Rhyscar

A slightly modified blacktop does drive significantly better than a standard one including being smooth with more low down drivability. Some mild cams and a link is all you really need. Leave everything else factory and it will run mint and still get up and go. I can't believe I just said that. Maybe I'm getting old.

So what are you doing this time around to make it faster? My Dunlops are toast after that pirongia round so I'm on old hard silverstones for the last round I'm pretty sure you'll be faster than me!

Thanks guys, will have a closer look and see if they one we have is broken or whats not working.

Hey guys, this may have already been answered elsewhere - if so feel free to point me in the right direction. I'm looking for a speedo cable to get the speedo going on the Rally car. Its a ke20 with a T50 gearbox. Where can a find a cable which will fit both ends? I would like to think that in the toyota parts bin there is something that will work. Diff ratio etc doesn't matter really as long as there is something that makes the needle move. Thanks in advance!

So thought I would do a write up on a project I did for my brother over summer/for his 21st birthday present. So he has a mini that he absolutely loves and he saw some roof racks online and wanted to do something along these lines... Did some research and couldn't buy anything suitable talked to me and did some CAD modelling to do something way cooler than that. Wanted to add some curves to it as the mini isn't a very square car so squares would look weird on it. Curving the roof rack in both directions looked good and wanted to create a 'floating deck' with no stays in the corners so it looked lush/kinda like it wasn't attached. Wanted to do it all out of stainless so it is shiney AF. Used 3/4" dairy tube as its easy to work with and aesthetically was the right proportions for the mini. Send cad files to autobend and they rolled and bent the tubes to suit. had to cut + weld to length (ignore my rubbish welding pls) Got it all welded up and test fitted good My brother did some woodwork with Kiwa?Kila? wood and came up real nice! Pic showing clamp/mounting arrangement Turned out pretty good and looks sweet. Best thing is its super practical also. Just did a west coast trip in it with his girlfriend and they could stow their luggage on it. Here's a few sweet parting shots of sweet south island west coast.

So in absence of doing any actual work on my racecar, I've been doing a few events in my daily Levin testbed/hack around car in the aim of knowing exactly what suspension setup I want in my racecar. The two things I wanted to determine were; 1. What springrates to run on track to eliminate my previous tyre outside edge scrubbing issue and crippling understeer? 2. How does front swaybar go on the track and on the road + how does this effect spring rate required? 3. Is their a happy medium between a track/road/targa setup I could achieve? So in order to scientifically prove this I entered a trackday at taupo and booked myself in for an epic tarmac hillclimb. I had the same Tein coilovers in the car I ran in the racecar previous to rebuild so had a decent reference for how it drove. Used 400lb springs front and rear with Cusco swaybars front and rear along with the same old Semi slicks that have been sitting in the shed for the last 3 years.. Things went well. Lapped around the 1.46 mark on Track one in the afternoon. In summary from trackday; 1. Front swaybar was awesome. No understeer at all and perfect front/rear balance with rear stepping out when I wanted it to. Spring rates were perfect albeit a lack of suspension travel probably helped me out 2. open diff was painful but wheelspin not as bad as expected. They are shit and effect handling SOO much in a fwd car. 3. People who drive Skylines and GTR's are a bunch of pansies. Come on people if my 100kw POS road car can beat your uber power car around the track you're doing something wrong! All in all lots of fun and doorty noises were had Next up was the Tarmac hillclimb - 9km's of epic targa road on Pekanui rd (by Ngutunui school) Raised the car 20mm to try get some suspension stroke/stop the shocks from bottoming out. Other than this did nothing. Made some good noises Ended up 4th in class and doing pretty well. Everyone was impressed by it for a cheap/low cost basic car. Enjoyed tarmac driving a lot and gave me heaps of motivation for racecar doorty things. Things I learnt from Tarmac Hillclimb; 1. 80mm suspension travel in each direction is not enough even with stiff springs - bottoming out unsettles the car something chronic and makes it want to crash into the scenery 2. Spring rate was slightly too hard, need to aim for 350lb front springs and standard front swaybar 3. Damping is KING. controlling bump and rebound settles the car and makes it feel like you are driving on a cloud. I used a lot of left foot brake to settle the car as much as possible but it still wasn't enough to really push the car or be comfortable when something unexpected comes up. Tein's are not up to Targa driving style and epic MCA's are required. Considered Bilsteins but thing won't be cloud-like enough for a light car. So now I've done my testing with this car it is for sale so I can focus on doing gravel stuff in rally car and making progress on racecar. All proceeds will go towards buying some shocks for racecar. If anyone wants a really cheap quick road legal track/club car let me know. Keen to get around $5k for it.

This thing sounds awesome! Good work on science. you win the internet for tonight for me. Maybe a tyre to give a go next time is the Archilles semi slick 'S' compound - make sure you get the soft ones or you'll be hellishly dissapointed. I've been rolling them on my daily falcon over the summer and got 10000kms out of them (were second hand to start with too) with heaps of grip for a road tyre. No where near as grippy as an R888/proper semi slick but more than adequate as a road/trackday tyre. Much better than goodyear F1 and T1r alternatives I've also tried on the falcon and got about the same amount of kms out of a set. Good thing is they are good value at around $180/tyre.

