Grassroots Motorsports

We take the Ro-Spit apart. Again. Feb 7, 2000

On New Year's eve, just as the whole world was due to collapse, Rennie and Tim dragged the Ro-Spit up to Asheville, N.C., and completely disassembled the car at Steve Eckerich's Triple E Performance (phone 828-645-7850). Together they laughed, cried and cursed as--just one year to the day after it first ran--the Ro-Spit was completely taken apart again.

There are several reasons (other than pure insanity) for our decision to dismantle our baby.

First, with the help of SpeedSource (phone 954-481-8331), we are rebuilding the noisy tranny. Apparently the input shaft bearing is going south on us. We chalk this up to using old junkyard parts to begin with, not because of any stress that our 225-horsepower rotary is putting on the transmission.

Second, we are going to finally fix a pesky oil leak. Either our modified oil pan or the oil pan gasket is the culprit, and it has leaked since day one. With the engine finally back out, we can fix this correctly.

Third, thanks to Steve Eckerich and Wilwood (http://www.wilwood.com), we now have rear disc brakes. Our awesome rear disc brake conversion (also perfect for G Production Spitfires) uses carefully redrilled Fiat X 1/9 rotors and Wilwood Dynalite Single calipers. While only slightly lighter than GT6 drums, this setup will offer much better serviceability and braking performance.

Fourth, we really wanted to look everything over after the car's first year on the road and track. We must say that despite the aforementioned problems, we are totally impressed by what we've seen, now that the car is disassembled. Nothing has cracked, stretched, warped or in any other way gone wrong in the entire chassis and driveline. Due to our careful design and judicious use of Thermotech (http://www.thermotec.com) heat shielding--possibly combined with some luck--we don't even see any burned paint or heat damage anywhere on the chassis or transmission tunnel.

And last, but certainly not least, again thanks to Steve Eckerich, we have now designed a true independent coil-over rear suspension. The heavy transverse leaf that was restricting suspension travel has been replaced with Truechoice-built Koni double-adjustable shocks and Eibach springs (http://www.truechoice.com).

Look for the new and improved (and 100 pounds lighter) Ro-Spit at an event near you this spring! 

Ro-Spit on the Road (and Track) Again Jun 14, 2000

After a very successful test day at Road Atlanta on April 21, we thought we were ready for the Beech Mountain Hill Climb. Our newly redesigned rear suspension (for complete details see the October 2000 issue of GRM) worked fantastically. We now have 4.5 inches of rear suspension travel, instead of the 1.5 inches we had before the redesign. We also have only a 1/2 degree increase in negative camber throughout the whole range of suspension movement. Bumpsteer at the rear is also now nil.

At Road Atlanta, we found that the suspension is now so good that the three-year-old 13x6-inch cantilever Hoosier slicks were totally inadequate. We put some eight-inch-wide Hoosier (http://www.hoosiertire.com) slicks on seven-inch wheels on the rear and left the six-inch slicks on six-inch wheels in the front.

At Beech Mountain, Steve Eckerich finished fourth overall out of nearly 100 cars! According to Steve, "The car just flat hooked up and was a dream to drive." This early in the car's development, we are just flabbergasted by its awesome performance.

Now that the car is finished, we can't wait to start hunting for our first FTD trophy! As for the future, we plan on gradually increasing horsepower, lightening the car and fine tuning the chassis. We recently corner weighted the car again and found that we had lost roughly 35 pounds with our redesigned rear suspension. Our project now weighs 1703 pounds (LF 455, RF 456, LR 390, RR 402) with a full tank of gas. As can be seen from these weights, the car really balances out well. We have already gotten a fiberglass front end from Japco, which will remove more than 50 pounds from the front end. This will make all four corners close to ideal.

We have also started collecting turbo bits and pieces for our rotary engine. We feel we can easily add another 75 to 100 horsepower without tearing anything apart. Let the insanity begin! 

Busy Busy Aug 25, 2000

Our Ro-Spit has been quite busy lately, racing at the Beech Mountain Hill Climb, where it was the fourth fastest car overall. More recently, it ran at the July 29 Belle Chere street autocross in downtown Asheville, N.C.

At Belle Chere, the fastest time of day before the Mod cars ran was a 37.0 set by Rob Faulkner in Rob Hauser's new Boxster S.

When it came time to run the Mods and Prepareds, the heavens opened up for a brief shower. An FTD would be difficult to obtain in the rain. After Steve Eckerich took two messy runs on the rain-soaked course and ran into cone troubles, it was up to co-driver Tim Suddard to save the day.

His first run was a very promising 37.3, but missed a gate and turned it into a DNF. On his second run, Suddard felt confident that he could save the day for Team GRM, as the streets were quickly drying and he had the course figured out.

But alas, it was not to be, as after making a very quick run down the course, the right axle snapped when he pinned the throttle for the return run. Our first failure with the Ro-Spit and DNF were at hand. This is the first thing that had broken on the Ro-Spit since we began running the car early last year.

As it turns out, the repair was simple, and Steve Eckerich could see where he had taken too much off the weld when he turned the axles down for the second shot at making our earlier transverse leaf rear suspension work. Now that we have gone to a true coil-over set up, the axle could be built back up and welded even better. This should eradicate this problem.

Unfortunately, this incident brought out the realities of developing a race car. In the early days we had less power, way less suspension, and less traction. As we continue to tune the engine, develop the chassis, and add ever bigger and stickier tires and wheels we will find the weak links.

The Spit took a trip down to see Stu and Geoff at BSI Racing for a complete alignment. All of the assembly and disassembly meant that we needed to make sure that the wheels were still pointed in the right direction! A quick adjustment here and there, and we were out of Stu's hair.

Overall, we are very happy with our little project. The car turns heads wherever it goes and is just incredibly fast to drive. Our next step is to continue to develop the car and run it when ever we can. In addition, KSpeed is looking for wider rims for us from Panasport so that we can properly harness the horsepower on the track. 

 FTD Oct 30, 2000

On October 27, as part of the Vintage Triumph Register's Southeast Regional meet in Lake City, Fla., project Ro-Spit took FTD at the autocross with Steve Eckerich behind the wheel. Less than a second back was Tim with a 65.5-second run, closely followed by J.K. Jackson with a 65.6-second run. Another second back was Chris Moore, who finished second at the Solo II Nationals this year in DSPL.

All four drivers were running the GRM Ro-Spit. The project car held up well to the abuse, as all four drivers took four runs apiece on the very bumpy and rough, but very fast, airport course. Jody Miller finished fifth overall with a 69-second run in his nicely modified Triumph TR6.

"This is what we built this thing for: to come out, have a bunch of people drive it, have fun and not have to worry about overheating, breakage and that sort of stuff," Tim explained. "We still have a little dialing-in to do, but we are very happy with the way the car is performing now." The results speak for themselves.

Plans for the car this winter call for the removal of another 100 pounds of weight, development of an improved exhaust system and some more suspension fine-tuning. Look for the car to run again next spring. 

New hubs Aug 9, 2001

Steve Eckerich is busy working on a a new rear hub design. The GT-6 hub and axle assembly was marginal when we were using 7" wide wheels, 10"s might be too much. Steve is looking at 4-lug RX-7 or Miata-type hubs for the conversion. He has also re-worked the upper control arms to lower the roll-center.

Here are some shots of our new 3-piece Panasport wheels. 10" of rim width should help harness the rotary's power.  

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