal was to always do our best. ChumpCar races at big name tracks: Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Road America, Daytona, Charlotte, Watkins Glen, etc. They do over 50 events per year all over the US and Canada. Events range from 7 hours to 37 straight hours of endurance racing. Most being in the 14-24 hour range.

We have completed two events thus far:

1) Road Atlanta in February 2014 - We finished 32/109. Not bad considering 3 of our 4 drivers had never road raced. Two of the 4 had never raced anything, ever. We also had performed no performance mods and the motor was bone-stock.

2) Atlanta Motorsports Park in November 2014 - After the Road Atlanta race, we spiced up our 4.3...a lot. The race at AMP was two separately scored 7 hour races. In the first race we were involved in a pretty major wreck (not our fault) which killed our finishing position. We had been as high as 14th out of 53. In the second race, we lost our rearend and stock NV3500. So we finished very poorly. However, on Saturday (the first race) I set a laptime for the day that was ranked 17th of 53 competitors. I didn't think it was too bad considering we are the ONLY truck racing.

I'll begin chronicling our build and race progress in this thread.

Currently, we are reconfiguring  the entire drivetrain in preparation for Road Atlanta (14 hours) in February 2016.

Original Truck Specs:

1995 Chevy S10 LS
4.3L Z Engine Code
3.08:1 rear Gear
5 Speed NV3500
Regular Cab, Short bed

Here's what she looked like when we bought it. The truck came out of Virginia and we got it for $1,350 on Craiglist. I'm sure you're already asking about why it isn't $500. Let me clarify a little more about the rules, no one had to actually buy your car for $500, you just needed to provide 10 CL ads showing cars like yours for $500 or less. Again, the rules have changed and these shenanigans are no longer required.

Paid: $1,350
Miles: ~220,000



Resold the campershell for $150 on CL....score!

So, the first order of business was getting rid of the majority of stuff we didn't need. We gutted a lot of stuff, only to end up going through more and more iterations of stripping stuff over time. At first, we didn't gut the HVAC, eventually we did. We cut some of the door panels out, eventually we cut so much off the doors they were nothing more than skins and door handles. We are currently engaged in popping holes everywhere in the bed to get rid of unnecessary weight. It is amazing how much weight you can save by cutting off everything you absolutely don't need.

Okay, cage time.

Parts:

S&W Race Cars 1.75" DOM cage
Price: $~$750
Link:
http://www.swracecars.com/store/Lemons--Chumps-Car-Roll-Cages-1-34-DOM---approved-for-all-Lemons-cars-OSCARItem_354=13-627.aspx

Install Notes:

1. The best way we found to do this is to unbolt the body bushings first.

2. Make sure the truck is up on jack stands on suspension components (ie, front lower control arms and rear axle) not the frame - you could induce a twisting etc that will mess up the geometry of the truck.

3. Put your downbars (A-pillar bars) main hoop, and halo in. Note where the floor penetrations will be and drill a small pilot hole through the floor to insure the locations where you are penetrating aren't impeded by something on the underside of the truck. If that checks out, we cut large holes to insure plenty of room. We didn't care if it was pretty, well, because racecar.

4. Tack your outriggers into place on the frame. Cut downbars and hoop to length.

5. Place downbars, main hoop, and halo in the truck and rest them on the outriggers. Tack downbars, halo, hoop togther.

6. Cut outriggers off the frame and allow the tacked together cage assembly to rest on the floor through the holes in the floorboard.

7. To gain even more clearance for welding, it may be best to jack up the body of the truck (remember, you unbolted the body bushings in Step 1). Now weld it all up.

8. Once it is welded, left the cage back up and block it up inside the cab. Weld your outriggers back onto the frame.

9. Weld cage to outriggers, bolt up body bushings, and you can weld in dash bar next.


The rules dictate certain cage requirements. The pictures below show the cage nearly completed, minus the driver's side doorbars which we waited until we were nearly done with the build before we added them simply because of ease of access into the cab as we still had much work to do. Eventually, we've added a removable doorbar on the passenger side and put plate steel on the driver's side doorbars for anti-penetration protection. We are also considering a Petty bar.

Also, we eventually cut the downbars (the ones that go into the bed) out and welded in these so that the downbars could be removed to allow for easy removal of the bed.

http://www.tmrcustoms.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=32&products_id=2078&zenid=93581502cfb6ee7776a2245214dce664

Once the cage was in, we painted it and the floor.

The cage looks really well done.  How did you tie it into the frame below the cab?  I've tossed ideas around in my head, but never looked closely at an S10 with a cage.

The cage looks really well done.  How did you tie it into the frame below the cab?  I've tossed ideas around in my head, but never looked closely at an S10 with a cage.

I'll try to find a pic of it tonight, if not, I'll just snap a fresh one.

Basically, we used "outriggers" as we call them which are nothing more than carbon steel boxes which we welded directly to the frame, parallel with the ground, that stick outwards from the frame that allow the main hoop and downbars to rest on after penetrating through the floorboard.

This is what S&W suggested and I think it works nicely.

Here's a pic of the outrigger. We used 4 of these for the entire cage. I added some verbiage up in the post about the cage install on exactly how we did it.

Thanks for the picture.  Pretty much what I was expecting, but I like pictures.

After mounting the seat (pretty straight-forward) we tackled the suspension. Although it wasn't what we knew our final setup would be, we had to make some progress, so we:

1. Used McGaughy's 2" Lowering Spindles (Part Number: 33122)
2. ProForged 0.5" Taller Ball Joints (Part Numbers: 100-10020 and 100-10048)
3. ZQ8 Leaf Springs from Craigslist
4. We cut down our front springs to help lower the truck and increase spring rate
5. Used 1.75" solid steel blocks for the rear leafs
6. Moog Offset Cross Shaft (Part Number: K6218)

Eventually, we learned that we had way too much axle wrap and made some simple leaf spring clamps (both front and rear on the leafs) which stiffened everything up and lowered the truck about another 0.75" in the rear. We also installed a swaybar off of a Blazer on the rear and found the frame mounts from eBay and used a 1.33" swaybar on the front.

