Truenotch's BEAMS AE86 racecar

[Truenotch]

One more post for this page, so I'll make it about something boring. (edit - oh nooo, I've miscalculated! TOTP fail 😅).

At the last round of racing, I noticed a bit of a wave pattern on the outside edge of my Nankang slicks. This kind of "cupping" or "scalloping" is normally caused by overworking the tyre in some way, and can be exaggerated by worn shocks or suspension bushings.

The RF tyre takes the most load at a couple of points of Highlands A&C track - particularly the Carousel, which is a high cambered corner and I reached a sustained 1.3-1.5g through it. The last round was hot and I'd been experiencing some understeer through there, so it's possible that this graining and wear should be expected. I'll flip the tyres around before Round 3 to try and use the other side of the tyre, haha. 

You can see here that the inside edge (right) still has tread depth dots. The outside dots have disappeared all the way around this tyre. The other 3 are fine. 

The Nankang carcass is a lot softer than the Kumhos, which will also be a factor here. They seem more sensitive to setup and pressure changes - something to keep an eye on! 

I still have a set of Kumhos that are less than half worn, so will get through the season OK if the Nankangs run out of rubber. 

[Truenotch]

So that brings us to Coronet Peak Hillclimb Weekend. Hard to believe it's been a year since the last one!

@GARDRB, @Roman, @Rhyscar and Josh flew down from the North Island for a dirty weekend in Queenstown supporting me and apparently driving my Legacy through terrain most people would think is impossible for that kind of car.

I really enjoyed having people in town for it and they seemed to enjoy themselves too. I'm very keen to push for an OS weekend in Queenstown for next year's hillclimb. 

We kicked of with the car display on the Queenstown waterfront. Old mate from Luis Vuitton wasn't stoked about having riff-raff out front, but we had a permit so he can GTFO.

Then we mucked around for a while, did scrutineering and had devil burger for dinner after 10pm. 

Check out this weird creation that was at scrutineering. A Smart car with crazy aero and a 1650cc+ modified Hayabusa engine.

Competition in the 2L class was pretty tough this year. Brad Rule entered in his impressive K20 EG Civic and Andrew Gibson brought his K20 Lotus Elise along. Both cars had a power/weight advantage over me and I was sure they'd both be a few seconds up the road. 

Brad's Civic has a very spicy K20 that is rumoured to be from Reg Cook's Nissan NX Coupe land speed racer. 

I pitted next to Martin from HPA. We'd got him ready for the hillclimb and it was his first ever motorsport event! Pretty cool that he could get started in the wild little widebody B18C City: 

From there it was into the runs. I had 3 runs with a mildly moist run in the middle of the day. My times were looking good leading into the last run of the day. 

In the last run of the day I was on for a blinder! My lap timer said I was over 3 seconds up on my earlier run... When I struggled to get into 2nd gear and lost at least two seconds at the tight hairpin. Gah! Here's the video: 

It was still my fastest run of the day and now I know there's at least a 1.36 in the car next year.... The 1.38.3 sat me in 2nd place behind Brad's Civic and in front of the yellow Elise.

The whole day was another great one yet again and I'm stoked to have been involved with organising it this year.

... Oh and after all of the time we spent together over the weekend, this is the only pic I can find that has all 5 of us (you can just see the top of my hat behind the car). 

Who's coming next year?

[Truenotch]

Coming up on this season of Markku's Driveline Adventures: J160 Gearbox disassembly.

For the last few events, I've been really struggling to get gears. Particularly getting down into 2nd, but it's also been crunching up into 3rd and 4th. Missing 2nd gear and then bogging through 3rd lost me a few a positions at the last round of racing at Highlands and I was getting super frustrated trying to find gears, so it's time to sort it out!

I have a spare gearbox that I swapped out after it started to get rumbly at oldschool nats 2015. The plan has always been to rebuild it so I have a good spare, but it hasn't been an important job until right now 😅

So I downloaded the full J160 service manual and proceeded to pull it apart. You can download the full PDF from SQ Engineering (at the bottom of this page: https://www.sq-engineering.com/tech-articles/wiring-diagrams-and-diagnosis ).

As I was taking things apart, a few little bits appeared from the oil. I think these are piece of bearing cage... 

Once I got the counter gear off, it was pretty easy to see where the rumble came from: 

A few of the rollers had completely fallen out of the bearing and it's chewed up the counter shaft. The rollers run directly on this surface, so I think this shaft is toast unless I get someone to hard face weld and machine it back to size

Note to self and everyone else: if your bench has holes in it, put a layer of cardboard down! It take ages to find a roll pun when they fall down there! 

I think the shaft is too far gone, so will get Dad to raid my parts gearbox in Palmy for a counter shaft and a couple of other bits so I can get the box rebuilt in time for the next round of racing on Feb 28th. 

Having a parts hoard comes in handy sometimes [often].

[Truenotch]

My parts J160 gearbox arrived and the counter shaft was completely destroyed (2nd gear failure)... And the rear bearing had failed in exactly the same way as the first box. That's OK though, it still has a bunch of useful parts for the rebuild.

