[misc_work] Still Nothing To Do With 205's...

[Rippthrough 98]

Sorry its off topic but,

 

Thats one way of building up your post count

 

[Rippthrough 98]

[Rippthrough 98]

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!

 

Anyway, we have had some good news in that the generous lads at Opie Oils have offered us some sponsorship by way of a lovely discount on oil/fluids/spark plugs, etc, which is much appreciated, being on a shoestring budget a little help on the consumables should hopefully go a long way towards modifications for more speed out of the old girl, so I'd like to say a big thanks to them

You never know, we might be able to afford a bacon butty each at the weekends shortly!

[Rippthrough 98]

Well, we sorted the misfire!

 

But had a slight issue with the tracking...

 

[GeorgeXS 32]

Haha, just a smidge of toe out there

[lukesaddy 0]

looks a bit of a beast mate, the noise it makes in that vid is immense, is it a handful to drive ?

[Rippthrough 98]

looks a bit of a beast mate, the noise it makes in that vid is immense, is it a handful to drive ?

 

 

Depends what you hit and what speed your going when you hit it

 

She is a bit lairy, yes.

[Rippthrough 98]

Sorted the misfires, lost compression on one rotor instead, doh!

 

Think running on the misfiring engine to finish at Baden Hall has perhaps chipped/cracked a seal.

[James_m 0]

What happened to the bmw v10? Or was I dreaming....

[welshpug 1,621]

:doh! repairable?

 

V10 is the next car...

[Rippthrough 98]

What happened to the bmw v10? Or was I dreaming....

 

 

New car that one, for Guy though (Ed's brother) as a bit of a halo car as part of the business, it's stopped for a while as we still haven't got the bloody new cnc machines in the workshop.

 

 

This ones just between me and Ed, our little scrapyard hobby car

Edited July 25, 2010 by Rippthrough

[Rippthrough 98]

One very s*it, wet and very slippy event today - complete with wet grass, mud, sheeps*it and peat bogs that you could have stood in and just dissapeared downwards with a slurping noise.

Crap course for a 2wd car, but there was a lovely bit of gravel near the start that we made some time up on, so we ended up 10th overall, had a puncture on run one which mean we had to put old knackered tyres on which didn't help.

Still, no other 2wd even managed to get around a single lap, never mind the full race, so we won our class by a long way and have won our 2wd championship class by over 100 points.

Edited October 24, 2010 by Rippthrough

[Anthony 1,000]

so we won our class by a long way and have won our 2wd championship class by over 100 points. :thumbsup

Congratulations! Not bad for a "scrapyard car" as you so lovingly refer to it....

[Rippthrough 98]

Congratulations! Not bad for a "scrapyard car" as you so lovingly refer to it....

 

 

You didn't see us beating the wheels back into shape with a big sledgehammer earlier

She's definately a scrapyard car! Still funny as fook to drive though!

 

 

Give her a wash, swap some knackered old tyres on there, sort a few niggles we had, and stick her back on the trailer ready to play at Curborough!

Edited October 24, 2010 by Rippthrough

[welshpug 1,621]

bloody typical, closest event I could get to and I was up in the Hope Valley

 

well done on the result

[Rippthrough 98]

'S alright, we're back there next year.

Hopefully this time going downhill on the muddy bit and uphill on the gravel, as the other way around is slippier than a greased weasel.

[Rippthrough 98]

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

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....

 

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 a unit 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...

 

 

Piccy of Ed taking a friend of ours for a run:

 

 

Look, sunshine, in Wales!

Good old G1 on the windscreen keeping the s*it off nicely too!

[Rippthrough 98]

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 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.

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.

Edited April 5, 2011 by Rippthrough

[Rippthrough 98]

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 fabbed ally brackets to save weight will be appearing through the year after a bit of practice, hopefully!

[Rippthrough 98]

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:

 

 

:hehe:

 

 

Got a final review on the Carbotech XP8 brake pads here too I wrote for another forum, in case someone is looking around for pads:

 

- Initial bite and outright power has been the most consistant (and the highest) of any pad I've ever tried on the car.

- No hint of fade even with the discs glowing red (we use steering brakes' date=' so the inside wheel gets the brake dragging all the way through a corner after braking)

- No undo squealing, in fact, they've been completely silent.

- Modulation and feedback has been good too - it's not often you can consistantly hold a car on the point of lockup even over rough and changing terrain/grip levels, we reeled so many cars in on the brakes last year I thought about sticking a 'Gone Fishing' sign on the car.

 

 

- Pad and disc wear is exceptional, I know the pads are a touch more money than most of the competition (although Ian is kindly providing us with some discount to help us out :smthumbup), but the pads have lasted 9 events, 10 test sessions, and a trackday. They'd probably do another 1/2 events if needed.

Previous set of race pads lasted an event and a half, and ate a set of discs every other event.

Disc wear on XP8's is so low I haven't even been able to measure it!

 

- Work superbly even in cold water and mud - not often a race pad can cope with cold water and a bit of mud, nice to see these held up.

 

Downsides?

Well, unless they're a bit dusty (pass, wheels are filthy 10s after the start anyway), none, absolutely nothing, bar the steering brakes make them wear a bit faster than the ones up front (which are still only 1/4 worn).

 

So, this weekend, out went the XP8's and in went these, XP10's.

 

[img']http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Rippthrough/XP10.jpg[/img]

 

 

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

 

 

That'd be, errr, none then.

 

 

 

Just about ready to give it a quick run in the morning to bed the brakes in and then load up and head to Waterbeach, it's on the barracks/airfield if anyone fancies coming to watch on Sunday, or I can offer a lift down with us @ 11am tommorow.

[Rippthrough 98]

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 hehe

 

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.

 

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

[Rippthrough 98]

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 another 20mm of 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 warm.

 

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

[shalmaneser 26]

I demand more pics!

 

This is a great thread, sorry to hear about the throttle cable!

[Rippthrough 98]

Think there were a few taking pictures/video of us jumping an army bailey bridge so I should have some shortly, I hope.

[Rippthrough 98]