With a huff and a puff

Bigger brakes? Check!

Stronger clutch? Check!

Wider wheels? Check!

More downforce? Check!

It was time. The collection of parts that had being slowly building over the last year and a bit were about to meet their destiny. It was finally time to turbo charge the Harper Type 6 V8.

The 4.0 litre, naturally aspirated, Lexus V8 that is fitted to my car is a bit of an unsung hero in the engine world. Often overlooked owing to its rather small capacity, at least when compared to brawny American muscle, this all aluminium engine boasts some fairly advanced tech for its time. 

Designed in the late 80's by Yamaha for the Lexus LS 400 saloon, it quickly made its way into a number of Toyota vehicles, running in production until 2000. Designated as the 1UZ-FE, it featured an all aluminium over square block, 6 bolt main bearings and belt driven quad cams acting on four valves per cylinder - all combining to produce 195kw and 360Nm out of the box. 

Quite impressive for the day!

The engine quickly built a reputation for being strong and reliable, gaining it a sturdy engine transplant following. It was not only fitted to virtually every type of four wheeled vehicle, but also ended up in home built aeroplanes and boats over the course of its life. Despite the enthusiastic fan club, even by the mid 2000's, aftermarket go-faster goodies were scarce and expensive. The desire for more power was ever present and it was not long before turbos were being bolted onto the little V8. The pre-94 version of the engine had slightly thicker con rods, but more importantly, a lowish compression ration of 10.1:1. Not exactly ideal for slapping on a turbo, but tuners realised that if the boost was kept below 0.8 bar, the engine was still reliable and could produce over 300kw. This was a nice option, since you started off with a 200kw motor and then just increased the peak power and torque. Turbo lag was not an issue with this setup.

Of course, there were those that went a bit crazy and built 1000hp versions of the engine, but at vast cost and effort. Generally, if you wanted huge power you were best off starting with a big block American engine, but if you wanted cheap power, you slapped a turbo on a 1UZ. Dropping the compression ratio with aftermarket pistons allowed boosting of over 1  bar and power number in the 400's. Again, a nice option, but the real strength of the 1UZ was, well, its strength. Not having to open the engine up before adding the turbo was a huge gain, both in terms of cost and time.

Thus, our plan was to bolt a rather large turbo directly onto my two season old race engine without even taking the engine out of the car. Further, the car still had to run on pump fuel, a tall ask for a high compression engine being force fed buckets of air.

The car as duly dispatched to the Harper head quarters where work began, as always, in ernest.

The design of the Type 6 lends itself rather well to the addition of a turbo, since there is a large open space behind the engine and above the gearbox that happily coincides with the exhaust pipes. 

A space in need of filling

Craig set about designing and fabbing up all the required bits. A manifold had to be made, oil feeds routed, intercooler installed, dump valve and waste-gate plumbed in and numerous other small fiddly bits all needed doing. 

New two into one exhaust manifold..

..and fitted in place waiting for the turbo and waste-gate

Turbo and waste-gate fitted

Of course, the addition of a turbo meant I would be losing my twin tail pipes. I was a little unhappy about this as they gave the rear of the car some serious cred. However, there was no way to route the exhaust back up and still split it into two for the effect. In the end we decided on a single large 76mm tail pipe exiting low out the back of the car. I think it actually looks a little meaner now.

Single large exhaust pipe

While all the activity was going on, and body panels were removed, we decided to also fit an oil cooler. I had managed to get away with not having one for two seasons so far, but oil temps were a little on the high side and the addition of the oil cooled turbo was likely going to push things over the edge. A nifty all in one kit was ordered and installed in one of the side pods.

Oil cooler sharing space with the fuel pumps

Once the intercooler had been added, the space that was previously there, ceased to exist.

Intercooler, dump valve and "traffic fan" installed

Space? What space?

No really, there is no space left

Once all the mechanicals had been completed, a small modification was required to the engine cover to allow cool air into the intercooler. This was easily achieved by chopping a big hole in the existing cover and building on a new scoop. 

