Archer Bros. Racing Talon Resurrection

[Greg Collier]

Glad to see there is interest in the Archer car. I'll have it at Road America this weekend for the F Body event. I had it out three times last summer after I purchased it.

If ANYONE has any information, press releases, etc, etc..... for this car I would appreciate you dropping me a line.

Welcome to the site Scott, glad to see you came on board Now you're gonna have to let us know how the weekend went at R/A and how that "Archer" car performed. I know everyone is going to want to here about it...

Greg

 

[ldstang50]

mavisky your car looks awesome

greg, i love the old style man. i'm surprised i dont' see rainbows and peace symbols on it. hahaha

Scott, I hope to hear about your weekend running the car. thats an awesome 'find'

-Liam

 

[underradar92]

Cool, I'll see you at the track, Scott.

 

[schemauer]

By the way - the gentleman that I bought the '93 Archer car from also has the 1990 "Thrifty Rental" Talon that Bobby Archer drove. He wanted to sell it. It would be nice to see it go to a good home!

Let's get all the DSM's pitted together this weekend at the F Body event. I'll be there early with a beige Montero pulling a silver enclosed trailer......

 

[Wizard]

Hey Greg, Give me a call sometime. I know of a identical twin to the Archer car is. Located In NC and I have pics. I can scan them tomorrow. I mean identical, been down and sitting since like 1996.

(605)228-6816

Wiz

 

[schemauer]

Well the weekend went very well. The car ran great. I was running it a bit conservative - only about 12 lbs of boost - and a bit on the rich side. No issues other than cording my two left side tires and missing a few sessions on Sunday.

I did have one off-track excursion in Canada corner. It all started in the Carousel. I took a bit different line and had a lot more exit speed into and through the Kink. I came into the corner a bit fast but didn't move my braking point. Ended up sliding it sideways through Canada corner and driving through the gravel run-off. Came in and cleaned all the gravel out of the car. No damage though.

I may give up the "originality" of the front braking system and do a front brake upgrade on the car. It takes some of the fun out of the weekend having to manage the brakes throughout a track session. I'll see what I can find that hopefully fits with the 16x8 BBS wheels on the car.

I got to meet underradar and his Talon - also some other DSMs that were there for the weekend.

Please give some details on the other Archer car like mine. I have seen some reference to a second '93 car. A #30 car. In fact, some of the parts on mine, (fuel cell cover for example) have a #30 marked in Sharpie on the underside.

 

[mavisky]

I know Baer makes a brake setup designed around 12" rotors for the 16" wheel crowd, aand I'm sure Todd at TCE Performance Products could get something sorted out for you as well.

 

[JOEY A]

Those are really nice wheels, how does the car handle?


I would like to see some pics of the thrifty talon, its forsale?

 

[Greg Collier]

Wizard Hey Greg, Give me a call sometime. I know of a identical twin to the Archer car is. Located In NC and I have pics. I can scan them tomorrow. I mean identical, been down and sitting since like 1996.

So did you scan them yet? Everybody is drooling

schemauer Well the weekend went very well. The car ran great. I was running it a bit conservative - only about 12 lbs of boost - and a bit on the rich side. No issues other than cording my two left side tires and missing a few sessions on Sunday.
I did have one off-track excursion in Canada corner. It all started in the Carousel. I took a bit different line and had a lot more exit speed into and through the Kink. I came into the corner a bit fast but didn't move my braking point. Ended up sliding it sideways through Canada corner and driving through the gravel run-off. Came in and cleaned all the gravel out of the car. No damage though.
I may give up the "originality" of the front braking system and do a front brake upgrade on the car. It takes some of the fun out of the weekend having to manage the brakes throughout a track session. I'll see what I can find that hopefully fits with the 16x8 BBS wheels on the car.
I got to meet underradar and his Talon - also some other DSMs that were there for the weekend.

Sounds like a great weekend... that's great that you guys were able to hook up at the track. A DSM show of force

We missed our race weekend at Button Willow and I'm kinda glad we didn't make it there. The run group I would have been racing in on Saturday afternoon had a fatality in the first lap. The (FFR) or Factory Five Cobra racing series was running with the Super Unlimited group when a crash occured. I don't know any details, but (Dan Lawson) the driver that died was a seasoned professional with years of teaching and driving experience. Just goes to show that anyone can bite the bullet when racing. This is the second fatality for NASA in the last couple of months and the entire racing community is stunned.

 

[pkieley]

That's terrible news, Greg. My heart goes out to his family. Definitely a wake-up call for me to be safe first and foremost. I won't have any fun or support my family from a hospital bed, or worse.


Here is a Talon that is supposed to be ex-Archer, owned by Nelson Motorsport and driven by (?) Nelson and John Drew in IMSA Firehawk endurance series. They complained it lack power "no matter how much we turned up the boost"! WE know it takes a hella lot more than just turning up the boost!

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The oil cooler placement is interesting on #33. How is that working for you Scott? Very nice car btw and I love the triangulated strut tower!

Phil

 

[ldstang50]

Sounds like you guys had a good weekend Phil. Glad to see that car back out there and bein tossed around.

Greg, I'm sorry to hear about that. Thats a tough thing right there. I was at Busch North Race at Limerock a few years ago and a volunteer pit crew worker was killed by flying debris from one of the worst accidents I have ever seen, period.

 

[terefic181]

Greg Collier
I don't know any details, but (Dan Lawson) the driver that died was a seasoned professional with years of teaching and driving experience. Just goes to show that anyone can bite the bullet when racing. This is the second fatality for NASA in the last couple of months and the entire racing community is stunned.

So sorry to hear this Greg, our prayers will certainly be with his family.

 

[underradar92]

Condolences to Dan's family.

 

[schemauer]

I'm going to try to find a brake kit to work with the 16x8's on the car. To make along story short that's originally how I bought the Archer car....I was running my '95 GSX for track days at the time. The car runs mid-12's in the 1/4 mile and was very fast on the track. I was running the stock brakes at the time and was looking into doing a brake kit on the car. It turns out that the brake kit would not fit with the 17x8 wheels that I had on the car. So I was looking at brake kit + another set of wheels. For the $$ that I needed to spend I instead bought the Archer car as a dedicated track car. It didn't cost me much more than all the upgrades I was about to do on the '95.

The oil cooler on the Archer car works out great. I've run the car in 95 deg ambient temps and no problems with overheating. The car runs an upgraded side mount which, I think, helps out a lot with engine cooling. On my '95 I ran a "small" Greddy front mount. I had to keep an eye on temps - - even with a Fluidyne radiator and a Setrab oil cooler on the car.

Joey - The pics of the Thrifty car - the files are too large to attach to this note. (I have not had any luck in doing this so far - how do you guys get all those pics attached to your posts?????) I'll try to email them to you if I can find your address on the site. I know it was for sale about 6 months ago when I talked with the owner - who I bought my #33 car from. I have some pics of it that he sent me when I bought the #33 car. For what he was asking I considered buying it - but I have too many vehicles as it is!

Scott

 

[Greg Collier]

I'm going to try to find a brake kit to work with the 16x8's on the car. To make along story short that's originally how I bought the Archer car....I was running my '95 GSX for track days at the time. The car runs mid-12's in the 1/4 mile and was very fast on the track. I was running the stock brakes at the time and was looking into doing a brake kit on the car. It turns out that the brake kit would not fit with the 17x8 wheels that I had on the car. So I was looking at brake kit + another set of wheels. For the $$ that I needed to spend I instead bought the Archer car as a dedicated track car. It didn't cost me much more than all the upgrades I was about to do on the '95.
The oil cooler on the Archer car works out great. I've run the car in 95 deg ambient temps and no problems with overheating. The car runs an upgraded side mount which, I think, helps out a lot with engine cooling. On my '95 I ran a "small" Greddy front mount. I had to keep an eye on temps - - even with a Fluidyne radiator and a Setrab oil cooler on the car.
Joey - The pics of the Thrifty car - the files are too large to attach to this note. (I have not had any luck in doing this so far - how do you guys get all those pics attached to your posts?????) I'll try to email them to you if I can find your address on the site. I know it was for sale about 6 months ago when I talked with the owner - who I bought my #33 car from. I have some pics of it that he sent me when I bought the #33 car. For what he was asking I considered buying it - but I have too many vehicles as it is!
Scott

What kind of HP is the Archer motor putting out? I had the side mount Greddy and it gave me 330hp no problem.

