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Right, no, we haven't been spending all our time in the pub (more's the pity), just haven't had much time with the photos due to pulling the engine/gearbox/etc all back out again so we could change the clutch (cracked the plate and worn yet another splined center out), and weld in the upgraded suspension bits:



As you can see, the torsion bars have been removed, along with the frankly knackered bushes and spring plates (they wear out rapidly from all the grit that gets in, then the back wheel toes in and out of it's own accord and the car steers where it likes!), the bushes are about £120 a set and when they're dying after an event and knackered after a few it's a bit tiring.
Anyway, if you look, the whole thing has now been replaced with a chromoly rose joint, clamped in double shear between those plates (the gap will be plated over and welded between the pegs to stiffen the whole thing up at the front).

In case you are wondering, the gap between the plates is that large as the rose joint runs side spacers - these serve two purposes - one, they allow me to wrap the joint in a neoprene sealing boot to keep the mud and water out (which will also be packed with grease to reduce the heat and wear in the joint).
In addition to that, the gap should allow the mud to drop out of the back of the plates, to prevent damage to the boot - seems a little backwards having a larger opening for the mud to get in there to start with I know, but with a small gap all you need is one small stone/clump of mud to stick and then all the muddy slop/stones build up behind it.

More pictures soon, I promise
I'll have to as Rob over at www.gtechniq.com has kindly donated some more water/mud repellent products that will now work on the side polycarbonate windows, some of their P1 polish, and dirt repellent coating for both the paintwork and the mudguards in an effort to keep the buildup of mud off the car and the stickers visible - seems a little tarty for us I know, but it's not uncommon to scrape 30-40kg of mud off the car if it's a wet event, that's a fair chunk on a light car such as ours, and being able to see is always a bonus!
Personally I think Rob's sitting at home laughing his tit's off at me having to polish this thing, it's gonna take a tub of elbow grease the size of a swimming pool!


Edit: You can also see the upper secondary torsion bar there - the one that runs across the back above the beam - it's attached via rocker arms and rose-jointed droplinks, and can be set as either a secondary spring that lifts the spring rate at a certain point in the travel, or stiffened up and set to use a softer version of a bumpstop to prevent the chassis hitting the floor, depending on the course.

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And a bit of makeshift modifications to the arms to space the rear dampers apart so that we can run springs on both pairs of coilovers, it also grabs the shock in double shear instead of single - as the bumpstops are on the dampers rather than the body now it makes it less likely to bend a bolt on a big impact.

Not the best arm design in the world due to the cut and shut but it's more than functional, we'll probably make a couple of lighter, stiffer ones during the break in the race come summer.



The open area to the right you can see will be plated in with some drilled/pressed 1.2mm steel sheet to tie the upper and lower tubes together, which will stiffen up the connection between the inner damper and the hub without adding much in the way of weight.

In other news, the Bay of E has turned up trumps with a brand new half-decent TIG welder without breaking the racing budget, picking it tomorrow, so lots more formed alloy components and brackets to save weight will be appearing through the year after a bit of practice, hopefully.

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Anyway, all the new suspension is oe and setup - the dampers want some valving changes but we're waiting on the new sets of rear springs (for some reason, Demon tweaks and Rally Design don't keep 24" long coilover springs in stock, : ), so I'll leave those until I know precisely how it behaves on those. There's also another 20mm travel available with the new parts so I'll need to alter the stops in the dampers anyway.

Waiting on a new paddle clutch arriving (mullered the centre in yet another one), before we can put the engine in and rear cage/bodywork, etc, on though, so going to be some long nights this week!

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Well, springs are here

Brake pads are here

Nice clutch firm sent us some new splined centres out for free because they couldn't do us a plate, which are being machined to fit the old paddle plate as we speak

And the engine is still sat in the corner and half the frame and bodywork is on the floor, 's gonna be a looong day today!

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Well, shiny red new arms, casing and rose joints:





Shiny red new XP10 brake pads:



And new damper mounts to allow twin springs so the torsion bars can be chucked:

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Oh, and the disc 'wear' after ~15 months of racing abuse.



That'd be, errr, none then.

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Well, the weather was fantastic, the course was nice - albiet a bit of an outright power course - lots of fast stuff, the engine didn't explode, the temperatures stayed reasonable, all the wheels stayed on, new brake pads feel like someone threw a brick wall in the way, the new suspension held up just fine and the car rides the rough stuff like a bloody magic carpet with a rocket up it's arse

Unfortunately, we had the Curse Of Waterbeach return in an exact re-run of last year the bloody throttle cable snapped just before the finish on the last lap!
After burning our hands and removing a few yards of skin trying to wedge it open to trundle the last straight to the finish in first, we had to give up and take a maximum, a little unfortunate as it was feeling pretty quick all day.

We'll see what we were doing when the run times come through on Tuesday (issue with the timing printer/computer), car was much easier to drive with the new suspension though.

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Right, the drill and hammer has been out and she now sports 2 throttle cables, take that yer swine

Rear dampers are apart to give a little more damping to match the new spring rates, and the driveshafts have been tweaked to give us a touch more rear suspension travel. Next job is to pull the front suspension apart and replace the worn bearings and bushes (again), and perhaps some tweaks to the side scoops to flow some more cool air around the gearbox as the oil is getting a bit too warm.

And beat all the dents out of the skid pans with a sledgehammer....

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Right, not got much in the way of improvements this time around I'm afraid, bar making up the new side scoops, then deciding they looked crap and didn't allow the air to expand enough and shelving them, back to the drawing board.

Anyway, with this weekends event being a 2-day race rather than one, we decided to concentrate on a bit of maintainance and setup work rather than introduce yet more new parts (got some front suspension/arm upgrades in progress, and some stiffer damping settings, but we'll wait until we can get some more testing time before fitting those)
So, spent this weekend having various sensors recalibrated after some replacements, just to ensure they're accurate, tidied some of the wiring up that had been chopped about before to add new bits, and then sat with the laptop refining the engine mapping.

Mainly been focusing on the throttle transients to get it to respond as smooth and crisply as possible, as it sometimes had the odd hiccup when it was still on the cold engine map, and added as much fuel up the top of the rev range as possible without killing the power in order to cool the engine a little more.
And the most important bit, the nice 3ft long over-run flames are back

Reliability tweaks and refinements this month really, sorry, no pictures of new shiny bits for a change!

Regrease all the bushes and bearings on Friday, set the tracking, load up and off to Baden Hall and see how she goes!

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Lots, and lots, and lots and lots and lots of water from the sky.

I'll give a race report in a week when I've dried out...but there's a lovely shiny trophy in the house....

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Oh, also had a slight arguement with a concrete post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEq1enypU6g

For once, the car won
(Seal bust in the front damper and let the gas out overnight, hence the weird bounce that threw it into the fencing).

Definately going to have step up with saving the money to get that limited slip diff as soon as possible though, it was so wet today that if you came out of a corner behind a 4wd car they pretty much disappeared whilst the car sat spinning wheels, once it got going you caught them back up under the brakes but it's a fair struggle to keep the car up where it needs to be in the results once the heavens open

Meanwhile, well, this was Sunday morning....



And it still looked shiny on Monday morning after a day of racing:



One lap later it looked like this...



1st in class again (in fact the only 2wd that finished), 7th overall in the awdc results, and, because we've been fairly consistant in pace through the events, we're now 3rd overall in the championship. Long way to go yet but we're hoping if we can hold off on the big upgrades whilst winter (new front suspension in the works) and just concentrate on current suspension setup and reliability mods, then we might be able to hold station there and end up with a podium, with a lot of luck.

[scooby doo mode]
Would have been second if it weren't for that pesky throttle cable!
[/scooby doo]

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Right, had the rear dampers apart and put in some more low speed rebound - to compensate for the friction lost with the new rear suspension - and also put some more compression damping in the range for landing over jumps, as it's a touch soft at the back at the minute. Sounds simple but it was a pain in the arse
See how it fairs this time out - probably tweak the fronts a bit to match but we'll see how it goes first.

Two new aluminium plates ordered for the sump and gearbox guards too as we've worn a hole in them...
And two new mudguards, give the hole in the rear one from firing a rock through it off the rear tyre, and the post incident with the front one!

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Well, dampers back on, new skid pans made and fitted, new mudguard on, fresh fluids, new mastercylinder for one of the brake circuits (score on the bore from some debris), new power steering valve and pump, and she's strapped down to the trailer ready to roll again

Even given her a polish!

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Won't start hot.
Lost power through the revs.
Won't go past 7k.

Oh dear.

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Side seal gone in the engine again I think. Just not up to the heat generated in race use.
Forlorn hope that it might be a sensor or something electrical but the symptoms are there...

I think that's game over for the championship podium now

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C1 crystal coating on the drivers side panel, G3 rain-repellent on the drivers side window and their C2 product on the plastic mudguards and mirror (the rear mudguard was fairly clean too until it got ambushed by a tree at the bottom there, hence the crack!).

Gtechniq side:



versus:



This side had a very popular wax know for it durability applied too. Didn't last that long!

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Results through tonight!
Now 2nd in championship, and 3 points behind 1st.

[homer]
Doh!
[/homer]

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Looks like RX8 engines at the moment are going for a fair old chunk, so it's probably season over, we didn't budget for a spare engine I'm afraid!
We'll keep on the hunt, and I'll let you guys know if anything happens on the engine front.

If not, I'm sure we'll manage to sort something silly out over winter instead...

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Late on a Saturday afternoon, an engine barks into life...


...and promptly covers half the town in blue smoke from burning the presevative oil film off the inside of the rotor housings

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Well, cars ready, all packed up, loaded on trailer...and Ed gets called into work because the weather has dried the crop out, bloody farming!

Sat twiddling thumbs all day on the off-chance that we can get down there tonight if he finishes in time, but it's not looking likely now - it's a 6 hour drive, and it'll be at least 2 hours to walk the course in the morning and half an hour for scrutineering too....

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Right, didn't make the last event
All that work wiped out by the weather and farming! Ah well, down to 7th in the championship now but we'll see what we can claw back.

Loaded back up and on the trailer ready to head to SevenOaks tommorow though, supposed to be a nice tight and twisty track, so might be good for us. Hopefully!

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Well, few issues again, that's what you get when you've not got anywhere big enough to test it - car misfiring badly when it got warm, which meant we took a maximum penalty time early on for not completing a stage.
Think it was down to a couple of failing coils, however, we didn't have enough spare coils to replace them all and completely get rid of the issue, but we got it better and good enough to run around all day, albeit still with a misfire and about 40bhp down from a reduced rev limit to preserve the engine/coils.

Apart from that, it was an absolutely fantastic course, with something for everyone - some faster stuff through a couple of fields, plenty of lanes through forests, turning into tight tree-dodging sections (which the new suspension and fiddle brakes on our car were fantastic, I don't think there could have been anything much faster through them), and then some nice narrow flowing tarmac and gravel sections back through the forests again. Think it's up there for one of the best events we've been to.
It also gave a great proving ground for some alterations to the brakes and the suspension work, and they were flawless all day, so at least the rest of the car is about where it needs to be now, on pure laptimes we weren't all that far behind the podium guys even with the dicky engine, which was encouraging - in fact, if we hadn't abandoned a stage to try to sort the coils out, we would have been 4th even with the misfire all day!

Pity about the engine as it's cost us any chance of regaining a podium this year, but that can be sorted and it's proven the rest of the upgrades anyway.
However, since the engine was playing silly buggers anyway, we spent half the day giving passenger rides, which judging by the grinning faces when they got out went well

Hopefully we can still hang on to some more points at the next event after sorting the engine, and make sure we get a single figure race number for next year

We did get the highest jump over a bump in the field though

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Just working out the times and points, and it appears nobody can actually catch us in the 2wd championship again, even if we don't go to the next event and the nearest guy wins, so at least we've won the 2wd trophy again

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Well, in the hope of sorting out the munching coils issue, there's a set of D585 coils on the way from the 'states, they're a lot more powerful than the stock mazda coils, but more importantly, the components are rated for a higher ambient temperature (120*c instead of 85*) and they come with their own heatsink on the ignitors to help with cooling.

Should help with coil life, they're a damn sight cheaper too, bought 8 x D585's for less than the price for 4 Mazda OEM coils.
Got some rewiring to do to make them fit, and need to make some new ends for the Magnecor leads (do Magnecor still do custom leads, seem to remember they used to?), and some tweaking to the dwell tables in the ECU to charge the new coils for longer.

Fingers crossed!

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Right, this bloody new engine is making me loose what hair I have left:


Mis-fires badly from 3.5k to 7k.
After 7k it clears and goes like poo off a shovel.
Engine starts just fine, no excessive cranking, idles smooth as butter.

All injectors are working and staging okay, coils are working, variable valves are working, there's nothing stuck in the intake tracts, the earths are all good and clean.
Leads are relatively new Magnecors, new set of spark plugs. Swapped two coils for brand new spares that made a small improvement but not much.

Fuel pressure is fine, fuel lines are clear.
Throttle pot checks out okay, new throttle pot makes no difference. Same for the shaft sensor.

Our rudimentary coil tester (patent pending) - otherwise known as a trailing plug with the bar snapped off - shows a consistant spark across all 4 coils - albeit a relatively weak sounding orange spark, but with no difference between 'em that would mean we'd have to have got 2 duff new coils too...
Winding the coil dwell up just to check makes no difference either.
Only change between this engine and the old one is the timing (S1 > S2 timing is different), checked with a timing light and it's right, tried it 20 degrees retarded and no difference bar a lack of power.

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Okay, looks like the 2 brand new coils we had were a pair of duff ones, so all that fun was for nothing :hehe:
Lesson learnt, if all the symptoms point to coils, even if you've swapped them, it can still be coils....

Anyway, over the weekend we've done a very fast conversion to some D585 Yukon coils - which are rated for more ambient temperature, have a built in heatsink and are also much more powerful, rigged up with some universal leads most of the misfire went away (bar a little @5krpm, but the spark plugs are sooted up from running them before).

Have to say a big thank you to the people at Magnecor, who after a hurried e-mail over the weekend, sorted out a rush order on some custom ignition leads for us to suit the new coils, which arrived first thing this morning, ready to put on and test before we set off down to Minehead on Friday.

I'll get a picture tonight if I remember of the new coil setup! At the moment it's a case of some very fast work to correct the timing and coil dwell maps...

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Shiny new leads, beefy coils and new wiring, hopefully should stand up to the heat and abuse a bit better than the Mazda ones!

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And the oops moment:

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Arrrgh, spare gearbox in, test run, stuck it in reverse and it jammed there and won't come out. Engine out again...

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Engine out, gearbox apart, 5th gear synchro/selector was worn just enough to move ~1mm on the shaft and jam the whole selector mechanism. frown

Put a 45* bevel on the edges of the selector to help if anything similar happens in future, and 5th gear/selector and it's fork are on the bench looking lonely

Gearbox back together, engine and box back in, radiators back on, fluids refilled and bled, test driven, works beautifully.

4-speed gearbox now, it's lighter, might go faster

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Right, after a very rough event at Kirton today, we've managed to claw a couple of places back and end the year 8th overall in the Championship, albeit after battering the skid pans to death, punching two holes in the floor, cracking the windscreen on a hard landing and hitting the engine skid pan hard enough to dent it the whole way across and put a dent in the sump too.
Oops.
This stand-in engine was feeling decidedly unhappy towards the end of the day too tbh, just about managed it but it doesn't have many ponies left!

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We decided to fabricate some new front arms to reduce the friction in the suspension, modify the geometery and give a bit more travel at the same time, so new arms getting mocked up:



4 degree's of static negative camber, 7.5 to 16 degrees of castor (varies with travel, not much I can do about that), 4 inches of extra travel, 1 inch less scrub, more progressive spring/damping rate, and 2 inch wider track

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Yes, I know, the mudguard is miles out and the wheels are about as round as a 50 pence piece - don't worry, making new ones, gotta move the mudguard as we're making new damper mounting towers too, improve the motion ratio and change the progression curve. Gives you an idea of how much travel there is though, that's not quite full compression - it's got another half an inch or so.

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The things we go through in the name of money saving...couldn't really stretch the winter budget to a set of longer 10" stroke front dampers to match the arms, so we're having to trying and make the old 8" units do the job, doesn't do the motion ratios any favours, but needs must:



Damper goes the other side of the bracket but the old shock tower was in the way, I've had the angle grinder out since and there's a lot of front steelwork sat on the floor now though
Best get on with making the real replacement arms properly now though!

Ed's finished welding the jigs up tonight so should be able to knock the proper T45 tubular arms out in the next couple of days, got a few bits of chopping and tweaking on the chassis we weren't expecting just to add a little clearance around the tie-rods, and possibly move the rack a little more, but it's almost there, just waiting on some spacers/fitting for the new steering arms.

In other news, engine should be back together just in time for christmas, it's had a bit of light port work to boot as well, see what Santa brings when you've been good...

Hopefully should get chance for a run around the yard and lane after christmas just to give it a quick check over (I'll get some video this time, I promise!), then it's back to ordering yet more springs, damper oil and valve shims/stacks, as the whole lot needs re-valving and re-springing again, doh.
And another 6 wheel rims to make and weld up too, bit more offset now the track is wider.

Once that little lot is sorted, we'll start on the rear suspension!

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Right, no takers for the 8" Foxes so needs must, on they go, proper arms nearly finished:

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New upper mounts in progress for the damper, didn't really want to put a kink in the arms (need to be as stiff as possible) but couldn't clear the damper when it's fully compressed without, good enough anyway, another tie-rod to go down the chassis toward the rear mudguard mount too - may as well - but it's stiff enough without tbh:



Don't worry, it's not getting heavier, it's all thin-wall T45 tube, lighter than it looks!
Certainly lighter than the plate tower that was there before anyway.

From the side:



And the passenger side pretty much finished:

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Weekend in pics:

Finished these at last, car on the floor again!


Pushed her outside today for a look at the front from afar, and to see what it looked like at full articulation (one wheel on floor, one in air, with car still perfectly level, lots of travel!), didn't get a picture as it was dark and raining but she certainly looks a bit more purposeful now!
We've lost a shedload of friction in the front end with the new bush/bearing/arm setup too, which should help the ride and handling.

Slight technical hiccup with the bonnet...





Needs a bit more than some T-Cut to sort that out...

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Right, wiring ripped out, new connectors here, ready to start making a fresh new loom again, what fun. Only 4 weeks before the first race and the car's a frame with some suspension on at the moment!
Ed's just mounting the new fans whilst I 'enjoy' rewiring some parts of the car loom that were rather tired

Looks like the new rear damping system we were hoping to do as well is going to have to wait until the second event, as we'll be pressed to get everything together and the car shook down for some testing at this rate, haven't heard back on the new gears we've ordered yet either

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Gear man's ears must be burning, he rung me not 5 minutes after posting that, might just have them in time

Spent the weekend fabricating the new front mudguard mounts, made new steering tie-rods, and stripped the steering rack.
Rack had loads of play in it and no provision for any adjustment for wear and tear, so I had to sand the whole case down by hand with wet + dry paper, until it got back to a nice, tight sliding fit again, then bond tiny strips of 0.25mm thick shim steel to the rack bar to bring it back into proper engagement with the pinion, and then make some more tiny strips of shims to give the appropriate clearance back on the casing, as well as changing all the support bearings.

It involved lots of swearing.
And it's a good job the firm that make the rack have gone bust so I can't go over the pond and kick them square in the nuts.

Even started rubbing down and painting the front arms, shiny things on the car for once!

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Just fetched engine tonight, it's had a rebuild (apex seals warped from the heat) and some light port work - tbh, because they wanted a look at the R3 motor a bit closer, he did it almost as cheap as we could get the parts to do it ourselves, no brainer really.
We wanted a fresh engine for the year, and a check over the rest of the engine to see if we'd sorted the trouble we've had before with side seals/springs, which seem to be good now (bar needing a bit better intake filtering), so we'll get a few events on the engine to make sure all is okay, then supercharge her.

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New prefilters + secondary airbox:




Would probably be better with a couple of cotton filters up there so we can wash them out, but budget dictates paper for the moment!

Accidentally made it flow enough air for 500bhp, oh and the supercharger can go where the primary airbox is at the moment too.
Fancy that!

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Well, weekend went fairly well. Bar doing 3 miles on 3 wheels, and the next run with no brakes....
Writeup later!

Oh, and 'Wheeee!'

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As for the 3 wheeled excursion, well, we re-used the old VW link pin washers that hold the upright to the arms, turns out they weren't up to the job any more, one folded over and the upright fell off, leading to dragging a front wheel sideways along for a few miles on one lap. Doh.
That also killed a brake line with a hairline crack at a joint we didn't spot, which resulted in doing the next run with just rear brakes on the fiddles, no pedal, so we had one driving, one braking

So, we weren't exactly fast, we spent the rest of the day just going steady so we could get it home in one piece, but the new suspension worked nicely when it wasn't hanging off
Had a few issues with the new engine being a bit slow to start, so a few tweaks to the startup map might be required.

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Shiny new paperweights waiting for us when we got home!



Need a lot of hours putting in to profile the selector teeth by hand, as they couldn't get their cutting gear in for the right angles, but they were cheap so it was worth it, only way we could afford it



Shorter 3rd and 4th gear, so they're a bit more useful, currently 3rd is good for over 90mph and 4th is good for about 135mph, which the car struggles to pull when it's on a gradient, the new ratios should drop that to 80mph and 108mph.

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Hey, the old shock oil doesn't look too bad for 2 years of abuse, sure, it's a little dark, but it's clear, not cloudy and no real debris in there either, gotta be good, right?



I mean, even the seals and shims look spotless, next to no wear on them at all



And the new oil is just the same colo.....oh, wait, maybe the old oil was a little tired then....

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Well, the site was better suited to swimming today - pressing the throttle pedal down in any gear at all just meant the mud flew higher - the car didn't go any faster

Unfortunately, we had trouble with the alternator on the second run, which lost us 10 minutes whilst we bodged it back together with side cutters and tie-wraps.

However, the next few laps we barely made it around - literally creeping along sideways on full lock at 1mph through a few sections they were so slippery, and then just to top it off, on the very last lap, either the gearbox or the clutch plate let go with a bang whilst launching off the start line

Bah!
Had a lot of issues with starting the engine again too, which isn't good....

A photo so I can remember what the car looked like when it was clean:



That's the lightest bit of rain we got!

Well, up until the racing finished, when in the usual UK-weather trick, the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Extra points if you can spot the vital performance upgrade it's had!

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Whee!




And here's some more of that muddy stuff:

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Well, got our nice new 15 tooth starter gear and new clutch centre yesterday, so, in a mad rush today, we chopped the starter mount off, fitted the new pinion gear, moved the mountings welded it all back up, refitted the clutch, lifted the engine in, bolted the rear frame/cage back on, fitted the exhaust/wiring/oil/fuel lines/etc, and fired her up!

With an hour of tweaking with some cold start enrichments it's now faster at starting again, great.

So, fitted the floor, seats, belts, etc, put it in gear to reverse out of the workshop and load up to go racing tommorow. And no drive.

Feck.


So, by this time completely knackered from rushing around, and after lots of energetic swearing, we got stuck in and ripped it all back out in about 10 minutes. Only to find the clutch pressure plate has died and there's no way of fixing it or getting a new one in time for tommorow.

I am just very slightly annoyed. A little bit. About a hairs-width away from setting the thing on fire.

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