That left me without enough parts to rebuild the spare gearbox, so I had to decide what to do. The current gearbox has been getting worse, mostly in second an third gears, but I didn't want to be left with no gearbox, so I figured I'd just leave it for the next race meeting and avoid second gear as much as possible. 

A few people mentioned Castrol VMX80 can be helpful for synchros, so I bought a bottle and dropped the oil out of the box. 

Which delivered buried treasure... 

That's a detent ball from a selector ring... I guess that means the box needs to come out after all!

The culprit was the 3/4th gear selector hub. All three detent balls had popped out and the springs were munched. I must have overthrown this at some stage. 

Thankfully, this box has a good countershaft bearing (finally 🙄) and it looks like it's been replaced with the 7E-HR 0620 bearing that's listed for Mazda & Nissan versions of the AZ6.

Here's the 4th gear circlip for anyone who's interested. This is the common failure point for J160, S15, RX8 and MX5 6 speed gearboxes (probably GT86/BRZ also). I'll do a circlip mod when I have time. 

The teeth on the 2nd gear synchro tell a story. I think the sloped angle on the top of the steel teeth is normal, even though it looks wrong. They're pretty burred from grinding into second.

After a bunch of head scratching, I decided to use most of the internals from the first box I'd pulled apart with the dead counter shaft. That gearbox shifted great and was only removed because the bearing started to rumble.

It also meant I could use the entire main shaft and only needed to swap gears and synchros on a single counter shaft. So I set to work pulling both sets apart and reassembled with the best synchros I had in the stash: 

One piece of advice for anyone planning on doing this at home: take more photos than you think you need to. I spent about two hours mucking around with the 3/4 selector hub because I didn't know which way it was meant to go and the pictures in the manual aren't detailed enough to tell. If the hub is upside down, the selector ring doesn't align properly and overthrows which lets the detent balls ping out and you spend the next 30 minutes on your hands an knees looking for tiny steel balls on the floor.

After gathering up my balls and taking a deep breath, I held the whole lot together with rubber bands and threw it in the hole. The input shaft, main shaft, counter shaft and 2/3, 5/R selector and reverse idler all need to go in as one unit and it's difficult to do on your own. 

But it's possible. 

(This wasn't the final time - the selectors aren't aligned in this pic.....)

I wrapped it up in rags and left it alone for the night. 

4 nights left before race day. Cross your fingers for me! 

 

[Truenotch]

In the previous episode, the gearbox was mostly assembled and almost ready for the centre casing to be installed. I attempted that on Monday night and made a couple of mistakes. 

Mistake 1: Shift levers not aligned correctly.

The shift levers in the J160 feel like they're aligned by hopes and dreams when you first look at them. I had no idea which orientation they were supposed to be, so got it wrong the first time and had to open it up again.

Once the levers are aligned, it starts to make sense how they line up (I forgot to get pics, soz)... and once the levers and forks are aligned, you can flick them around and shift gears. Which brings leads onto...

Mistake number 2: Over throwing the 3/4 Synchro and losing all 3 detent balls from the selector hub again 😅

With the J160, it's super easy to overthrow the selector when shifting into 3rd when the box isn't fully assembled. The ring travels too far and all the balls shoot out of the hub. I spent the rest of Monday night trying to get all 3 back in place on my own, but resigned to the fact that I'd need a second pair of hands to get it done.

A mate of mine chimed in over messages. He's done a bunch of these and says they're one of the harder boxes to assemble. The whole conversation made me feel like less of an idiot

Shoulders on the ends of the dogs? Man that would be nice for avoiding what I just went through:

I got back on the horse after work and one of the guys fingered my ring and held the shaft so I could get my balls securely inside the holes.

It worked and I seemingly got all the forks, shafts and detents installed correctly and ended up with a sealed gearbox tonight! I can even find all 6 gears and reverse. Win!!

I was useless with pics tonight, so here's one of me with my first competed gearbox rebuild: 

Can't wait to do this all again soon with the spare gearbox 🫠 😁

[Truenotch]

Got the box back in last night with the help of @TimShadboltfan27.

Gave it a test on the stands and everything seemed to work.

Took it for a hoon around the block just now and the shifts are super smoothe.

Nothing makes you feel like more of a bad ass than driving a racecar around the block. Would trade again.

[Truenotch]

Good weekend at the track! I had one wild moment at the start of Race 2 that's getting me Instagram famous:

I ended up with a 2nd, 3rd and two wins in my class for the weekend. The other two drivers I'm battling for points took each other out in race 3, so they both DNF/DNS'd the last two races of the day. That means the points should swing in my favour leading into the final round in a month's time. 

Kyle moved up to join me in Class 2 for this round and he's bought a set of CBY flares and 15x9 -10 wheels. The cars are getting closer to being twins as the days go by

(He has his other wheels fitted here... The car won't fit on his trailer with 15x9s)

The gearbox went great! It has a slight crunch up into third, but had zero issues changing down to second and the only gears I missed were driver error. 

