The new injectors have been ordered, the tail shaft has been dropped off to be modified to fit the new gearbox output spline size and the new motor has had all of my pieces bolted back onto it.
Progress is slow, but its still progress…
The gearbox shifter is going to be in a different position to the previous gearbox, so I also need to modify my remote shifter too…. yah….
Simon from GTI Performance has kindly let me borrow an engine to finish the year off.
This motor is a proper race motor (compared to mine that had standard insides). With the extra power that it can make, it also means a stronger gearbox, which he has also lent me – problem is that it won’t fit inside the transmission tunnel as it is now – time to cut that one out of the car and make a wider tunnel… It has different gear ratios too, so I need to swap over to a different diff ratio too – just another job for the weekend…
Its going to be a hard week – I apologize in advance for being so tired and grumpy!
Sadly, it was another injector seal failure that cause the engine explosion. Even worse was that it did this in practice, so I never got a timed run to see what she would do.
It filled the cylinder with enough fuel to hydraulic lock it, causing the connecting rod to exit out of the side of the engine block, in no less than 4 separate pieces.
My engine is not supposed to have a ventilation hole here… 😦
The fuel tank as now been re-configured and now has a roll-over vent (the blue tube) and a fuel gauge (the silver circle cap) installed. The roll-over vent is a special little valve that shuts the vent off if the car is upside down. Without this, if the car is upside down the fuel will all drain out of the vent line – leaking fuel is not something that you want to add to a crash big enough to put you on your roof.
Its now also got a fuel level sender in it, so that I can see on the dash how much fuel is in the car. The last fuel tank had one in it, that I used a lot. For this year, I’ve not had one and I don’t like it as I’m never 100% sure what fuel is in the car. So for must runs, I’ve had too much fuel in the car as I didn’t want to risk running out mid run. I’ve now got it all configured so that I know how much is in there down to 0.1 of a litre :). I don’t need it that precise, but I could, so……
Then started work on getting the windows ready to fit to the car.
The window trim has been glued to the window and the whole thing glued onto the car.
There is still some work left to do… 
Got a bunch of other little bits cleaned up and fitted back onto the car. The bigger items left that have to be done are the rear window, floor and wheels.
I’d still also like to do a lot of other performance enhancing things as well though. It’s going to be a long week.
So, after Jacks hill rear window explosion, the first priority was to make a new screen.
I started with a spare glass window, and waxed it and covered it with mold release agent. Then put two layers of fibreglass on it, plus some extra ridges for strength (The T part in the picture).
It turned out quite well, and at 2.6kg its a lot lighter than the glass (9kg).
Also did some more work on the rear 1/4 windows. Here is on still with the primer/filler on it.
And the second one with its first coat of black.
After a couple of days letting it dry, started working on finishing the rear window. Here its 1/2 sanded down, to get rid of some tiny imperfections in it. I’m new at this fiber glassing thing and learnt a lot doing this window – I learnt how NOT to do a lot of things.
I also made a start on making a mold to make some NACA ducts (low drag cooling duct inlets). This will possibly only make sense to people once I’ve finished the part. About another month….
I made a throttle return stop too. Previously it was moving back to far, making it hard to quickly transition from the brake back to the gas.
Then drilled some holes in the door and mounted the mirrors.
Then got back onto the angle grinder to cut more bits off the back of the car. The shrapnel on the floor shows the small bits that are coming off now – all the big bits are gone….
Just over a week until the car needs to be finished, hmmmm………
Started with the passenger side glass and some 12mm square alloy tube. After some bending, twisting, some head scratching, more twisting and more bending, we have the first part of a new window frame.
Made up a second piece to complete the frame, then had to work out how to mount them to the existing door.
I drilled and tapped a piece of plate, welded that to the door, then the alloy bolts onto that. Makes it nice and strong, put still light.
Then needed to work out the same thing for the front mount.
The pieces of the frame welded up, and mounted to the car.
Next job is to make the Lexan window, then bolt that to the frame.
The next event is at Collie on the 19th – 21st Oct. It is being run as a round of the Speed Event Series and a round of the Australia Sprint Series, a national event.
Its going to be interesting going up against some of the top cars from the eastern states.
So, I’ve got a list of things that I want to improve on the car before then.
The first of these is working out what to do with the rear window (as its now in a million pieces…). I could get a Lexan one molded, but long term I want to put the 180sx rear end on it, and as its a different window I don’t want to pay $300 for a window that will be useless at the end of the year.
So, as one of the rear 1/4 windows is still glass, I thought I’d try something to replace that with fiber glass, then if that works ok I’ll do the same with the rear window.
Here is one of the two that I made. Its been roughly sprayed with undercoat, which I’ll be sanding smooth and then painting it gloss black.
Panel sitting on the car.
Once I’ve painted it I’ll put the factory window trims back on too.
They are looking good so far, so assuming that these turn out ok then I’ll do the same for the back window. As I won’t be able to see out the back any more, I’ll remove the interior mirror and put the external mirrors back on the car. The inside mirror was of limited use anyway as the rear wing blocks off most of your rear vision anyway.
Other jobs were taking more weight out – again…..
I trimmed up the insides of the passenger door and also took out the power windows and the glass. Then painted the insides of the frame black over where I ground and sanded off the metal. Will make a lexan window for this side.
Then I started on the insides of the rear, around the windows and roof areas. I had roughly cut the metal out from the inside, but never nicely cleaned it all up. So that was the first job. I then cut out the rear wheel wells and cleaned up all around those areas. A bit more to go to clean these up, hopefully this afternoon….
Other items on the list:
And that’s just the big jobs…..
Last weekend was the hillclimb at Jack’s Hill. This is a place that’s not been kind to me in the recent past, and I was really hoping for a change in luck.
Practice was OK. I took it easy, just getting the tyres cleaned up, and everything warmed up.
Run 1, started OK, but turning into the top part of the circuit there was a bang from the rear of the car, then turning into the next left got a big slide going…. Great I though either flat tyre or broken suspension, and I’ve not even finished a timed run. The curse strikes again.
Pulled off the track, drove back to the finish and parked it. Got out expecting to see the right rear flat or hanging out… Nope, that looks OK.
Hmmm, the rear window is gone…..
The rear tyres are covered in glass, explains why it was slippery…
So, after cleaning up all the glass, from the track, and from the back of the car, was ready to try again.
Next run, slow but at least I made it. Crossing the finish line at speed felt like winning the world championship! Maybe the curse is dead?
Next run was better, a lot more commitment, 2 seconds faster. Two runs in a row without a failure!!!
Run 4, pushed harder again, another 3 tenths faster.
Run 5, time for a real all or nothing run. Was going faster until about half way through.
There is part of the course between a fast right corner and the left hairpin. Each run I’ve been wanting to punch the throttle between the two corners, just didn’t think it was possible.
Run 5, being the all or nothing run, was the perfect time to try it. Well, as it turns out, you can’t. Ran wayyyyy wide at the hairpin, loosing all the time that I’d made up, ohh well….
So after a poor start, ended up 1st in class, first tin top, 4th outright and a new class record for the track, so not a bad day in the end.
A mixed day, 3rd outright and 1st in class (and first tin top) was a very good result, but had two incidences of the injector o-rings coming off again 😦
Fixed it once, then got a run in before it did it again. So the day ended early, but the lap was good enough. On the last run that I did (when it broke) the handling was much better – so there was more time in it…
As is the way with me, after having plenty of time to get the car ready for Waneroo, I’ve now run out of time again. All because of the addiction of going faster….
On previous events, the air intake temperature (temp of air going into motor) was much higher than what you want to see. There were two possible reasons for it – One was that I’d not made any ducting to force more air through the intercooler, and secondly that the air filter is in a location near the exhaust, and I never got around to finishing the box around it to keep the hot exhaust air away from it. The ducting into the intercooler is done and pending time over the next few nights, I want to re-locate the air filter as well, to put it in a better location (hindsight is a wonderful thing :))
Looking into the duct.
From the side.
Next on the list was to make some improvements to the drivers door. One is due to the fact that I’ve cut so much out of it that its really floppy now, and doesn’t want to shut very well. The second one is to make it a little bit safer. While I know that its a bit late to have come to this realization, but my recent overnight trip to Sydney made me think out things a bit different. Sophie was very upset because I was not there to read her a story and say goodnight, and by the time that I got out of the presentation that I went to they were already asleep. I’ve never really worried about me dying, and I never really thought that the kids would miss me that much – I’m at work for most of the time that they are awake. So I guess as I’m more important to them (than I am to myself) I really need to spend some more time making the car as safe as it can be in an accident. So to stop the floppy door syndrome, and to make it safer in a side impact the door is now filled with 120mm thick foam across the whole door, and there is now an internal skin that is a lot more structural than the standard door trim. The idea is that in a side impact, the foam in the door crushing against the roll-cage will absorb some of the impact, rather than the metal skin of the door just instantly crushing. Hopefully I never have to test it out, but if I do, at least I’ve done all that I can to make it safer.
The door weighs in at 15kg though – not too happy about that. The next version needs to be safe, but lighter 🙂
The reflections from the inner skin make it look all warped…
The skin is rolled over at the top – again no sharp corners are safer…
I finished off the passenger side of the rear diffuser (aerodynamics) so the outer strakes are finished now (apart from paint). At some point I need to make one or two more strakes for the middle section.
JC asked me the other day as to what was inside of the lower A-Pillar section of the car. I didn’t know, but its been on the list of things to remove from the car for some time, so I cut it open to see what was in there. The answer is not much……..
And it only took about 900 grams out of the car 😦 So JC, the answer is very little!
After that it was a lot of items that were not really photo worthy – like changing spark plugs, changing the diff oil, putting a new battery in, cleaning the inside of the car, re-assembling the removable firewall section, putting the rear window back in, putting the front bumper and fenders on, putting the new fire ext in, etc, etc, etc……
Last night I had to change the oil in the car, so I either needed to cut a hole in the floor or take the floor off (the floor completely covers the bottom of the motor, where you drain the oil out of). So I undid the bolts holding the floor on, but the floor also attaches to the front bumper. Then it was either take the 8 bolts off that hold the fenders and bumpers on, or the 12+ screws and glue that hold the floor to the front splitter. So funnily enough it was easier to just take the whole front off the car…..
And this is what you are left with. A front end in one piece (sort of). The next project that I want to do it to take a mold of this whole front and make a one piece fibreglass end for it. The parts here are heavy in most cases, and that whole thing weighed a lot more than I was expecting.
So I’ll see how I go after waneroo as to if I can get a start on this one piece front clip.
Another angle:
Got all the injectors and parts back in the car last night, and got it run up on the dyno.
Its still running, and still producing the same peak power, so it’s looking like I got lucky and the motor has not been destroyed.
While its a good thing, I was liking the idea of putting something different in, like a Nissan VK56 motor…..
The jobs for today were supposed to be putting more of car back together. That was too boring so I started pulling more things apart instead.
One of the first things was to pull out the accelerator pedal and make some changes to it. The pedals that I build were quite close together, as there is limited foot space with the motor pushed back so far. I have now had 3 cases where I’ve hit the accelerator with the side of my foot when going for the brake – the worst one at wanneroo at 190km/hr that made me run off the track, over the sand and almost into the wall, were it not for a rally style flick in the dirt to get the car to turn parallel to the wall, just before I was going to hit it.
So, the pedal came out and I modified it to move it further to the right, away from the brake. As it turns out, there was plenty of space left in this area so it was an easy change.
Next, I was supposed to finish cleaning out the inside of the car – that was too boring so I cut the drivers side door up and made a lexan (plastic) window instead. The door is now 1/2 the weight that it was. I still need to fill it with foam and make an inner panel for it (for crash protection)
Its not perfect, the next one needs to be better, but I did learn a lot from it.
