Track feedback- hows your SHO holding up?

[Jonny Cash]

I want to say for the past year or so, theres been some buzz about the ol' v6 SHO in lemons/chump car. Then the little plug in GRM, that was really great to see.

Ive been caught up in a few projects for the past few years, and doing various events in my bmw e30 and 2002. But Ive been really anxious to see a local SHO racer to shoot the shit with.

As i prepared my s52 swapped e30 for last weekends Homestead event, i ran into some last minute issues.. And neither of my cars would be able to make it in time.
The day before the event a friend of mine offered his sort(of)ed 3.4 gtp for me to drive. Of course, i expected the worst.. But as i thought about it, id never really taken my old SHO to a long fast track to really judge a big old fwd car like that.

So I did a quick high temp fluid prep, and threw some hkook c60 r comps on it and went to town. Took it out for about 5-6 sessions, and had just as much fun as any other other hpde in my BMW's.. Had an absolute blast.
So i guess you can imagine where this is going.. (oh no not again) .. But seriously, it makes sense for me.
So who's taking their SHO's out this season? What are your plans/class, what tracks/clubs etc..

 

[SHOspazz92]

No comment other then my track car needs more chassis reinforcement. We put so much stress on the car running the 275's C71's up front, that we managed to break the welds on the welded in rear strut tower bar. It's fixed now, but I guess 6 years of road racing and Autocross will do that.

I no longer own the car, but will still drive it. The new owner is already making a few changes here and there.

-Sam

 

[Jonny Cash]

I wont lie.. After this weekend I came back to the classifieds seeing if it was still around..

 

[St Louis SHO]

Eggboy racings car has held up ok consideringhat they really do with it. One trans failure due to running straight nascar oval for 7-9 hours.

 

[DrivinhardLLC]

SHOAZ did the whole TTE thing with the SHO awhile back till the car met it's end, but I can't believe somebody in the southeast (with as many SHO's as there are) hasn't built a ringer TTE car for NASA with a SHO. The way the rules are set up, it would be a killer car.

 

[shocar]

I am one of the drivers for the GI SHO Chump car team... Our first race of the season is coming up the end of this month. The car has been performing great except for wheel bearing issues. We decided to change the subframe to a Taurus SLO subframe that we had to modify to fit the motor and tranny. The SLO has aluminium hubs with bolt on bearing so we are hoping that it will stand up longer and if we have to change the bearing it will be much quicker. Last summer at the 24 hour race at Spokane, we burned up 4 wheel bearings and that problem continued for more races after that. If this works, it is my understanding that SHO SOURCE may start offering this for MTX models Gen 1 and Gen 2 Sho's We also went to a smaller sway bar to improve the cornering acceleration. I will let you know how it goes. If you want more info, go to our face book page GI SHO http://www.facebook.com/pages/GI-SHO-Racing/103436909711126

 

[somedude_001]

I plan to get my 90 to as many tracks as I can afford. mechanically the car is holding up extremely well. I need to order new brake pads and rotors for the front because I broke them at my last event in the fall. I also need to figure out why my car is trying to **** me. I rotated my tires and added a rear strut bar last season and the car has uncontrollable oversteer. I have a hunch that it may be a tire issue. I think it might be possible that I over heated my front tires and turned them into rocks or something and when installed on the rear now I have less rear traction when near the limit and around she goes. I have not been off course in the last 6 track days I have been to and that last one in the fall I spun out 3 times and went off course twice (safely).

I will try rotating the tires back and see how it does. If the issue persist I will get the alignment checked and remove some camber from the rear and if that does not help then I will remove the rear bar. I noticed that with the addition of the rear bar quite a bit of my rear tires do not see pavement. It is probably a inch or inch and a half. Without the bar it was probably only half inch unless I got the car into a massive slide then I would use all the tire but never roll onto the sidewall.

The engine and trans are solid. I have learned to not fill the P/S fluid more than just touching the bottom of the dipstick or it will puke out when it gets hot. I often wonder how hot my oil temp is because I run pretty long sessions sometimes or I will run 2 or 3 in a row, but so far the engine has not locked up so I guess it is doing ok.

To speak on the wheel bearing issue you are having shocar. I had the same issue with the stock subframe but when I upgraded to the Gen 4 frame and spindles I have noticed much better durability so far. I did 2 days at road america, 1 day at black hawk, and 3 days at nelson ledges Plus my daily driving activities and I have not worn any tie rods, ball joints, wheel bearings, or strut rod bushing (which use to constantly fail). I can't honestly say I notice much if any difference in the way the car drives but not having to replace stuff after every track event made it worth every penny.

I really have this car where I enjoy the **** out of tracking it. My prep is down to shaking the front and rear end down, checking fluids and tires and racing the **** out of it.

My favorite chase of last season was a guy in a STI. It was only lightly modded but good god those things are quick. we were taking turns following each other to try each others lines in a couple different corners and towards the end of the day he started out behind me and I kept pushing harder and harder until oops no more brakes. Threw the car sideways to bleed speed around the corner and later he commented that it was the coolest drift he has ever seen a FWD car do. I explained the situation and he said he though I was "a bit ambitious" with my entry speed. nearly 70mph into a 45mph corner... yeah I would say so.

The best thing about these car are they are very affordable to race. Three track days last year and the ONLY thing I did to the car was 3 oil changes and add 1 qt half way through each track day.

I plan on at least a couple days at nelson ledges this year. I really want to make it to bever run this year because I have heard it is a blast. I also want to get out to gingerman for a run out there. I love that track. I have run a bunch of events with autointerest. It is always a great group of people to race with. I really want to get out to road america this year again with Midwest F-Body Association. My buddy lives in wisconson and when he went to a event last season people were still talking about the nut in the white SHO that was out terrorizing everyone in the rain. On a side note a quafe equipped SHO is a force to be reckoned with in the rain. Especially against big HP rear drive boats

 

[Jonny Cash]

Awesome! Keep us updated and dont forget to take video.

I edited the video from last weekend in a more watchable version. Its really fun when people approach you with comments like " you maybe the only person in the world driving one of these cars on a racetrack right now "

ANd thats the same feeling Id feel in a SHO..

You'll see I came in a little hot at the 7.20m. This particualr session wasnt pretty but man alot of fun. I had jumped directly from an e30 to this car in two sessions. I had to re-learn to drive a fwd car just because you turn the wheel doesent mean thats what direction the car will go.. lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVY91GxoBZ8&feature=related

 

[somedude_001]

the only video I have of my car on course is this one which I don't know if you will be able to watch unless you friend my copilot. We taped a I phone to my GPS mount.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2176570335258

 

[krek]

EggBoy Racing will be returning for a full season of ChumpCar with our '90.

We've made some additional changes this Winter in that we eliminated the balance of the factory wiring harness, eliminated the ICM, made a custom dash with aftermarket gauges, relieved the strut towers for additional camber adjustability and we're working on a transmission cooler to ease those woes.

Before last season we swapped in a different subframe so we'd have bolt in wheel hubs. That came in handy at Nashville over July 4th when we swapped out the passenger's front late in the race and still managed a podium (Third).

The SHO is wicked fun on track and what we give up in size and weight we gain in HP.

We'll keep eating those little ricers for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

 

[SHOVNST]

Motorcrap FTW!!!

 

[krek]

The spoof of the Wood Bros 21 car was our original theme and still my favorite. When we redid the car for the Chumpionship last year we added the Motorcrap vinyl back on.

A brief history of the SHO:

First race, Nashville 2010:



Later in 2010 with replacement bumper (which was damaged and left in a trash can):



End of 2010 at Hallett:



Beginning of 2011 at Road America:



End of 2011 at Chumpionship:



I think we've lost the front bumper cover in every single race we've run except for Hallett.

 

[94shodriver]

I've done a about 10 HPDE days in my SHO. I spun a rod bearing on my second, just days before I was planning on replacing them. This was on the original motor with about 160k and I'm sure the original bearings. So I rebuilt a 3.2 and put that in, along with a quaifed transmission, 12" brakes and all the other stuff in my sig. The only other track issues I've had with it were brake related, and those seemed to be related to pad quality. Hawk Blues just were not enough and when I switched to Raybestos ST-43s, my pad life went up, rotors stopped cracking and fluid stopped boiling. My local track is notoriously ******* brakes, and brakes are also one of the SHOs week points.

I have gone through something like four clutches, off the track. One was the POs that needed to be replaced, two were destroyed by the floormat pinning the gas pedal down between downshifts. The engine would bounce of the rev limiter and destroy the straps. The second time this happened was the night before a track day, so I said F-it and drove it anyways. Shifted horribly and had some vibrations, but no issues 12k miles later on the latest clutch. Another clutch had a spring fail 300 miles from home.

I've put over 40k on the 3.2 and the car has over 200k on it now. I attribute the spun rod bearing to lack of maintenance and otherwise the engine is bulletproof. The clutch issues were probably made worse by using an aluminum flywheel and UDP, along with using locally re-built clutches instead of a Southbend or like.

The car is a blast and easy to drive. It's great to have a car at the track that consistently encourages people come up to you and say "That's a Taurus?!" Also, the "not afraid to ball it up" factor is great for late breaking and learning too.

I also drove the GI SHO in one race a couple years ago. From what I remember it was on it's seventh 24 hour race at that point and has done over 10 more since then and is still on the original engine.

I think if you're up to date on maintenance and address the car's weaknesses with high quality parts, you'll have a reliable, cheep, fast and unique car. Good luck!

 

[rooster]

I'll run my 91 at the convention and maybe one more day Gateway Motorsports Park. Hopefully *Knock on wood* nothing will break. The rest of the year it will be a garage queen as usual

 

[gas it]

The SHO is a fun track car. It's easy to drive at 10/10ths or at least what feels like 10/10ths. If you do the maintenance on the motor you won't have any problems. 20 minute track sessions don't stress the car much if it's prepped right.

Endurance racing is a whole different story. As Eggboy Racing, GI SHO, and us Texas Lemons racers have found out. Things just don't last long when you beat on them for 7 to 10 hours straight. Some stuff makes it a few races other stuff not even one race. The secret is to drive 9/10ths. Don't redline every gear, late brake every turn, etc. etc. Try to not use up the car. If we could monitor wheel bearing temps I'm sure our driving style would change when they get to the meltdown stage.

We are going to do our first 24hr race in May and I don't know if we can leave any spares at home. "We'll see" said a blind man.....

 

[Ishodu]

EggBoy Racing will be returning for a full season of ChumpCar with our '90.

We've made some additional changes this Winter in that we eliminated the balance of the factory wiring harness, eliminated the ICM, made a custom dash with aftermarket gauges, relieved the strut towers for additional camber adjustability and we're working on a transmission cooler to ease those woes.

Before last season we swapped in a different subframe so we'd have bolt in wheel hubs. That came in handy at Nashville over July 4th when we swapped out the passenger's front late in the race and still managed a podium (Third).

The SHO is wicked fun on track and what we give up in size and weight we gain in HP.

We'll keep eating those little ricers for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

What are you using for a pump to flow the oil? I am thinking of adding one as well.

 

[krek]

What are you using for a pump to flow the oil? I am thinking of adding one as well.

We've shelved the tranny cooler project because of the lack of finding a 12v pump in our budget that would move the fluid. We are still looking for a diesel lift pump, but it will have to be a cheap one.

In fourteen hours of racing this weekend we lost the alternator, starter, DIS and clutch.

Oh, and the freaking brake switch.

 

[Ishodu]

I found a pump thats around 80 dollars and people are using it for a return pump for turbos on motor cycles. I am thinking of getting one to try it. There is not much flow but then again there is not much fluid in the tranny either. It just might work.