Preparation for 2008 Season

The car went through more body work and preparation before heading to be painted in January. It had been about 8 years since the entire car was painted and it is was overdue for a bright fresh coat of white! New Rally America number backers and decals were fitted to the car after the paint cured.

There were many nights and weekends spent in the garage. Below are a few pictures of the work we completed on the car.

A new bumper fascia was secured to the shadow and Torie added instructions as to what to do if the fascia falls off (left).

Torieput a new coat of paint on the floor while we had the seats out. The old dirty floor can be seen in the picture on the left, and the new claen floor on the right. Good Job TORIE!

We purcahsed a fresh pair of Hankook ice tires for the event and have appropriatly "tuned" them for optimum performance.

The exhaust system has been modified / re-routed to go around the new gas tank. This involved a fair amount of cutting, welding, and engineering to get a 2.5” diameter pipe routed through the underbody of our little shadow!

We also outfitted the car with new SFI spec 6 point harnesses and a re-certified handheld firebottle.

Preparation for 2008 Season

Work is underway to prepare the ShadowRally team for the upcoming 2008 rally season.   The car will receive a fresh coat of paint during the off-season, along with several other updates, upgrades, and repairs.   The fuel cell that was previously located inside the vehicle behind the driver and co-driver's seats is being removed.    Due to the FIA FT-3 fuel cell rules it was mandated that the entire fuel cell including the filler neck be enclosed in a fireproof / liquid proof container.   This is especially difficult for us since the car is a hatchback design, it would require building a steel box around the entire cell and it would require climbing into the trunk and pouring a 40 gallon can of gas through the x frame of the roll cage to re-fuel the car.. not a good option.

The easier option (the one we chose) was to remove the fuel cell and place a factory OEM fuel tank in the stock underbody position.   We will add a skid plate over the new tank to protect against puncture from rocks and debris that it will be subjected to under the car.  This project will also include re-routing the exhaust around the new under body fuel tank, re-wiring a new fuel pump, re-routing the fuel lines, adding a new fuel filler into the new tank, and replacing the old Lexan window that used to hold the fuel filler neck for the fuel cell. We are making good progress and hope to have the car painted and operational by Jan. 1 to allow for sufficient shakedown before Sno-Drift 2008.

Team Competes in Son of Sno-Drift Rally

After a mad dash of work to the car the Shadow has hit the road running again! On Saturday December 5 the team competed in the Son of Sno*Drift time speed distance rally. The body work was not yet complete so the car ran a mixture of paint, primer and Bondo. This run was used to shake down the rally car after a number of recent repairs and to get Torie experience running the odometer and reading a route book prior to the Sno*Drift performance rally January 25-26.

The event was a sucess for Team Shadowrally as the car ran flawlessly and Torie had no problem keeping the car on route despite this being her first ever rally. The roads were a mix of cold ice, wet ice, slush and mud. It was an ideal run to get Greg some much needed seat time sliding the car around after over a year without racing!