A little history on the project, my father built this car from '72 to '74. It was successfully given a log book and SCCA homologation to compete in the D-Sports Racer category. This chassis predated the modern steel roll cage rules, meaning an all aluminum (crash structure) construction was allowed, including the crash structures. Additionally, there was no minimum weight prescribed for cars under 850cc. The car is basically an aluminum monocoque, or maybe better described as a semi-monocoque as it uses effectively an aluminum tube frame with riveted and bonded panels. At the time of build the Suzuki GT750 was a popular engine, and given a proper tune could make over 100hp easily. The first engine build was performed by Eric Buell, this was back when he still lived in Pittsburgh. Later builds were performed by my father, and the engine evolved somewhat over time. The chassis was engineered by my father's friend, who at the time was a full time engineer at GM. My father constructed the car with the help of another friend and his wife. The car was raced from '74 to '79 with mediocre success and then mothballed. They participated at Nelson Ledges, Summit Point, and Mid Ohio, but with a limited budget and limited man power they never quite got it going like they had hoped. The car remained in the garage unused for 40 years. It had become such a burden on space that my father eventually mounted the car on the wall, it stayed there for something like 16 years.
Here's a bit of photo history of the car.
Here's the car as we were pulling it off the wall, I want to say this was in 2015, maybe 2016. It's hard to recall.
Once off the wall we put the car back on the fabrication table that it had sat on for something like 20 years before. The process began. The all aluminum crash structure simple wasn't adequate. After 40 years of competition in other areas of racing my father had learned a lot from the days when he built the car. So he took the chance to update and change a number of items, but tried to be sensitive to keep the original spirit of the car. The focus was mostly on engineering issues, especially those that could be a safety concern.
Progress
And, this last weekend we got to the track and managed to race the car. We fought with the master cylinders right up until the race, but managed decent brakes come race time. Then of course the car overheated. But I managed the best laps of the weekend in the race, so for having basically used the race weekend for testing it was a positive result. We simultaneously got the car on track for it's 40th anniversary of retirement, and my 25th anniversary of race driving competition. A true success!
https://youtu.be/pH5OCOBPmZgI have other pictures as well. I can also publish more detailed specs if anybody is interested. We plan to continue development of the car. It actually fits the rules for the modern P2 class which is sort of the modern equivalent of D-Sports Racing. So we could compete in national competition if we wanted, of course the car wouldn't be competitive, but it would be fun.
