Barnfind single seat Chenowth 1000 3 link race car restoration

[oldschool5er]

Although I have been a member here for a long time, I really do not post much about the builds that I do because of limited time and I usually don't document the details on various sites because of that. In this case I decided to start a new topic to show the process of restoring a Barnfind Chenowth 1000 3 link race car. I did this because I am documenting this partiular build because it is pretty rare and special to find a race car that ran in the 80's so well unmolested and with an unmolested race engine by a pretty well known drag racer, offroad racer and engine builder.

Many on the Samba might have never seen what a Vintage offroad race car restoration involves so hopefully you can glean some info out of it. The car was in a collection out of the Glenwood Springs Colorado area and we picked it up in November and brought it back to Ohio. The plan is that it will be raced again in the 2020 Norra 500 race as a Vintage Score Class 1 car. It also will be shown in various shows in it's orginal format as a champion Score Class 9 car.

This will be a complete restore with minor safety modifications done to upgrade it for current race rules and to fix some obvious defects that in the 80's no real other choices were available. It will be made adaptable to be changed back and forth from the Class 1 format to the class 9 format as it was originally raced with only having to bolt up the various components.

In the years this car raced the differences between the old class 9 and Class 1 cars were not that great other than engine size and other bolt up components. Keep in mind this is the old class 9, the modern class 9 that is now raced is a much more limited design based on the newer rules.
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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[oldschool5er]

The history of the car is as follows:

This car is a single seat Chenowth 1000 3 link car which is now fairly rare and unique as it was short lived with Lynn Chenowth introducing the 5 link model 1000 then on to the Chenowth Magnum series.

It is Model number C1RL1W and is an all Chromemoly chassis

It has raced in about 9 professional Score races and still counting, and it was a 1981 Score Class 9 Champion.

It was campaigned from 1980- 1983 by the John Kruger/ Norm Lester team and there probably is more race history that I have not found yet. I am still researching the finishes and places although the best so far was a 1st place in class 9 in the Score Inaugural Pernod San Felipe 250.

The car has been in storage probably for the last 30 years based on what I am seeing and know, but it could be even longer.

The engine was built by Lee Leighton of drag and offroad racing fame. I am happy to report back that after we got it back to Ohio. I prepped and fired the engine for the first time since it had been stored. I took my time and went through it inspecting it with a bore scope and of course all the neccessary prep work. The engine fired right up and buzzed like the killer 1200cc bee she is. I took video of the first firing and will post it. The engine will be gone through at a future date dublicating everything Lee did. For now it was not driven on and has been pulled and shelved as a class 1 engine is going to be built.
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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[oldschool5er]

This is the car as we picked it up in Colorado. The Baja we left in Colorado. I was happy to have the trailer make it back to Ohio as it came with the car but had a Long Beach California McCabe Bros. VW plate on it last tagged in 1983 lol.

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[oldschool5er]

Here are some pictures I took of the 3 link setup before we took it off the trailer and began taking everything apart.

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[oldschool5er]

The Lee Leighton 1200cc Class 9 Engine before I started prepping it to see if it would fire.

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[oldschool5er]

First Firing of Lee Leighton engine after 30 some odd years

Link

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[oldschool5er]

Link

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[oldschool5er]

For those of you who might wonder how I fired an engine up with a 30+year old fuel cell the answer is ...... I wouldn't lol. I anticipated the cell would be bad after that long so I ran an external can. It is a good thing I did because the cell had disenegrated to a pile of dust. The picture shows what it looked like before I reached in to pull the bladder and just like magic it went to pieces other than the weave when I touched it.

I had to order a new custom fuel cell because the old one is too small for a big engine at the Norra race, it was probably 10gal and the new one is 24gal. There is an odd shape to it like a wedge shape because it has to clear the upper link supporting frame tube. The new tank has to match the wedge shape but unfortunantely the only way to get a bigger tank in is to make it taller, so not optimum for center of gravity.

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[AZ-BUG]

Amazing find! I will certainly follow this... I love the original Class 9!

[weasel_ugs]

Nice find!

[dustymojave]

This is VERY COOL!

