Team Twin-Snail
The Crew:
Luke Light: Storm Automotive’s president, head of the Raceworks Division, and lover of fast and crazy cars. He’s never let being an android keep him down or hold him back, and when he heard about a crazy $500-or-less off-road race, he had to join. As $500 was pocket change for him, he made sure to find something suitably crazy.
Amy Storm: Her great-grandfather, John Storm, founded the company. She’s part of the Engine Design Team and also a member of the Raceworks Division, and is addicted to fast cars and big engines. While she knows almost nothing about off-road racing, and can’t understand why someone who happens to be a DOHC expert has been dragged along to repair a SOHC-based car, she’s willing to try, as her great-grandfather once did with rally racing.
Scott Regale: Storm Automotive’s head of Interior Design. He’s here because he’s told Luke that he has off-road experience. The thing he didn’t mention is that his off-road experience consists entirely of rolling over a Storm Husky pickup truck, and getting a Storm Swift GT stuck 20 feet up in a tree. His mechanical expertise stops at changing tires, but he’s a master electrician.
Linda Regale: Scott’s sister and Storm Automotive’s accountant. You’d be forgiven for believing she’s only here because her brother’s here, but she’s a great navigator. Give someone else a GPS unit and give her a map and compass, she’ll find a way to get there first. However, while her navigational skills are exceptional, her driving needs work. Preferring power over finesse may prove to be the team’s undoing in the RWD beast that Luke found.
The Car:
Big, bold, and beautiful. The 1977 Sinistra Savage, with the optional drop-top and 4-speed automatic. Luke had seen it a few times up for sale near their Nevada-based alternate factory, and believes he got a great deal on it.
Having thrown down $497.68, the surprise was when the car actually started. Sure, it ran rough, and Luke seemed shocked at the mileage, but the car was his. 662 cubic inches of twin-turbocharged, mechanical-fuel-injected mayhem, aged perfectly to the tune of 578,362 miles.
Of course, the first thing he noticed when driving it back to Chicago for the Raceworks Division to help fix it was that it wasn’t exactly… fast. Despite the big engine and turbochargers, the fuel system was all out of whack and the factory air-to-air intercooler had hugged a bush at some point, and was a fairly nasty boost leak.
Luckily, the car made it, despite the appalling fuel efficiency and lack of power. The Raceworks Division fell upon the car and started the repairs, starting first by draining and changing fluids, swapping filters, swapped the twin catalytic converters for some that hadn’t been under the car for quite so long, and starting to beat all the dented panels back into shape. The interior was reupholstered to get rid of the slimy mess in the back seats, the top was replaced, and the transmission was given fresh fluids in hopes that it’d last a bit longer.
Luke and Amy worked together to overhaul the engine, retuning the mechanical fuel injection system and dropping in a spare intercooler from an old rally car. With the water-to-air intercooler in place, they turned up the boost just a little, keeping it running on Regular Unleaded.
With nearly-400 horsepower on tap, but going to just the rear wheels, it was inevitable that once they had the engine sorted out, the transmission fixed, and new tires ready to mount on the rims, the method of removing the old ones was going to produce a hellish amount of smoke. Linda and Scott proceeded to burn the rear tires off of the car, at least until the fire department was called.
With the new tires on the car, team Twin-Snail was ready to go. The last thing on the checklist was to name the car. As Luke had driven it the most, and had some knowledge of how (not) fast it was, as well as a reference to what was under the hood, it ended up being called the “Snail-Boat.”
Known Issues:
Transmission fluid leak near valve body.
Smokes a little. (Luke’s note: No, it smokes quite a bit. And it burns a little oil.)
Top gets stuck in the down position and cannot be retracted electrically.
Alternator works, battery charges, but is using a home-made voltage regulator that gets really hot.
Power steering pump has a blown bearing. Makes really terrible noises at just about anything above idle.
Lights are all-or-nothing. To have low-beams, you must also have high-beams on.
Fan clutch shrieks when engaging.
