Race Car
|
|
|
Our car for the Max5 race series 2004. The car is a 1990 Eunos Roadster with the early 'short crank' engine. It has done 125,000km. We struggled to get it ready for the first race at Pembrey on 15th May. We stripped the interior of carpets and most trim, removed the soft top and frame, removed the electric window motors and the side windows from the doors and also removed the boot trim, spare wheel etc. We didn't have time to remove much else, so we entered the first race with a lot of performance-sapping stuff still on the car, eg. the cat, a/c, heater, power steering, headlamp motors, etc. Here's some pictures of the car in Japan:
Here's the engine compartment at the start of preparation, also here's the cockpit stripped out. We've welded in one of the roll cage mounts on the inner sill. The ignition barrel has been removed but not disconnected yet. We will put the stalks back on so we have indicators, sidelights and wipers. We need to make a panel to go in the radio hole for the cut off and extinguisher switches. In the picture of the right hand B-post area, the hood drains have been removed and plates welded in to mount the rear of the cage. The angled mount welded to the rear bulkhead is for the r/h door bar.
First race - Pembrey, we made it. We put the stickers on at the circuit after doing the bare minimum to get the car race ready. For the Pembrey races the car still had fully functioning a/c, PAS, headlights, air filter, etc. It also still had the original exhaust complete with catalytic convertor. I don't know the power output, but would guess it to be some way off the better prepared cars. That's my excuse anyway. It's looking a bit more like a racing car in the following pictures. I fitted on my Voodoo gearknob which has to be worth 10bhp. Note that there is not much room between the steering wheel and the roll cage with the standard Momo wheel, so I'll be swapping that for a smaller one when I can.
Here's a picture taken by Paul Wingfield (James Wingfield's dad) of the car during the Sunday race. Full details of the two Pembrey races are on the www.max5racing.com web site, unfortunately complete with timesheets showing just how far off the pace I was...
Between Pembrey and Snetterton we did a fair bit of work to the car, getting it all stickered up, removing the cat, a/c, pas (we swapped the rack for a manual one), fitted a K&N panel filter, advanced the timing to 14 deg, and did the alignment done so that all the wheels pointed in approximately the same direction. The car recorded 92bhp at 6,400rpm at the wheels on the rolling road. Note in the view from above the left hand light cover is partly raised, just 5mm or so, this makes a big difference to the performance on the track with the standard air intake, in that it doesn't tail off after about 4 laps as the underbonnet temp gets up. Sadly this mod is not allowed, so we're rigging up a bit of ducting to pick up air from under the front of the car instead.
Snetterton was not a huge success, qualified 15th out of 15 and spun on the first lap of the race <insert some excuse about cold tyres, handling problems, etc.>. I never managed to catch up with the rest after that. I didn't get lapped this time though which is something. The car felt a lot quicker though, so the missing time will have to be found by improving the driver and losing the excess 50kg from the car. After Snetterton we made up a straight through exhaust as ours seemed to be the quietest car by some way. We took it up to Mallory Park for a track day but were sent home after 4 laps as the new exhaust was too loud. It didn't even sound very nice, sort of rasping and horrid. So now we have to add in some sort of silencer before the next race at Anglesey the first weekend of July. Anglesey 3rd and 4th July 2004. We put in a cherry bomb silencer but it was still too loud so I had to make a quick trip over to Demon Tweeks on the morning of the Anglesey test day (the Friday before the meeting). We popped a Supertrap on the end of the exhaust which quietened it down although it made it sound very strangled and rasping. At the test day I was doing 1:02 laps at first, improving to 0:59 by the end of the day. I swapped cars with Gordon Harding (the yellow #11 car) for a little while, I was slightly quicker in his car than in mine, despite the low seating position (I had to use a cushion as his seat was bolted to the floor unlike mine which uses the standard runners). He was just as quick in my car as he was in his own (in the region of 2secs quicker than me) so that suggests that I can't be blaming the car for my poor performance any more. ho hum, can't be the driver, surely?... James Wingfield also had a go in my car at the test day (and surprised a couple of the other MaX 5'ers out testing as they thought I was driving ;-)). He came back and told me that my right rear damper was set too soft, I hadn't noticed - it would probably take a completely flat tyre before I noticed that much was amiss to be honest. The dampers have 22 settings and James said that it was either set to about 5 or it was broken. We checked and sure enough, it was on 6. The Saturday race saw me qualify last on the grid and finish last, although I was quite chuffed not to have been lapped in what was another close fought race at the front with Christian Dick beating James Wingfield by a nose. I think I managed to hang on to the back of the pack for a few laps, I was close enough to get the screen cracked by a flying stone at one point. Sunday I qualified in last place as well and thanks to a couple of spins by other cars I was even running in a place other than last for a while. I managed to spin as soon as someone caught up with me though - too busy looking in the mirrors instead of watching the track. Got lapped on the last lap, finished last. |