Before our first race, we also installed tubular UCAs from UB Machine. I can't recall exactly what length (I'm still digging), because we ended up adding some very large shims to our UCAs. This is after we installed a Moog offset cross shaft to give us more capability for camber. We ended up with about 1.5 degrees of negative camber. To get anymore, it appears more extensive work will be required. However, after checking tire wear at both events we've ran, the tires wear as if we have proper camber, although I'd like to see greater than -2 degrees.

Next, it was time to finish the exterior paint (rattle can of course), stickers from all of our non-sponsors, and wheels and tires.

For wheels and tires, we spent months (during the whole process of the build) trying to figure out what combo to go with. Wow, what an exercise in frustration. First thing we learned is that pretty much no one makes a performance tire in a 15" wheel on the width/aspect ratio we would want....no one. One thing to note is that ChumpCar (as does most of the cheap up-and-coming endurance road racing clubs do) stipulates a treadwear no less than 180. After much debate we settled on:

Wheels: Black Rock 909 17" x  8" (Part Number 909B780545). It's aluminum and uses both the Ford and GM patterns which is handy because we knew we would eventually go to a Ford rearend...and we are currently doing so as I write this post. Also, we wanted a 17" wheel to fit C5 brake components.

Tires: Kumho Ecsta XS in 245-40R17

You may also note the holes cut in the front bumper, that is our cut-outs for our brake ducting. And yes, it works well.

Nice choice on the number, that's the one I've been using since I started auto-X about 7-8 years ago!

you guys need more cubes :p

you guys need more cubes :p

A future upgrade is an LS engine. I'm working towards the post on the engine work we've done. We have one mean 4.3 now. Bored, roller rockers, 270 Comp Cam, Vortec heads that have been decked, forged flat-top pistons, DUI distributor, JBA headers, Holley carb, Edelbrock performance intake, underdrive pulley, etc.

It holds its own, but we definitely want to step up to an LS

Nice choice on the number, that's the one I've been using since I started auto-X about 7-8 years ago!

I noticed that in another thread.

Ours actually should be 265 now

Moving along, we needed to finish up the driver's side door bars, window net, dash and clean-up the interior electrical since we gutted a lot of the original electrical only leaving enough circuits to run the windshield wipers, motor electronics, fuel pump, and brake lights.

We got the seat and seat padding installed, the fire suppression system, mirrors, kill switch, and switches for the accessories we wanted to run. We ended up using the factory gauges because we were running out of time and funds before the first race.

Before our first race, we also installed tubular UCAs from UB Machine. I can't recall exactly what length (I'm still digging), because we ended up adding some very large shims to our UCAs. This is after we installed a Moog offset cross shaft to give us more capability for camber. We ended up with about 1.5 degrees of negative camber. To get anymore, it appears more extensive work will be required. However, after checking tire wear at both events we've ran, the tires wear as if we have proper camber, although I'd like to see greater than -2 degrees.

That's seems to be the most camber you can run without going to adjustable arms. My shim stack is maxed out, and I believe it was at about -1.3 degrees. For me it's fine since my truck is a daily, but on aggressive autocross tracks I see a bit more outer edge wear than I'd like.

Okay, so we got the truck running in September of 2013 (preparing for our 14 hour endurance race at Road Atlanta in February 2014) and took it to a local AutoX event to shake it out. Let me be the first to say that I like the idea of an AutoX event but our local chapter needs to invest in about 4 billion more orange cones. It was awful. Literally, the course was ridiculously complicated and only had about 15% of the cones it should have. I would love to say we finished well, etc but neither my buddy or I (in 3 passes each) ran one clean pass because we missed a cone somewhere.

However, there were lessons to be learned, and we did. So all in all, it was worth the experience.

In February of 2014 we traveled to the historic Road Atlanta. If you live within 5 hours you should find an open track day and drive RA. It is awesome. Anyways, we have 4 hungry drivers that have to give it their all for 14 straight hours of racing. The event started with 109 cars. Yes, 109 other cars. Pit road was completely packed and teams were having to stack 2 deep in some cases to fit all the teams down pit road.

In the 14 hours, we would:

1. Pit 7 times for driver exchanges including fuel, cleaning the windows, checking tire pressures, checking lug nut torque, etc.
2. In our 3rd pit stop we noticed that our front brakes were almost gone. We sent one of our friends out to buy a set of AutoZone specials - the Autozone specials were down into the backing plates within 5 hours.
3. In our 4th pit stop we rotated tires, changed out the front brakes, swapped drivers, re-fueled, installed our lightbar for night racing, refueled, etc. It took us 21 minutes to do so.
4. In driving for 2 hours, we would use about 12 or 13 gallons of fuel. Pretty impressive.
5. We finished 32 out of 109. After I reviewed lap data, we were 89th fastest of 109. We were slow, but our engine was bone-stock. We did learn staying out on the track was very important...almost more important than speed itself.

Here's a highlight video of my first stint ever driving in a race.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNNhkz111v0

I'll post some cool pics later.

Auto-x can really suck if you can't find the course! For some people there were probably way too many cones though!

Love the stats on the Road Atlanta event, it really gives a good sense of what's required to run a race like that.

Are you happy with the engine build as it stands now? I started a stock bottom end heads/cam/turbo build on an extra motor I have and I'm considering holding off on the turbo for now, just so I can get it done before I lose interest.