Jump to content

Truenotch's BEAMS AE86 racecar


Recommended Posts

The August round of UTRS was good fun. Switched classes to run in the middle group, instead of the fast one as I was always at the back of the pack.

Had a blast and had a lot of cars to compete with - namely the 300hp AE86 that's new to racing.

Qualified on pole for race 1, which was greasy but not totally wet. The other AE86 ran away on the straight and I was unable to catch, but be broke out of the time bracket (went under 1:23) and got a 10sec penalty... People spun out and the race finished under the safety car - I was the official race winner. Stoked.

Race 2 was a handicap race. Started at the back of the pack. The weather had cleared up but stayed with semi slicks in an attempt to stay above the time bracket.... Had a good race but got stuck in traffic and tried to hard at one point, ending up on the grass and finished mid pack.

4.jpg.8d2dfa93326f4b99d24c91274deb674d.jpg

Race 3 was awesome! Started in a mid group cause of my poor finish in race 2 and had a lot of fun battling toward the front. Had a big battle with a Super6 commodore who was very good at blocking and holding his line. Managed to get past and found a pack of HQ's... 3 rows, 2 wide. They are scary to try and pass in the corners! Started passing them on the back straight but made a bad choice of line and the white Porsche 928 (v8) took advantage... Decided "fuck it" and dived into a gap between an HQ and the grass, found space and ended up in 2nd place heading into the last lap. Sweet! during this I'd had a few runs over the ripple strips and my exhaust had come off the hangers... So going though the esses on the last lap the whole lot fell off! 3SGE with open headers for half a lap is painfull....

Finished in 2nd place but had done a 1:21 on the last lap so got a 20sec penalty and officially finished 8th or so.

Pics:

1.jpg.30096646f08455bcac6b9572adc53ff4.jpg

2.jpg.0188a5c256933a6fbe377a57592b44cd.jpg

3.jpg.1eddf35c79f2d298a3b18eb078988ce4.jpg

The last round is this Sunday, September 6th at Manfeild. Come have a watch! BYO old man for fathers day.

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14421&start=120

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 193
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Truenotch

    193

Top Posters In This Topic

Didn't have a good weekend this time. Went out for practice on Saturday and sheared an axle, which the nom-nom'd the bearing cage on the diffs carrier bearing and put a stop to my racing.

1.jpg.ee105392ddf2f3c2b286564f532a0ec8.jpg

Diff:

2.jpg.eec38696e6d5595deb842c2900e9ddd7.jpg

How it should look:

3.jpg.ff617633da49125f40e47df15ac08d24.jpg

Sponsor:

4.jpg.10afe3b8ab5b5a1b9cb2bed639eb7e26.jpg

So the plan is to get some nice chrome moly axles made up with hardened splines before the next event (not till november or so). Will be getting them done by Howat Engineering in Nae Nae http://howatengineering.co.nz/ .

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

New axles arrived today and they are very pretty!

1.jpg.4ebbb9d6d5005531461d505e0e697efd.jpg

2.jpg.70d727a21b305ec5f99c49912250083f.jpg

3.jpg.0ff87124f80836659e00bf2d57037561.jpg

Took the LSD into Geartech for them to have a quick squiz, and he said it's starting to burn the crownwheel to bits again which prompted converation about WHY this might be happening. You can see that the teeth have been meshing well, so it has been set up correct, but the teeth are getting burnt as if there is a lack of oil. So we had a long discussion about baffles.

The reason it has been doing this appears to be because the baffles are too big, and don't have a gap for the oil to drain back through. This will be because it was set up for a diff cooler at the beginning and the oil supply would have dribbled in from above the crown wheel. So now with no cooler setup the oil is "running away" around Manfeild's long sweepers and is unable to drain back into the middle of the diff housing.

So I jumped under the car to have a look at the baffles... turns out there is almost no space for oil to drain back with this setup because everything fits so tight. Yay for that! I can keep my T series diff.

Here is the baffle:

4.jpg.801446f9a13d92718cecaa7e14056473.jpg

So the plan is to drill mucho holes in the bottom of this one so the oil can drain back (while still doing it's job) and run no baffle on the RH side (becuase it got munted when that axle sheared to pieces). Manfeild is mostly RH corners so the LH baffle is most important.

//oldschool.co.nz/phpbb/viewtopic. ... &start=120

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Update - Racing this weekend!!! Can't wait.

Found a fresh CWP in the right ratio so my diff is away getting that built that the moment... Will have it back tomorrow morning.

Rebuilt front calipers, changed the seals and fitted a different set of (still half worn) pads. Hopefully will stop it from pinching the brakes, which makes it hard to push.

