Truenotch

Fitted my wets today. This probably guarantees it won't rain for the rest of the season... And some aluminium arrived for my wing mounts. 150x10mm 6061 flat bar - should do the trick.

Haha, exactly. the boot will open if I remove the wing blade. Not too bad really.

The fuel filler is external - its where the number plate normally lives. There's no need to open the hatch apart from adjusting harnesses or replacing tail light bulbs. I'd originally planned to make a support structure from the floor to the ducktail and bolt the wing uprights to the ducktail to so it could still open, but it's extra work and complication for no benefit. The sheet metal under the ducktail is already removed, so it's really as simple as cutting two slots in the fibreglass and maybe adding a couple of rubber seals to keep the water and wind out.

I decided to bust out my splitter brackets nw that I'm getting back into the aero. These PCI quick release brackets are designed for DC2/EG/EK Hondas and I was intending to modify them. But it turns out they bolt directly to an AE86 chassis rail. No drilling required and the holes are already sized for M10 bolts. They even line up with the splitter and seem to sit pretty much level. It's not often you get this lucky when trawling through the parts bin! Also had a play with templates for mounting the wing. I'm planning to use 150x8mm flat bar for these uprights with brackets that bolt into the chassis rails. The brackets will come through slits in the ducktail and the wing will be ~200mm or so above that. Should look something like this: I've been putting this job off for quite a while now and still don't know if I want to run a big rear wing... but Kyle with the blue Beams 86 has added a wing to his and I don't want him to be faster than me at the next round 😄. The look is definitely growing on me though.

That's why you should always look at cams based on the duration @1mm or 0.050" lift. It still doesn't tell the full story, but gives you a much better idea of how big the cams actually are. Most suppliers have this on their spec cards. Here's how it looks for @Roman's cams:

After buying the Z213 "wet rally" tyres and the groover, I had a message from a mate offering me his brand new full wets for a great price... so now I have two wet tyre options 😅 both sets of tyres still worked out cheaper than buying a set of wets at regular price anyway, so I'll keep the Z213s in stock for later. Also picked up a glass table on marketplace and have ordered a bunch of carbon and resin to get back into the splitter project.

Ahn sheeit, I forgot!

He bounces between the pros and cons of short and long rods for ages tbh. At the end he said the smartest option is to run the longest rod you can practically fit, particularly for V8s.

You know you've made it when David Vizard is calling you out on YouTube.

Thanks Matt! I'm happy with how it's looking at the moment. Our SS Cup class stickers make it look a bit more racecar than usual. I'll run the Hankooks on my 15x8 Superlights. They're only a 190/580r15 tyre, but will go on an 8" rim fine. I'm a skidfluencer.

Sunday dawned and it was a drizzly, cold day... And my only "wet" tyres are 245/40r15 Nankang AR1s, which are absolutely garbage in the rain. As you can tell from a couple of posts ago, I didn't have any grip, so just mucked around doing skids and having fun in the rain. I got lots of compliments after that... Turns out the crowd enjoy a skid 😄 Watch me get swamped off the line in this one: The final race of the weekend was even wetter with zero visibility off the start... and I almost T boned an Evo at Pothole corner. He was spinning for so long then started rolling backwards, so I darted left across the grass. It was so close to being a big crash! More skids, couple of battles with an Altezza and the Evo (both on full wet tyres), followed by more skids again. After that I decided it was time to get better wet tyres. There's no stock of 15" full wets in the country right now, so I've ordered a set of Hankook Z213 "wet tarmac rally" semi slicks. They are the same rubber compound as a circuit wet, but don't have as many radial grooves. Z213: Z207 full wet: The Z213s will be great for damp conditions as they are, but I really want a full wet... so put out the call to look for a tyre groover. This is what popped up from one of my friends: What a cool tool! It's German and has got to be from the 70s or earlier. I gave it a test run on one of my dead slicks and it works well! This one's for @GARDRB: The next round is at Levels at the end of October. I'll get these wets prepared just to guarantee it'll be dry for the rest of the season.

