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Truenotch's BEAMS AE86 racecar


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  • Truenotch

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  • 5 weeks later...

The Manfeild round went quite well. I had brand new tyres and am starting to get the hang of the car in this class. It's a big step up from the club racing I had been doing, so I've had to spend more time preparing the car and am pushing to find every small development I can. 

New rose joints and a decent suspension tweak by the boys at Mag and Turbo in Palmy mad a massive difference, along with the new Hankook Z214 soft compound tyres. This was the best my car has ever handled! So we're moving in the right direction. 

Video from the last race of the weekend - I stuffed up the hairpin on lap 1 and let Ivan get ahead of me. Damn! 

 

Pics: 

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Then it was off to Drag Day a week after. This was a great test to see if the crash has bent anything in the rear suspension. It ran nice and straight all day, so that's a clean bill of health in my books! 

And my fake wheels didn't even explode on the day :P

Best time of the day was a 13.82 @ 100.4mph which I'm happy with considering the old tyres and relatively low horsepower. 

Here's a vid from late in the day against Mark105 in his C110: 

And a few pics stolen from the drag day discussion thread. We towed it there with Rahn's Valiant wagon :D

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Burnouts! 

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This was quite a novelty for me as I've never done a proper smokey burnout in Robin before... Turns out it does great skids when you wind the brake bias all the way to the front, hook second and dump the clutch at 8000RPM! :lol: Would trade again.

Thanks to Richy for putting the effort into organising the day, it ran without a hitch and everyone had fun. Also all the volunteers for making it happen and Greg / Midnight Upholstery for providing the sausages and helping us roll the Valiant guards with a jack handle at the end of the day! 

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  • 2 months later...

After drag day I left this thing in the shed and promptly got busy doing other things... A few months down the track and it hadn't been touched, moved or cleaned and oldschool trackday was coming up. Perfect. 

I left it in "drag trim" with very old semi slicks on the back with ~20psi, slicks on the front and my DYO time in chalk on the windscreen. The car was still fairly well balanced and felt OK throughout the day, but the brakes weren't inspiring confidence. The best time I managed for the day was a 1:16.0 which I'm fairly happy with considering the old rear tyres and poor brakes... I think it's got a 1:14 or better in it on race day though! 

It wasn't until after nationals that I remembered that the brake bias was wound all the way to the front from drag day (to assist with burnouts)... Whoops! That's probably why the brakes felt funny :P . Here's a vid of the fastest lap of the day (need to get an open mount for the action cam, the sound is terrible!). 

 

 

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Since nats I've had to start working on it as there's a race meeting coming up. There were a few things to get sorted - replacing the crownwheel bolts in the diff was one of those jobs. They had come loose and we rattled them up with a bit of loctite at round one and I decided it was time to get in there and replace them. We ended up pulling the diff completely to pieces as it's needing a bit more backlash, so a friend of mine is shimming it up at the moment. So for now this is how it sits: 

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In the meantime I started fixing my bent rim with outer bands that Sheepers kindly sold me from his hoard of awesome parts. He even polished them before I got them, thanks sheepers! 

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These are 13mm wider than my old outer bands, so that makes these wheels into 15x9's at -13ish. Not bad! I've fitted two for now and will do the others before the final round at Taupo. 

They're fairly chubby! I can't wait to get the tyres fitted. 

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I also gave the brakes a good clean, service and flush along with returning the bias back to the normal place instead of being set an extra 30 clicks to the front!

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More to come this week... I've got to have it ready for Hampton Downs this weekend!

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Tyres fitted - they're chubby wheels! I'm looking forward to finding a set of 225 wide slicks to match them.
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The extra 1/2" of poke is definitely noticeable in person.
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I also added a new start button as mine blew apart when I started it the other day due to being extremely old.
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Now all that's left to do is re-fit the diff when it comes back and give it a wash. :-D .

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

Time to start working on this again after leaving it alone since the final round at Easter. 

So here's the situation: 

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There's a bit to do in the rear end. I'd suspected that the left rear shock was on its way out after the Pukekohe round of SS2000... And it turns out I was right: 

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So it's time to replace all these bits: 

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While I'm in there it's time to clean up the diff and replace all the axle seals as the RR is dropping a lot of oil and the LR is starting to weep as well. 

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I should have a set of these in the mix soon (double adjustable) which will make a massive difference! 

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Spent some time hunting for oil leaks this afternoon. Both sides have an issue, but the RR is far worse than the LR. My theory was that there must be a crack or a porous weld on the RH side that was making the problem worse, but on closer inspection the seal appears to be pretty bung!

Got floating hubs off:

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This is the right hand side:

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And the left:

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The seal on the right tapers out (which is shouldn't) and the outside edge looks quite worn. By comparison, the other seal has more of a U shaped curve - which creates a seal on both sides. There was also a lot of abrasive crud stuck to the oil on the bad side, which would have been wearing away at the rubber and making the problem even worse.

Time for a couple of new seals and it can go back together.

I would like to rule out the potential for a porous weld though, as this part has always seemed weepy:

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Does anyone know of an epoxy or similar that can be stuck to the metal to seal off any potential holes? I've tried CRC need-it before and it didn't stick that well... Obviously it'll need a vigorous clean beforehand, but I'd like to goo it up with something.

Oh, and here's the new Toyo underseal I'm trying. It's expensive, but only takes a couple of minutes to apply and sticks quite well!

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