Since we've just finished shelling out the donor, we figured it was time to start a build thread. So this is the TARP Racing 818R build thread.

By way of background, we've been racing in the 24 Hours of Lemons for a few years. I started my first Lemons build in September 2008 (an '86 MR2) and we did our first race at MSR-Houston in February 2009. I've done 25+ races since then and have built or participated in building several cars for that series. There are three of us (so far) working on this build. The car and all the parts and tools reside at my house in Dallas. Ben is the really tall guy you'll see in some of these photos, and Roland is the second member working on this one, and then there's me.

We bought the 818R that went on special during the 20 Days of Christmas in June Special or whatever FFR was calling it, so we got a new black powdercoated chassis and the original #5 bodywork:

818 Garage.jpg

The chassis and body were delivered in early July, but between work and prepping the Lemons car for the overnight race in Joliet (which did not go well -- we had a lot of problems and finished next-to-DFL after a very long tow), we didn't start working on the donor until 2 weeks ago. Our donor is a 175k mile 02 WRX with the EJ20 motor:

818 Donor.jpg

Thanks to our experience with the Lemons builds, we've gotten pretty quick at stripping a car down, so we had the WRX shelled out in 2 full workdays. Here's the traditional "no engine, Ma" photo. That's Ben doing the engine bay honors with Roland on the left:

818 Shelled.jpg

Our plan is to run essentially stock internals and turbo on a mild tune. We will run a dry sump and are working on spec'ing that part out now. We are shooting for ST-3 for NASA racing. Our goal is to have the car on the track by spring 2016. Cheers.