This is pretty cool. I'm on the lookout for a 244 sedan.

I think the paint is acceptable.... Flywheel ended up coming loose due to being warped. Always had issues with clutch being extremely difficult to drive so replaced it with an Exedy HD unit which is smaller in dia nad much more progressive so we can give it plenty of slip to get it off the line with the very high first gear. Lightened the flywheel as much as we could, think it got down to about 5kg or so which isn't bad. First event I did was Otaria rd run by Dannevirke car club. First time in the car for a while so was pretty rusty. Good battles with Blake/Blizzo though. Won A class and got a sweet certificate. Tararua rd was next. bit longer so managed to get into it a bit more/blow out some cobwebs. Car went well all day but struggled to commit/stop being a pussy. Managed to find some pace in the last run and beat Blake for A class honours again. There was a cool ke26 which has been running in the series too! Here's a helmet-cam view of the first and slippery-est run of the day http://youtu.be/AcLnxVXnxRk After catching up with mates in palmy after tararua rd, I got up at 3am to make it to a gravelsprint in Pirongia. Early morning trip and day of rallying was tough work on 4 hours sleep! Was well worth the effort though at 9km long. Was a cool datsun 1200 running that day also. Ex Reg Cook car from 70's with a Nissan Micra EFI engine and 7 speed sequential box. Needless to say it was 30sec quicker than me! Road was epic fun but had fuel pump woes by the end of the day. Trying to get to the bottom of it now. http://youtu.be/cabAQVqlt7E

We carried a spare shock for a rally car that had been straightened fairly successfully. But in saying that it won't be as strong as it used to and will always have one or two tight spots through the travel. If its just to get it going again and it doesn't matter I'd give it a go but really needs replacing. How did it bend is the question? Hondas don't have any lateral loading on the shock like a Mac strut and the spring is holding the car up, not the shock shaft..

Yeah they require material details and thickness reports along with engineers reports for anything not made out of the suggested material sizes. Also they require a as-installed bumpsteer report from wheel alignment machine through full travel. Can't have anymore than 10mm total bump over the travel of the shock. Also needs to detail steering rack dimensions and position

Took me about 16-20hrs to draw up tubular front end and A arms etc. It certainly isn't an easy task..

I've just done this for a friend. Is a bit of a pain in the arse getting it approved. They don't want it to be used as a one-off approval for each person but more for companies making kits for cars/bringing stuff in for popular models. Talk to your friendly certifier. There are different levels of certifiers too so make sure you find out who does scratch builds in your area and talk to them. I'll find the requirements for the drawings and out some pics up. They can be drawn on paper (don't need to be CAD necessary but does make it nicer)

*bux.. Damn autocorrect!

Nah was cheap as chips. The whole lot cost me 50but..

Test fitted the front bumper the other day on the daily. Wanted to see if it's going to be suitable for racecar and if looked OK. Looks a bit drift kit ish but changes the look of the car quite a bit. This is now the daily struggle. My driveway isnt even steep and it scrapes. Also 3 wheels going over the driveway. Since kit has indicators blanked I did some Andrew-spec wiring alterations to the park lights to make them into indicators. Which means I don't have Park lights now but meh won't be an issue.. Looks pretty good i reckon. Looking into options for painting bumper. Will keep it mint and change it to the stock one if I'm driving any backroads. Should be mint for smooth roads/track use

Back to racecar updates.. Daily is currently being certed ready for daily thrashing.. This thing is back to being rolling yuss! Paint turned out really good in the end Subframes back in - still need to tidy up the arms and steering rack with a fresh lick of paint. Forklifts come in handy.. Has now made the move with me to Hamilton. Good to have it in the shed again.

Built another ae101 as a daily in the past couple of weeks. Back to cheap reliable 4age power for daily driving yay! Keeping this one extremely simple compared to the racecar...

What pads did you get with them? I found the polymatrix B compound the best. The street compound is rubbish even for driving on the street funnily enough. Should go much better now!

Cool will be good to see a few more of these conversions out there. Is fantastic value for money these engine have come down in price so much Mr2 non turbo driveshafts work with both ends of this swap. I've had a look at the driver's side mount but haven't made anything to suit yet. I was looking at milling the mount on the engine down by 10mm and then making an adaptor plate so the engine doesn't get lifted on the one end.

I've got a bunch of this under my bench which should be the perfect size to thread inside diameter. Bought it to make beefed up rear arms for the old aw11 mr2. Your welcome to as much as you need for steering arms

You like it dirty.don't you.

Pads were a mintex 1144 I think from memory. Some of the other pads will be harder and should last a bit longer.

Oh such good memories... Funnily enough was the second time it had happened. First time also had Markku in the car going into the hairpin at manfield. Managed to save that one. My brake failures were due to twin pot calipers with spaced discs to centre them properly and not checking if it was possible for them to fall out.. Lesson learnt