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I bought this car not knowing what I was getting into. I was told that it is a 1970 formula super vee. The person I bought it from said it was race ready for autocross and hillclimbs. At my first race last year with it it lasted about a half an hour before giving me a huge fit. I ended up finishing the 3 day event in the wife's Subaru, but I did learn a lot that weekend about the vee and what I needed to do to get it ready for this season. So that one weekend was not a loss to me at all. Very glad it happened at the last race of the year and not the first race of the year. The reason I bought it was I need a dedicated car that is relatively cheap to repair versus my Mitsubishi. I tried a hillclimb last year and am hooked. But the thought of wrecking my daily driver on the hill was a little nerve wrecking for me. This vee kind of fell into my lap right after the hillclimb.
Well enough about that. Onto the car. This is what it looked like when I bought it. The only difference is that it has drum brakes in the picture and it came with disc brakes when I bought it.
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I had it about a week and a half before my first race with it. I found a lot of problems with it in that first week and worked almost around the clock to get it ready for the race. I will do a different post with all the problems I found. If possible maybe all of you can give me some points and tips to make it better. Here it is the day before the race. The paintjob is temporary. It was kind of a joke to paint it black. I own a pretty good size car club and had to lower the tension somehow about the race. The race is most of the NW carclubs competing against each other, so my club was a little worried. That is what the skull and crossbones were for.
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
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When I got it home from that race it went right into the garage and a huge list of stuff to get done was pinned to the wall. Here is my new hoop. The new one sitting behind the old one to show the height difference. I think the car was build for a 4 foot tall person and I am over six feet.
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New hoop in.
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The next major issue I had was the exhaust. It was really restrictive and ugly. I welded up the rust holes and some of the other problems with it before the race. I am pretty sure that is was to restrictive for the 1776.
Old exhaust
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New exhaust
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The next major problem was the motor hopping around everywhere. So made a front engine mount for it. It makes it a little difficult to get the motor in and out, but the motor is solid now. Before it only had the 4 bolts in the tranny holding it in.
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