Barely Street Legal League [SURVEY ON PAGE 70]

Community Challenges & Competitions
101

ENTRIES ARE NOW CLOSED! Sorry for being 2 hours late, my internet access was a bit shaky for a while.

[size=200]L[/size]ong after the warehouse had shut down for the night, and the sun had set, a select few of the core of the Gryphon Gear team sat in the upstairs office. Dan, team manager accounts gatekeeper and aide of all things legal, had done the noodle box round, and having dropped it off, promptly left. Her only parting comment was: “I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I said nothing, and I know nothing.” Twenty seconds later, tyre screeching could be heard from the carpark, and then they were alone.

For a moment, Hannah, Noah, Tesla and Strop sat in silence as they negotiated with the noodles. Finally, Strop swallowed, then he spoke.

“Last call guys, are we all still in?”

“Well duh.” Noah retorted. “You’re not getting cold hooves now are you?”

Strop made a wounded pout. “Just checking.” He aimlessly scrolled through the list of entries, reviewing their documentation for the umpteenth time. “Hannah, is your kid sorted?”

“Yep.” Hannah made no effort to swallow before speaking, flecks flying out of her mouth. “Boden’s all over it.” Strop glanced at Tesla but she was in no position to talk, her nose jammed tightly into the box as she snarfed everything down with typically canine voracity. “Is the truck loaded?” Tesla merely flashed her thumbs up at Strop, leaving the noodle box suspended over her nose.

“Very well then…” On the computer, Strop flicked across to the open email addressed to the twenty-odd entrants from all over the world, who had submitted their details and their cars to what promised to be a gruelling, exhilarating but mostly hair-raisingly scary fortnight. There was everything from modern supercars to tuner cars to prototypes to rebuilt classics and even Frankenstein cars with bodies and engines from completely different companies, let alone eras. There was no way of telling how it was going to turn out, and of course, that was racing at its finest. Even if it was barely legal for the most part, and downright illegal in others.

Strop attached the attachment to the email, the finalised schedule to which they would run. It was with the leverage of their kind sponsors (plus a certain amount of omission from the proposal they had sent) that they had been able to secure bookings at any of the venues they were aiming for, and they were opportunities not to be wasted. Then in the body of the message, he simply wrote:

“Bring yourselves, your cars, and any supplies you need to the Gryphon Gear factory at the precise moment Sunday becomes Monday in Victoria, Australia.”

The others watched as he encrypted the lot. They all looked at each other one last time, and nodded. With resolute commitment, Strop hit SEND, and the Barely Street Legal League was on!

Attached file: SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (in EST with daylight savings in effect):

0:00 November 10: meet at the Gryphon Gear factory in Donnybrook, Victoria, Australia
0:00 November 11: meet at Mount Panorama in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia
0:00 November 13 (local time 23:00 November 12): meet at Mount Haruna in Gunma, Japan
0:00 November 16 (local time 06:00 November 15): meet at the Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway, Tooele County, Utah, USA
0:00 November 17 (local time 0:700 November 16): meet at Tulsa Raceway Park, Oklahoma, USA
0:00 November 19 (local time 11:00 November 18): meet at Dunsfold Aerodrome, Surrey, UK
12:00 November 20 (local time 0:00 November 20): meet at Circuit de la Sarthe, Pays de la Loire, France
0:00 November 22 (local time 12:00 November 21): meet at Spa Francorchamps, Stavelot, Belgium
0:00 November 23 (local time 12:00 November 22): meet at Nordschleife, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
6:00 November 23 (local time 18:00 November 23): close of track, adjourn to local pub for presentation, celebration.

102

Nice…

In the air the smell of burning rubber, gasoline, adrenaline and death… will take over the next few weeks …

103

Very well ladies and gentlemen, I look foward to seeing you all at the starting line, and hope to see at least most of you at the finish. let us bow our heads now and remember jessie’s prayer.

