Icetiva 3 race car build

[Icedawg]

Starting a new race car build, ending up with a modified B6T based on a Miata engine from the JDM, and G25mr transmission. The last two shells are toast, but their parts will live again. We started with a white shell, used as a parts car, and seriously stripped, no drive train, no running gear, no dashboard, no interior. It just makes it easier to build a race car, but all the working parts have to come from one of the wrecked race cars.

Weekend 1: The white shell, doors, hood, hatch, remaining running gear removed to minimize weight hanging on the shell.


Weekend 2: It is a rusty old shell, not sure of the year, with holes in the floorboard just where the wheel well joins the front running board/door sill (one of the usual spots on these cars), on both left and right sides. So we cleaned it up and patched it.



Weekend 3: We planned to cut the roof off, and drop in a salvaged roll cage. Strapping the sides at the door and across the back was done to reduce drooping of the frame once the roof was removed.


So with holes patched and sides strapped together, it was time to remove the roof.




The cage came from Icetiva, my first Festi ice racer, built in 2007-8, and wrecked for good in 2012.


And when we test fit it in the white shell, it seemed to fit! Still work ahead to fully fit it up and weld it in place, but promising so far.

[TominMO]

Very nice! I love these builds.

[skeeters_keeper]

Glad too see you're still around building festys!

[Icedawg]

I seem to spend as much or more time wrecking them, unfortunately. And Hiroki has to keep welding new ones up for me. Here is the lovely 2012 version that replaced the first, red Icetiva.

from this pretty 1.8 L Escort GT swap

[bravekozak]

I would hate to be under those front tires if you ever drove over me by accident!

[mystere1]

Looks like you guys are off to a good start! Hopefully we have some good ice this year to race on.

[PhoenixSHO]

that must be a blast

[Icedawg]

^It is stupid fun, that's why we keep putting all this time and effort into building the cars!! Otherwise all the work at repairing the damage would not be worth it.
Here is a video link to a weather channel story on our club racing pedal_to_the_metal_on_a_frozen_lake
And a place to dig into more pics if you want.
nascc.ab.ca/media/

And yeah, no one would want to be under one of those studded tires. It always freaks me out thinking about the motorcycle ice racers, since you really could end up under one of them if you fell off a motorcycle while racing.

[Icedawg]

More work from Weekend 3, after cutting and fitting there is the endless prep work for welding. Hours go in for what looks like not much in the way of results. Grinding the footpad area clean, removing the seam sealer and floor insulation, and taking the paint off the roof pillars where it will be welded back together. It's like painting, much of the work is in the least glamorous part, but the welding itself is harder work than painting.

looks clean and shiny though!

[Icedawg]

Midweek progress involved adding a bit of paint to cage and floor.
Black for the cage

and white for the floor

[Festiva_Fred]

Very nice work!! :thumbright:

[Icedawg]

Tacking it all together

Weekend 4 saw real progress to a carhtd
Strongman Hiroki lifts up the shell so I can put it on jack stands

then we position the cage, wrestle it into place, strap it down, test fit the roof and remove it again to check for shape change in the shell, and tack weld the cage in

the roof drops back on, and we pin it in place with twelve vise grips. There was a wee bit of a twist that required two sets of hands to force the roof to line up at all six points, but it worked out.

Then the roof was tack welded in place

And finally, the new race-car-to-be is a real shell again with a roll cage inside. It is just tack welded so far, so there is a lot of welding yet to do, but it is intact. A great Saturday result.

[Festiva_Fred]

Did you sleeve the inside of the pillars where you cut and rewelded them at? Just curious, I'm a bodyman and anytime we put on new rockers, quarter panels, etc I sleeve the joint on the inside with some plug welds on either side of the cut also.

[Icedawg]

Did you sleeve the inside of the pillars where you cut and rewelded them at? Just curious, I'm a bodyman and anytime we put on new rockers, quarter panels, etc I sleeve the joint on the inside with some plug welds on either side of the cut also.

We thought hard about sleeving the inside of the pillars, but in the end we did not. At the points we cut the B and C pillar there is a much thicker metal plate inside the pillar, running vertically. We cut the outer sheet metal on those pillars back, on the inside of the car, so that we could easily weld that centre plate together, and decided to call that good. If this were not a race car with a roll cage in it, we would have done a sleeve. But we concluded we could just weld metal plates on the outside of the sheet metal on the pillars, on the inside of the car, if we are still concerned about strength. After all, on the inside I am not concerned about looks. And we will be tying the cage to various points of the roof. So the sleeves seemed like overkill, given the presence of the cage itself.

[Festiva_Fred]

We thought hard about sleeving the inside of the pillars, but in the end we did not. At the points we cut the B and C pillar there is a much thicker metal plate inside the pillar, running vertically. We cut the outer sheet metal on those pillars back, on the inside of the car, so that we could easily weld that centre plate together, and decided to call that good. If this were not a race car with a roll cage in it, we would have done a sleeve. But we concluded we could just weld metal plates on the outside of the sheet metal on the pillars, on the inside of the car, if we are still concerned about strength. After all, on the inside I am not concerned about looks. And we will be tying the cage to various points of the roof. So the sleeves seemed like overkill, given the presence of the cage itself.

Gotcha, makes sense since it's caged I was just curious, couldn't see from the pics.