Sam's build thread

[sambb]

Ha cool. Thanks Andrew. Oh man mine looks so slow coming up the esses but I never braked once and just had it pinned through that section - need a louder exhaust, bit more theatre to make me look quicker ha ha. That must have been run 2 for mountain straight. The car gave a good little wobble coming up to the crest there but I didn't even realise that my loaded tyres were running right through the oil trail from Pete's car that you can see there. Glad no one went off due to that. Again the tyre whine is louder than my engine! but happy with my line into there. Its awesome there when you drop off the crest and the wall is coming at you but you know you've kind of got it all lined up. Man your thing sounds so good between the walls - love the view out over the fenders.

[sambb]

I used a 2in - 1in adapter as my turbosmart plumback uses 25mm tubes. Id actually go for a 2.25 - 1in though. The internal diameter was below 50mm on mine which was 1.5mm less than the IC outlet so i'll deal with that soon. The rest is just plumbing. My 'pink' stiffest DV spring just arrived today so i'll see what boost drops I'm getting with the new setup first but can go to a stiffer spring at least if I need to.

[simon k]

Esses results. Times are irrelevant since the club has admitted to a timing offset for sector 1 that they don't seem to want to disclose. I'm not sure if that's even true, as my last run was an absolute cracker and was down as slower than everything else and a guy who got a similar time to me on the last run checked his gopro and the time stamps were way faster than the time he got too. Last year without an LSD or coilovers apparently I went 2.7 seconds quicker which is just bollocks on a 30 second run. But hey the placings are apparently legit so I'll take it.
Final results for day 2. My goal was to try to crack top 10 (was 13th last year) and managed a 5th so absolutely stoked with that. Panorama is a scary place all round but the esses on day 1 is nothing compared to day 2 for having you absolutely peaking before each run. Once I got the first run out of the way this year (which I really treated as a way to finally suss the line over the crest which has always terrified me) I felt pretty calm because I new the car was just sweet and so I could really think about what I needed to do on each run. I was super stoked about my bottom splits relative to the rest of the guys and was just elated that I was able to build on my times throughout the day rather than blow my wad early and then have everyone go past me later - suspension changes have a lot to do with that.

this is awesome - having the car sorted so you can work on beating your own times and moving a up the placings - great stuff

a bloke from my local club was there, a very ugly yellow Datsun 1200 coupe with an FJ20 (or something)

Are the full results published? I had a dig around but couldn't find anything

[sambb]

I just photographed my class results as they went up on the timing caravan. The official site is hillclimbnsw.com but they haven't updated it yet - dragging the chain I think because of the timing issues. Keep an eye on that and they'll have a full report, pic gallery and results soon.
Yep I saw the yellow datto. There was a webbered SR20 orange 1200 coupe there too in Improved Production. Will be interesting to see how they compared.

[sambb]

Simon I noticed my quote in your post didn't have pics in it. are the pics coming thru?

Here's your local comp: VICTORIAN HILL CLIMB CHAMPIONSHIP get on it!

[metalhead]

Ha cool. Thanks Andrew. Oh man mine looks so slow coming up the esses but I never braked once and just had it pinned through that section - need a louder exhaust, bit more theatre to make me look quicker ha ha. That must have been run 2 for mountain straight. The car gave a good little wobble coming up to the crest there but I didn't even realise that my loaded tyres were running right through the oil trail from Pete's car that you can see there. Glad no one went off due to that. Again the tyre whine is louder than my engine! but happy with my line into there. Its awesome there when you drop off the crest and the wall is coming at you but you know you've kind of got it all lined up. Man your thing sounds so good between the walls - love the view out over the fenders.

Yep, it's all about the entry speed through there I think, I had it pinned all the way up too. I thought yours made a reasonable amount of noise, you could hear yours from further away than mine! But mine's pretty tame volume wise too I suppose, and I guess it was mostly the turbo surge that could be heard with yours.

[simon k]

Simon I noticed my quote in your post didn't have pics in it. are the pics coming thru?

Here's your local comp: VICTORIAN HILL CLIMB CHAMPIONSHIP get on it!

ha - nah, not hillclimbs... not yet anyway. Although I'm told that Bob (yellow Datsun) is organising a hillclimb locally which I'll either help out on or compete in, or both.

My focus is the Mini motorkhana nationals in June, events leading up to it are working on the car and practice, then the rest of the year is floating on a high from beating my result of the previous year... it's going to be hard this year, last year was a cracker.

I'm doing my local club's sprint series which moves between Winton and the local DECA - that'll take up enough $$ and points with the minister for finance and recreation.

[sambb]

Ha ha re the minister. Mine still thinks that I'm going to social drives. If she ever watches you tube I'm in trouble.

found the results on the Bathurst light car club site:

esses -

https://bathurstlightcarclub.com.au/uploads/downloads/2018_NSW_State_Hillclimb_Round_1.pdf

mountain straight -

https://bathurstlightcarclub.com.au/uploads/downloads/2018_NSW_State_Hillclimb_Round_2.pdf

Was it Warick Berge?

Your welcome to throw your motorkhana pics/vids up on here mate.

[simon k]

Ha ha re the minister. Mine still thinks that I'm going to social drives. If she ever watches you tube I'm in trouble.

found the results on the Bathurst light car club site:

esses -

https://bathurstlightcarclub.com.au/uploads/downloads/2018_NSW_State_Hillclimb_Round_1.pdf

mountain straight -

https://bathurstlightcarclub.com.au/uploads/downloads/2018_NSW_State_Hillclimb_Round_2.pdf

Was it Warick Berge?

Your welcome to throw your motorkhana pics/vids up on here mate.

no, Bob Waldner, thanks for digging out the results - was a bee's d*ck quicker than you, though his car weighs bugger all, has had a lot spent on it, runs e85 and was probably running sticky slicks...