104

Kristina checks her email and spots an ominous one from Gryphon Gear, one which she had been both anxiously anticipating and dreading at the same time. After a long pause, she clicked on the decrypting key and awaited the results. Her eyes were wide, perhaps from fear of what it may hold, or perhaps from sheer excitement of what it could mean for Swanson Motorsports. Finally, it finished, and the text began to appear on her glowing screen in the dark office. She was in. She instantly knew Gryphon Gear was completely and utterly mad, which was exactly what she had hoped they would be. She had submitted a nightmare disguised as an automobile for a competition which might just prove to include the most insane group of people on the planet.

Her submission was an abomination of the worst kind. An aged body and chassis, with skinny tires, no modern drivers aids, and nearly 1300hp to the rear wheels. She thought to herself, “Are you fucking mad? Do you really intend to operate this thing against other drivers with a similar passion for lunacy?” She shrieked out loud, “Of course, you silly witch!” Her grandfather may have given her the introduction, but since those 35 years had passed, she had only gasoline in her veins, and a right foot made of pure dark matter, far to heavy to lift from any accelerator. This was her moment to shine. No rules. No inhibitions. No sanity. Pure adrenaline to feed her aching desire to go as fast as possible, in what others would only talk about driving.

She had to reinforce the chassis to withstand the 1100 lb-ft of torque traveling down the drive-shaft from 19PSI of forced-induction. The interior had been gutted with a full 6-point roll cage. The inner fenders had been all but removed to force a twin-turbo LS7 monster under the hood. The front fascia had to be modified to afford nearly 2000 kJ/s for cooling and the factory. M3’s are already fast. Nobody can deny this fact. But she had doubled the original engine size and quadrupled the engine power forcing her to retrofit an M22 Muncie in the car to keep up with the output, as the original 5-speed crumbled on the first run around the Swanson Proving Grounds. Even the Muncie had to be updated with titanium gears and shafts, as it still wasn’t strong enough. And she left the factory brakes on the car…surely she is mad enough to compete in something from Gryphon Gear.

Apparently Gryphon Gear agreed, as the email confirmed her acceptance into the competition. There was no turning back now. The path was set in stone, and she braced herself for the ride of a lifetime. The best of both worlds. The E30 M3 and the Corvette Z06 beast’s heart. Bring it on!

105

Maybe i’m just ignorant and miss the point, but what was so scary 'bout your stats ?

106

[quote=“HellBoyBG”]

Maybe i’m just ignorant and miss the point, but what was so scary 'bout your stats ?[/quote]

I was just joking man, i know there’s nothing scary about it, it’s just an AWD box with tons of power and 28mpg gas mileage, that’s it

107

[quote=“HellBoyBG”]

Maybe i’m just ignorant and miss the point, but what was so scary 'bout your stats ?[/quote]

Only in this thread will I see something like “what’s so scary about having a 1000kg car with 1200 horsepower?” This is my kinda scene.

p.s. Story writing your own bits as 07CobaltGirl has taken to doing is also very welcome :slight_smile:

108

[size=150]EGT Hangar, Japan, 11:30pm, 8th November 2014[/size]
Enry was taking yet other photos of the car to send to Gryphon Gear, he liked it, looking at the beast he was going to drive like it was a work of fine art, he always had a soft spot for admiring his cars like that. Then, a loud noise and a lot of yelling could be heard from the Communication office, and someone rushed out by well… falling off his chair, it was the lead computer engineer, he was upstairs for ordering some insulating cable from the Seishido main factory, but then he saw the message…
Daichi: ENRYYYYYYY!!!
Enry: What’s happening up there? Do you have some ne…
Daichi: Gryphon Gear accepted our entry! The X90 is in the competition!
Enry: …Seriously? Now that’s good to know! I was pretty tired of waiting, so, when’s the first meetup, and WHERE?
Daichi: 10 November, 0:00 am, Donnybrook, Victoria, Australia
Enry: Let’s ready up! We need to test it once more!
Daichi: Wait a se…
And so Enry opened the door of the Achernar X90 and sunk in the bucket seat, put the 6-point harness on for safety reasons ignoring the fact that he was driving THAT car without a helmet, let alone a racing suit, when Daichi told him something important, scaring him just a little.
Daichi: The test track is way too dirty, the other guys accidentally dropped some dirt on it, a truck had a trailer problem, we needed it for the rally track…
Enry: Isn’t this nutjob AWD? It’s not like you dropped a mountain of it…
Daichi: I think so… but it’s still dangerous.
Enry slowly presses the ENGINE START button, waking up the monstrosity under the hood with a tremendous, rough roar, shaking the entire garage up, then he turns on launch control, moves the gated stick shifter into first gear and, heavy breathing, he lets off the brakes. Time stops just for a split second, the drivetrain getting power, the tyres getting traction, and he’s off. After what seemed like a blink he is already into third gear at over 150Km/h, and just realizes how fast he’s accelerating, so… he screams like a kid watching a horror movie, but continues chasing speed, he wants to see how fast the X90 really is, 250… 280… 310… then he notices a tight bend at less than a few hundred meters from him, mashes the brake pedal until it goes into the floor, the car stopping with the brakes screaming and bright yellow, turning the steering wheel strongly the hatchback throws itself in the corner real quick,slamming him on the other side of the probably too large seat. But Enry didn’t notice something,after other two pleasing turns, here is the dirt. Accelerating out of it he lost traction brutally, because of the Semi Slick tyres and his famous lead foot, the driver aids try to control the 1000kg box into going straight, Enry says to himself “That’s it, you’re toast mate, goodbye Seishido” and the car spins out into the sand runoffs, sliding in them for several frightening seconds. Luckily it doesn’t hit the barriers by an inch or so. Enry jumps out of the car with a grin connecting his ears, laughing.
This. car. is. AWESOME! The next day the X90 had a #ilovetractioncontrol sticker on it’s rear bumper.

I’m going to write more of these stories, it’s addicting

109

[size=200]The AMW Brimstone[/size]

The Brimstone is AMW’s entry for the Barely Street Legal League. Its name is a reference to two things: a certain type of butterfly, and the other name for sulphur. (There’s also an item called Brimstone in The Binding of Isaac and it’s related to the latter of the two). Both of these things are yellow, hence the paint colour.

Anyway, remember the 70’s when the Austrian guys used to build the Caterpillar? It was nothing too special in its own right, but it made for a good foundation for future projects; something that would evolve into something much greater. The Brimstone is that car. With a twin-turbocharged 4.0L high-revving V8 that makes even more power than the last generation Dragonfly’s 4.0L block, this is certainly no slouch. On the outside, it’s aggressive and yet immediately recognizable as an AMW car thanks to the signature grille. Like most cars in the competition (at least that’s what I think), it comes on Semi Slicks. But even the 325mm rears will struggle putting down all of its power. And yet, AMW’s chief engineers have managed to put it down well enough for the car to be on par with a Lamborghini Aventador over the quarter mile, despite losing 1 whole second from 0-100km/h due to the RWD setup. That required adding some weight to the rear end but the car still makes more than 1hp/kg. It’s also very refined and features a 7-speed double-clutch gearbox, allowing it to shift both quickly and smoothly, as well as reaching 382km/h despite having pretty good downforce. It’s the balance that will make this car a force to be reckoned with.

And now we get to the silly part, which is the reason this is related to the other word for sulphur. Well, it’s kind of easy to see if you watch this car accelerate because it creates so much smoke and such deep black lines on the tarmac that you won’t be able to see it accelerating until it’s out of your sight anyway (which happens rather quickly) but the place will smell like something was burnt down in the most terrible way, as is the case with sulphur. Brimstone in the Binding of Isaac is an item that allows you to fire a powerful beam once charged up, and that’s also kind of the way that this car works: charge it up (get to 5000+RPM), and then fire.

For all this silliness, it’s still road legal, featuring working headlights, taillights, indicators and doors. But what kind of madman/madwoman would drive this on the road?

