Cows got a free show then.

Looking pretty clean and fired up.

Yes, nearly hit one!

Bit of frost on the morning runs saw us sailing down a steep field as passengers basically, which cost us 5-6 minutes, but with the mods it's had it's gained another 20-25s, we were putting times in that were top ten bar that, was 15th but had the pace for 8th.

Thought the car sounded a bit loud at scrutineering - got louder through the day, then started to get a ticky rasp like an exhaust leak. Checked the backbox and the ceramic wool had blown out, couldn't work out why, but I think we found it...



Few more pics too:

Little bit more work tonight, gearbox oil change and a few plans to maybe change the breather system or put a pump and spray bar in there - the transaxle got a bit warm last event and slowly breathed out half a litre of oil - the breather is quite short and low so we'll shift it up to the top of the car and see if that helps, gearchange goes notchy when it gets too warm, doesn't want to go into second, which makes things tricky...

Also made some changes to get the rear suspension softer on the spring rate but still with a couple inches of stiffer bumpstop formed by the rear torsion bars, and lowered the car a bit front and rear along with some slightly stiffer compression settings on the dampers - it was a bit too high at the last event, made it skittish and tentative over some stuff that you'd expect to just hammer over usually, hopefully going back to the old lower spring rate and our little trick for more preload is a good balance.

Apart from that it was mainly servicing work and retensioning belts, etc, haven't had time to test it so it's gonna be on the trailer tommorow and just fingers crossed at the event!

Little clip from last time out:

https://youtu.be/ENN0_vkHFQk

Forgot to mention, the new pulley setup is ready, which should give the car another 50bhp and bring it back around the original target boost level - almost just slapped it on and ran it because Walters has a lot of Cat A rally tracks and 50 horsepower is probably worth 10-15 seconds here, but without chance to test it and check the temps and fuelling we decided not to risk it quite yet.
We're being sensible for a change, I know, weird right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8g1t3aJv9k

Okay so - it was a mixed weekend, incredibly slippery the first day - felt like the car was on ice, no grip anywhere - I bet anyone watching thought we were out for a Sunday drive from the outside, it was like driving on marbles, some of the downhill corners you just couldn't touch the brakes and it was a case of just letting the car slowly slide itself into a turn without doing a 180* and heading down the the hill backwards after the corner.
However I made some big changes overnight to the damping as the new spring rate on the rear seemed to be okay, so I kept that and then went far softer on the low speed and rebound to suit - no big hits to kick the rear end up here so felt fairly safe to do so in the name of finding some grip and feel, and cranked the cracking pressure up instead to still take out the bigger hits - car came alive on the second day on the other course, we put a few times in that were top ten which was pretty good on such a fast, slippery course.

Doesn't sound too much but there were a lot of quick cars here this weekend, to put it in perspective some of the 4wd Canam cars that are fairly consistent across courses were about 60-90 seconds faster than us at the start of the year on a similar course length, we'd dropped that to 30 seconds by the second event, were faster at the last event at Tiverton by a few seconds and now we're pulling 30-60 seconds on them at this one - and matching some of the guys who are usually contenders for the championship on odd runs, which was a surprise even to us
We're certainly not front running pace, not even close yet, but this kind of championship is as much about endurance as pace, if we can get there and keep it consistently at that pace, it's boding well for some fun at least.

It's still very situational so I've a lot of work to do on the damping once I get tools to strip these new Foxes, to make them more consistant across more terrain, and we could do with finding some of the soft compound race tyres in the right size for the rear - currently we're on standard road tyres whereas most teams are on either soft grass race compounds or Michelin forest rally compounds, I bet there's a chunk of time there to find. Also need a bit more front camber we're on the edges of the tyre all the time even with 3* static on there:





We had another issue which was we got 300m from the finish line on one run and lost all power - the car just cut out completely - turns out the connector for the electronic cutoff switch had somehow managed to work it's way out and cut the power to the car as a safety measure - doh!
Anyway, one session with tie wraps and the dashboard out overnight fixed that problem from coming back but that was a bit of a pain for a simple plastic plug. It's getting a session with some epoxy resin and hot glue before the next event, rather annoying that one.
Issue #2 was the last two runs of the event on day 2 - the torsion bar in the power steering snapped - so there was no feeling in the steering unless you were full lock left or full lock right - not the best thing on a race off road!
It's a standard part out of a Peugeot 405 but finding them these days is tricky, so it might be a redesign on that front, on the upside after we worked out what it was and that it wasn't going to cause any complete failures, Ed took the car back out anyway and somehow put the two fastest runs in we'd had. Apparently steering slows you down. Somehow.

On the upside, we've 100% sorted our breather issue with the engine we had before, the cars responding to suspension changes much better now which it wasn't doing too well before the work on the front arms and rear springs, the engine doesn't use a drop of oil or water, temperatures have been great at all events - if anything I'm going to play with blocking some cooling off over winter, maybe even drop the oil cooler and just add some fins to the dry sump tank - the oil barely gets warm, and the cooling fans only run at half speed most of the time.
Along with that the oil, belts and filters always look perfect, so it looks like we're doing well on the engine front.
Might also shrink the side intakes slightly, make them a little less draggy.
Along with that I think it's time to crank the engine up with that new pulley to give it some torque and horsepower - not for the next event, it'll be winter - but we've been also short shifting most of the time for grip, so I'll push the warning lights up and the limiter up in the ECU and wring it out a bit more next time around, there's another 1500rpm to play with yet which is a fair bit more power already and still be conservative, it only really gets run out to there when holding second gear for a corner so it's time to use it more in anger through the other gears.





We ended up well down the results due to the run we had the car cut out on us on, but still 24th out of 42 entries, so nothing exciting but we're not too bothered about that, we got to have fun and it was looking promising. Upset a few people anyway on odd runs which is the main thing

Sounds like you are having plenty of fun mixed in with dashes of sest backs but all solvable and pointing the way to faster times.

Being mid field and nibbling at the leaders is a good place to be. Focus on closing in on those ahead rather than perhaps keeping ahead of the bottom gang who are spending their time trying to devise ways to beat you !

That just looks like so much fun   

It's definately a nice place to be, we've got some work to do as the car still doesn't really have the grip or handling we had before - but then it had a few years of damper work behind it back then, we're kinda starting from scratch again.

And yes, definately a lot of fun - back there next month as they're having another event at Walters.

Wheel spin, mud bath and Buckaroo - looks like your rail is built for the wild !

 

Definately built to take a beating!

With more use will come more changes and modifications just like a buggy.

Oh it's getting modified every single event atm.

https://youtu.be/E7lKrbhZnR4

https://youtu.be/ZCnvOT1XHtE

You certainly rip along and 'eat up' the dusty terrain with ease. Wish I had such smooth suspension.