The final Magic Aero Arches came through last week! They look awesome, and I love the little labeling touch! And we found a new local painter to prep and paint them in bodyshop instead of the toilet of our second unit . Looking at the quality of the 'out of the gun' finish, I think this ones a keeper! Meanwhile Craig has had the car next door again for a few days. The new Alcon clutch is in, and he's currently working on the optional rear silencers. These will not be used unless necessary. We also got the air tank back from testing. It's now filled with 4000psi. We'll find out if that's enough to lift a heavy car later!
Must have missed the post about air jacks, I'm well happy they're on there though. Might just be the angle of the photo but that rear silencer looks like the perfect spot to pick up bits of tire debris and burn nicely, just in case the tire shredding doesn't bring up the smell of burning rubber enough!
are you serious!! this thing is amazing. have you got a build cost? i cant even imagine. awesome work seriously impressed with your skills
With just five days before our first round of the season in a brand new car, we finally got to properly test the car. Of course it being a brand new very complicated build, it wasn't long until we broke it. But that's already being fixed, and over all the test session was very useful. As this video shows, if it's possible to learn to tame this wild thang, it might end up being quite competitive. Warning, it isn't a great quality video, but the soundtrack makes up for it.
Our first round of competition in the new car pretty much went as expected If there's one word I used more than any other over the weekend it was 'terrifying'. The mechanical grip this car has, combined with the short wheel base, rear biased weight distribution, and awesome Nankang NS2R tyres was more than enough to deal with. But combine all of that with the brake issues, the lack of suspension setup and my inexperience driving anything even slightly like it on a track at speed before brought it all to the next level of 'terrification' ,as I tried desperately to not put it in the gravel or the walls . The actual first ever lap in practice I unfortunately crashed into Alex Laws S14 when he span out on the top corner. It was my fault as the car had so much grip even in the wet I probably had a +15mph speed difference and couldn't stop in time. It was only a little low speed tap. My door, rear quarter and wheel are a bit worse for wear but the car still drove and looked fine from five metres away. Then we popped a seal on a brand new AP Master cylinder in the handbrake, which meant that under a certain combination of hand brake and footbrake I had no brakes at all. Completely terrifying! Mark Lappage kindly leant us a master cylinder, and that was swapped out, and the brakes worked the best they ever have after that.. So we'd done no laps in practice session one, and got about five laps in practice session two. I was really not happy with my progress 'taming the beast' but love how photos can make shit drifting look good Then during qualifying the car was drastically loosing power after 4500 rpm almost like a soft cut limiter. It turned out our posh fuel tank and the pickup for the fuel pump had been filled with crud from a jerry can that was peeling paint from the inside. Lot's of disassembling, cleaning and filtering later the car was back together, but we had damaged the filter during cleaning and it leaked. Buff and the SATS team came to the rescue, and leant us their spare Aeromotive filter with some fittings to convert to our -6AN lines! We'd qualified 12th despite some of the weakest entries I've ever made into the first corner. Craig had fixed the car, so it was time for the top 16 and our battle against Jack Shanahan. We'd set the tyre pressure low as we were expecting rain, but when warming the tyres when exiting the pits I heard an almighty and all too familiar bang as the propshaft snapped the front UJ. This is the 4th driveline failure we've had in the car, despite choosing the absolute best and strongest parts. So we're going to have to dampen engagement with a Tilton adjustable flow delay valve. I use one of these on my JZX110, and I can't even tell its there, so hopefully it wont cause us to overheat the clutch. This is the valve in my JZX110
Shame to hear about all the teething problems, but no doubt once they are all ironed out and the car is preforming at its best, it will be difficult to beat.
how much angle are you running at the front between the gearbox and prop must be something strange going on to be killing them that quickly
There's no strange angles. At ride height the prop angle is 1.5* at gearbox and differential ends. I think the issue is everything is completely solidly mounted, and the straight cut gearbox plus straight cut drop gears in the diff just add that little bit more slack than normal, so a harsh engagement in second gear at low speed with our unsprung triple clutch is like hitting the lot with a 10 ton hammer
That 2nd video is awesome, in the 1st video is the axle moving sideways or is it the tyre wall flexing?