110

In the basement of Saber’s advanced Motorsport R&D centre the most secret of all secret projects known to automotive kind was unfolding. This project known to the very few people involved is called the YELLING MADMAN. For reasons not that clear to the company’s CEO Rayyan ‘balls ‘o’ Titanium’ Rawat, the engineers could only eek out 1055BHP.

Project YELLING MADMAN is the first hypercar performance front wheel drive car. This means that you’d literally have to be a YELLING MADMAN to own one of these beasts. The decision to designate the car HFF was made by rayyan himself as he’d one day hope to sell this vehicle and YELLING MADMAN is not a friendly non for a monster like the HFF.

111

112

ahahahahah

113

“Oop ook ag ag” said the trained monkey.
“Yes, Mister Greasepaws, you can eat when you’ve applied all the decals on the car” replied engineer Rubik without lifting his gaze from his laptop. They were in a brightly lit, neat garage at Raggari headquarters, making final adjustments on a sleek race car. Engineer Rubik was looking at power and torque curves on his laptop, the latest dyno results making him frown in frustration.
“I just need a little bit more. The rules say we need at least 1000 horsepower, but we’re at 998. Some of our competitors probably have double that.”
Mister Greasepaws the monkey raised its head. It scampered over to the front of the car and popped the hood.
“What are you doing Mister Greasepaws?” asked engineer Rubik.
“Eep eep ga eep!” came an excited answer from under the hood. There was a metallic clunk and the monkey jumped out, slammed the hood shut and ran out of the room.
“You better not have broken anything!” shouted engineer Rubik after it.
Rubik carefully opened the hood. He didn’t notice anything amiss.
Mister Greasepaws came back holding a sign in its little greasy paws. Engineer Rubik saw it was taken from the door to the dyno room, as it said “Dynamometer room” on it. The monkey handed the sign to him.
“Oh… umm… okay. Why the heck not.”

The car was making a menacing rumble on the dyno. At least the car didn’t sound different yet. Rubik put his foot down. A satisfying roar echoed in the room as the engine revved up. Turbochargers whined like a jet engine. Power and torque values on his laptop screen went up, higher and higher. Rubik had to do a double take on seeing the power curve. It peaked at 1005 horsepower. He never figured out what the monkey had done, but it worked.


114

Late night in the CPV Shed
Niall’s hunched over a desk going through computer simulations, getting more and more fustrated when Old Jedediah strolled in,.
“So you’re still set on entering this race huh kid?”
“Yeah only I can’t get find a engine in our lineup powerful enough without overstressing the block, none of these new designs can take enough boost.”
“Listen Niall I’ve been working here since you’re grandfather run it, and he was a man like you crazy enough to try a project out two, some never panned out, seems as though i remember something downstairs from one or two of those that might suit you.”
Niall glances back at his monitor, where yet another test run failed. “why not…”
Jed leads him down through a series of storerooms housing various stocked parts for the obsolete Centauri lineup. set in the back wall of the third storeroom was a older style round vault door.
“It was a old bomb shelter during W W 2, back when we were just starting out, producing engine components for the M1 Shermans. She got retrofitted some during the early days of the cold war, turned into a fallout shelter. Now though we just use it to store though projects too expensive to destroy but not viable for use.”
Jed spins the large locking wheel and the old but serviceable door swings open, dusty basket lights wink on as the two step in.
“Here she is” Jed pats a massive wooden crate on a dolly “This baby was made for the Can-Am series back in '74, she past the endurance trials, but we never got her into a car before they pulled the plug on the league, she’s good for about 1000hp, more then enough for your crazy race series I’d say.”
Niall was awestruck as the top was pried off and the gleaming trumpets of a full race spec Individual throttle bodied V8 of massive proportions was relieved.
“Now a few things to remember, shes all mechanical so all those fancy computers aren’t gonna hook up, it’s a 1 piece block and head so don’t go bending a valve or chipping a tooth on this girl or you’ll be stranded, she’s got hardened valve’s and seats cause for some fool notion your grandfather didn’t want it running on leaded race fuel, hat said you can fill up at a normal gas station without worry.”
“what the hell am I gong to find that can fit a engine like this in time!” Niall exclaimed, but his eye’s were taking in every curve and ridge on the gargantuan motor, his fingers tracing the throttle linkages.
“well that brings us to the second thing I remembered down here, back in the 80’s your father wanted a crack at the Dakar rally, only thing was we didn’t have a suv strong enough to take the kind of abuse it would have seen, so he envisioned this.” walking up to a long low shrouded object towards the back, lifting the cloth tarp relieved a heavily reinforced and crossed braced ladder chassis with a long sticked transmission bolted between the rails.
“he build this out of the frame of a Centauri Knight, so it’s still only rear wheel drive.”
“wait, THIS was a Muscle car?”
“as much as anything was back in those days, the EPA might have choked off our on road power in those day but for the Dakar he stretched the frame rails to fit a modified straight 6 from a Mack dump truck. it blew a rod during testing and he lost interest in trying again, but that transmission should still be good, and rated for about 2000 lbs-ft, the frame is long enough enough to mount the engine, I’ll leave finding a body for this to you.”
Jed wandered out of the vault door calling back “just you be sure to bring these back when your done.”

