[Ellis V Buth]

When we last left, the car was headed to Indiana for the build to start. So far...the only investment we've made into the car is marrying the beautiful lady who owned it (and we are still happily married even after deciding to take her street car and turn it into a racecar) so we are calling it $0 initial investment since we had the car. For argument sake...you could find a car basically like this one for $1500-2000 running and driving etc. This car has just under 160,000 miles on the odometer when we started the build.

IRP had a Wednesday night test and tune/street car night (Wild Wednesday) 2 days after the car was picked up. Andrew Fidler, our buddy who is building the car, and my brother Travis decided to take the car and get some baseline 1/4 mile runs to see what it does. They make no changes to the car before going and run it as a pure street car. It runs a best of 16.80s which gives us a solid starting point. They played around with launch RPMs and a few other little things they could do without wrenching or anything. Air cleaner in vs no air cleaner, letting some oil out, tried a pair of slicks. Gained 2 tenths in the initial test session roughly so we have some hope and a plan to get the car ready for 7 days later...the Jegs Sportsnationals and Divisional at Columbus. We need 3 tenths to make the index before then!

Our plan is simple...change transmission fluid to something lighter, put in 0 weight oil, change the brakes to something smaller on the front so we can make a 13 inch wheel fit. We have a pair of 22x8 M&H slicks that came with my Ranger that are a couple inches shorter than the stock street tires, but if we can get a 13 inch rim we have a pair of Hoosier 20.5x7 slicks that a buddy uses on his Honda from time to time that are already mounted on rims that'll work with our car but won't clear the stock calipers. We also bought a header that we found online to try. As long as our initial weight for the car from the local elevator is close to correct, we'll be able to run under the index with these changes we are confident!

It is now July 10th and we are filling out our first tech card for the Cobalt. Below are a couple pictures of the visible changes to the car for testing and then for the first race. So far, we've got calipers, rotors, pads, trans fluid, header, and a couple of oil changes for testing totaling just under $400 invested in the car.