Round 1 of the SS Cup came around fairly quickly. The car was pretty well prepped and it looked like the weather was going to hold out for both days [foreshadowing]. I'd installed fresh brake pads, new tyres, new plugs, cleaned a bunch of things and done a bunch of maintenance. One thing I hadn't done is any laps of Ruapuna (and I'm in a new job, so didn't want to take leave), so we fired up the sim on Friday night for some Ruapuna laps on Project Cars 2. The map is actually pretty good! We jumped in a GT86 and pumped laps until we knew where the track went. Saturday morning we got our TeamBeams86 pit set up. Pitting with Kyle is pretty rad since we have really similar spec cars and can share knowledge/parts etc. Plus he and his family are good sorts. Got stickered up and met @Hyperblade in the pit paddock. He gave me a bunch of Beams bits that were left over from his old engine set up. Nice to meet you Ben, hopefully we'll get to share some time on the racetrack one day! Practice and qualy both went pretty well. The timing system only recorded 3 of out practice laps, but Kyle's dash said he was doing mid 1.37s and I was running away from him, so knew I was in the window. Our class breakout is a 1.35.00, so the key is to be close to that and not go quicker! Qualifying wasn't all smooth sailing though... turns out I'd forgotten to secure my crank angle sensor wiring after refitting the water fittings the week before racing. The wiring must have been whipping around on ripple strips, so started cutting, lurching and turning the tacho on and off. I pulled into the pits, refitted the plug and finished qualy with no further issues. I did a 1.36.8 in the end which put me in P8 (ended up being P7 after one guy was excluded from qualifying). Everything seemed OK until I secured the crank wire and started it back up to test... to be greeted by a charge light on the dash 🫠. We couldn't find a wiring fault and the battery had good voltage, so I decided to risk it and see how many laps I could get on a battery. Turns out a battery lasts roughly 4.875 laps... and the race was 6 laps 😅. Thankfully it died in the braking zone for the last corner and I was able to coast back into the pits. Just. Still had fun and got some good laps in. Ruapuna is a really fun track! My boss (Josh) and a couple of other people appeared and helped to diagnose the fault. We tracked it down to a faulty alternator, so I tried to buy one from repco between races to get going again, but it wasn't to be. The one they had in stock had a different plug to mine, so we gave up for the day and went to watch Race 2 from the hairpin. That night I went to visit Simon @surfab to get an alternator... and at the same time another two sets of friends turned up to my house with alternators 😄. So we had a little parts fitting party in the garage. Got the alternator fitted and went to bed hoping for more dry weather on Sunday.

Entries and payments 11/09/2026 Keep them coming in: https://forms.gle/rZXZjXuiqoCMaeTL8 # Full Name OS Username Car Make/Model Paid? 1 Daryll Anderson Bigfoot 1979 mitsubishi lancer NOT PAID 2 David Lee Munce Muncie 2003 Holden Commodore NOT PAID 3 Paul SHIZZL 1981 B1600 NOT PAID 4 Jason Sayers DatJaseNZ 1972 Datsun 1200 Coupe NOT PAID 5 David Torckler DaveT 1977 Vauxhall magnum NOT PAID 6 Gavin Gardner Gavin 1974 ford capri gxl NOT PAID 7 David van der Haas Roman 1983 Toyota Carina NOT PAID 8 Richard Macnaughtan Avenga 1980 Chrysler Avenger V8 Estate PAID 9 nick walker Kp60nick 1997 honda Logo NOT PAID 10 Benjamin Jones keltik 2006:Mazda 6 PAID 11 Jay Simpson Teslol 2019 Tesla or MR2 NOT PAID 12 Matt Rolley Mjrstar 1989 mazda mx5 PAID 13 Campbell Langley 1978 mazda rx7 NOT PAID 14 Ryan 1997 lancer evo 4 gsr NOT PAID 15 David Parr Born_Disturbed 1979 Mini Clubman NOT PAID 16 stewart hansen 1957 CHEVROLET BELAIR NOT PAID 17 NATHAN 1973 HQ HOLDEN NOT PAID 18 Matthew Gill 1981 Toyota Corolla NOT PAID 19 Shaun Duncan Logan 1972 Plymouth Satellite PAID 20 Jared Rule 1974 Mazda RX3 NOT PAID 21 Simon Peryer 1963 Ford Cortina PAID 22 Scott Curtis 1987 Mazda Etude NOT PAID 23 Joshua Curtis 1996 Mazda 323 bw NOT PAID 24 Lawrence Loke 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX NOT PAID 25 Adrian Osborne 02 Dc5 Integra NOT PAID 26 Ken Myers 1972 holden lj torana NOT PAID

Couple skiddies from the weekend:

This weekend will mark the end of the second logbook for this car. I was lucky enough to meet a previous owner a couple of years ago and he sent me the original logbook, so I have the complete competition record for this car. This weekend's event will be its 98th competitive event and the 55th with me behind the wheel. Its first event was the Pukeora Road Hillclimb in Waipukurau in October 1994. Pretty cool to have all the history! I whipped the passenger's seat out and found half of the Shotover Delta underneath. Queenstown is the dustiest place I've ever lived and the dust is this super silty mineral slurry that gets stuck to everything. Gave it a wash after work and it looks ready to go racing tbh. Quite excited to get to Ruapuna finally! I've raced every other track in NZ and the car also raced at Bay Park in 1995, so am very keen to tick off Ruapuna and Levels this season.