mikuni

Oh yes, I should have guessed it would be that corner. Kind of like the last corner at Manfield (was Dunlop, now Pepsi?). They both also have a high entry speed making it a little harder to set the car up right. I always go around them feeling like I could have gone heaps faster. I think option "slow rebuild and fix any issues while waiting out the 13/14 season in prep for house/epic shed and hit 14/15 season hard" is probably a wise decision.

Which corner is it that you struggle with? And what is the plan for the future; are more people building Pro7 Minus cars, are you going to turn yours into a Plus, continue racing in your own class by yourself, or sell and race in the MX5 class? (not meant in a bad way, just interested to see if the class is growing or what the plans are)

12th? Might have to shoot up and have a look. I take it that it's a drift day? What set of corners do you do at Hampton, from turn 2 onwards?

It's just a socket to get an idea on how much I'd need to space it up.One day in the future I will be doing something similar, but with a machined billet shaft in a pillow bushing lower mount. I think it'll be strong enough and have seen similar, but I guess time will tell.

haha yeah, they are forged and probably less than half the weight on the black ones. Plus spence pretty much gave them to me, which is the main reason I'm bothering with the stud pattern change. Vectras are 4x100 or 5x110 which is super stupid, so 5x100 will be a good change anyway - heaps more wheels available if/when I bend the forged ones.

First aid kit sounds pretty lol/awesome. I'd be keen for that. I already have one of the emergency triangle things that I have no idea what to do with, so you can hang onto that. Cheers though. Maybe go leave it on the road somewhere and see what happens? /nah don't do that

Umm, pretty much just for the look at the moment. Even though I hate those wheels, they were the cheapest 18 inch 4x100 wheels I could find. I want to run the wheels below eventually, but need to change the stud pattern to do so. I bought 18 inch semis for them, but needed something to put them on in the mean time. Main reason for big wheels isn't brakes or anything, it is to drop the lower arm down (RCA) to run the car super slammed, kind of like drop spindles. Here's a pic to show what I mean. And a way more awesome example. You can just see the lower arm there, below the massive disk. You'd never be able to run small wheels on that, but they actually ran 19s! They're too big/expensive for me, so 18's will have to do. Second hand slicks and semis are cheapish in 18 inch too.

So this thing got way too hard core for me at the moment. I'm still going to try most of what I had talked about, but to a much lower level and not flipping the engine/head around. I cut the red car up into lots of little bits and took it off to the scrap man. Sad, but oh well. I'll just buy an ex-super touring car when I'm old and rich. In the mean time, follow the lesser project at the link below! http://oldschool.co....a-track-car-v2/

This is attempt number 2, since the red car got a bit out of control and I realised it was going to take a decent amount of time to get it back on the road, if ever. I decided it would be better to have something I can drive and at least have fun with while I build it. I picked up this Vectra 2000 in late January after thinking it had been sold to someone else. It's one of the messiest cars I've ever seen, but a great base for a track car. I was quite shocked to see the state of the engine bay. It needs a lot of tidying up, but mechanically everything seems to be ok and it has actually had maintenance, just never a clean. First step was to get the rear end sitting a bit lower. This involved solid mounting the subframe and I also moved it back 15mm to lengthen the track and give a bit more guard - tyre clearance, as the wheels actually move forward when you lower these Vectras with IRS. As you can see in the above photo, removing the interior was also part of the first step The dry ice method was used to remove the tar inside, and I'll never go back to chipping the tar out. It's only around $6 a kg and 5kg goes a long way. There was some matted stuff that it didn't quite work on, but overall it's such a clean way of doing it and heaps of fun. Stripping the engine for fitment of individual throttle bodies was also happening at the same time. I was also doing a little bit of tidying, relocating some components such as the coolant header tank, and replacing some seals and gaskets as required. I'd contemplated all sorts of options for the throttle bodies, but decided to take the easy route in the end and ordered a direct to head kit from the UK. A company called QED to be exact. I was impressed with what came with the kit, and also added a few extras on top. The base kit consists of something like below It came in without too much hassle, but did take quite a while to sort it all out through customs. Probably 3 weeks in total. I was olso missing a stupid little bracket that you had to specify seperately, so had to make another order but this came in much quicker being a cheaper package (3 days from the UK to my door). On it went, and I was nearly ready to start it up. The kit comes with a mostly wired loom and a base map, but there is still a little bit of wiring and customisation required to get it to work with the Vectra (it is made for a Lotus 7 style kit car running this engine). Start up vid. This is the second time I started it up, so it was running a bit crap, but I just wanted to catch a little bit of dort on camera before pulling the suspension out for the next stage. I wanted to set the ride height close to how a touring car should be, so set about undertaking some relatively major suspension work. It's not as low as I want it, but I needed to compromise it at least a little bit so that I could drive to the OS Nats trackday, which was held at Manfeild in the Manawatu. I was concerned about the angle of the axles/CV joints and that they might break if it was too low. The front wishbones are a known weak point on these Vectras and so I had a good look at mine. I found one completely broken in half! I'm not sure if this rubber mount is factory or a retrofit, but what ever it is it didn't fix anything. If anything it appears to have made things much worse by creating a weak point where the cap screws are. Needless to say I changed this out for an uprated arm, which is what has already been installed on the other side. New on the left. I also put a better boot on the ball joint and re-greased it. It's not ideal but it should last till stage 2, when things get a bit more serious. The driveshaft on this side was also changed, as the boot was broken. The other sides boot looked fine, so short of tightening up the strap holding it on, I didn't bother replacing it. Unfortunately it didn't have any grease in it, which resulting in a blown CV joint on the way back from Nats. Before Nats I also bolted the seats and harnesses in once the car was sitting back on the ground and level. They are a little low, but I will hunt for some more suitable seats once my bank balance recovers. The oil catch can was also mounted, along with hooking up brake boost vacuum and tidying up a few other loose ends. A wheel alignment was next, then we hooked it up to a wideband and did a bit of a road tune. It took a while to get it right, the tune was very rich and the timing needed heaps put back in it. We had it about as close as you can get it in only a few hours on the road, but the next day I found the TPS was loose and had fallen out of adjustment. We adjusted it blindly as best we could (I was already on the way to Nats) but to be safe we had to set it a bit rich. This was a pitty, as it was running so well, but it didn't seem to affect the power output too much, it was more at idle that it was really bad. Final picture of it out on the track. Sorry about the windscreen wiper. Blame uncle jake for that!