I don't have a lot of photos or videos, mostly only of the kids doing it with me. I have 3 girls, the oldest was never into it, but the younger 2 are super keen and were into it as soon as they turned 12. There are a few videos around, there's a guy in our club who makes videos professionally, he put this one together - jump to 1:10 - I'm in mustard coloured car at the bottom Motorkhana / Khanacross DECA 2016 Round 3 on Vimeo

motorkhana pictures and videos never look fast - it feels a lot different, but it just looks like someone driving around a carpark kicking up a lot of dust!

If the Australian Championship is in Melbourne this year I might take the Polo in it, the Polo slips into the long wheelbase FWD class by 16mm - that class is a lot less competitive than the short wheelbase with minis and mokes in it

[sambb]

Love it!! that looks unreal. That's how I learnt to drive in my RS2000 escort. As soon as it'd rain (cos everyone has 500hp in the wet) me and a mate would descend on the nearest industrial estate that would be empty on the weekend and get all Ken Block. I want that 1200 Ute. I bet you've got a good handbrake.
I'll have to have a good squiz at your mates 1200 next time I see it.

[sambb]

Oh man he got me by a 1/10th at the Esses but a second at Mountain Straight. I was neck a neck with him on the bottom half of the mountain but he creamed me across the top. He's in over 3000cc - is he turbo?

[simon k]

I want that 1200 Ute ............ I'll have to have a good squiz at your mates 1200 next time I see it.

the 1200 ute is a very neat bit of gear, it's really really quick and you can see how well it turns and they're brilliant at throwing it around. Bob and his son are both pretty heavy, the ute will lift it's left front wheel 6" off the ground when turning left, but somehow stays very flat when turning right... something about weight distribution....

And yes, the 1200 Coupe has an FJ20 turbo - it's exhaust manifold fell to pieces today, I didn't look, but Bob's son came up to him after a session and said 'it lost all power and now smoke is coming out from cracks all over the manifold, the turbo looks OK, but the manifold is falling to bits'. Bob said it was a $300 ebay job and has lasted 4 years so he's actually pretty happy with it.

Love it!! that looks unreal. That's how I learnt to drive in my RS2000 escort. As soon as it'd rain (cos everyone has 500hp in the wet) me and a mate would descend on the nearest industrial estate that would be empty on the weekend and get all Ken Block. I bet you've got a good handbrake.

Yes, hydraulic handbrake - I've just made a new one that will sit up beside the steering wheel instead of between the seats and with a lot more mechanical advantage - but otherwise a bit of adjustability in the suspension, quaife diff, I adapted power steering from a Barina last year.. I had a blower (+ megasquirt injection & LS1 coils) on it for a few years but it was too hard for the kids to drive and to maintain reliability, so I took it off and went back to a carb, but I've kept the MS & big coils.

Reading your notes about suspension setup, a lot of it applies to the mini so I'm going to do something about pulling the bum down and adding a rear sway bar. My mini has 'hydrolastic' suspension which is rubber springs with fluid damping that is linked front to rear on each side. Most people doing competition with a model like mine (Cooper S) remove it in favour of the alternative 'rubber cone' suspension which is fully independent rubber springs, I won't do that, so need to engineer my way around it

The sprint today was fun, but as I expected the understeer is diabolical - standard suspension setup and very cheap tyres. One guy who was following me for a few corners said afterwards 'you need to get some tyres on that thing!' - no matter what I did I couldn't get it to oversteer even the tiniest bit.

plenty of people with cameras, I'll post some pictures in my own thread instead of hijacking yours

[sambb]

so that was the Polo that you ran today that you couldn't get to turn in?

[simon k]

so that was the Polo that you ran today that you couldn't get to turn in?

yep - other than tyres, it seems like the first place to start is making a stiffening beam for the back-end, and I suppose some poly control arm bushes, maybe make a strut brace for the front too? As I said, I nearly made a rear stiffening beam - I wish I had, I didn't think it'd be as bad as it was...

I like your TT ball joint modification, except that the strut top bearings collapse (right?) can you replace the tops of the standard struts with something that can handle the change in angle? maybe machine an angled plate to sit on top to correct the angle?

oh - and I think I want some 15" wheels - since it's my daily, it might be smarter in the long run for me to get some 15" wheels and cheap-ish track tyres (even 2nd hand race tyres) rather than put expensive tyres on the 16" wheels for the ~25,000km I do each year plus trying to compete. I've always had separate competition and road tyres for the mini

if you were on a (very) limited budget, where adapting or fabricating stuff is easier than buying, where would you start?
yell out when you want me to start my own thread

[sambb]

You can pick up VR6 wheels 15x6.5 et43 for 200 a set. They are pretty light. Put semis on the front and baldies on the rear. You could put 185 or 195/55/15 on ths back and 205,s on the front. There are some 15mm spacers on the parts forum so id grab them too to get thectrack width up. Id pull the esp fuse because i found it grabs opposire front brakes and funny things like that with the esp active and mucks up handbrake turns. Definitely get the hardest rear bar you can or use an internal bar like gary was talking about. The eibach shims transformed my car so for khanacross youd want a touch of toe out and thst only costs 40 bucks but is a bit of effort. Since you daily your xar you could use spring rubbers or sometimes called blockers. They insert between the coils in the springs, just say 1 full turn, and effectively coil bind them. Tbis will crank up your rear spring rate and then you just pull them out at the end of the day. Summit racing sells them. They sound dodgy but the supercars use them. Yeah the ball joint mod did stress the top mounts a bit, but you don't have to extend the existing slots in the ball joints like i did for extra camber. You can just throw the ball joints in and get the roll centre correction alone.