This is the new door opener. Nice light bit of alloy. The same handle can be used from inside and outside of the car.
Next on the list was to clean up all the wiring and other items under the dash, and make a new mount to hold the center console, as the dash cover is now gone. But again that wasn’t sounding too interesting, so I made more changes to the rear aerodynamics – difuser strakes.
For the rear difuser to work well, it needs to have the airflow in it flowing in a nice straight line. Things like rear wheels spinning nearby hurt this airflow, meaning that you don’t get the same levels of downforce. On this years car I had not got as far as making these, so I started.
Looking from the side of the car, this fence keeps the air inside the tunnel separate from the swirling air that’s exiting behind the rear wheels. The cut-out behind the wheel is to get the air that’s being picked up from the back edge of the tyre from being pushed up into the top of the wheel arch – creating lift – which is bad for aero performance.
From underneath the car you can see the fence that’s separating the tyres from the tunnel.
Once I have a setup that I am happy with the performance of, I’m going to make a fibreglass version out of a single piece, to make sure that its all smooth. Having rivets etc sticking out is not good for air flow.
Some more veiws, this first one from the rear of the car looking at the tunnel to the back of the rear tyre.
Another side view
After that the night was getting on, the F1 race had finished and it was time to leave the shed and go to bed. That was lucky, cause next on the list was some more boring stuff!
Didn’t get much car time today, just did some work cleaning up inside the rear of the car.
Popped the rear window out to make it a bit easier to work on. Then there was lots of grinding and sanding to clean up all of the rough cutting that I did when tubing the rear of the car, then ran out of time to finish it off nicely.
Then, while the grinder was out, I cut off the rear guards and bumper getting reading for finishing the aero on the rear of the car – around the diffuser. These cut sections will meet into the side strakes of the difusser – this will make more sense when its done and I take a picture of it 🙂
When the rear is done, it will look something like this on the sides:
A quick video from under the bonnet of the car at Jack’s Hill. This is the run where the car stopped 😦
http://members.iinet.net.au/~mikejoss/Run1.avi
Still, its interesting to look at the tyres and suspension working.
Hillclimb at Jack’s hill last weekend, did a practice run, talking it a bit easy, just putting heat into everything. First timed run ended about 1/2 way through with a bad miss-fire and then the motor stopped and locked solid. 😦
Couldn’t get it to start again, motor would not turn over by hand either. Not a good sign…
Packed it onto the trailer and took it home. At home discovered the 4th cylinder was full of fuel. Removing the injectors show that the bottom o-ring has failed, allowing fuel to fill the cylinder. As the RPM was very low when it stopped, the motor may be ok, but there is a chance that its bend a rod. Compression tests fine, so at this stage I’m just hoping its ok.
I’ve ordered new o-rings for all injectors, and I’m getting them tested while they are out to make sure they are all ok and are flowing evenly.
When the injectors come back I’ll chuck them back in and she’ll go on the dyno and we’ll see if it’s ok, or if it blows up…
I’ve cut up the old steering column and re-made it. The angles on the uni joints are now equal, so it should take out the harder to turn spots as you go from lock to lock. Should lead to steering that feels more comfortable for me – and that confidence = speed. :). In rotating the front wheels by hand, the steering wheel now spins at a constant speed – before you could see the wheel accelerate, then slow, then accelerate again.
Its just all tacked together at the moment, need to get more gas for the welder to continue… Also want to put the car back on the ground and test it under load to make sure that I’ve got it right this time.
Also got one of the fibreglass front guard mounted on the car. With white front guards she’s looking like a real bunky now 🙂
The rest of the weekend was moving rocks, mowing lawns, gardening, making cages for animals, cleaning up / cutting up old metal around the place (ok, around the shed) ready for a trip to the scrap metal yard to get rid of it all.
Mike Joss Racing 