Actually, it might be cool to move all this tacho talk to a dedicated thread? Seems a few people are doing later model engine conversions now and having similar issues. I can't even get my tacho working with an aftermarket ecu and no idea where to start. I'll split the tach related posts into a tacho tech thread later, if you're happy with that Mikey?

oh well, at least the joke will be on them when they can't figure out where their sim card goes.

Yeah, spin some sh*t to the engine builder about classic race series and needing to stay with original series of engine or some such. The most time I've spent talking to engine builders or fabricators over the years has been convincing them why I'm wanting to work a SOHC/Carbed/Vauxhall/Opel/Vectra, so I imagine you'll face similar with a 7K.

First inject it http://oldschool.co....jection-thread/ Then add ITB's http://oldschool.co....dies-itbs-tech/ Big valves may help http://oldschool.co....ersized-valves/ But I can't find the cam or exhaust threads at the moment with a quick search. They are out there though (on this forum). And have the engine rebuilt fresh with a port clean up (don't polish) and a bump up in compression according to what the engine builder recommends after seeing the combustion chamber. edit: I should really put up the twincam head thread and show you why you shouldn't bother with a 7k and should just go to something twincam atleast, but meh.. I know there's no point trying to change the mind of a crazy dutch man.

I managed to stumble across this blog that seems to have a lot of information on the car written by ted huang from this forum http://blog.retro-classics.co.nz/?p=1850

You can't fuck up too much, biggest thing with the 20V throttles is spacing to suit your ports for straight runners, and packaging of everything (throttle linkages, injectors, fuel rail, air box,etc).

FUCK YEAH I'M WITH THIS GUY/ROBOT

I do zero effort at all times, don't worry.YOWZER!!!! on the other hand is the man in charge

oh man those are so choice! good find in 4x100

Ok. So we have it at the base Burger Fuel, with parking outside to see the cars and underneath if it's raining. Foundation/Cock and Balls afterwards if beers are required. And apparently we need to invite lingling

It's a dodgy area and leaving the cars out of view isn't cool. / no where to sit as mentioned. Base is way better.Nathan, gardens is exactly what you are after but it sucks in the rain.

Wongs is NZHonda/CJC meet place though. Would probably be weird moving in on their turf? Plus has anyone tasted it? I guess it's an aquired taste. Keen to either stay at Burger fuel, but I do have some concerns over seating there if 10+ people turn up, or go to the Gardens upper carpark again while we still can (March, possibly April as well).

Possibly Phil for march, probably kk, shaz and speeno for April. Maybe more?

Would ATL touch it? I know a guy who would probably be keen but his lathe wouldn't be anywhere near large enough.

Nah man. Too dangerous, I got out before shit got real. Now YOWZER!!!! has been assinated I'm not prepared to take that risk.

Must be then. Ohwell. Any new area rep nominations? edit: it is a potentially dangerous job by the looks of it