The buggy thread

[OilyFingers]

Well done that man. Do you have a pilots licence for that buggy?

[Rippthrough]

Well, after thinking we'd cured the misfire with a new throttle pot, it's now back with a vengance, but in a different spot - at a guess we've been unlucky and had two problems, not one, which is why it's seemed so random! Anyway, we've stripped it all back down for a check over and I've just dropped the injectors off at a local garage for checking and cleaning - hopefully it's one of those - if not I'm stumped!

Anyway, we have had some good news in that the generous lads at Opie Oils have offered us some sponsorship by way of a lovely discount on oil/fluids/spark plugs, etc, which is much appreciated, being on a shoestring budget a little help on the consumables should hopefully go a long way towards modifications for more speed out of the old girl, so I'd like to say a big thanks to them
You never know, we might be able to afford a bacon butty each at the weekends shortly instead of sharing one

[Rippthrough]

Sorted the misfire with the new throttle pot + new leads

Unfortunately, tracking is a bit out...

[Rippthrough]

Whoops, missed out on an update on here, anyway, the engine lost about 100bhp after cracking a side seal due to the earlier misfires, so we laid her up and put the engine on the bench to strip down at some point in the future.

We sourced an RX8 series 2 engine about a month later but all the oil systems/water circuit/sump/oil filter/pulleys/timing, etc was all different, so we've spent the past month modifying the car to get it to fit.
Fired it up for the first time last night but it needs a new throttle pot (doesn't fit properly on the new engine), and several other bits and bobs, and some testing.
Unfortunately, the next race is this weekend!

So if anyone's bored this week, bring your spanners up here...

[dhutch]

Sounds like utter maddness!

Just skimed the thread but its something i would be very interested in getting into, ive done greenlanding and pay&play days with landrovers which was good but a bit slow and heavy, im currently doing fast road driving and trackdays with an old westfeild which is fun but a bit clean.


Daniel

[Rippthrough]

I don't think you'll regret it, it's dirty, and tiring, but bloody hilarious.
There are plenty of VW-engined chenoworth/warrior frames lurking about in old barns around the country which are cheap to get hold of, OK, they won't be the fastest car there, but if you put the work into keeping it reliable you can score a lot of points (if our competitors had finished every race this year they'd be so far ahead we'd have no chance, even with winning our class in the ones we finish).

We didn't make it in time for the last event (only waiting on a new throttle pot), so now we're only 1 point in front in our class, gonna be down to the wire on the last event, and we've not tested this engine yet!

[dhutch]

Fair enough. Are there any forums/websites I should be looking at? What exactly is the sport called? Presumably something fractionally more specific than 'buggy racing' is required to find anything useful.

Are there local clubs? Competition details?


Daniel

[Rippthrough]

There's a few championships you can run in, main ones are:

BCCC - British Cross Country Championships.
SCCC - Scottish Cross Country Championships.
AWDC - All Wheel Drive Club.
NORC - Northern Off Road Club.
SCOR - Southern Counties Off Road.

Pretty self explanatory, they all run slightly different regulations so there's no hierarchy as such, the BCCC is the most publicised as it's the MSA recognised 'top' series for competitive safaris (which is the event type), the AWDC is generally considered the feeder series for them, but as they all do different venues, you tend to find that people just enter whichever depending upon the type of venue they prefer, the BCCC run all-terrain tyres and tend towards smoother tracks, the AWDC run mud-terrain tyres and run on rougher events, but the average speeds still end up similar because of the extra grip available (and the A/T tyres are more of a disadvantage for 2wd vehicles in the BCCC).

Try here for info:

http://www.awdc.co.uk
http://www.marches4x4.co.uk
http://www.norc.org.uk
http://www.madlandy.freeforums.org (forum for 'em all)

Probably the cheapest cars to start with are either LR 90's for the production/modified production class, or the 2wd buggies the same as ours.

[Rippthrough]

One very s*it, wet and very slippy event today - complete with wet grass, mud, sheeps*it and peat bogs that you could have stood in and just dissapeared downwards with a slurping noise.
Crap course for a 2wd car, but there was a lovely bit of gravel near the start that we made some time up on, so we ended up 10th overall, had a puncture on run one which mean we had to put old knackered tyres on which didn't help.
Still, no other 2wd even managed to get around a single lap, never mind the full race, so we won our class by a long way and have won our 2wd championship class by over 100 points.

[Rippthrough]

Of to Curborough on Saturday with her, anyone else going?

[Rippthrough]

[Renrut]

Did things go all pear shaped after that last photo?

It looks like it was still running off road tyres?

[Rippthrough]

Oh yes, still on big knobbly tyres, things didn't go pear shaped, that's how it normally corners

In fact, here's the suspension cam from that run:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSjgk2R0Mw4

[Rippthrough]

Well, due to having 4 million other things to do we didn't actually get the new trailing arms on in time, although we mounted the new, wider tyres and new rear dampers, plus some modified fronts, and bled the new cooling system through - just about managed to throw the car back together by 5:30pm on Saturday, and head off to Walters Arena for the first event.
Haven't even got this years stickers yet so had to make some temporary numbers up from electrical tape too
Got there at 9.30 after traffic from hell, went to sleep, up at 5:30 and walked around 7.5 miles of muddy Welsh hills

Not the best thing to do in a morning before the racing! Cue two knackered northerners running around like nutters trying to unpack the car, get setup, scrutineered and signed on in the 30 minutes before the drivers briefing....

In a shocking distortion of reality it was actually bloody sunny in Wales for once, which dried most of the standing water up pretty quickly, so apart from going steady for a few laps due to rough riding and a horrible knocking noise, the car ran well all day, no trouble with traction, although it could do with a gear between 2nd and 3rd on some of the steeper uphill slogs!

The horrible noise and rough riding was due to throwing the torsion bars back on in a rush on Saturday and the car sitting on it's suspension like a stilt walker - the rear was running on the droop stops, but altering it would have taken far too long and the new dampers were keeping it in check enough to give us another 1st in class and 7th overall. No problems with the car for once* so we'll get the new suspension on for the next event (Waterbeach) and spend some time setting it up properly. Hopefully we might achieve our aim of a top 5 overall finish this year, it wasn't far away this time.
The good news is the new dampers on the rear and the revamped fronts have got the car handling jumps and ditches far better, I might do a little tweak to the rears but even I'll be struggling to make them much better now, without fabricating some 2/3 way adjusters for them - I'm thinking about it....

Some more good news came over the weekend as Tom from Gripper gave us a ring, who has one of the old differentials to look at with the aim of having a plate-type limited slip made, and after some studying he thinks it's definately possible to drop a unit in that's robust enough for our abuse, so we should have that soon, for some much needed traction
I think that'll have to go in during the summer break when there's a free month between races so we can take our time to build a good gearbox up out of all our spares.

So, a good start to the season with 100pts in the bag, here's hoping the rest goes as well and we can concentrate on making the car faster rather than repairing it for a change!





**Well, apart from catching a car up, hitting the horn, and the car in front promptly rolling over onto it's roof....cue muggins here running up a welsh hillside in overalls and helmet waving like a nutter to attract a marshall.
I know the horn is pretty loud, but I didn't think it was enough to make a whole car jump...


Piccy of Ed taking a friend of ours for a run:



Look, sunshine, in Wales!
Good old G1 on the windscreen keeping the shit off nicely too!

[Rippthrough]

Got some photo's from the last event of 2010 at Ebbw vale, need to set the scanner up so for now you'll have to put up with photographs of photo's