Autocross? Drag racing? This turbo Voyager did it all | #TBT

What do you get when you mix a lot of specialized knowledge and experi­ence with a special interest group that tends to do things a little differently? In the case of the Mini Me entry in GRM's recent $1500 Challenge, you get a unique, but nonetheless ef­fective, interpretation of the term sports car, for starters. 

It all started at the June 1999 meeting of the National Capital Chapter of the Shelby Dodge Auto Club (SDAC), where one of the topics of conversation (among all the other bench racing) was the $1500 Challenge. There were nods of approval of the idea all around, and a general agreement that we ought to do something about it. It never went farther than that inside the Tysons Corner, Ya., Fuddruckers, but it went MUCH farther in the parking lot after the restaurant closed.

I reiterated the statement that we ought to do something about the Challenge, and made the comment that a Dodge Omni GLH Turbo would probably be an effective tool.

Barry Miles piped up, "One of the editors is already doing one."

Curses. Foiled at the outset! Flipping through the magazine, we found J.G. Paste1jak's Omni displayed as the first shot fired in the Challenge.

"We've gotta do something different," Cliff Sebring said.

Barry, myself and others turned and looked at him. We'd heard that tone of voice and seen that sparkle of eye before, when Cliff was hav­ing one of his ideas. 

After a moment, I finally ventured, "Like what?" 

Cliff answered, "I found something at auction the other day that I'd never seen before–an '89 2.5-liter turbo Minivan with a five speed. It's got 177,000 miles on the clock and a blown head gasket, but it might be okay other than that," he said, smiling. 

"Could you imagine?" Barry blurted out. "We gotta do it."

"Cripes," I said, "If we beat ANYBODY with something like that, it'll be hilarious. I think we have a plan."

When we were done laughing, it occurred to us: since the rules specified DOT tires, everyone would be traction-­limited, especially in the drag racing. The GRM point system would pay well for a good drag strip time, and drag racing would be the Mini van's forte, since its relatively high cen­rter of gravity would prevent it from taking an FTD in an autocross.

Something we all knew was that Chrysler's Minivans were developed off of the old K car platform, which also was the basis for the G-body Dodge Daytonas and the P-bodies such as the Dodge Shadow. Most performance parts for those cars and 2.2/2.5L engines stood a good chance of being applicable to the minivan, which Cliff christened "Mini Me" after the character in the film ''The Spy Who Shagged Me." Turbo minivans are a bit unusual, and were developed as a stopgap for the '89 and '90 model years until Chrysler could get their new V6-powered vans into pro­duction. Interestingly, the five-speed turbo minivans had the heavy-duty A555 transaxle with an equal-length driveshaft arrangement standard, all of it borrowed from the Dodge Daytonas of the time. We had a lot of experi­ence amongst us racing FWD Chrysler prod­ucts, so the Mini Me/GRM $1500 Challenge project would mix some known and some unknown vehicle development work. 

We plotted a schedule that would accommodate our racing sched­ules (Cliff's NMCA drag events, Barry's MWCSCC autocrossing, and my SCCA Club Racing) and still keep all of our marriages off the reefs of yet another race car project, with a little testing thrown in.

The first step was to boost the engine's power. We looked to con­vert the car from the non-intercooled Turbo I induction configuration to the intercooled Turbo II system. Cliff found an '87 Dodge Shadow that had a Turbo II setup, a blown bottom end and a wrecked gearbox. The owner was sick of looking at his terminally broken car and just wanted it taken out of his sight, so away it went in "Dr. Evil's" loving care. The Turbo II top end and intercooler went onto the engine, along with a new head gasket. Then, with everybody involved crossing their fingers, it started up and ran okay. The first bridge had been crossed.

If you live anywhere within 150 miles of Carlisle, Penn., you know that the auto shows, flea markets and vendor booths can be a treasure trove of performance parts, if you know what you're looking for. In this case, we were looking for a Turbo II SMEC (computer) and pieces to make up a NOS system for Mini Me. Again, Cliff proved to be resourceful, getting the tank for $40 over here, solenoids for a few dollars over there, and nozzles and jets. At the end of the day, he had put together a system for a grand total of $150. A computer was spot­ted on a table for $50, and we were on our way.

The Internet was the next place Cliff shopped. There, he found a set of used G-body Monroe GP struts and Daytona Shelby springs for $50. This trick lowered the front of the van four inches, and while it introduced some unwanted driveshaft angularity, we thought the lower center of gravity would be worth it. That issue would have been fur­ther addressed if the van were going to a road course, since it's likely that there would have been clearance problems and large angular stresses on the C.V. joints, but the rear axle needed a bit of investigat­ing before we were ready to lower it, so we decided to put it off awhile and concentrate on other things.

At this point, in late July, everything was put on the van, and we thought it would run like a rocket at the local drag strip. It didn't. It sneezed and coughed and blew off intercooler hoses and generally behaved so badly that no one dared use the nitrous, thinking that a NOS-powered sneeze would put an end to Mini Me right then and there.

Over time, the team solved the problems with vacuum lines and the array of electrical sensors that make a (relatively) modern turbo­charged and fuel injected car run. The best ET slip, however, showed a 17.9-second pass, which was a long way from the 13.9-second pass that we estimated it would take to win the drag racing portion of the $1500 Challenge. 

In between drag strip passes, Cliff and his son, Lee, spent a few evenings addressing the single biggest visual problem facing Mini Me (other than the fact that it looks like a gray brick with windows): the paint on the hood and roof was peeling like Johnny Winter after two weeks at a nud­ist camp in the Sahara.

