Buttonwillow Raceway Park, CA

A foto of my 911 from our April 2009 Track Day.

Group B Rally Club

A friend and I - both long-time rally fanatics and he, a former ur quattro rally driver - have formed a new club for owners of rally-type cars of the 1970's/80's. Michigan has a strong rally history and is the only state in the US to host 2 Rally America events. While the club is based here, membership is open to all. The website is just getting up & running. Get a sneak peek here (and turn up your speakers before clicking):

Group B Rally Club Website

Running The Fire Lanes

Had a chance to hit some great state forest fire roads early this morning with the rally car. I continue to be amazed by the gravel tires, being this year is my first experience with them. They are to gravel, what snow tires are to snow. Easy to build confidence with them. Need to do something about the overheating though. The car runs HOT when you're pushing it. So, it looks like it's time for a Ron Davis aluminum radiator and a rear under-wing oil cooler. Skid plates need to come soon too ... hit some shit today that could have been a problem.

Next time out I'll shoot some in-car video!

2-Shores Cars & Coffee

Cars & Coffee early Sunday morning in Lakes Mills, WI. Thanks to Jurgen at 2-Shores Classics!

Accumoto Open House

June 13 Open House at Accumoto's race shop. Nice variety of cars in attendance. EXCELLENT presentation by veteran road-racer and 2-time Daytona 24 Hour winner Randy Pobst. Lot's of good track tips.

Fender Extensions Done.

Custom Muffler & Safety Harness

Progress on the 81 urq: Got the roll bar back in and the safety harnesses mounted. Was able to use all the factory mounting points, other than the shoulder straps on the harness bar:



I took the Dynamax racing muffler and welded on a 3 inch stainless tail pipe to mimic the factory rally setup. Needed to make up a new hanger. Sounds great.

Wheel Arch Extensions

The wheel arch extensions arrived from AM Cars in the UK. These are exact replicas of the extensions used by the factory in the last half of the 81 season and most of the 82 season.

A test fit of the extensions.




WARNING TO PURISTS: Avert your eyes now. This is an extremely rare-in-the-USA 81 ur quattro. This is going to turn ugly ...

So Step 1 is to do a test fit and draw some cut lines. Quite a bit of metal needs to come off!



Time to fire up my trusty Milwaukee Sawzall. I also cut down through the leading edge of the rear bumper since this was one of the areas that was rubbing on big compressions. Check out all the dried mud on the floor I chipped out of the wheel well .... the downside of driving in the mud is .... the mud.



OK, so the metal is trimmed off. Now we have a problem with a gap between the fender metal and the inner wheel well liner. This needs to be closed off, so I took strips of fiberglass and sealed the gap.



After the fiberglass cured, I coated the patch with 3M rubberized undercoating.



The modified fender is now ready for the extension. It needs to be painted and then fastened to the fender. The patch will be concealed.

Playing With Mufflers

I was running open exhaust on the 81 urq for a couple of weeks. With the turbo, it's really not THAT loud. It sounded great, in fact. But there was a lot of popping and backfiring on decel. So I put on a stainless Borla race muffler. Has a great sound to it actually, but it's not quite as aggressive as I'd like for the rally car. So tonight I put on a DynoMax race muffler - basically just a small resonator. So my system consists of a 2.5 inch pipe and the resonator. That's it. Here's a test firing, with no load on the motor. Should sound really good under load.



So, I also refurbished the shifter and got that back in. The roll bar modifications are done. I'll be installing the new safety harnesses this week. Hopefully, the wheel arch extensions I ordered from AM Cars in the UK will be here tomorrow. If so, I'll get those painted and installed over the weekend.

Drag quattro

10.1 in the 1/4 mile .... not bad :)

quattro DRAG CAR VIDEO

Harness Bar For The urq

Welded a harness bar into the roll hoop today.

An Easy 25HP Increase

.... the 81 feels noticeably quicker after installing the new sun visor! From the left ... John Buffum, Michele Mouton, Hannu Mikkola and Stig Blomqvist.

Ur quattro Meet - Upper Peninsula Michigan

Excellent day of driving in the UP today! 4 urq's, an ur S6 and a Lotus (driven by an ex-urq owner, so good enough!). Tim's urq-zilla is a monster. I think this meet is going to be the start of much bigger annual event.








WG's ur S6 - 20V 5-Cylinder Turbo:

A Good Gravel Day

These cars just love the slop ....






Check out this GREAT video posted on FlatOverCrest.com. It was produced for Canadian TV in 1982:

More Treffen '09