The buggy thread

[Renrut]

Do you need power steering on that? Surely it doesn't have that much weight over the front or is it just to make it easier to drive in rough conditions?

Sounds to me that if you can sort the packaging out, wishbones is a no brainer. A 10kg weight saving and far better body control would make it far more controllable and thus quicker with the added benefit of handling jumps a better.

[Rippthrough]

Do you need power steering on that? Surely it doesn't have that much weight over the front or is it just to make it easier to drive in rough conditions?

It almost takes your thumbs off from the impacts in the rough stuff when it's not working!
The steering is more than light enough usually but the power steering is there to deal with the shock loadings.
It does want the wishbones really, but we're getting up in the championship from consistant finishes at the moment, so I'm a bit hesitant to start chopping it around mid-season

[Rippthrough]

Still having issues with the scanner so had to resort back to taking pictures of pictures again...hence the flare from the lights (and the cut off top on one, whoops!
I've only took a few of them, I'll get some more pictures up when the scanner is sorted out, the rest are more of the same - most of the wheels in the air as per usual

All from Walters or Waterbeach.

[Rippthrough]

That busy posting video and pictures I forgot to list the results. 1st in class again (in fact the only 2wd that finished), 7th overall in the awdc results, and, because we've been fairly consistant in pace through the events, we're now 3rd overall in the championship. Long way to go yet but we're hoping if we can hold off on the big upgrades whilst winter (new front suspension in the works) and just concentrate on current suspension setup and reliability mods, then we might be able to hold station there and end up with a podium, with a lot of luck.

[scooby doo mode]
Would have been second if it weren't for that pesky throttle cable!
[/scooby doo]

[Rippthrough]

Right, had the rear dampers apart and put in some more low speed rebound - to compensate for the friction lost with the new rear suspension - and also put some more compression damping in the range for landing over jumps, as it's a touch soft at the back at the minute. Sounds simple but it was a pain in the arse trying to keep the rest of the settings similar so I didn't cock up the traction and handling improvements made with them previously! :hehe:
See how it fairs this time out - probably tweak the fronts a bit to match but we'll see how it goes first.

Two new aluminium plates ordered for the sump and gearbox guards too as we've worn a hole in them...
And two new mudguards, give the hole in the rear one from firing a rock through it off the rear tyre, and the post incident with the front one!

[Rippthrough]

Killed it, engine's dropped compression.

[tommi]

ahhhhhh shucks!

hope you can rebuild it for not too much money

[Rippthrough]

Unfortunately just the kit of seals, springs, tips, gaskets and o-rings is nigh on a grand to rebuild it, n'mind uprating the part that has died, so I think that's our season over unless we can drop on an engine dirt-cheap

[Rippthrough]

Well, managed to drop on a slightly damaged bare engine block cheap, built up the engine from parts off the others and got it running, but work stopped play so we missed an event, which dropped us from 2nd to 7th in the championship

Got to one this weekend at sevenoaks however we had a few issues again, that's what you get when you've not got anywhere big enough to test it - car misfiring badly when it got warm, which meant we took a maximum penalty time early on for not completing a stage.
Think it was down to a couple of failing coils, however, we didn't have enough spare coils to replace them all and completely get rid of the issue, but we got it better and good enough to run around all day, albeit still with a misfire and about 40bhp down from a reduced rev limit to preserve the engine/coils.

Apart from that, it was an absolutely fantastic course, with something for everyone - some faster stuff through a couple of fields, plenty of lanes through forests, turning into tight tree-dodging sections (which the new suspension and fiddle brakes on our car were fantastic, I don't think there could have been anything much faster through them), and then some nice narrow flowing tarmac and gravel sections back through the forests again. Think it's up there for one of the best events we've been to.
It also gave a great proving ground for some alterations to the brakes and the suspension work, and they were flawless all day, so at least the rest of the car is about where it needs to be now, on pure laptimes we weren't all that far behind the podium guys even with the dicky engine, which was encouraging.

Pity about the engine as it's cost us any chance of regaining a podium this year, but that can be sorted and it's proven the rest of the upgrades anyway.
However, since the engine was playing silly buggers anyway, we spent half the day giving passenger rides, which judging by the grinning faces when they got out went well

Hopefully we can still hang on to some more points at the next event after sorting the engine, and make sure we get a single figure race number for next year.

