Velociraptors!

The next clean up project on the race car was to deal with the driver compartment.  It was pretty dirty and I didn't want people to mess up their clothes when they sat in it for photo ops.  That and the seat upholstery was faded and torn and clearly something had damaged the side of the bead seat insert.

So I removed all three pieces that make up the seat insert and underneath I found the culprit!

Velociraptors!

Work Begins

After several years I finally got around to starting some work on the car by painting the front suspension.  I know, it’s not very ambitious, but years of neglect had left the A-arms and all looking pretty shabby.  Plus I needed to replace the missing “shock strut” so that I could level the car and raise the ride height.  When I bought the car it was missing the coil-over shocks and had only three fixed rods in their place so the left front corner was sagging.  The other issue that has given me problems is that the ride height was set at less than half an inch so the car dragged on anything.

A quick order for a couple of new swedged steel tubes allowed me to level and raise the front suspension.  I then raised the rear by the same amount and now I have over two inches of ground clearance.  It looks fine, not too high off of the ground and I’d like to have it even higher, but I’m getting close to the maximum droop of the suspension to where things are close to start binding up.  It’s fine for now and if I decide I need more ground clearance then I can do something relatively easy like getting taller tires or something more radical like getting different uprights that place the spindle lower relative to the rest of the suspension.  A new upright would be a fair amount of work in the beginning, but it would solve the ride height problem and allow me options when it comes to a braking system.  Did I mention that the car didn’t come with brakes?

Front suspension components being painted and hanging from my improvised paint rack.

All painted and put back together.

G-Force GF05

So I scored myself a genuine G-Force GF05 Indy car.  I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do with it really.  But I knew that it would be cool to be the only kid on the block with his own Indy car.  I knew that it had been sitting too long and was too neglected to ever be turned back into a serious race car, but I had visions of putting some kind of engine in it to make it mobile.  I have also seen chassis turned into video game simulators or just hung on the wall or from the ceiling.  The truth is that for years I didn’t do anything with it other than clean it up and have the wheels painted.

Now for the history.  The car raced for three seasons in the IRL from 2000 to 2002 for 310 Racing and Team Extreme, both of which have long ago closed up shop so I haven’t been able to find any documentation of its race history.  I do know that 310 Racing ran the 2002 season with driver George Mack and the car still wears the Tech sticker from the last race of the season at Texas Motor Speedway.

2000 and 2001 with Team Extreme are more of a mystery.  All I know about that time period is that their drivers included Davey Hamilton, Airton Daré and Jaques Lazier and that their best finish in the Indy 500 was 8^th place in 2001 with Airton Daré.

You can buy an Indy car on craigslist. Who knew?

Once the walls were up at the warehouse, I started to check eBay and craigslist every so often looking for racing related stuff to hang on the walls.  I found some cool posters and signs and I really thought that I had scored when I was able to buy this engine cover from a car owned by AJ Foyt and driven by Scott Sharp.

But I was shocked one day when I was checking craigslist and saw an ad for an Indy car for sale!  At first I didn’t believe it, like it must be for parts or even a scam.  But no, as it turned out, there was a guy trying to sell a pretty complete Indy car roller (car guy speak for a chassis that doesn’t have an engine).  The owner told me that the car was retired after the 2002 season and it had been sitting on display out in front of a body shop.

I was skeptical, but intrigued so I flew out to LA to make sure it was for real and it was.  I struck a deal on the price and I called the transport company that I had on stand-by.  They came and picked the car up that afternoon and it was on its way to the warehouse.

The Back Story: Part 2

The thing is when you’re getting dirty working on cars you really need running water to clean up.  And not having a bathroom was limiting how much time I could spend there.  That’s when I decided that I would bite the bullet and install a bathroom and a utility sink.  But one thing led to another and then the scope-creep kicked in and eventually I ended up with a bathroom, bedroom, storeroom and party room.  Those take up about 1500 ft2 still leaving me with 2500 ft2 for cars.

The party room came out pretty sweet with a pool table, dart board, projection TV and video games.  Our house is pretty small so we usually end up having our parties at the warehouse. 

I’m really happy with how everything turned out and people always want to know where all of the memorabilia came from.  Some of it was just purchased, but most of it I have collected over the years and from going to various races and car events.  Some stuff is new, but a lot of the stuff I found on eBay or craigslist.  Ahhh… craigslist.

The Back Story: Part 1

So how do you even end up with a car from the Indy 500 in your garage anyway?  I'll get to that later, but first it all started with the story of my huge garage...

I had already filled up my oversized three car garage with three cars, my racing kart and a utility trailer when I decided that I wanted another car.  I didn't want to leave any of the cars outside so I started looking at places for off-site car storage.  But the places that were convenient to me were these full service storage places for high-end cars that were climate controlled, they washed the cars, kept them on battery tenders, etc. and they were expensive, like $300/mo.  Plus you couldn't work on your car there.

So I thought to myself, for that kind of money each month, me and some of my other car buddies who had the same problem should go in together and buy a place that we could all share.  A bunch of guys thought that was a great idea so the search was on.

It took a couple of months, but then I found a place right in my neighborhood.  It looked really rough on the outside, but it was structurally sound and priced so that I could buy it on my own.  After a fairly painful negotiation process, it was mine!

I now owned 4,000 ft2 of totally free span garage space.  The possibilities seemed endless.  It had electricity and AC/heat, but no running water or bathroom (that will become important in the story later).

After about two days I realized that owning a warehouse is like owning a pickup truck… all of your friends are going to want to use it.

So that was the start of the club house phase.  A bunch of my friends started keeping their cars there and it became a place where any particular weekend there’d be somebody over there working on a car or two. 

Bringing a retired Indy car back to life.

So I'm setting up this blog as a place to document my ongoing project to bring a retired Indycar back to life.  And by back to life, all I'm really talking about is moving under it's own power since right now it doesn't.  Basically the car is a roller that sits in my garage.  But it looks complete and people like to sit in it and have their picture taken.