Having VVTi working makes a huge difference. Last time my inlet side VVTi solenoid had a broken wire and it was a slouch until 6k+ rpm. This time I was able to pull through the forest hairpin in 3rd with no issues. 

I have some oil leaks to find... The RR axle seals are hosing out diff oil. This has been much worse with the thinner diff oil that's currently in there. I'll replace the seals and change back to a good quality 80w140 and hope that works.

Here's the onboard footage from the first two races: 

 

 

[Truenotch]

We had the final round of racing over the weekend and I came home with a new trophy for the pool room. First place in Class 2 for the year! 

Stoked. 

[Truenotch]

It wasn't all smooth sailing to end the season. Remember this little bit of foreshadowing after Round 2? 

On 04/12/2025 at 12:39, Truenotch said:

The RF tyre takes the most load at a couple of points of Highlands A&C track - particularly the Carousel.

You can see here that the inside edge (right) still has tread depth dots. The outside dots have disappeared all the way around this tyre. The other 3 are fine. 

Well it eventually got to the stage where the tyre had no rubber left. I'd flipped this tyre around on the rim and rotated it to a different corner to stretch it out as long as I could. It did well until I asked too much of it under brakes and found the cords. 

That happened in the second race for the weekend. Race 3 was wet, so I chucked the semis on and kept them on for the rest of the weekend. 

Apart from that, the car was pretty solid all weekend. The diff is still having a whine, but has done extremely well considering how noisey it was before the rebuild. 

Here's the footage from Race 1: 

And the final 30 minute mini-enduro race to end the season. This was a crazy race, with the class 1 Lamborghinis and Porsche's coming through to lap us for the first time this year. Definitely spiced things up 😂

 

[Truenotch]

Big day today! The roof finally has some colour after a year in primer.

We set up the inflatable booth at work this time. It's so much nicer than using the dusty fab room.

Got it prepped and masked, then Brandon gave it a spray.

And Voilà: 

All ready for the big adventure to Christchurch.

[Truenotch]

One of the benefits of my new job is being able to use the tools we have available... I asked Richard to throw the cams from my TRD engine into the Cam Doctor to get a clearer idea of the specs: 

They're basically 264° at 50 thou lift (inlet) and 255° at 50 thou on the exhaust. 

Peak lift on the inlet is 10.16mm and 9.93 on the exhaust. A bit weak on the lift numbers because the class was limited.

And the profile looks like this:

Looking forward to assembling this engine to see how it runs! 

[Truenotch]

Lil' close-up of the chode lobes just because.

Inlet: 

And exhaust with a factory lobe for comparison:

Plenty of duration... it'll be interesting to see if they make any power.

I also don't think I've covered this earlier in the thread. These cams are from a 3SGE Beams engine built by Lynn Rogers for TRD New Zealand and it was run in the Barrie Thomlinson Altezza and/or Phil Hallebreakers car. The engine has "BT4" stamped into it,  so I think this was the 4th engine for the team. They would have rotated through the engines throughout their life cycle.

One of the cars ran at Bathurst in the enduros too: 

The class was limited to 11:1 compression and ~10mm valve lift, but they didn't have any other rules.

I picked up this engine along with another ex-touring car 3SGE with the intention of using the high compression bottom end I'd had sitting around... until I took it apart and noticed something weird about the pistons and rods.

That gudgeon pin is really high up in the piston... 

Yep, it's right up inside the oil control ring and it's Teflon coated. Pretty advanced for the year 2000 or so.

The regulations limited compression, valve lift etc but I guess it didn't say anything about changing the rod and piston dimensions 😄. Now it makes sense why these engines supposedly revved to 9300 rpm in their day.

Being a long rod motor means the high comp pistons from my other engine won't work, so I've decided to put this engine back together in the same spec as it was in the touring car. The only difference will be reinstating the variable valve timing because I'm pretty sure TRD would have run that if they were allowed.

Rough measurements say these are ~8mn longer than stock. Factory Beams 3SGE rod ratio is 1.6:1 and these will make it around 1.7:1.

I'll chip away at this to try and have it ready for the second half of the summer race season.

[Truenotch]

Now I'm settled into the new place in Christchurch, it's time to get ready for the first SS Cup race meeting in a couple of weeks.

My filler neck decided to do wees at the end of last season and it made an absolute mess of my engine bay.

It's amazing how much mess a small amount of water can make.  

Thankfully @JustHarry has access to a TIG just around the corner from work, so he gave it a fizz up for me: 

Turned out decent considering how dirty the crack was.

And it's time for new brake pads. The Winmax W5s did me well last season, but it felt like I was overworking them and I wanted to try something with a bit more initial bite, so I've gone to the W6.5 compound this time around.

The W5s were getting pretty tapered, but still have loads of meat left... Thinkiny maybe I'll cut them down to fit in the rear.

And a shot of the trust old calipers. These are at least 32 years old.... maybe even older. They're not perfect, but they still work well enough.

 

[Truenotch]

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.

[Truenotch]

Couple skiddies from the weekend: