EDC Round two
The build up to this weekend had been relatively calm by our standards. Bon had done a demonstration in Sweden the weekend before, but his car had landed back safely with surprisingly little wrong with it. Just a new power-steering pump needed, and one of our Driftworks remote coilpacks required to cure a misfire.
Our R32 Skyline had warped the exhaust manifold, snapped four studs off in the head, and obliterated the gaskets after our drifting demo’s at Japfest, so I had that all sorted by the Thursday.
EDC round two qualification was on the Friday 1st of June at Silverstone, which happened to be my 30th Birthday, so I was hoping for a little bit more luck than at Round 1.
The first half of the practice went well for me. I have been feeling more at home in the Skyline every time I drove it, and at Silverstone’s high speed track, I felt I was drifting at least to the standard I did by the end of the 2006 season.
My pleasure was short lived though, as on my 7th run I rounded the final Luffield corner in the usual smoke screen, I lifted to slow down, and noticed the car running on 5 of it’s normal 6 cylinders. Not panicking, I returned to the pit’s and checked it out.
The catch tank was full of oil, which was reminiscent of one time I’d over-filled the oil. But I had been very careful with the levels this time, so it confused me a little. We cleaned it all out, and I removed a bit more oil to be sure.
I Went out and gave it beans up the pit lane in first gear, and my heart sank as it misfired again, and I saw smoke coming out of the bonnet. I opened it, to see the dip stick had been ejected and smoke coming from out from where the dipstick once was. That’s pretty much an instant give away to terminal engine failure. Great!
Extremely gutted, I was all set to pack up and call it a day, as to that point, my season this year had been nothing but terrible. But my good friend Steve-O, offered his S14a 200sx for me to qualify in. |After much deliberation as to whether I should risk breaking his car too, I took him up on his offer, and sat first on the start line to qualify having never driven this car before.
I basically drove the car presuming it would be like my old S14a was two years ago, and it really worked. It wasn’t massively fast, nor did it have great traction with Steveo’s part-worn tyres. But it’s an extremely well put together car, with sensible mods, and I instantly felt at home in it.. To my surprise I qualified in 8th place.
This meant that I had a mission (should I choose to accept it). The main event was on Sunday, which gave us 24 hours to find and fit a replacement engine.
Saturday 9:00am: I start ringing around local breakers.
9:50am: Find an RB25DET in Birmingham. Thank fk!
10:30am: Remove all of the wheels, tools and other crap out of the van, and go to pick up the engine.
11:00am: Arrive to pick up the engine, and find out it is an RB25DET, but it’s from a 4wd Nissan Stagea. That’s kind of cool, but meant it wasn't a straight fit.
12:30pm: After the guys at the breakers yard faffed about for ages getting bit’s off the engine before I took it, I arrived back at our workshop with engine in van, where Clarkey and Bonbon had started to remove the broken engine.
By the time it got to mid afternoon, we had Myself, James, Bonbon, Clarkey, Steve-0 and Ant all hard at work on the transfer. The old engine was out, and the new engine from the Stagea was being checked over..
4pm: First serious hurdle: The sump from the Stagea contains the front differential for the 4wd system. The normal steel RB25 sump cannot be used, as the Stage RB25 uses a bigger block.
The Stagea alloy sump is actually superior, as it holds more oil and is baffled, so the 10” angle grinder came out, and the sump was carefully hacked up to remove the diff housing and flanges, so it would clear our Crossmember on the R32.
5pm: The biggest problem: Something had happened in the time I had picked up the engine, to mean it wasn’t turning. It would do 180 degrees each way on the crank before coming to a stop. Closer investigation found that the engine had been left with no sparkplugs in, and was absolutely full of random shit that had dropped through blocking various valves.
After 2 hours of carefully using a screwdriver with grease on the end to remove bit’s of plastic through the inlet and exhaust ports, and 20 compressor loads of air gunning, it still wouldn’t turn. Drastic measures were called for!.
We wheeled the engine to the front of the workshop and out came the fire hose. The engine was subjected to a full flooding internal pressure wash, and after around 15 minutes, we finally got it to do a full rotation. Plenty of drying and about 3 litres of duck oil later, we had the engine back in the workshop ready for all it’s ancillaries to be transferred over.
Around 10pm. The complete exhaust manifold/turbo/turbo elbow combination was slotted on. The newly modified sump was re-fitted after cleaning out the oil pick-up and baffles, and the inlet manifold/plenum/rail/injector were slotted on in one piece from the old engine. Various modifications were made to account for the different cooling pipe locations on the Stagea engine.
We are now at about 1am Sunday, Bon had gone home to get some kip, and myself James, Steve-O, Clarkey and Ant were still on it. We bolted up the gearbox, and lowered it in complete. The prop was slotted in, wires connected, and the engine was lowered onto the mounts… Damn! It won’t go low enough. The sump is hitting the crossmember..
Out the lot comes again, and we set at it again with the angle grinder. We’re at about 4am by the time we have the engine and box sitting correctly in position. And we’re all really struggling with exhaustion. The gearbox, exhaust, and engine mounts were done up, and the car was lowered to the ground for it’s final bit of wiring and bolting up..
5:30am Myself Steve-O, James and Ant, had the car ready to start. We had some slightly cheaper oil in there to clear any remnants of water from the internals. The car was primed on the starter with no plugs, and gave a good 2.2bar pressure. Brilliant. Okay, so we’ll start it. 2 turns of the starter saw it burst into life with a lovely tappy noise as the hydraulic lifters struggled with not being run for ages. Oil pressure was great, and it slowly started to sound nicer. Unfortunately we then noticed a massive water leak under the car. Upon reassembly one of the braided turbo hoses had been pinched. So a new one was found from the DW stockpile, and with much swearing fitted without having to remove the turbo assembly.