For educational purposes, since MOST ALL offroad racers now know NOTHING of the original Class 9, not to mention those on here here who know little about offroad racing in general, and because I personally Tech Inspected this car back in the day, I'll pass on a little info.

SCORE Class 9 was created during meetings at my dinner table, involving my dad, Jack Parcells; founder of SCORE, Mickey Thompson; offroad racing journalist and racer, Jean Calvin; and then a number of others over a period of time. In late 72/early 73, when I was a senior in high school, my dad was the head of Rules Enforcement for the SCCA road racing organization for SoCal. He had worked in Engineering for VW of America and for NASA as an Inspector. Mickey Thompson, famous for his Indy car, land speed record, drag, road and other racing was heavily involved in offroad racing. Mickey and my dad were old hot rodding and racing buddies from the 1940s and had worked together for a while back then. Mickey wanted to start his own offroad racing organization. SCORE was it. Mickey had the organization figured out, but he needed help with the technical part of the rules. He knew of my dad's involvement in Tech Inspection. So he called up dad and they worked out much of the rule book together. Mickey's race car fabricator John House provided his input, and so did a number of racers, especially those who raced buggies with small engines.

At the time, there were literally millions of VWs in America with 1200cc engines. The bigger 1500 and larger engines had only been around for about 5 years and the 1600 was only a year old. So there were a LOT of racers who had 1200cc engines. My dad had gotten his job at VWoA as a result of the head of VW motorsports, Jo Hoppen, watching dad inspect Formula Vee racers at the SCCA national championship races. So dad used his experience with the rules for Formula Vee racing and applied much of that to a new off road race class for VW 1200cc engine racers. That became Class 9. The rules for the car were exactly the same as for the unlimited buggy Class 1, except that while virtually ALL of the Class 1 racers used VW transmissions, front beams, suspension, etc.; so Class 9 did also although the rules did no specifically require them to.

So the original Class 9 required VW Type 1 engines of 1200cc. What most VW folks in the US call 36hp or 40hp engines. 36hp engines were pretty uncommon, but MAN there were a LOT of 40hp racers. Often as many as 50 racers in the one class and with the rules being quite limited and closely watched, with the top 3 finishers in the class at most races getting their engine torn down in post race inspection, it was VERY competitive until the mid 1980s. At that time, it cost more to build a 40hp VW engine than it did to build a 1600 engine. Many of the remaining racers switched their cars to 1600s and the class quickly died.

It was replaced with a new Class 9, aka "Challenger", for cars with limited 1600 engines, swing axle trans, and ball joint beams with a 100" max wheelbase. That Class 9 is still going.

Most all of the racers in Class 9 used VW torsion housing, spring plates, etc. Just like the big boys. This car was quite unusual in using road race formula car-type suspension, similar to that being used in F1 racers of the day. Chenowth experimented quite a bit with this sort of rear suspension in Class 1 racers, although MOSTLY for short course offroad race cars for races like Riverside, and then for the Mickey Thompson Stadium Championships. This car was early in that experimentation, still using VW rear torsions. While later cars used coilover shocks. But it took some development of coilover shocks to deal with longer travel than most coilovers of the early 80s were capable of.
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Richard
Offroading VW based cars since 1965
Tech Inspection 1963 - 2012 SCCA/SCORE/HDRA/MORE/MDR +
Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
SoCalBajas Member
Kicked Cancer's A$$...1st and 2nd round...Fight ain't over yet.

[oldschool5er]

Thanks Richard for the summary of the beginnings of class 9, it is a perfect description of the class. I actually am impressed with the car finishing with the podiums it had with such a large field of entrys. What I saw during the teardown made me question some of the durability of the suspension, but the condition of the frame and very little race repairs on it is a testament to Lynn Chenowth's race cars quality.

The status of the car right now is that it is stripped down to the bare frame and several years of artifacts have been cut off and the remainders ground down. I am finishing up this week and it is scheduled to go to powder coat next week.

Before I go on with the status update these are some trackside pictures from various years of racing. These include from the Mint 400, Baja 500, and Parker 400.

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[oldschool5er]

Before we removed the engine, trans, we removed the torsions and rear arms, then re-installed the arms minus the torsions so I could get a good idea of what the rear travel was because I had found some damage related to shock length. The torsions were 26mm Sway A Way.

The long shocks in the front and rear are Bilstein B46-359 with Heim ends.
The two short shocks are a version of the Bilstein B46-034 with Heim ends.
Neither of these shocks are made anymore but Bilstein will rebuild them, plus I have spares and even new B46-359's that I have stockpiled through the years. The other Bilsteins that are on the car are two Bus steering shocks. I found one to be damaged internally, but I have several used that I can send out to be rebuilt.

The car has AMS trailing arms attached to porsche 356 modified spindles. I believe the spindles and links are by AMS too but I can not find identifying marks.
The steering is a Wright place rack and pinion, Wright tie rods using Ford ends. All of this was found to be in mint condition and the rack is with like new backlash surprisingly enough.

The beam is a 6" over chromemoly unit, the torsion leaves were removed and found to have some corrosion from lack of grease so they will be replaced.

After measuring the travel it was found to be 11 5/8" which is close to what Chenowth stated at the time being 12". I will be changing the lower shock mount position a little bit as I found the shocks were actually being overextended before the arms reached the hard stop and had elongated the mounting holes. At the same time I believe I will be able to increase travel to 14" without making a major change to the existing design, but I will have to look at it a little more closely.

The goal is to race and restore it to the way it raced in the 80's but that being said I will have to make some changes to make it more durable.

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[rayjay]

Any guesstimate of the hp the motor made ?

[Booky]

Love the single seat class 9 I have one on the road in Pa. It does get the looks.

[oldschool5er]

[oldschool5er]

I spent a few days removing welded in pieces that the other teams had put in then removed for whatever reason. I still can't figure out what they had been for, but some things were obvious what they had been. The most difficult piece to remove?? The Battery tray of all things, it must have been welded to the frame in every available square inch lol. It is being replaced by a narrow dry cell battery tray and to give more room for our long legs and a new foot rest.

A change I am making is to the upper and lower rear links. I am not a fan at all of the use of Urethane and prefer always to use Delrin or similar. At some point Urethane was used as the bushings in the rear links, I think originally Chenowth had used a rubber bushing but these were urethane and as you can see in the pictures, they had disintegrated over time. The links had ¾” aircraft spec bolts running through them without a steel sleeve which is something different then I would have expected.

This is an area I made changes to as I bought ¾” chrome moly Rod ends to use instead of the bushings. One other aspect of it that I am changing is the way the link mounts were. The lower link had a long ¾” bolt going through the bushing, then through the single plate mount, then going to the lower cage threaded insert to hold the bottom of the cage to the solid transmission mount. So now I will be using a separate ¾” bolt to hold the cage to the transmission mount, and a separate double shear mount for the links rod end now with a ¾” bolt and nut. All link mounts will be double sheared now except for the upper link mount on the arm because it already is. This is the extent I will change Chenowth’s design on the rear suspension only.

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HRE in Westerville,Ohio

Full machine shop with all types of CNC. Rapid prototyping available, CNC Plasma cutting, 3D printing and Laser engraving.

[dustymojave]

Lee Leighton was not only a successful VW drag racer (he broke into the 9s in his all steel body, full VW pan and beam oval window Bug in the late 70s), He was quite successful at building offroad race engines. Probably the top 3 limited class engine builders of those days were Lee Leighton, Jim Fueling (who invented the "Merged" header collector and built the Olds quad 4 engines that held the world closed course speed record in an Indy car chassis with streamliner bodywork - the AeroTech), and Brian Skipper, who went on to buy Sway-A-Way. Certainly those were the 3 I remember meeting with the most for teardowns of their customer's race winning engines.
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Richard
Offroading VW based cars since 1965
Tech Inspection 1963 - 2012 SCCA/SCORE/HDRA/MORE/MDR +
Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
SoCalBajas Member
Kicked Cancer's A$$...1st and 2nd round...Fight ain't over yet.

[oldschool5er]

[L5wolvesf]