The Spark

Wanted to share some pics and vids of the Chaparral 2J. They ran it the other day. Truly an amazing car.





The cockpit is a little sparse. I don't know if they put padding on the seat. If not, those racers were sure tough.


Here are some videos.

The first is warming up in the garage. They start the sucker fan engine at the end. It is so loud it drowns out the car engine.



This video was taken outside. It is hard to tell from this but you could see the car go down about 2 inches when they started the fan. And the car wasn't even moving. Jim Edwards (the guy that restored the cars) told me it produced ~ 1,000 pounds downforce as he recalled.

burners

That is so cool to see running! I would love to be there for that. All this stuff you keep posting actually makes me want to visit M/O. Thanks for taking the time to post it.

ghoffman

Thank you! That is so innovative, it makes me sad to see that as compared to the spec racer mentality so common now.

VetteDrmr

That's one awesome car, thanks for sharing!

I wonder what they did to keep the fan from getting FOD'ed to death with all the dirt and gravel?

GRM's video of the Cheaparral at this year's $2008 Challenge was wild, showing about a 20' geyser of road muck getting shot out of the fan.

Thanks again, and have a good one,
Mike

yakisoba

That thing is a hoot!

BrianCunningham

Tintin

I saw that baby at the CanAm races at the Glen when I was a teenager and it was so way out at the time we believed that anything was possible. When you are young , you do not have a grasp of the economics of a wide open series. When the Porsches came along it killed CanAm because of the cost to compete.

When that car ran back in the day , you actually could not hear the Rotax engine at all. That was because the field was about 40 cars all running giant unmuffled engines. The McLarens had 494 Chevrolets for example. It was a great time to be a car fanatic and a fan of real racing. By the way , the first race I ever attended was a CanAm in 65 at Mosport near Toronto where I grew up. I have a framed photograph of that first race with the 2C zooming up the Andretti straight and I can still sense the smells , the sounds and the sights of that day. It was a big influence on me and caused me to blow a fortune in becoming a pro endurance racer. It is the little things...

I recall that every year my best friend and I would speculate on what wacky new car Jim Hall would come up with as they kept getting farther away from the conventional as the years went by. He was the only true innovator in the series and is a testament to the pioneering spirit and Yankee Ingenuity (ok so he is a Texan, you know what I mean) of America. It is probably a contributor to my decision to transfer here 16 years ago.



Thanks so much for the memory tweak!

The Spark

M/O isn't that bad.
okay Midland isn't that bad

FKING1

I saw all the Chaparrels run at Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio, etc., many years ago. Awsome cars and Hall was a genious ahead of his time.