Fire it up again! Shit... another water leak. One of the hoses we’d had to get creative with because of the Stagea differences hadn’t sealed properly. Never fear, Steve-O’s on the case with his sausage hands. It’s cranked up, and we start it again for the 3rd time. We had now swapped the oil out for some lovely Silkolene. Fingers crossed! It was primed again, started up, and instantly sounded absolutely awesome. The lifters had now pressurised, and she was purring like you would expect of an RB. But oh god no! as the water got up to temp, pressurised and there was another water leak. We couldn’t believe it. Absolutely knackered, we tried to find out where it was coming from.
James found it this time. It had been a case of to many cooks, and one of the water hose clips hadn’t been put onto one of the hoses right up in between the inlet manifold and plenum. It was an absolute nightmare to get to, but as we were so determined to get this done 15 minutes of battling contortionism saw this done up.
8am Sunday: The car hit the street. I blasted it up the road to see how it ran. It was absolutely superb. So she went straight onto the trailer, hooked up to the van, where I took it back to my house so I could get 15 minutes to shower and change. Then it was straight off to Silverstone.
From this point on it’s a bit of a blur really. Sleep deprivation, energy drinks and no food turned me into the walking dead. Every time I stepped into the car, I was on complete autopilot fuelled entirely by adrenalin. Every time I stepped out of the car I had to do everything I could to keep busy and not fall asleep.
Practice had gone pretty well. I’d not felt exactly on form, and I had a quick heart in throat moment when I saw the Greddy oil pressure sensor drop to zero, then seen that the Nissan gauge red fine: Phew. The car hadn’t blown up, and seemed to be back to it’s old self.
The top 16:
I’d drawn Pete Barber, who has really improved in the very short amount of time he's been driving at the top level. This certainly wasn’t an easy battle.
I’d qualified 8th and he was 9th, so it meant I lead in the first part of the battle. Some oil had been dropped on track by one of the time attackers. So loads of the white dust stuff had been laid down on the racing line. As I hit my entry point at around 100mph I went over this oil but managed to hold it together. Unfortunately Pete didn’t get through it, and span out.
The second part of the battle I followed Pete, he initiated well, and I was soon up on him. At the switch going into Luffield I’d gained way to much speed, and had to slow myself quite dramatically to avoid hitting him. It meant I held an extremely tight line with one wheel on the grass, and happily went through to the top 8.
Bonbon, had drawn Alan McCord, an S15 Silvia driver from Northern Ireland. He’s really good, and had been taking a different line into the first corner, that could have caused Bon some problems. Bon returned from his first run to hop out the car swearing about something. It appeared one of his plug leads was coming off as the engine moved from side to side under acceleration. This was problem was sorted, and he beat Alan and progressed to the top 8.
The top 8:
I drew Marciej Polody, from Poland, he had competed in the championship last year in his S14, so I new he was very good. He’d turned up with the S14 fully revamped, it looked awesome, infact, it looked pretty much identical to our Driftworks S14 last year which was a bit weird. It almost seemed like going up against myself in my semi-delirious state.
This was an epic battle. To re-call any particular part of it is almost impossible, but after two runs, the judges were undecided, so we went one more time, then after 4 runs, I thought he had me, but the judges were still undecided, so one more time again after we’d both changed tyres (many thanks to those of you that helped me out here), so the 5th run was close again, and on the 6th I rounded Luffield, and all of a sudden the windscreen was covered in oil, the car lost power, and was running on 5… This was all too familiar. I was 100% sure that Polody had beaten me this time, so in a fit of rage, I threw caution to the wind of a piston ejecting itself from the block, and saluted the crowd on the way back with a very weak rolling burnout. Returning to the startline, I resisted the urge to purposefully smash the car into a barrier. I got out, and sat with head in hands..
My self pity didn’t last too long though, as Bon was now out, up against Buff in the SVA 350z. In the warm-up run we all get before going head to head, Bon had seen the boost spike massively, and returned to the startline where we found he’d burnt a rubber hose. Parts were quickly stolen from the abandoned Skyline, and Bon was out on track again. We were all sure that after the 2 runs it would have been a one more time, as nobody could tell them apart. But the judges decided Buff was slightly better, so it was the end to Bon’s day as well as mine..
Bon finished the event in 5th place, and I finished 6th,.Which all bad luck, exhaustion and costs taken into account just about made the day worthwhile.
Results:
Winner: Marciej Polody
2nd: Brett Castle
3rd Mark Luney
4th Tony Green
5th Ben Broke-Smith
6th Phil Morrison
7th Ian Harrison
8th Niall Gunn
Congrats to Maciej Polody, you were on fire dude!, Great to see you back in the UK.
Regarding the 2 broken RB25DET’s, we’ll be cracking the 2nd one apart to see the cause of the failure, but my money is on a partially blocked fuel injector in cylinder number 1.. This was transferred from the first broken engine to the second along with the complete plenum, and obviously we didn’t have time to flow test them….. Balls..
The biggest most humongus thanks has to go to these people, who all made it possible for me to get to the main event on Sunday. I love you all guys, in a manly non bum sex type of way.
In no particular order:
James, Steve-O, Ant, Clarkey, Bonbon, and anyone else that helped at all. Even if it was just entertaining my delirious ramblings in the pit garage, or consoling me when the 2nd engine died. I am lucky to have made such a brilliant group of friends through this sport. I simply couldn’t do what I do without your support.
Phil Xx
