Archetype

The RX-7 is on display at Sky City Hamilton for a couple of days this week as part of a conference that I have being doing some design/print work for. I had to drive it on the street in the middle of town briefly, which was fun. I would very much enjoy having this car road registered.

Good shit. Time to enjoy it without having to worry too much about the fuzz. Got any more plans for it?

I suppose there's always the option of just doing a few rounds this season, but I'm more of an 'all or nothing' kind of person.

Yeah Pepsi at Manfeild is a tricky one - I had a spin on that corner. I went off into the gravel on T11 at Taupo when I did the big lock up which resulted in that flat spotted tyre (pic above). Both of these times that I went off, it was due to my foot slipping off the brake and I ended up going in waaay too deep. The problem is from a combination of a big gap between my brake and accelerator pedal and a bad heel/toe technique. I touched the back of Tim Forster's car through Splash at Manfeild because of this too. I should really make it a priority to fix that.

There is 1 other Pro7 Minus car being built at the moment that I know of, which will be ready for this coming season. John Forster raced his RX-8 with us this past season too, which is in the same budget spec class as me in theory, but it was quite a lot slower. There are 2 or 3 more RX-8s being built at the moment which should be racing this coming season too. So my options are: - Keep my car at the same specs as it is currently, and hope that there will be some more cars to compete with. I'll still need to spend a reasonable amount of time and money on the car if I do this, as my engine is in need of a rebuild. The engine has never been rebuilt and the oil seals are stuffed. I was hoping to get through 2 seasons before I had to do this, but oh well. I went through 5 litres of oil at the last round, and the car is fairly smokey. It starts well, runs well, and isn't too bad power-wise (bearing in mind that it's an old engine, and doesn't have the intake modifications that the Pro7 Plus cars have), but it really needs to be done. - Upgrade to Pro7 Plus I only built this car because of the proposed introduction of the budget-spec class, as building a Pro7 Plus car was out of my price range. I liked the option of being able to upgrade to Pro7 Plus spec in a few years time if I wanted too, but I don't really want to be forced into the Plus class due to a lack of numbers and a change of direction from the club. You're looking at at least $30,000 to build a competitive Pro7 Plus car, and I know 1 of the cars currently racing cost $50,000+ to build, and another one in the south island was $64,000 (!). I'd probably need to spend between $10,000-$15,000 to get my car up to Pro7 Plus spec (including an engine rebuilt), and I'm not that keen on spending that kind of money to go 2-3 seconds a lap quicker. - Give the upcoming season a miss and do the season after that instead. I feel like I would be giving up too easily if I did this, but it would give me a chance to recover financially so I could compete in the next season without being on the bones of my arse. Between building the RX-7, setting up the KiwiMotoring website, doing a full season of racing, and having a Honda Civic race car built at the same time - it's been a fairly expensive 12-18 months. During this time I wasn't able to work in/on my design/marketing business either due to lack of time, so I had less income too. We're also saving up to hopefully buy a piece of land next year to build a house/giant shed. So every $1000 I spend is about $4000 less that we can put towards our property. The MX5 class would be cool to do as well/instead, but I think I should focus on the race cars that I already own.

Bring your car to a track day at Hampton Downs and we can have swapsies.

T11 is the corner I was struggling with:

So my last round for the season came and went without any major dramas at Taupo back in Easter. I managed to qualify in front of one of the Pro7 Plus cars again, and finished 7th in race 1, 7th in race 2, and 8th in race 3. Placings didn't really mean much to me throughout the season though, as my main aim was to get some experience, drop my lap times down, and have some fun. Like Manfeild, track 1 at Taupo is a bit difficult if you're down on power like my car is. It's a lot of fun through the infield though, and I can generally keep up with the Pro7 Plus cars until we get to the straights. There is one particular corner that I continued to struggle with, and I always seemed to pull up too short and get on the power too early. On my last qualifying lap, I decided to really push my braking point and had a huge lock up, which resulted in a massive flat spot on my front left tyre: Lucky it was the end of the season, and my tyres were all buggered anyway. I was the only car competing in the budget-spec Pro7 class this season, so my points were included in the Pro7 Plus results, which inevitably meant that I would be at the bottom of the points table. I finished 8th out of 9, beating one competitor due to him missing a few of the rounds. I wasn't too far off beating one of the Pro7 Plus cars overall though (who had competed in all rounds), so that was pretty good.

So the issue with Burger Fuel at The Base is the lack of space inside? Also, the lack of alcoholic drinks I guess too?

The chinese place on Bryant Road closed down and was replaced by a Vegan takeaway place. They have a weird pricing structure for their food, where you get charged $.$$/100gm. The setup of the shop wouldn't be suitable for an Oldschool gathering IMO.

We went to the Classics Museum a couple of weeks ago, and it's cool as. The food and service was good, the museum is pretty amazing, and there's a massive carpark for a gathering too.

Haha, the crisp night time temperature caught me out a little. I can tell you that trying to roll a thin foam mattress around you doesn't help at all. We've got a bach sorted for Taupo though, so all good. I'm not too sure what's next for the car at this stage. My main goal is to finish the season without any major dramas, and I kinda need the club to finally decide what is happening with the idea of a sub-class in the Mazda Pro7 Racing series.

Also, this build is nuts.

Yeah, that clear vinyl stuff is nice and thick, and would do a good job of protecting that area without it being obvious.

Taupo, Easter weekend. Last round of the series.

Thanks - it was a really enjoyable weekend at Hampton Downs - especially that last race. We were at Manfeild this weekend just gone, as well as two weeks ago (so 3 rounds out of 4 weekends in a row). I've got a bit of video footage (haven't watched it yet), but I don't think it'll be very exciting as I struggle to keep up with the Pro7 Plus cars due to the long straights. I'll have some more pics up soon too.

It looks like you've been making pretty good progress in the last few months. What's putting you off from finishing it (I saw your comment in spam thread)?

This event was way bigger and better than I expected. Here are a few pics that I took yesterday:

Yep, I'll be there. The only advertising I've seen was a small sign on the street somewhere. I should have listed it on KiwiMotoring for them to help spread the word.

Nice pics /\/\/\. The car's looking a little smoky in the top photo, and I really need to get some wheel spacers to fill out the guards. Here's an in-car video from the last race of the weekend (skip to 2min 50sec if you don't want to see the warm-up lap): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yEIxiG09qmE

Lucky you weren't directly behind the black Series 1 RX-7 when it shit itself. I saw the nice coating of oil on the front of Julian's car. THREE DAYS TO GO!

Some photos from Round 3 at Hampton Downs this past weekend: This was a really good race-long battle between myself and John Jackson. I managed to get him on the last lap: Turning in a bit early on the dipper:

Sounds good. We've got qualifying in the morning, and race 1 at 2.16pm.

Off to Round 3 of the Mazda Pro7 Racing Series at Hampton Downs this weekend...