Soldered some wiring.

Bled clutch and brakes.

Nearly ready.

Had a fiddle with what the car would look like if it was 50mm lower and 50mm wider while I was waiting for paint to dry :P .

1.jpg.2fb5826b1e7a96c2e811fd30251a92bc.jpg

2.jpg.2c1e9f2eb6d9f380675e03364fe4b00d.jpg

3.jpg.d03b924081959e36bbb87bbbe69475e3.jpg

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bit of an update:

I've just had the Largest weekend of my life... and possibly one of the best. It'll take a lot to top it.

Started off on Friday morning - heading out to Manfeild for a day of testing. All went well, no breakages or worries. Trialed some different brake pads which worked quite well, but were too worn to carry on with in the end.

Went racing on Saturday, qualified in the rain and ended up around mid pack. Dumped clutch off the start and didn't move very fast.... So was passed by a few escorts. Ended up being caught up in their battle for 4 of the 6 laps (which was good fun), and eventually got past. Set the fastest lap time for the race in the last 2 laps which was bad for the following handicap races.

Sunday morning, another wet one. Started off the back of the grid and was having a really good battle with a Zetec powered bubble-arch MK1, got past him and started to work on Bruce in his 80's Camaro (the "orange roughey"). Poked my nose in around a few corners, only to have the "door" slammed shut in front of me... but kept trying. Got a run on him onto the front straight before he moved over once more...... Edging me toward a puddle. Changed into 4th gear mid-puddle and SNAP, the car was pointing at the wall. Caught it, got passed by the escort and carried on. Gutted.

...... Although at least I wasn't one of the FIVE cars that went into the wall on the front STRAIGHT.... It was pretty wet.

Sunday afternoon came along and we got 1/2 a dry race. Started from grid 16 of 25 and ended up having a great battle with an escort again. We were door-to-door for most of the laps and had one point where we "threaded the needle" down the middle straight... 4 wide with He and I passing through the middle. I had a bit of wheel-to-wheel contact with a datsun and he got a bit of guard damage from the esses. Sweet race, even though I didn't get past as many people as I would have liked.

Good weekend racing over all, happy mood amongst all the drivers despite the rain.

Vids:

RX2 falling off at the start of this was heart-in-throat worthy

Then we had a bit of a party for my 21st :P . Thanks KK for the giant glass of VB :lol: .... We had 100 people and everyone had fun. Up till 4am on a Sunday night after a Race meeting. Sweet.

21040_108262049187305_100000105320959_201050_6715397_n.jpg

21040_108262032520640_100000105320959_201045_6035854_n.jpg

Etc...

In other news:

1.jpg.dbbb6a9ee6946680cc8b297114dbf03f.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Well, the weekend has past and I have............ cleaned my engine and tidied the shed.

Had a good number of helpers on Saturday and it was hot as shit, so we prepared and then went to the river for swims/drinking. Planned on going back home to do more work but just ended up enjoying the sunshine until it was gone.

Started again at 11am this morning. First job, swap the sumps over (wanted to have the oil return fitting for my catch can). Turns out the sumps are slightly diferent.... It has space for the crank angle sensor and a lug in a different place. So we looked and thought some more and decided that the factory oil return plus a non-return catch can was good enough.

Degreased the engine and looked at it some more. The engine mounts don't fit up the same as the gen 3 block... Another slight difference. On the gen3 there are 4 bolt holes on the intake side of the engine, the beams only has 2, with another 2 further down the block. This means I'll have to make another mount plate for the engine and weld it up.

1.jpg.4f32b5659fea81b98d131220a1dae137.jpg

So what we got done was....

2.jpg.87b83ff7a7947668021c7ea1bebfb884.jpg

P.S - this is the billet flywheel I found on the Gen3:

3.jpg.af00993c2d27e9661fca3dac2a477501.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Pics from Thunder in the Dark:

1.jpg.46b24346b89b6536523cdc8c209b8a4f.jpg

2.jpg.e8e73ae03969907164435d296cb94ea5.jpg

3.jpg.2ee83d8d7dfb244254a4c26cac2683d2.jpg

Also, I did something today. Curiousity/procrastination got the better of me, as I sat and looked at the intake & exhaust cams and cam gears.

Ended up deciding to try my luck and see if the Adjustable Exhaust cam gear was the right offset for the beams. It was. Followed that up by trying the Gen3 exhaust cam in the beams head.... It fits. Interesting.

Recently I've been worried about the possibility of the Beams not having as much power as my Gen3 - due to it's lack of cams and my lack of ability to use VVTi. That problem may have been solved today.

