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Big Orange Truck, Little Blue Car Feb 10, 2004

The nice man in the big orange truck dropped off our newest project car last week, a 2004 Dodge SRT-4. We're planning on campaigning this car for the 2004 season in National Solo II competition. Look for more updates soon.

We've enlisted the help of two of the greats in Solo II competition: Hoosier Tire will be supplying the project with their super-fast A3S04 tires and multi-time Solo II National Champion Mark Daddio will be our co-driver at several key events in 2004, including the Toledo National Tour, Peru National Tour and The Tire Rack Solo II Nationals. Here's to a successful 2004 season! 

And now the brown truck… Feb 13, 2004

Our friendly UPS man dropped off some presents today, our Hoosiers and a Mopar performance exhaust. We'll be mounting the tires up next week, as well as dynoing the car before and after the exhaust install.

While we'll be mounting the Hoosiers on the stock rims for D Stock action, we ordered a set of bronze "Next" rims from Konig Wheels to mount the OE BFGoodrich g-Force T/A KDW tires on for street, drag and show use. The Next is a 17" x 7" wheel that weighs in at a reported 16 lbs. We'll throw them on the scales before they're mounted up. 

The SRT-4’s first autocross Feb 17, 2004

We autocrossed the SRT-4 this weekend with the Central Florida Region SCCA. Despite some mucky conditions and the stock street compound tires, we had a lot of fun and turned some respectable times. The car will be exponentially faster on the Hoosiers.

In the drying conditions, the traction actually got worse before it got better. The dust, sand and water combined to make a really slippery slurry.

Before we went to the autocross, we loosened up the strut top mounting nuts and pushed the top of the strut in as far as it would go. It only moved a millimeter, but we'll take any camber that we can legally get.

Our graphics thus far are pretty subtle. With the rear wing, this car has some "bling" already. After this season, the rear wing is getting ditched.

When we got home, we installed our Hoosiers and Konigs. Unfortunately, the front wheels required a 5mm spacer to clear the brakes. No big deal as we can now use the spacer with the stock wheels (up to 1/4" is legal for Solo II Stock rules) and autocross tires.  

Dodge on they dyno Feb 20, 2004

Today's dyno testing went well.

The SRT-4 sounded like a city bus as the large turbo spooled up.

We installed our Mopar exhaust, too.The stainless exhaust tips are a little big, but we'll be removing the right one soon anyway. The Mopar system is 304 stainless, which has a higher chromium content and is quite a bit lighter in this application.

We just called our local Dodge dealer and ordered some new parts for the SRT-4

  • Front camber bolt package 5019 074 AA $27
  • Rear camber bolt package 4773 957 $27
  • Front anti-rollbar from a PT Cruiser convertible 050 856 56 AA $101

The parts should be in on Monday, which is after this Ft. Myers National Tour...but better late than never. 

Spinning Our Wheels Feb 24, 2004

All the power in the world doesn't help much if you can never use it. We finished 3rd and 4th at the Ft. Myers National Tour with our SRT-4. The car was a handful to drive on the stock shocks and alignment.

Tire pressures started out around 46psi front and 40 psi rear. This was quickly raised in the front to 50, then to 60 as we tried to keep the Hoosiers from wearing their sidewalls too much. More negative camber and the larger front anti-roll bar will help this immensely.

On our last runs, the intercooler hose popped off. This gave us lots of noise...but no power. It was a quick 2 minute fix.