Tweet
I had a thread running which covered the rebuild of my rally car: http://www.turbosport.co.uk/showthread.php?t=122375
Now that the rebuild has sort of finished, I thought I'd start a new thread here recording our progress with the car and its ongoing evolution.
A quick summary to bring everyone up to date:
Mine and Mark's last event before the rebuild was the North West Stages at Blackpool in Feb 2007. We retired from that one with a shattered differential. That prompted an axle upgrade, which led to a conversion from leaf springs to a coil-over six linked setup. At the same time I was talked into upgrading the engine to a new Duratec... by my friend Paul Dunnell who builds Duratecs. In summary, the car has had a total rebuild.
Anyway, fast forwarding to January of this year, the car was just about finished and so we entered the South Downs Stages at Goodwood. We saw this as a bit of a test as its a nice smooth circuit and isn't too harsh on the cars. Net result was a DNF after stage 3 due to: running on 2 cylinders, very poor brakes, oil temperature too high, water temperature too low and a drive train vibration that was so bad I couldn't get my hand on the gear lever at over 70 mph.
So, there was a list of things to sort out - A new coil pack, new brake pads, a change of master cylinders, propshaft re-balance and a water cooled oil cooler. We did all of these things and then booked into a track day at Snetterton to give it another test. This went a lot better. We had a small problem with a fuel injection rail cracking - and the brakes still weren't that good, but it was certainly quick.
So... on to our first 'proper' event, the Malcolm Watson Spring Stages at Sculthorpe, last weekend.
In an attempt to make the brakes better (and following some good advice from some of you chaps http://www.turbosport.co.uk/showthread.php?t=142022), I replaced the EBC front brake pads with some Ferodo ones after scrutineering on the Saturday evening. This made quite an improvement. I did a few laps of the service area to try and bed them in - and then we were ready for Sunday.
I was a little cautious on the first stage, but we soon had the car sliding all over the place. Probably not the quickest way to get through the stages, but loads of fun! The brakes were working well and there was loads of power. However, halfway through the morning, while waiting between the stage arrival and the start, the throttle started to stick. The heat was getting into the throttle cable and it was going tight. A slight touch on the pedal and it would hit 5 or 6k rpm and then very gradually return back to idle. We were in 'dead time' at this point, so we pulled out of the line of cars waiting to start, opened the bonnet and let all the other cars go through. We were hoping that it would cool down a bit. By the time all the other cars had gone through it was a little bit better, but was still sticking. We did the stage anyway - and for the most part it was OK - although there were a couple of hairy moments when it stuck open going into corners. Running at the back meant we did catch quite a few cars, which was fun because we had something to aim for, but undoubtedly cost us time getting past them.
After that stage we removed one of the throttle cables (there are two) and wrapped the remaining one that wasn't sticking so much with heat reflective tape. After that it was pretty much fine.
Stages 1 to 4 were a single lap (around 7 or 8 miles I think). The surface was very abrasive concrete and we used up one set of part worn tyres on those first 4 stages. Stages 5 to 8 in the afternoon were each two laps. We put brand new tyres on before stage 5 and they were pretty well destroyed by the time we got to stage 8. We ran the last two stages with a slow puncture in one of the rears and by the time we finished there were strands of wire sticking out of the fronts.
We came away with a 3rd in class (2 seconds behind our friends the Mills brothers) and 8th overall. We had a superb day.
Our next event will be the Honington Stages, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk on the 3rd May. Just a spanner check and sorting out the throttle cables to do before then...
Here's a couple of pics.
Now that the rebuild has sort of finished, I thought I'd start a new thread here recording our progress with the car and its ongoing evolution.
A quick summary to bring everyone up to date:
Mine and Mark's last event before the rebuild was the North West Stages at Blackpool in Feb 2007. We retired from that one with a shattered differential. That prompted an axle upgrade, which led to a conversion from leaf springs to a coil-over six linked setup. At the same time I was talked into upgrading the engine to a new Duratec... by my friend Paul Dunnell who builds Duratecs. In summary, the car has had a total rebuild.
Anyway, fast forwarding to January of this year, the car was just about finished and so we entered the South Downs Stages at Goodwood. We saw this as a bit of a test as its a nice smooth circuit and isn't too harsh on the cars. Net result was a DNF after stage 3 due to: running on 2 cylinders, very poor brakes, oil temperature too high, water temperature too low and a drive train vibration that was so bad I couldn't get my hand on the gear lever at over 70 mph.
So, there was a list of things to sort out - A new coil pack, new brake pads, a change of master cylinders, propshaft re-balance and a water cooled oil cooler. We did all of these things and then booked into a track day at Snetterton to give it another test. This went a lot better. We had a small problem with a fuel injection rail cracking - and the brakes still weren't that good, but it was certainly quick.
So... on to our first 'proper' event, the Malcolm Watson Spring Stages at Sculthorpe, last weekend.
In an attempt to make the brakes better (and following some good advice from some of you chaps http://www.turbosport.co.uk/showthread.php?t=142022), I replaced the EBC front brake pads with some Ferodo ones after scrutineering on the Saturday evening. This made quite an improvement. I did a few laps of the service area to try and bed them in - and then we were ready for Sunday.
I was a little cautious on the first stage, but we soon had the car sliding all over the place. Probably not the quickest way to get through the stages, but loads of fun! The brakes were working well and there was loads of power. However, halfway through the morning, while waiting between the stage arrival and the start, the throttle started to stick. The heat was getting into the throttle cable and it was going tight. A slight touch on the pedal and it would hit 5 or 6k rpm and then very gradually return back to idle. We were in 'dead time' at this point, so we pulled out of the line of cars waiting to start, opened the bonnet and let all the other cars go through. We were hoping that it would cool down a bit. By the time all the other cars had gone through it was a little bit better, but was still sticking. We did the stage anyway - and for the most part it was OK - although there were a couple of hairy moments when it stuck open going into corners. Running at the back meant we did catch quite a few cars, which was fun because we had something to aim for, but undoubtedly cost us time getting past them.
After that stage we removed one of the throttle cables (there are two) and wrapped the remaining one that wasn't sticking so much with heat reflective tape. After that it was pretty much fine.
Stages 1 to 4 were a single lap (around 7 or 8 miles I think). The surface was very abrasive concrete and we used up one set of part worn tyres on those first 4 stages. Stages 5 to 8 in the afternoon were each two laps. We put brand new tyres on before stage 5 and they were pretty well destroyed by the time we got to stage 8. We ran the last two stages with a slow puncture in one of the rears and by the time we finished there were strands of wire sticking out of the fronts.
We came away with a 3rd in class (2 seconds behind our friends the Mills brothers) and 8th overall. We had a superb day.
Our next event will be the Honington Stages, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk on the 3rd May. Just a spanner check and sorting out the throttle cables to do before then...
Here's a couple of pics.
Attached Files
Sweet car
Comment