So I pulled all 4 cams out and went down to see the gentle folk at Kiwi Cams, told him my story and he understood exactly what I wanted to do. As we speak he is finding out a price for a brand new billet for the intake side to grind to my specs... And if he can't find a billet blank for a decent price we'll look at re-grinding the factory intake cam and shimming to suit.

So I'll have the same cam grind as the old engine in the Beams, and will only have to buy one cam and gear. I'll need to re-shim as the aftermarket exhaust cam from the Gen3 has a slightly smaller base circle than the Beams.

He's pricing an adjustable cam gear for the intake side as well... So once this is all decided we'll be good to go.

Hopefully eke_zetec jase will be around one night this week to talk about intake mani, headers and modding the engine mount.

Watch this space.

Talk about it if you want:

//oldschool.co.nz/phpbb/viewtopic. ... &start=200

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Bought some aluminium today - a metre of 100x10 flat bar for intake flanges and some 5" billet to make a cam gear centre.

Jase (eke_zetec) came around last night and we figured out a way to run the dizzy off the back of the cam. This means the wiring wont need to be touched. Was going to have to go to wasted spark, but this is an easier option.

Dummy fitted the engine. The modified engine mount lined up fine and there is enough space for a dizzy behind the head. Good.

1.jpg.def4cae7aa3b1df53cc9234e9373a09d.jpg

(Put the extractors and huge radiator in the pic for laughs)

Conclusion:

Progress.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Huge thanks to Jase_eke_zetec_rwd for all the work he's done on this so far! It's looking good and getting it going for the Manfeild Winter series looks possible now.

Adjustable cam gears made and fitted. One flange made with another two to come. The cam and cover will be machined to take the dizzy this week and I've got to make covers to block off some water galleries that are exposed. It's all happening.

Once the dizzy is fitted I can take it home, mount it and get it cranking... May even be able to get it running if the standard beams manifold will fit (T/B will be pointing backwards but it will tell us if we have our timing points right). After that the intake and exhaust manifolds can be made to get the business going...

No pics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dizzy slotted in the hole. Looks factory. Thanks again to Jase eke_zetec_rwd for the mint engineering. The cam still needs slotting but the main part is done.

1.jpg.04ec97932d510282fc6cca83dd3a9ec1.jpg

Also, John CXGPWR has lent me a set of factory Altezza extractors to get me going. This is just in case we run out of time before the winter series. It NEEDS to be running by June 5th.

So next on the list is to mount the thing (Maybe this weekend)... Then if we get really into it we can also put the FWD intake and T/B on it to see if it will run and fire in the right sequence...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's in for good this time. We decided it would be easiest to install the engine and trans separately because of the way the mounts work. Box will go in tomorrow.... Manifold time!

Still can't believe how well the Dizzy fits in there... It's almost factory (But lurks in the shadows in all of these pics).

1.jpg.e19e63e1a705c19f1acd37fd6abdd05a.jpg

2.jpg.98a6516e20137f157a67390041f7e28f.jpg

3.jpg.d180ad82fb83eb881cc274ec3eea53db.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Extractors are done. I'll do the exhaust and the rest of the extractors tomorrow and if my dyno man can make time we'll be tuning tomorrow as well!

Shit I'm tired.

Thanks to Jase the engineer for being fucken awesome about this... He would have been at work at 6.30am and stayed working on my shitter after hours until 1am... But he'll probably still beat me at the race meeting in the weekend :P .

1.jpg.05abe8969f71a2e2a4450202478c8333.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, what a weekend!

Last week it was all coming together slowly but assignments meant that getting it done in time for the race meeting was looking unlikely... We managed to get everything in order and had it up to the stage where all that was needed was to build the exhaust system and bleed the cooling system on Thursday - Easy right?

The exhaust was coming together mint, but I needed to get it built by around 3pm to make sure there was time to get it on the Dyno. Got to the last bend and had it tacked up sweet... Then when I pulled the system out to weld it the tacs snapped but I thought I could make it work. Ended up not making it work and the mig gas ran out shortly after that. FAIL. Cut and bent the system to make it fit as a temporary measure and tried to bleed the cooling.

I had an assignment due the next day and needed to finish it. Then John (CXGPWR) showed up for a chat we had a look at bleeding it. Shortly after that we noticed that the TAPTAPTAP the engine was making was not a header leak... It was a head noise. I gave up. John said "GO DO YOUR ASSIGNMENT, I'll fix this". So I did and he spent all night removing my cams and figuring out what the issue was. It ended up being an easy fix. THANKS JOHN :D .

