Driftworks DW86 - AE86 of many powers and grips!

Mini update:

At BDC we stuck a GoPro pointing at one of the front struts while drifting to show the lock the new Geomaster3's have. But what the video showed that the chassis rail was flexing ALOT.

We'd already done a lot of work to strengthen the front rails when building the car, and the T45 frame was also really rigid, so it was time for some serious triangulation.

Up Top, we created a strut brace



In the wheel wells we added some T45 tube to triangulate. It goes from the old air jack mount through into the inner side of the chassis rail.


And lot's of cross bracing underneath, passing both sides of the front crossmember.

We'll stick a GoPro in the same position soon to see if it's had any effect. But more importantly! Finally a bonnet strut!!!!!


Also after round 1 we'd notice a drop in oil pressure of about 8psi. We pulled the oil pan and checked mains and big end bearings. All fine. So before we pulled the engine to investigate further we removed the intake and valley plate to see if we could see the cam bearings. We could see one of them. In fact we could see way too much of it. The bit with the small hole is the bearing and it should not be visable through this hole. It had moved forward about 10mm.



So we pulled the RHS engine and built the heads and all of the valve train onto our spare GM 454LSX steel bottom end, and fitted it back in to the car while we investigate the cam bearing issue in the RHS block.


Not ideal, but I was okay with the extra weight of the steel block going back in as I wanted to bring the weight forward in the car a little, in an attempt to fix some of the understeer issues we were suffering at Rd1.

And on that note of understeer, we changed the front tyres to some medium compound Kumho V70A's which we've had awesome results with on our track cars over the years.



One of our more recent Driftworks VLOGs shows more about all of the above including the chassis rail moving:

So if you've watched that VLOG you know that we removed the rear silencer section. I liked it so much I decided it had to be heard at Japfest Silverstone. That was very last minute, so the only change we made to the car was to the car was to go one step further with front grip as the changes we'd made with tyres and alignment had helped a lot. So we thought we'd try a pair of the new Nankang AR1's



And here's our VLOG from Silverstone / Japfest. What a fucking blast that was! 5th gear 112mph skids!

So here's a first. I broke an axle after nearly 3 years of no driveline failures!


We've got spares though luckily, and we filmed a section on the axle for this Fridays VLOG I think, so watch out for that.

And since then, all I've done is go to Vegas for my stag do, while Ross rebuilt the axle, and Craig made a solution for our new more open exhaust setup. Mega Spaghetti! & of course it's been made so we can refit the silencer section.

 

Craig & Ross fixed the axle & a few other bits while I f*cked off to Vegas with James & Al for my stag do.. Some of which we captured for the VLOG

Since I got back from Vegas we took the car to BDC Rd2 at Teeside,
I took this picture while lining up for our first run of practice on the Saturday - It's a nice picture, but the dash being in shot was useful, because at this point all is well.


We only got three runs in that practice on Saturday. But when starting the car from cold on the Sunday morning I noticed the oil pressure was about 15psi lower than it should be (It should be about 60psi cold on idle). So that was that. No point in damaging the engine.
Needless to say we're getting rather tired of this old game though. We thought we'd got to the bottom of it by changing the engine mounts. Apparently not.

We have a theory though. It's running main bearings, & there's been one remaining constant throughout all the variations of engine and dry sump components we've had in the car since it was first built: The ATI Crank damper.
We've naively looked past this every time simply because it's an ATI, and the general rule of thumb in motorsport is to either use a standard crank damper, or use an ATI.
So we think that there's a possibility that it's worn out, and this is causing huge harmonic imbalance in the crank causing it to bend & whip. We've got a new revised design ATI on the way from Bill Dailey who is behind the dry sump system & we'll be pulling the engine for a rebuild this week.
Fingers crossed.....again..... :/