Topic: The first Lada niva in Lemons
So here's some rambling highlights from the niva build from start to finishline. I will add photos as I find more from our build page.
It started in early august when we were just starting to work on a 1976 bmw 2002. Our plan was to spend a year turning that junk heap into a snowmobile powered pile junkheap. Instead I get a phone call from the team captain saying he knows someone that has a soviet car who wants to race this year at the ridge. yep about 8 week away no pressure. He paid $300 canadian and imported it to the US for $9. Oh and the underside of the car looked like it was dredged from the titanic. Every nut and bolt on this was seized
After that was roughly a month of on and off work. the interior was pretty disgusting especially when we took out the headliner. The worst part was the firewall. It had a mix of house fiberglass and burlap glued to it. Yes really. First problem was figuring out how to squeeze a roll cage into a car the size of an adidas sneaker. The back bars just barely fit on the back of the rear tubs. Next problem was the car had no brakes and the transfer case was in the passenger seat. In true Lemons fashion the more we dug the more problems we found in this car. Every single bushing on the suspension was bad and to make matters worse someone welded most of the bolts shut so we had to break most of them just to get the suspension out.
To make it more fun the gas tank and fuel pump were completely rusted out and the engine was most likely seized. Also the fuel tank and lines were only 6 inches from the drivers seat so first priority on my list was making a bulkhead for the fuel lines and we had to source a new tank from the spare parts pile. The only one we could find was for a fuel injected soviet car and we had a carbuerated car. That involved some grade A butchery with a hack saw to remove the fuel pump and rig up a new venting system(which didnt work). The biggest problem however was while parts are readily available for this car they had to be imported from Ukraine which we did order, but...... they are just now showing up after being held up in customs for the last month. So for a while we wound up robbing minor parts like suspension bolts from a fully restored museum piece.
Anyways the last 3 weeks involved us picking up the car and dropping it onto the front sub assembly and going over everything so it could run and drive again (goodbye sleep). The week of the race started with me spending a day re-doing the crappy race seat adjuster handle so it actually "worked" and figuring out how to mount this giant seat in the car and still make tech. Then after that its a sleep deprived blur of doing odds and ends leading to friday.
Anywho onto the race. On saturday the car refused to start despite us driving it the day before. Turns out the kill switch died from the humidity. Because of this we missed the green flag by about 20 minutes. First couple stints went well despite the car being slow as dirt. The only problem we found was that the fuel tank wasn't getting enough air so it was slowly vapor locking itself due to our "customizing" the fuel injected tank. easy fix just change the gas cap.
Then came my turn. I have not driven a manual car in 12 years and had no time to get one to practice on while working on the niva. surprisingly enough the car is pretty forgiving that way. That being said nobody could get it in second gear without the car acting up. After having to come in because I couldn't see (visor fog) I noticed a bigger problem. The car reeked of gasoline! turns out the gas cap wasn't the fix we needed because the one we replaced it with was puking gas. I finished my stint with the slowest laps out of all of us.
Then came Michael's turn which was cut short when he got black flagged and missed the turn in. So he tried to back up and re-enter the pits that way.
Next was Martin and he came in after half an hour with the car's brakes smoking like crazy. Turns out a vacuum hose broke off the carb and jammed the throttle linkage wide open. True to soviet philosophy the hose was yanked the rest of the way off and he was able to finish the race with the car coasting back into the pits after the checkered. So yeah, turns out the hose was kind of important for engine idle. Also the idle adjuster screws had fallen off on the track somewhere. Along with Ruslan's gloves and iphone. Side note we found the phone and gloves later that day by turn 1 of the track.
The evening was spent repairing the carb and retuning the engine so it actually ran on all 85 hp. ....And then I nearly froze to death while trying to sleep in my truck because it dipped below freezing that night.
Next day the car was running ok but not great. One of the clutch hoses wriggled loose until Vlad was unable to get it into gear so it came in on the hook and was back out 10 minutes later. Martin and Jeffry set our record lap times and generally ran the tires off that little car. Then came my stint where I slowly pushed the car harder and harder until I managed to get it on 3 wheels and skidded until I had 2 tires in the dirt. On my next lap I saw I was black flagged so I came in and was informed that yep the car was puking gasoline again. After that came Ruslan's turn and he took the checkered flag.
I'm honestly surprised the car survived this race with so few faults. first thing is fixing the fuel issues so it doesnt leak fuel again. Then we need to take it on the dirt just for the hell of it.
ramble on forward northworst 2016
UW car club: the ridge 2015: dead friggin last