Spent Friday doing non-stop uni work and had decided that we weren't going to make it to Manfeild in the weekend. Had a laxy day and went to bed early, then slept in until 1. Lovely.

Saturday afternoon John arrived at my place again to tell us how his Corolla went at the Test day... I had just repaired my exhaust and painted it and all that was left was to bleed the cooling and Dyno tune it.

Got it bled after some feckling around and we went to see Rodney (my dyno guy) at his house. We mentioned that my beast was ready to run and he said "I'm heading back to work in 1/2 and hour to bleed the brakes on a race car, come along if you want to quickly tune yours".

So off we went at 8:30pm, unloaded the car and slammed it on the rolling road. We dyno tuned until 11PM!

The result of our quick tune was 115KW ATW. This doesn't sound like much but all we did was a safety check to make sure the engine wasn't going to explode. Within the 115kw, however, was a 20KW gain at 5000rpm and a 20kw gain at 6500rpm woth 80NM more torque, so you can see the potential of the new setup.

Graph - Blue = Old red = New.

1.jpg.13eaf591be0fe40b67eb09779c028a22.jpg

So we went racing.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The car went really well! Apart from one thing... The battery was dead flat so we had to jump start it before each race and I had to make it didn't stall on the line (which made me pretty nervous). I stalled in the dummy grid during qualifying and ended up sitting that session out.

Race 1 was damp, but not raining. I was starting last on the grid due to not competing in qualifying. Next to me was a red Evo2 and in front of me was a Star car and another BEAMS powered AE86. Awesome. We started off and I had HEAPS of wheel spin off the line and dropped back a bit, but stuck my foot in it and made a couple of spots into the first corner.

I got behind the other AE86 and we left the Evo2 behind. The silver AE86 supposed to be 200HP ATW and it is an Altezza Beams with TRD inlet manifold and a similar exhaust to mine. My car had a lot more than his in the corners, but he had the straight line advantage. This meant I had to be on the chase for the whole race and was able to experiment with a few different angles. During the 6 laps I attempted to pass on each corner at least once and was still behind him during the last lap... As we headed in to Dunlop - the fast (and last) corner at Manfeild - I hoped he would brake early, and knew I should go deep. He stuck to the inside to defend the line and braked, I waited, braked late and carried more speed through the top of the corner. We were side by side by the time we got to the middle of Dunlop with a papers width between us. I got the jump and had a faster corner exit speed, leaving him to try and catch up on the way to the finish line.

Race 2 was wet and fairly uneventful, but still really fun. Having four or five 500HP cars come past at once, mid-corner and in the rain was an experience though!

Race 3 was VERY wet. My screen fogged up and the blower did barely anything (damn Nick stealing my Pert 2in1 "defog"). Once again, I was having a good battle with the silver AE86 until lap 3 when my screen was about 80% covered in fog. The only combat for this was to crouch down and look through the mail slot of a gap I had and follow the other 86 around the track :? . I couldn't see the edge of the track (let alone the end of my bonnet) to try and make a pass... We circulated slowly, but with full concentration and finished in the same order we started.

A few point-and-shoot pics:

1.jpg.8b0899746029ca77c3dcb5774a46a001.jpg

2.jpg.01b8e3ebef14fbb99e99e2c58801e00a.jpg

3.jpg.cdd0e13104bbca15a6441fba88fbe76f.jpg

Dummy grid

5.jpg.4b8a8d452c8ab7a81c6b66b3396830c6.jpg

Jase (eke_zetec_rwd) - he got quite wet.

4.jpg.d447e36349c7670d26734fca125338d9.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

The engine detonated and died at the round 2 test day after about 9 laps it let go in a big way. After heading around Toyota into the sweeper and hooking 4th gear with a buried foot. *DOOF* - the cabin filled with smoke. I slammed it in neutral and turned it off as soon as possible. A quick look under the hood showed that it had breathed a lot of oil onto the extractors.

It looks like #4 cylinder has leaned out badly and detonated. The most likely reason for this would be a stuck injector - and it's possible since the engine was sitting around for a couple of years before being used. The damage is a melted piston and a dead bore - I think it'll need to be re-sleeved as the damage is quite deep.

Pics:

1.jpg.d709f02e5d5b10356fad47c8b11d84c7.jpg

2.jpg.2204fb60208cc180ba9a14724901f5d9.jpg

3.jpg.87e530e916246b1de2d38c113a21c23e.jpg

The bonus is that the head is OK (apart from having piston particles stuck to it)... So this might be the beginning of a race engine build... We'll see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...