As far as uploading pictures is concerned, they need to be a max of 700 pixels top to bottom and side-to-side, so you need to reduce if necessary. Any thing over that and the system won't accept it...

 

[schemauer]

I have no idea on the HP numbers. I haven't even pulled the head since I've had it. I may be pressing my luck not doing a timing belt......but the car has only 7,900 miles on it!

In talking with John Archer, I know the engine was built by Comptech for Archer. He did not recall any specs or have a build sheet on it. I'm not sure how "stock" the engine had to be for Class B competition that year. Balancec and blueprinted? Cast or forged pistons? Head work? I've run the car conservatiely (boost and EGT wise) since I've had it.

I did pull the turbo and there was some mile porting noticeable. I believe the car had to run in a fairly "stock" engine configuration. There were several things I noticed as I went through the car initially......

The car uses the stock downpipe and flex section with no cat, but the exhaust terminates just under the middle of the car after going through a small - and not very effective - canister muffler. They must have been required to run the stock exhaust up to that point.

Archer used a VPC on the car - so that must have been allowed under the rules at that time.

An electronic boost controller is used on the car. However, when I bought the car there was a metal plate covering the face of the boost controller in the cockpit.....and both the "Hi" and "Low" settings were set to stock levels. I'm thinking they were required to run stock boost on the car?

I also think there were some restrictions on intake pipe size. They used a thicker upgrade side-mount intercooler, but it appeared that the intercooler inlet was cut off and a SMALLER pipe welded on. I did cut this off and welded on a pipe matching the size of the inlet.

Lots of interesting details. Including, as I mentioned in a prior post, several "#30" markings on certain parts of the car. I don't know if they were parts from a prior year car that were used again, or if this car was #30 at some point, or if there was a second "#30" car that year.

Scott

 

[Greg Collier]

I'd probably change the T-belt just for the age of it.

Interesting that they had an electronic boost controller then plated it with standard settings, possibly had it available for other race series? The hp numbers would be interesting just to see what they were running then.

Have you run the car modifications through the NASA Performance Tuning point calculator system? http://performancetouring.com/calculator.php I wonder what class it would put you it?

Anyway you look at it the car is awesome...

 

[schemauer]

I'd like to dyno it - but first I want to at least pull the head to see what I've got and at least replace the timing belt, tensioner, etc and the head gasket, add ARP studs.....etc...etc.

I'm currently in the middle of putting a new clutch and rebuilt tranny in my '95 GSX. That should be done in a few weeks and then I'll have time to look at the Archer car.

By the way - if anyone wants pics of the '90 Bobby Archer car e-mail me privately at [email protected]. I don't have time to mess with trying to shrink them to fit on this site.

Scott

 

[Greg Collier]

Here are the photo's of the 90 Bobby Archer car from Scott...

 

[the-moss]

Scott, did you have the car at Shawano today? It looked like a fun car, I had the black Evo.

 

[schemauer]

Yes, I was there. I had to turn the boost down to try to make the car work on the tight track...it's set up more for open track events, but it was fun. That Evo was really fast, I would have liked to have had my GSX out there as well.

 

[JOEY A]

What does that 1GA talon weigh in at, I see the sheet metal was used to cut the floor out etc and the U brace is gone and im geussing AC power steering and all the metal bumpers are gone also.

What sus setup were these cars running?

 

[gsxtacy]

There's another Race Spec Archer DSM out there for sale?

How much was the guy looking for, any contact info?

 

[schemauer]

As far as the weight of the '93, I don't know. I do know that it was lightened in every way possible. The hood sub-structure was removed. Rear side windows and hatch window are lexan. Rear hatch sub-structure is gone. Bumpers are lightened. No interior...

Another race spec Archer car?? The person that I bought the '93 from also has (had?) the '90 Bobby Archer "Thrifty Rental" car. I think there are some pics posted earlier in this thread of the car. Like the '93 car that I have, the '90 car is pretty much as it came off the track in '90. Both of these cars have been in several private collections since they were retired. I can get you the email or phone of the owner if needed.

 

[schemauer]

Also - on the suspension setup...the car has a coil-over system. Eibach springs, Bilstein dampers. No front sway bar, custom tubular rear sway bar. Adjustable camber plates in front.

The floor are not sheet metal; those are just aluminum sheets riveted to the floor.