We did get the highest jump over a bump in the field though

[Rippthrough]

Sorry about the quality, took photo's of photo's...
Still flies with a dying engine...

[dropit]

Any news lately????
i really like reading about this buggy, awesome piece of kit, we know a few people that are into rotary engines, and from a 1308cc they make big power when they're going, but cost a bomb to rebuild when they're not!!!
you highlight the ups and downs of 'realworld' motorsport really well, a regular slot in the mag would be a cool idea??

[Rippthrough]

Well, I certainly wouldn't mind doing a monthly write-up, I end up doing one anyway

We fixed our engine problem with some uprated coils - I think the engine bay heat generated is breaking down the coil internals without actually making them fail completely.
Those two new coils we swapped on were actually duff, and let us on a right rat run trying to fix the problem - we stripped almost the entire engine down, found nothing, double checked everything...lots of swearing when it turned out to be the coils as first thought

Anyway, we've done a very fast conversion to some D585 Yukon coils - which are rated for higher ambient temperatures, have a built in heatsink and are also much more powerful, and when rigged up with some universal leads most of the misfire went away (bar a little @5krpm, but the spark plugs were sooted up from running them before).

I do have to do a little plugging, and say a big thank you to the people at Magnecor, who after a hurried e-mail over the weekend, sorted out a rush order on some custom ignition leads for us to suit the new coils, which were made on Monday and delivered with a knock on the door tuesday morning!, ready to put on and test before we set off down to Minehead for the next event
Some very fast work to correct the timing and coil dwell maps to get them running a bit better and we were ready for the next event.

New coils, sorry about the poor photo, phone jobbie:





Some new plugs to go with them on the Friday before the event sorted out any remaining hiccups the car had, the others looking pretty miserable after firing up and idling 30-40 times whilst setting the coils up...

Then it was off down to Minehead for the next race, really didn't like the course at this one - it was so tight in the twisty sections that it was tree dodging at 10mph - you couldn't get any throttle on at all, and when it did open up to get the boot down the way the course was laid out meant it was always starting from a near stop up a steep rubble slop - which for a 2wd car was a nightmare, it was pretty much a pure power and traction event.

The good news is the engine went perfectly
The bad news is, after 3 runs, the gearbox did this:




I think it's 2 years of racing combined with the shock loadings from scrabbling up those rocky inclines finished it off, bah!

Anyway, event photo's:







Another disappointing event in the season, given we were going so well to start with.
However, all is not lost, we do have a spare gearbox, which is in there now, there's one event left on the 23rd at Kirton Off-Road Centre and we're still in the top 10 for the championship.
So, if nothing else, we're hoping we can at least get down to a single figure race number for next year!

[OilyFingers]

It takes a hell of a lot to win. Look at how long it took Jensen to snatch a championship and he won nothing in the second half of the season. Just keep making your little steps and keep collecting spares and it will all come together. Aim to win each race and you'll have a horible calamity, especially without an F1 spares budget, but add all your podiums together and with a bit of a tail wind and a gearbox that doesn't want to escape that perpendicular race number will be yours (at which point we would like a wallpaper sized pic of it sliding sideways at full mast).

[Rippthrough]

(at which point we would like a wallpaper sized pic of it sliding sideways at full mast).

If it wins, I'll bring it to the next PPC forum trackday and you can can all have a seat in it whilst it's going sideways at full tilt

We've got some upgrades planned over the winter - there's a local firm we've got pricing some shorter 3rd and 4th gears up.
Also got that limited slip diff to pay for, it was supposed to be the upgrade for this year, and would have helped us massively at Minehead, but unfortunately with the engine trouble and buying parts for fixing it/servicing we just couldn't stretch to it
Could do with a few generous sponsors, anyone need to write off some tax in their 'advertising' budget?

Anyway, we're going to remake the rear bonnet to incorperate the side scoops and lose some weight (it's about 10 kilos heavier than it needs to be at the minute), should help with engine bay temperatures too.
We'll probably remake some front arms that are a little longer and wider as I've worked out a way to shrink the front hubs slightly, that should allow us to run more camber and castor up front and have a bit less kickback from the steering.
We were going to go quite a bit longer and get a few more inches of travel up front but again, funds are limiting us atm as we can't really afford a set of longer front dampers, but tbh, the suspension isn't bad as it is, it'll do for now anyway.

[Rippthrough]

Oh, and if you want wallpaper sized....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rallyejame ... otostream/