Blue Brick Racing
Welcome to Blue Brick Racing
Hi! My name is Gary Learned, and with a lot of support from my wife and other family members, I own, maintain and drive a mildly modified 1971 Volvo 142E that is raced regularly at various road courses in the Midwest Division of Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), in that organization's Improved Touring "B" class (ITB). We have also competed in the Hallett Motor Racing Circuit based organization known as Competition Motorsports Association (COMMA), running in PA and PS classes.
Race Results - MyLaps.com
Race season narratives are at the bottom of this page
Updated 10/31/09
Vehicle Origin & Description
Our 142E was first converted to an SCCA ITB (Improved Touring "B") race car in 1999 by David Kerr in Pennsylvania. David raced the car successfully in SCCA events around the Eastern US for a few seasons, then sold it to me in early 2005, when he decided to prepare and race a Mazda Miata in a different SCCA class. I have made many small changes to the car and replaced parts and assemblies as necessary, but it is essentially as David originally built it... a more-or-less fully developed ITB race car. So as you read the descriptions below, if you're wondering why we haven't modified a particular component, it is most likely because it is not allowed under the Improved Touring ruleset. Incidentally, many key components that are modified are the work of a racing hardware genius by the name of Bob Griffith at BHP Development, located in Bethlehem, PA.
Body & Interior
Stock 142E with appropriate IT-level safety equipment, consisting of 8 point roll cage, aluminum racing seat with 5 point harness, fire bottle, and window net. Front passenger seat, rear seat, headliner, and carpeting were removed as allowed by IT preparation rules. Instrumentation includes tachometer, oil pressure, oil temp, water temp, exhaust gas temp, and battery voltage. Vehicle weight is at the IT specification minimum for this car, which is 2640 lbs with driver. With the exception of a slightly overweight driver and 6 gallons of fuel, no ballast is used to achieve minimum weight. For insurance against finishing a race under minimum weight, we simply add more gas... the car has a 22 gallon fuel cell.
Engine
Blueprinted and balanced 2 liter (122 c.i.) B20E with .030 overbore, 11.0 to 1 compression, BHP exhaust header, stock Bosch D-Jet fuel injection running at 37-41 psi, Pertronix electronic ignition unit in stock distributor body. We haven't had the car on a dyno, but 142E's in similar ITB tune reportedly churn up about 120 rear wheel horsepower. Normal shift point is at around 7000 rpm, with occasional situation-dependent excursions to 7300 or so.
Suspension
Front springs are 675 lb/in, rears are 225, vehicle ride height is 5" at the rocker panels, which is about 3 inches lower than stock and at the IT minimum allowable height. The car has BHP hollow steel 1.375" front and .875" rear anti-roll bars, which have heim joint linkage setups, and are adjustable (in the pits). Nominally, these bars are the equivalent of 30mm and 21mm solid bars respectively, but of course they are much lighter. The front suspension upper and lower control arms run in BHP rigid bushings. We normally align the front end at 3.5 to 4.0 degrees negative camber, 3.0 degrees of positive caster, and zero to 1/32" toe-in.
Brakes
The brake rotors are stock, as are the 4 piston front, 2 piston rear, Girling calipers. This is one of the cars' strong points, as the late-1960's design Volvo 140 series was literally years ahead of most of the the rest of the world with respect to well engineered brakes on a mass production automobile. We run Hawk HT10 racing pads on the front and Girling GPX 103 street pads on the rear, along with Ate racing fluid. Front brake cooling is provided by 3" (valance inlet) air ducts to the rotors. We also run a Tilton brake proportioning valve on the rear half of the system, adjustable while underway.
Wheel & Tires
Volvo "Sirius" or Riken aftermarket wheels in 15x6", with Hoosier R3S06 DOT tires in size 205-50ZR15 or 245-45ZR15. Starting (cold) tire pressures are in the neighborhood of 30 to 32 psi, shooting for 40 psi hot.
Drivetrain
Flywheel lightening is not allowed in Improved Touring, but clutch assemblies are essentially unrestricted, provided they bolt up to an unmodified flywheel and run on the stock transmission input shaft. Therefore, we run a BHP all aluminum clutch disk and pressure plate that weighs several pounds less than the stock Fitchel & Sachs or Borg & Beck assemblies. The stock 4 speed M40 gearbox (no overdrive) transmits power to the basically stock Volvo rear end, which contains 4.56 gears and a True-Trac limited slip differential.
"So what'll she do, Mister?"
Results have been not bad... not bad at all. 
As detailed on the photo pages, we finished 2nd in the 2005 COMMA class PA series, and in 2006 we won the COMMA class PA championship outright.
Unfortunately, 2007 brought mixed results. In COMMA, we chose to run class PS, which is one class higher than where the Volvo belongs. But between DNF's and skipping two events to run SCCA events instead, we finished in 3rd at the end of the year. The highlight of the COMMA season had to be our PS win in May... during a rain-soaked 12 lap race, we lapped the 2nd place car not once but twice!
The two SCCA events (a total of four races) netted two wins, one second, and one third. And at the April SCCA event, we re-wrote the official ITB race lap record for Hallett, running a 1:32.681 against the old record of 1:32.937. We had hoped to lower the record even further in the July SCCA event, but we fought ignition problems all weekend and were 3 to 4 seconds per lap off the pace for both races.
Unfortunately, the 2008 season was cut short due to driver problems in June (chest pain, stent implant, etc.). No... none of this happened while on track! We did get in one COMMA event at the end of March, finishing 1st in the 6 lap PS race and 2nd in the 12 lapper. Then in early April, we ran an SCCA weekend at Hallett, finishing first in ITB both days against a very light field. At the end of May, we towed to Memphis for the Memorial Day weekend SCCA event. We finished 2nd in ITB both days to the perennial ITB champion in Midwest Division. Our car setup was all wrong for the track (first time there), so we just never had a chance, running 1 to 2 seconds per lap slower than the winning car. Hopefully, this won't happen again!
In 2009 (following medical release by SCCA) we ran 5 race weekends at 3 different tracks. Our results were four wins and six 2nd place finishes. This put us 2nd in class for the SCCA Midwest Division IT Tour series championship, and also 2nd in class for the MidDiv MidAm regional championship. We intend to run the IT Tour series again in 2010, this time (hopefully) winning the championship. 
For lots of photos of the Blue Brick in action at Hallett, click on the COMMA and SCCA Photos links in the light blue bar near the top of this page. We've also uploaded several YouTube videos that were taken at Hallett and Memphis, link above. More videos will be added as we run the 2009 season.
Still Photos at Hallett by Clyde Coman - Bird's Eye Photography