Out came the sandpaper and sanding blocks, and after several hours, the roof and hood were good enough for a race car paint job. While they were sanding, Cliff had an inspiration for the visual theme of the van. What he envisioned was not just a repaint of the bad areas, but a budget simulation of a Dodge Shelby Charger circa 1983-'87. So a silver "skunk stripe" over the top of the gray va, and a phone call to David Salamone's Positive Impressions shop (they do high-quality licensed reporductions of original Shelby Dodge graphics) and some pleading spurred PI to make up "Shelby Voyager" graphics to adorn the sides, at a reasonable cost.

We spent some quality time stripping out everything in the interior, with the exception of the dash, some headliner, and the driver's seat. We pulled over 200 pounds of stuff from the interior of the van, and didn't even get to pull the power windows or radio because Cliff liked them. There were concerns that the rear of the van would be too light for autocrossing, and that it would be ultra-loose. Time would tell after we took care of the rear suspension.

We had definitely been avoiding dealing with the rear, since there was no obvious way to do it right. After much discussion, we decided to take the easy way out by flipping the axle over the rear leaf springs (no, none of the K cars have leaf springs–just the minivans). Although the mounting plate for the springs was flat on both the upper and lower sides of the cast axle ends, we'd have to remove a brace that added support to the cast-iron wheel hubs on the upper side, and trust that the flat plate would last long enough without giving way. The fact that we'd have to drill a hole through it to clear the leaf spring locating pin didn't make us any more comfortable, either.

After removing the axle, we broke up into teams at either end of the axle. One team drilled the hole, and one team torched off the support. Everything went well, until we finished our respective tasks and switched ends to complete the job. The torching went fine, but the drilling seemed to take forever, and chewed a bit down to a nub. Lesson learned: Drill, THEN torch. Freshly heat-treated pieces are a lot harder to drill into.

Still, the axle went back on without any significant problems, and Mini Me seemed to be nearly level. Mission accomplished!

As August wore into September, and the little power problems were addressed, Mini Me began to wake up. The ETs began dropping–16s, 15s and finally, over the weekend of September 10-11, Mini Me and Cliff finally began to click. They reeled off seven straight passes between 14.8 and 15.0 sec., and Cliff hadn't even used the nitrous yet. We expected that the NOS would cut the ET by about a second, put­ting us right where we thought we needed to be.

Autocrossing was another matter. We tested Mini Me in an unused parking lot and learned that there was plenty of power, but the align­ment needed to be set correctly (to dial out some of the huge push) before there were going to be any serious attempts to go fast. Still, any fears we had about the rear of the van being too light were dispelled: It stayed planted, even when Barry lifted the inside rear tire in tight cor­ners. An autocross alignment would have to wait until after the Drag Racing portion of the $1500 Challenge, though.

At this point, we felt we were ready. 

When we arrived in Melbourne, Fla., for the big event, we cleaned and detailed the van, and applied the graphics. There was some discussion about really scrubbing the engine compartment down, since the Chrysler 2.2/2.5 engines tend to need a protective coating of underhood gunk, and are likely to have drivability problems when it's removed.

Cleanliness won out, and the van seemed to run okay after the clean­ing, but when we got to the drag strip Cliff found that Mini Me wouldn't make more than three pounds of boost on its first pass (which was still a 15.3, which got many of our com13etjtors' attention). When we did some quick diagnostics, we found that some of the vacuum lines for the wastegate solenoid were flip-flopped. Once the lines were put right, we were rewarded with the sound of the wastegate making its distinc­tive "phht-phht-phhttttt," and were ready for some quicker passes. Un­fortunately, the nitrous system was not dialed in all the way and, when activated, gave an initial surge but went flat quickly, evidenced by the slowish 14.303-second run with only a 90 mph trap speed.

On the morning of the concours d'elegance and autocross events, we did a quick realignment in the hotel parking lot, much to the amuse­ment of the hotel staff, who especially liked the toe measurements done using an electrical cord, since none of us had remembered to bring a measuring tape. We also had to remove the NOS bottle and line and set up for the concours' "French judging."

Having no idea what "French judging" was, we decided that it meant that the judges would be French, so we would attempt to make them feel at home by serving a Gallic picnic in the side door of the van. The picnic consisted of a bottle of fine French wine and French fries from a nearby Burger King. Since we were in the good old U.S. of A, we did NOT offer them mayonnaise with the fries.

Barry took three passes in the autocross, the first punctuated by a smoky front wheel burnout all the way down the back straight.

He later said, "I didn't realize I had gotten wheels pin there. When I made the 180 degree turn to come back, I saw I was going to drive through all this tire smoke, and I thought, 'I guess I ought to take it a little easier on the gas."'

By the time we had gotten around to discussing letting good guy Danny Shields (who knew the course like the back of his hand at that point) have a run in Mini Me, the weather intervened, and the rain came down in earnest. Danny did approach us later, asking to drive it in the rain, and were only too happy to let him have some fun with it. It was hard to tell if he was amused or appalled when he got out, but at least he was smiling. "Plenty of power," he commented.

We were quite pleased with how well we finished overall, and had a great time with the competitors, spectators, supporters, and GRM staff all weekend. A very nice young lady, who is a daughter of one of our competitors, told us, "You guys ROCK!" 

That made us feel pretty good. Rock, indeed. With a brick. 

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