115

**[size=200]I[/size]**n the middle of nowhere, there were no clocks to strike midnight. There was only the rumbling chorus of two dozen engines approaching, headlights converging like fireflies upon a stretch of asphalt with only a mystic connection guiding them. On cue, before them the lights flickered on, barely bright enough to make out the vague impression of a warehouse interior.

Out front, a figure stood, waving the cars in. One by one they filed in, lining the main floor before shutting down. As they lined up, the sound grew quieter until the only sound left was the whirring of the main doors shutting. Finally, with a resounding clang, the warehouse was secured, and more lights came on, revealing the figure to be the night’s host, Stroppy McHorseguy, who greeted the emerging drivers with outstretched arms and a toothy grin.

“Welcome, all, to Australia!. Also, welcome to the Gryphon Gear shed. And most of all, welcome… to the Barely Street Legal League.”

Skulking around the parc fermé that was the Gryphon Gear factory main floor, Noah raised his camera, snapping each of the monster cars as they stood before him. Never before had so much madness been confined to such a small space, and within the next few hours, it would all be loosed upon the world… and all for his delight and documentation to his blog that he had accidentally-on-purpose neglected to tell anybody else about. Anybody else, really meaning Strop, and Dan. Chuckling to himself, he fiddled with the dials, and once again the shutter clicked.

TOP TRUMP CARDS

In tradition usual to these forums, here is the lineup of the cars entered into the Barely Street Legal League, presented in order of submission. I went out of my way to be as offensive as possible in many cases, so please, don’t take it personally!













BSLLx4_zps74e60e8c.png480×640 79.5 KB

As you can see I have kept it pretty simple on the cards, but feel free to share the other details as you see fit. As to how I include the ‘bonus point’ calculations, they will happen incidentally over the course of the tournament unfolding, so you’ll see a simultaneous ever-changing race for all three classifications!

FUN STATISTICS:

Number of cars that were sent here with the explicit promise to bring it back in one piece: 3
Number of cars for which this promise has already technically been broken: 1
Number of cars that made a spine-chilling scraping noise as they pulled into the warehouse driveway: 22

116

I love these cards! :smiley: I’m excited to see how the competition will go

EDIT: seems like you’ve learned your lesson. You made fun of my car before you drove it. After, it made fun of you! :smiley:

117

Love your work Strop! :laughing: I personally found my entry write up to be accurate and descriptive, rather than offensive :slight_smile:

Can’t wait to see where my Luntatic ends up placing since the competition is so talented… :sunglasses:

118

I may have valued comfort over speed for my… creation. It’s very much the James May of this race, even with 1005hp.

119

Yeah, I might’ve just randomly thrown vents at it…

120

Now THESE are some good trump cards, i love the light effects and… the descriptions are art, pure art. :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

P.S: I like the fact that you actually put the #ilovetractioncontrol sticker right where i wanted it to be, on the plate that should read: “ACHERNAR” in some cheesy 80’s font :mrgreen: