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Well, here we go, the car's been built between me and my mate Ed (his car), he originally built up the frame as a cheap car to compete in the local regional championships in, total build cost was around £3.5k originally, which is fairly cheap as there are plenty of machines in the championships costing between £30-80k+. (And some 150k these days).
Having said that it's about triple that original cost now....oops.

The build started before I even knew Ed a fair few years back, cost and time constraints had meant the car had been built around heavily modified VW torsion bar suspension bought in from the states (they use in on their Baja buggies so it's cheap and works reasonably well). It was actually just chopped off a knackered old Baja 1000 car.
The engine was a bored and stroked 2180cc Beetle unit, on twin 45's, mild camshaft and various modifications to the rockers and heads, again, straight from the donor car, along with the 091 transaxle.

The first time I met him, I gave it the once over and told him the dizzy would give him problems, it wasn't too healthy, and had been mucked about with to stop the engine pinging (given it was original designed as a 1.6 litre unit...)

Anyhow, a phonecall shortly after he attended his first event revealed the dizzy had exploded and scuppered any chance of a finish.
Which resulted in a fair amount of p*ss taking for the next week, and eventually ended up with me getting roped in for years of work on the bloody thing afterword, should have kept quiet...


So the last few years we've been working the buggy over between us with upgrades here there and everywhere, ready to enter it in a full championship rather than the few clubman events we've run in on shakedown tests, it's been stripped bare a few times, and work had been seriously slow on it for the previous 6 months because of work commitments.

Anyway, being a 2wd budget vehicle, the racing is interesting, as there are no weight limits on 2wd vehicles, whereas most 4wd cars are 1200 kilo's plus, so we're half a tonne up already with more to loose yet...the downside is, get stuck in some slippery stuff and you can't see which way they went when they put 4-500bhp through all 4 tyres....


Back to history, the original engine specifications were along these lines:

2180cc VW aircooled engine, built from 1.6 unit.
- 4-1 manifold,
- Carbon/Mica filled PTFE gaskets (heatsoak prevention).
- Dellorto 45's + custom inlet manifold
- Engle 120 camshaft
- Needle roller rockers, high lift 1.4:1 ratio
- Full flow casing with external oil coolers
- Modified cowling with electric fan assist.
- Counterbalanced forged steel crank.
- 3D ignition system (MegaJolt, built it for him after the dizzy problems), I did the ignition mapping DIY.

Along the way the buggy has had several new rear ends, 4 suspension setups, a new front end, 3 different gearboxes/linkages/pedal setups, and 3 different braking setups, I'll go into detail on these at some point. (*Make that 2 new front ends, 6-7 suspension rejigs, couple of rear ends, 4 gearboxes, 5 brake setups, etc, it's a while since I wrote this....)
Now, that may sound excessive and a bit chop and change - but usually they've coincided with a change in the chassis (or an exploding gearbox...) in order to keep the entire chassis working as well as we could within our budget.

The first change came shortly after it's second event, in which there were a few problems, the first was some pretty crap rear pads, from a 3-letter named source, they were originally sponsors of the local club series so they had to be used - they were bright green ones - fell to pieces, and the backing plates then ground into the disc, welded themselves there and then ground away at the nice ally hub.
The result of which was some different pads, Mintex 1144's with the backing plates painted green on the rear, Wilwood Poly A's up front - then Hi-spec 4 pots fitted at the rear and some new discs.

The second was the gearbox exploding, this was the original box sourced with the engine so it was to be expected, another box was duly sought, and the engine and rear frame pulled out for fitment, the new box was a five speed version though, which gave us a little more pace as the VW tended to drop off cam, this was later resolved through some careful carb jetting and linkage tweaks, but the shorter gears were welcome at the time.

Of course, the problem with a five speed box is that it's slightly longer, which meant a simple gearbox change meant we had to rejig all the linkages, the cabling, and the entire back end and engine mounts needed moving an inch back.
This in itself mean the driveshafts had to be altered, and new panels formed up out of ally sheet.

So next time you are swearing during a gearbox swap, just remember, it could be worse....(*A lot bloody worse, you want to see what this winter held....few more walls of text first though)


The fun is in getting the engine on the box (yes, that is the right way around), which takes 4-5 goes to get the splines located right, which, when you are holding an engine made from sharp aircooling fins, gets you some funny looks when you've a dozen 'scratch marks' in a pattern down your arms, whoops.


The second box came around 2 events later on, after a final drive turned itself into smeared lump in objection to landing a 6ft drop off a small quarry under full power. Ah well, the joys of cars built out of scrapyard bits.
;D

This time we sourced several boxes while we decided what to do with it, the engine was down on power and there was a brand new 3.5 Nissan V6 sat on a crate in the workshop, a Porsche carrera 4wd box was duly acquired by Ed, along with a standard 2wd box.
It was decided to stay 2wd as they're more fun to drive, and it's more fun when you leave the 4wd boys, and it would have taken us about 10 times our budget to do what we wanted properly - unfortunately the next events were fairly soon, and there was no way the 3.5 V6 was going to shoehorn in with the necessary plumbing without a complete new rear end and suspension setup, so instead, in went a 5-speed Renault Master van gearbox, complete with 9" differential, again, this meant new linkages and tweaks to the chassis, along with a spring change due to the different CoG, we finished at 4:30 the morning of the next event....

Now, the problem with concentrating mainly on sorting out the rear, is that, at 5:30am, the morning of the event, after a short nap, you really don't want a whining noise to appear on the shakedown drive before loading it up on the lorry.
You most definately don't want that sound to be whining front wheel bearing, and you definately don't want to be 2 miles from home when it starts getting worse.
Once a bearing goes on something like this, they don't last long at all under the impact stresses, unlike in a car where it'll whine for 2000 miles, you're lucky to get 2000 yards...
Unfortunately, the smallest of the workshops must be 2010 yards away, because the wheel fell off trundling around the last corner back to it.
In itself that's not a problem, the way the buggy is setup you can post a running stage time with just 3 wheels.........
What IS a problem, is that fabricated steel wheel, meeting a beautiful but rather softer alloy Wilwood '5-star' rally hub.
After turning the 5-star hub into a 1-disc smear, it decided to take a chunk out of the from calipers just for kicks before it did it's party trick of wandering off down the lane.
Shiiiittttt.
We've got spare bearings, but no spare hubs, so that's the end of that event already, what fun.
Fortunately, I was driving back up to the workshops at the time, so I just caught Ed running around the corner before a wheel fell off, which gave me a laugh, even if it didn't him.

The next event was the final one we attended before taking it back in the workshop for a rethink, a local club event where you can just turn up and drive, all went well that morning, bar getting the lorry stuck in the staging area and having to tow it out.
The engine was running a little rough, but then, it's been due some new piston rings and probably some new shells for a while, but we couldn't see the point of spending money on the VW engine, it does the job but when it goes bang, well, there was that V6 waiting in the workshop....
This probably annoyed the poor overworked veedub, after being originally designed as a 1.6 with about 40 horsepower, for some greasemonkey to pull it apart, subject it to a bore out of existing holes, put in holes that shouldn't be there, push the output to 120bhp and then run it at 5000rpm, solid mounted to a buggy driven by a pair of nutters with suicidal tendancies, well, perhaps it had every right to to be a bit ****ed off and spit a shell that day....

The competition in the 2wd class included an RS200 look-a-like, and a similar machine to ours but with a long-travel double wishbone front end, 1.6 turbo engine with ~190bhp (More like around 120 when it got going tbh!), but it had a pretty poor frame compared to ours.

We were quite happy after the first run, setting a time 12 seconds faster than him (7 mile stage), which got us some mutterings from a competitor power steering failing and his engine overheating.

What we didn't tell him was we'd had to stop for 30 seconds at the bottom of the hill, as the carbs flooded the engine because of bouncing floats.....well, no point rubbing it in is there, that's what the next lap is for....
Especially when you'd lost time yourself as the VW had thrown a belt and you'd lost PAS and overheated the engine yourself. B)

After rigging a new belting system up, we were ready to go out for the second stage, with a better idea of the course allowing Ed to pick up the pace on the corners and avoid the ripples on the exit to get what power we had down, we worked out at 43 seconds up from our last time around after two thirds of the way around the course, on par with the some of the spaceframe 4wd guys running there, but we were loosing power, the engine was starting to blow a little smoke, but we had to finish the stage to get back to service area anyway - so full throttle it is.
Out of the marshland they called a corner halfway around the course, the car simply would not slog it's way out of the mud, struggling to pull second gear where normally we would have been in the top of third, onto the next straight, top of 5th at ~80mph over ripples left by the bigger cars digging in on the power - imagine speedbumps 2 feet apart at 80mph - and the engine spun a shell, the shock and friction as it attempted to weld to the crank dropped the engine revs massively and with a locked rear axle and the back end already snaking as it was running over the ripples, the car immediately spun several times, we ended up travelling backwards at around 60-70mph, downhill on wet grass toward a stone wall.

Now, we weren't too concerned about the buggy as we know how strong it is - the entire frame is T45 tubing, it would have made a mess but be fixable - but we knew for a fact that there were spectators behind the wall and the buggy would flatten it like a bowling ball hitting smarties tubes, or go over the top, thankfully the tyres eventually dug in and scrubbed a lot of speed off before we got close.
With Ed hard on the footbrake and attempting to bring the front end back around with the steering, I hung onto the left hand fiddle brake and between us we managed to slew the buggy around to a stop away from the wall anyway.
Some good natured cursing ensued in the fight to restart the engine, which luckily hadn't welded itself solid, and once it fired into a nice, uneven beat with lashings of rattles, we limped the remainder of the stage in first gear, and announced our retirement to the marshalls.

We posted an 8m40s stage time.
Which amusingly was still faster than a third of the competitors...so the car had a bit of potential against the local racers. So long as we stopped breaking it. (*This theme continues for years....)
Ooops:



The diagnosis was terminal, we went home and hatched plans, coming to the conclusion that the 3.5 V6 was just too big for the current chassis and we may as well start from scratch with it - as we could use it as a stressed member for a double wishbone front and rear. Basically you'd end up with a new car and some old bits tacked on...
Given the buggy was meant to be a low-budget challenge, this was wiped off the list and an RX-8 renesis engine accidentally made it's way into the workshop.
;D



Quick rundown on the chassis before I go into the Renesis conversion:

Chassis-

- Mixture of 1.75"-3" T45 steel tubing, rotary draw bent, weight was a touch over 770 kilos. You can quite happily lift the front with one person and walk around with the car, but certainly not as light as a kitcar.
- Rear setup was 4 gas pressure monotubes, consisting of 2 Bilstein dampers, 2 Fox adjustable coilovers, all remote res. nitrogen charged, giving around 13 inches of rear suspension travel, these act on a rear torsion bar setup with heavily braced arms, again, made from T45 tube, the bars are rising rate and there's a secondary assist torsion bar which comes into play after 10" of travel.
- Front setup is now 2 Fox coilovers aiding a rising rate twin torsion bar front end adapted from the VW setup, approximately 9" of travel up front.
- Brakes are a mixture of small 2 pot Wilwoods up front and Hispec 4 pots on the back, linked with braided hoses to 2 AP master cylinders on a balance bar with a homemade pedal box, it also sports a pair of hydraulic handbrakes/fiddle brake setup to brake individual wheels for turning the front end in quicker (or donuts).
Solid discs (less weight) all around matched with the uprated pads.
- Wheels were our own steels - 15x6J, weighing in at 5.8kilos, fitted with 215/75 Bridgestone M/T's.




It's absolutely hilarious to drive, but not exactly the most sophisticated or good-looking car in the world I'll admit

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Right, job number one was to mock up and adapter plate to get the RX-8 engine onto the VW gearbox, as well as machine a new flywheel with a counterbalance weight to fit a smaller clutch, as the the Mazda unit is too large for the bellhousing.

So, a decent 2800lb pressure plate, plus an AP cerametallic 4-puck clutch plate, with the centre cut out and a VW one pressed in, made it's way onto the engine:



Which lets us bolt the engine on for mock-up of the ancillaries and hoses, before taking it back off and machining the various brackets and fixtures out of ally to keep the weight down - as most of you know, it's easier to mock-up in steel as you can just whack the MIG on it to tack something in place - but it's a hell of a weight penalty when you add up the amount of brackets and adaptors on a car, so all the final versions will be ally where they can be.



And a couple of hours work to get the exhaust manifold sorted out - unequal length manifold as the centre port is siamesed on these, like an a-series, so the centre branch meets at a different length to the others to keep it from causing problems with pulse tuning.





As you can see, still not touched the plumbing!

We've kept the standard intake manifold on this engine, as although it's quite large, it's an extremely good design, with several variable intake ports on it, replacing it with throttle bodies would result in a marginal top end gain for the cost of a huge amount of midrange.

We had massive problems with a fooked Microtech ECU we were supplied, which isn't fun when the only bloke who maps them is several hours trip away and really couldn't be arsed to do our car anyway - we took 4 trips over there and the car ran like a bag of s*it even after switching to DTA instead, bearing in mind this guy is a rotary specialist we got led up a lot of blind alleys with regard to the fuel system - one trip to our normal DTA mapper and the car now flies. Hmm.
That set us back month and a large sum of money we didn't really have to spend.

A month or so later on and the car had the rest of the exhaust made up, a new 36-1 crank trigger wheel on for the DTA to read (they're a right pain to make up!), most of the plumbing in, and the loom stripped out for wiring to begin, hence the big pile of old wiring on the floor:



A new rear bonnet to keep it all dry:



And we finally got the thing running after about 6 months work, there were still a few jobs left to do on it, and a lot to tidy up, including another trip to the dyno having a flat spot sorted out and the top end mapped to account for getting the final variable inlet stage working - the rev. limiter is at 9600rpm...

Hopefully, we should soon be back to this:



We'll run this car for a year or two to prove the drivetrain, then sell it and make a new car with the RX8 engine (well, the new 1.6L version, when it arrives) in the middle where it should be, multi-link wishbones and a body with at least some kind of nod to aero....(Hah, so much for that)

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A little more work squeezed in over the past few weeks - made the doors (as doors or nets are now compulsary), with tubular ally frames and thermoformed polycarb over the top, new front bulkhead made to clear the new brake cylinders.

There's a pair of new front calipers on the way as the old ones are too far gone now to be worth refurbishing (they are 30 years old....), plus new pads.
I'll be machining some new discs up for it this week as the old ones have warped very badly from the sticking front calipers (they're about 3mm out )
After that a quick strip down of the front suspension to replace some worn beam bearings and then it's finally ready to roll.

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New discs for it I've had made up from some CGI iron plate:





Ideally the rear needs to go vented now we have 260-odd bhp, but they'll do for now until we've got some pennies spare, as always it's gone over budget!


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After fitting new calipers/pads/discs and building the scoop for the rear bonnet, along with finishing off the meshing, and rebuilding the front suspension, we went off to Newstead last weekend to finally compete.

Unfortunately the going was so sandy/boggy that we were running for ages at full throttle, which resulted in the fuel boiling in the injector rail from the buildup of heat in the engine bay.

Which means this week we're lifting the rear scoop upwards and forwards into cleaner air, meshing the rear panel by the exhaust manifold, and wrapping the fuel rail to keep it insulated.
We'll probably double skin the exhaust too as that's where most of the heat-soak is coming from - rotaries run silly exhaust temperatures, the outer two headers get cherry red, but the shared center runner glows dull orange right up to the collector!

Back end as it stands after a wash - going to add some mesh, bring the scoop up and above the roof:

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This is one for all you polishing fanatics, how to clean the underside of your car the lazy way:



That's a mere 100+ kilos of mud, gravel and sheep s*it you can see washing away under the car....

After that we set to work again, air intake has been shifted around to the side and ducted forward to a scoop, the bottom rear panel by the headers has been meshed to allow some airflow over them, and the entire exhaust has gone off to be ceramic coated, there larger meshed area around the rear to let some more air out and some ceramic blanket around the fuel lines to stop them picking up so much heat from the engine bay

Just got to work out how to sort the roof scoop out and we'll be motoring again

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The buggy now has nice ally roof scoop and rejigged hinges, plus an air intake scoop to take air from the high pressure area at the top of the windscreen, the exhaust collector and manifold has gained a couple more heatshields and there's been a few alterations to the panels for the engine air intake and cooling around the exhaust manifold.

We've cut down the rear bulkhead to the 'V' in the rear cross and then panelled that up to the roof to give a large airbox for the radiator to draw from and to remove the restriction the rear rollover hoop would cause with the new roof scoop.

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Had a synchro failure on 3rd gear a couple of days before the first event
So, engine out, shafts off, radiators out, loom out, gearbox out, new box in...

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Made it to Waterbeach this weekend for a bit of fun, unfortunately with a sporadic engine cut out problem which I suspect is the alternator given the battery voltage is dropping.
That and the melted alternator terminal...

Got a few good runs in though and shook the revised front suspension down - spent last week realigning it, new springs, alter the dampers and changed the bumpstops and torsion bar rates, the front is about spot on now, in fact we went over 2 foot by 2 foot square trenches without being able to feel it through the car, so that's working well.
The rear is on the soft side so we're just waiting for some new springs now, it's fine whilst in the forests or along most of the bumpy stuff, but it slams the rear skid plate onto the floor on the bigger jumps, always knew it wanted harder rear springs but now we know how much to go with, so the suspension is finally working at last.
Still wants the dampers altering a bit but that's a winter job.

She still runs a bit too warm even with the new scoop, so the exhaust manifold is coming off to be given an internal and external ceramic powdercoat, as it's the heat building up around the engine causing problems rather than the water/oil temp, it was damned warm weather though, which didn't help - 21* and blue skies, better than rain but wasn't helping the engine!

Ended up having to shortshift and leave it in third in the tight stuff and letting it haul itself out to keep the exhaust temperatures down (and whoever says rotaries have no torque wants to come and sit in this thing, when it pulls itself from axle deep, out of soil full of clay, in a forest, at 2krpm in 3rd...)

Other than that she's doing well at last, it might actually do a full event next month! :hehe:


Got to try and sort a bit more silencing though, 105db driveby and 104 static where everyone else was 104 static and ~90db driveby....whooops


Broken as normal:

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Well, we've finally sorted the brakes, solved the cooling problems, and fitted a new alternator to sort out the electrical gremlins.

Took it for a nice 10 mile test run with nothing but a very slightly slipping clutch.
Back in the workshop, adjust the clutch, back down to the test track, perfect, no slipping.

2 minutes down the track, into 4th gear, BANG.
No drive

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Well, good news and bad, nothing broke, and for the first time since it's inception, the car has actually finished an event :laugh:
Bad news was it's still getting hot enough at full chat that you have to back off a little bit - bigger oil cooler should sort it as it's oil temp not water that's the problem now.
Good news is the event was a lot of fast, very steep, full throttle uphill slogs in 26*c ambient temperatures, so it'll only get better from here!

Even better news is it's got a shiny trophy with 1st in class engraved to it's name.

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Well, a few weeks back, Ed put it into a tree at Minehead whilst I was laid up with flu!

Anyway, he bent both front beam tubes, a shock tower, made a 2D wheel out of a 3D one, broke the steering ram/mountings and bent a fair few tubes.
We've been debating just chopping the front off and sticking a double wishbone setup on there not ideal for the car, but we've already got the bits to hand (from building other cars), and it should be better than the trailing arm setup.

However, after chipping the bent tubing out, a bit of ingenuity with a jig allowed us to get the beam tubes under pressure in the right places, and that and a gas axe resulted in straight tubing again, with the front end welded back on, the bent tubes were chopped out, the frame jigged back up and new ones welded in, new suspension bushes, bearings, straightened the trailing arms out, made a new control valve for the steering and made some new wheels up and she was good enough to go.

Cheap and cheerful wins again!

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And all that work resulted in....another shiny 1st trophy....

Just about managed to cobble it all back together by 3pm on Saturday, loaded up, drove down, ended up kipping in the car as we needed a boat rather than a tent, course was rough as anything, bouncing off the skidpan most of the time, as there were area's where they'd been testing tank suspension out or something.
p*ssed it down most of the day so was far too slippy for a 2wd car really, but still managed 1st in class + lap times were good enough for 8th overall.
Lots of broken cars due to the ruts though - rough as hell.
So everything aches today, but ah well.

We had a bit of trouble with a seal on the PAS pump giving up, and a car in front putting the boot down whilst sideways on a muddy patch just as we were overtaking, putting about an inch of muck on the screen and blowing the wiper motor :hehe:
But apart from those and the battery giving up and making us late for our last run, the car itself is alive and well again, with no problems

Walters Arena in 2 weeks now that the WRC boys have finished using it, gravel tracks!

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Unfortunately, despite being the fastest 2wd on the course, we got two punctures, both on the rear axle, that left us stranded at the far side of the course
By the time we'd been back to service and rolled two wheels and a jack through the woods for 4 miles, we couldn't complete enough runs to finish the event. Bah.

The car had been spinning the wheels on the rims somewhat early on in the day, which probably helped towards them getting thrown off the rim by the rocks.
We do have some 16x8J steelies in the making to fit over the winter though, which will let us step up to more aggressive tyres with 8 ply Kevlar/Steel sidewalls instead of the 3 ply nylons/steels we are currently having to run, should sort that out.

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3 weekends to get it back together before the first event and it currently looks like this:





Hmm, tiny little bit of work left then?

Sounds like our competition has stepped it up this year - there's a two new 2wd buggies arriving, both built with about 10 times our budget, so we'll be doing well if we win any!

One's a spaceframe with a fibreglass shell over it to look like a car, similar to the construction of the 4wd cars, but with a civic type-r engine, sequential gearbox, bypass shocks all around, limited slip diff, and long travel double wishbones, all brand new parts - not scrapyard monkies like us - similar power and weight to us, but should have lots more traction and grip, and should be much more aerodynamical, so faster on the high speed tracks.

The other is a little single-seater buggy, clothed in carbon fibre/fibreglass, with a 1400 Kawasaki bike engine in the back, sequential box with the quaiffe back end and diff, should be a good 150 kilos lighter than us and that too is on long arm double wishbones, bypass shocks.

Bugger!

Having had problems with the brakes overheating, and in the case of the Poly-A pads - eating discs at about 1mm per event, and a set of pads every other event - we had some Carbotech XP8's custom made for it - far better bite, they don't fade, and the pad and disc wear has dropped to about 0.05mm per event, if that - just slightly better then!

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Nearly there!

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Slightly wider new wheels






And a pic in the sunshine!

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Originally posted by RichardK
I recently discovered that pigs can p i s s sideways when being transported

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The first change came shortly after it's second event, in which there were a few problems, the first was some pretty crap rear pads, from a 3-letter named source, they were originally sponsors of the local club series so they had to be used - they were bright green ones - fell to pieces, and the backing plates then ground into the disc, welded themselves there and then ground away at the nice ally hub.
The result of which was some different pads, Mintex 1144's with the backing plates painted green on the rear...

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Originally posted by Dualist
Good read, excellent engine choice

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Bit more work on this now since the last race, stripped down and revalved the rear Fox dampers as the oil was knackered and the old bilstiens on there have lost some damping.
They're not revalvable though - sealed units - so I've altered the shims and pistons in the Fox's instead, as they're cooler running anyway.
Should have a bit more traction over the rough stuff and be a lot better landing and taking off over jumps, hopefully.

Stripped the rear calipers down and rebuilt those as they were sticking a bit, had all the nuts and bolts off the drivetrain and suspension and renewed the locktite as it tends to soften up after a few events.

Front upright has had a couple of new bearings again and a sleeve on the shaft to take it up to the next size bearing - see if we can get them to last longer than a season!

Also sorted out the number board by taking off the top where it looks bloody ugly and putting some proper stickers (thanks to Adam!) on the side of some Carbon/Kevlar panels on the side of the car.

Tweaked the airbox to get another litre of capacity in there just for a touch easier breathing for the engine, and sneaked a bigger filter in so it doesn't get clogged up as fast with the dust and mud.

Other than that, just routine maintaince - oils/filters/water/grease bushes/regass dampers.
And ready for the next race next weekend - novelty being ready this early for us!

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Those new numberboards have been fitted instead of that bloody awful shark-fin thing, made out of carbon-kevlar sheet, saving at least 30-40 grams!







Everyone knows having some carbon bits on your car is worth 10 seconds a lap.

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Chalk up a pair of first in class trophies

Car riding much better with the revalving on the rear dampers, but we had major issues with heat buildup boiling fuel in the rail - lots of misfires when the car got hot - we've had it before but thought we'd cured it with lagging - but now the car is riding better we're on full throttle harder and longer....although we had some cold too, so it may be more than one issue. Still, was good fun!

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Right, we've hopefully traced the problem with misfiring to a dodgy throttle pot as well as the heat issue with the fuel, so a bit of tinkering over the weekend and it seems to be okay, sorted the hesitation/misfire with the throttle pot and just waiting for the new hoses to move the tank.
We've stripped down the rear wheel bearings to make some thicker shims to account for wear as the new bearings bed in, so that should be back together shortly, along with a new fuel tank shifted up front to help the turn in a little and hopefully solve the heat/boiling problem.
Spare throttle pot and a new set of leads on the way as they're a little past their best, and we'll see how she goes with the other half of the engine firing at the next one.

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Well, after thinking we'd cured the misfire it's now back with a vengance, but in a different spot - at a guess we've been unlucky and had two problems, not one, which is why it's seemed so random! Anyway, we've stripped it all back down for a check over and I've just dropped the injectors off at a local garage for checking and cleaning - hopefully it's one of those - if not I'm stumped!

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Apparently, ripping one front wheel and the associated suspension components off the car on the first laps isn't actually the fantastic weight saving scheme it appears to be initially.

Whoops:


Slight problem with the tracking.

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Slight problem with the engine too, looks like the previous misfires that we drove through in order to finish Baden Hall has killed a seal in one rotor of the engine, so it's lost compression and is down about 100bhp or so

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Right, new engine sorted with only 1000 miles on the clock, it's a 2009 model which has a lot of changes to the sump and oil system, so we need to tweak the rear chassis to get it in and alter a lot of the oil lines/blanks, but we're doing it with adapators so the car can then take either engine if need be.
That's because the plan is to rebuild the old engine with a ported intake and possibly a peripheral port exhaust (it's only cracked a side seal so it's fixable, just going to take a lot of time and effort) - which should hopefully push her up to about 300bhp or so, albeit a bit higher up the range @ around 9.5/10krpm or so.

It'll be fun*!





*The kind of fun that involves learning new curse words.

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Anyway, got the new engine finally installed, oil system changed, electrics altered and sat down and alter the timing in the map.
And she fired first time on the button, spot on.

Unfortuatly the DTA software showed the throttle pot reading was jumping so we need to sort a new throttle pot, little oil leak from one of the fabricated fittings and sort a new oil gauge out (this engine runs at 150psi of pressure instead of 90), but hopefully we should be at Sweetlamb this weekend.

I'll do a full writeup with pictures the week after on the alterations hopefully.

IT'S ALIVE!

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Unfortunately the new TPS didn't arrive (obviously the Royal Mail vans need some remapping, and a bigger turbo, and slicks, and someone awake at the wheel).
Anyway, we managed to get hold of one this week and replaced the knackered one, spent this morning refining the mapping (bit conservative on the timing and fuel up top originally until we'd got all our issues with cooling sorted, so altered that).
The new engine seems to run a lot smoother, might be me imagining it, or it's down to the extra oil pressure (80PSI at idle!) and better water pump, and she gets to peak power earlier now and holds it for longer (there's 90%+ of peak power now from 7500-9400rpm), feels much quicker up top.
Runs even cooler too now with the new water pump + extra oil flow.
Apart from a little oil weep that we expected from a temporary fitting, all seems well, so we're gonna get some milage in to bed the engine in (it's a little down on the old one 261bhp vs 268bhp, according to the rollers, but you know how good they are on different days), as it's done under 1000 miles and it's definately a bit tight.
Might just crack over 270bhp once she's done some miles, hopefully.

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Well, despite not being able to sort the slight oil weep from a fitting, we went to the last event at Ebbw Vale this weekend anyway, and apart from a bit of a heat problem (long slog uphill through some peat bog, horrible stuff, the car sunk in about half a foot when you hit it), and knackering the sidewall on a tyre after a little overexuberance through the final chicane - which was made of rock, so not very forgiving - we kept going all day.
As it was, we were the only 2wd car to get around the whole event, it was slippery and very rough and rocky in places, the new floorpan looks like it's been shot peened underneath from the rougher bits...
Anyway, other than that, we managed to slug around, it was never going to be a course that favoured 2wd vehicles as the uphill slogs were on mud or peat bog, but we made some time up early on with a bit of gravel track and ended up tenth overall anyway, obviously 1st in class.
Which means we've finally won the 2wd Championship class , and with over 100 points to spare, and we've now got 3 months to make some more bits to bolt on


Watch this space for the upgrade program
First step is to shift the oil cooler and make some high-flow endcaps for the radiator just to help out with the cooling - it's been perfect everywhere else but a long uphill slog in peat saw it climb to 105*c so a few tweaks should help a bit with engine life and, more importantly, stop the driver from looking at the gauge instead of where he's going
Then onto some damper work again and perhaps rework the front end for better geo. and travel, see if we can sort a cheap digi-dash to loose some wiring from behind the dashboard and hopefully sort out some sort of limited slip diff so we're not struggling so much in the really wet stuff.

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Had a day at Curborough on Saturday for a bit more seat time, took my nephew for a spin in it too :hehe: (he also took the first couple of pictures, and a lot more of the floor, grass, the track behind a passing car, his thumbs...)
Few pictures:









[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Rippthrough/Curborough/Buggy%20pics%20from%20others/73515_494050855907_589880907_7090376_6137530_n.jpg[/IMG ]

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Rippthrough/Curborough/Buggy%20pics%20from%20others/150010_494050785907_589880907_7090374_7933777_n.jpg[/IM G]

And a couple of the nephew in the car with Ed:

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Right, no, we haven't just locked it in a shed and forgot about it.
(Well, alright, maybe we did, for a bit. Beer got in the way over christmas, and new year)

However, it looks like the LSD diff. isn't going to be ready for the first event, which is a pity, but the little elves in the workshop have been busy, we've ditched the rear torsion bars and the housings/bushes they ran in on the rear suspension, because they wore pretty rapidly and it gave really vague toe settings at the rear, which made it a bit inconsistent to drive after a few events.

Anyway, the fabrication-fairies have been in, and kindly made new spring plates at the rear, that now terminate in a rose joint, that bolts into a new bracket made to clamp up to the original rear beam, which keeps the suspension geometery and load paths the same, but shouldn't wear as quickly (same sealed system as my joints on the 306's wishbones) and is a damn sight more precise as the bearing is metal-to-metal now.

At the risk of turning into cheque-book racers, we've also just sorted out some new Fox replacements for the rather tired old Bilstien dampers at the rear too (they are 30 years old now, they deserve a rest!), which means they're on my kitchen table looking incredibly clean and shiny.
They twin rate coilovers with a stop for the tender so they should give us much more options for the rear spring rate and the steps/progression that occurs over the travel too.
And we can't have that , so as usual when I get something shiny, I'll be tearing them to pieces tommorow and changing the valving and oil to my own special-brew...

The new radiator and cowling is all welded up and fits beautifully, so when Demon Tweeks get their arse in gear and send us a 60* silicone hose out (Yes, see, even more shiny new stuff, we'll be paying someone to put the kettle on too at this rate. Or we would if we hadn't nicked the wire out of it to run the fans in a last minute repair a few months ago...) the cooling upgrade should be all sorted ready for, hopefully, the advent of some boost sometime later this year.

Few pictures soon, write-ups are no good without lots of pictures, I know, sorry!

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1st in class again, 7th overall this time around, I'll do more of a write up tommorow 'cause I'm heading to bed, I'm knackered!

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Well, due to having 4 million other things to do we didn't actually get the new trailing arms on in time, although we mounted the new, wider tyres and new rear dampers, plus some modified fronts, and bled the new cooling system through - just about managed to throw the car back together by 5:30pm on Saturday, and head off to Walters Arena for the first event.
Haven't even got this years stickers yet so had to make some temporary numbers up from electrical tape too :hehe:
Got there at 9.30 after traffic from hell, went to sleep, up at 5:30 and walked around 7.5 miles of muddy Welsh hills

Not the best thing to do in a morning before the racing! Cue two knackered northerners running around like nutters trying to unpack the car, get setup, scrutineered and signed on in the 30 minutes before the drivers briefing....:rofl:

In a shocking distortion of reality it was actually bloody sunny in Wales for once, which dried most of the standing water up pretty quickly, so apart from going steady for a few laps due to rough riding and a horrible knocking noise, the car ran well all day, no trouble with traction, although it could do with a gear between 2nd and 3rd on some of the steeper uphill slogs!

The horrible noise and rough riding was due to throwing the torsion bars back on in a rush on Saturday and the car sitting on it's suspension like a stilt walker - the rear was running on the droop stops, but altering it would have taken far too long and the new dampers were keeping it in check enough to give us another 1st in class and 7th overall. No problems with the car for once* so we'll get the new suspension on for the next event (Waterbeach) and spend some time setting it up properly. Hopefully we might achieve our aim of a top 5 overall finish this year, it wasn't far away this time.
The good news is the new dampers on the rear and the revamped fronts have got the car handling jumps and ditches far better, I might do a little tweak to the rears but even I'll be struggling to make them much better now, without fabricating some 2/3 way adjusters for them - I'm thinking about it....

Some more good news came over the weekend as Tom from Gripper gave us a ring, who has one of the old differentials to look at with the aim of having a plate-type limited slip made, and after some studying he thinks it's definately possible to drop one of his existing units in that's robust enough for our abuse, so we should have that soon, for some much needed traction
I think that'll have to go in during the summer break when there's a free month between races so we can take our time to build a good gearbox up out of all our spares.

So, a good start to the season with 100pts in the bag, here's hoping the rest goes as well and we can concentrate on making the car faster rather than repairing it for a change!





**Well, apart from catching a car up, hitting the horn, and the car in front promptly rolling over onto it's roof....cue muggins here running up a welsh hillside in overalls and helmet waving like a nutter to attract a marshall.
I know the horn is pretty loud, but I didn't think it was enough to make a whole car jump

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