Hole made (no, he did not cut it out with the scissors!)

Scoop taking shape

The final finished item turned out rather well I think, adding just a little more menace to an already menacing car.

The new scoop

Subtle, but present

While Craig was busy finishing off the look-good bits, I decided to go shopping. I was a little concerned about how I was going to monitor the engine. The digital dash I have installed would easily be able to give me the boost pressure as well as all the usual temperature readings, but what I needed was a way of checking the state of the engine when it was working hard.

(DANGER - Technical stuff coming up)

Plonking a fat turbo onto a relatively high compression engine can produce two undesirable results. 

The first, and possibly most dangerous, is pre-ignition. Also known as knocking or pinking (although not technically the same thing), pre-ignition is when the fuel in the cylinder spontaneously ignites before the piston has reached the top of its stroke. 

Normally, the piston, on its way up the cylinder, compresses the air that was drawn in on the previous down stroke. As the piston nears the top of its stroke, a carefully choreographed dance takes place between the piston passing the top of its stroke, the injector injecting just the right amount of fuel into the ever decreasing space and the spark plug firing to ignite the air/fuel mix bomb. The engine ECU coordinates all this according to the "map" that has been written by the tuner. Fire the spark plug too soon and you will explode the bomb before the piston has past the top of its stroke. It then hits the expanding flame front instead of being pushed down the cylinder by it. This is when you hear the "knock" or "ping". 

This chattering noise is bad for an engine and should never be heard in a modern electronically controlled, fuel injected car if it is well tuned However, most normally aspirated engines can survive some "knocking" without ill effect. 

The problem with adding a turbo to the mix, is that now, one is forcing more air into the engine. When you squeeze air, it gets hot. Eventually you will get to the point when the air being forced into the engine (the boost), assisted by the compression effect of the piston, reaches the ignition temperature of the fuel. Thus, as soon as the injector squirts the fuel into the cylinder, it explodes. With a turbo car on high boost, this can happen way before the piston reaches the top of its stroke. This is pre-ignition, and it usually ends in tears as bits of piston end up in the sump.

Pre-ignition can be averted by having a good tuner and running an additive in the fuel. The tuner needs to make sure the engine timing and boost pressure is within a suitable range to ensure no knocking happens, while the additive slows down the burn rate of the fuel, making it a bit more predictive. The idea is not to have a massive, short lived explosion just as the piston rolls over top dead centre, but rather a controlled burn as it makes its way back down the cylinder. The higher the octane rating of a fuel, the slower the burn. By slow, of course we are talking relative here, milliseconds and stuff.

The second issue that presents itself is a little more insidious. This is the problem of running "lean". Running lean essentially means that there is not enough fuel being injected into the piston at each firing stroke. While this may seem like a good thing from a fuel economy point of view, it can be terminal for an engine. What happens normally is that the squirt of fuel from the injector actually serves to slightly cool the piston and valves down each firing stroke. When you run lean, you lose this slight cooling effect. Under normal street driving conditions, one would probably never know a car was running lean. However, put a car on a track and add a turbo to the mix, and quite quickly one can turn nice aluminium pistons into blobs of molten goo. This can happen in the space of a few laps and could even be caused by something as simple as a failing fuel pump. You, as the driver, will have no warning until clouds of smoke appear from the rear of your car.

(Note for anoraks out there. This is a vast simplification of the problem, and there are all manner of discussions about  stoichiometry, "insulation boundaries" and subsequent increased heat transfers to piston crown etc that actually cause the "melting" issue, but let us not get caught up in all that here)

Anyway, back to the shopping. I was going to rely on Herman from Mace to ensure I did not have any knocking,  but I turned to technology to ensure I did not melt any pistons. Drivers of modified diesel engines use gauges called EGT's to keep an eye on this whole issue. The EGT or Exhaust Gas Temperature gauges measure, well, just that. Increase in EGT means pending doom, so slow down.

Us petrol heads have a much better way of doing this. We measure AFR or Air to Fuel ratio. If there is too much air in the AFR, you are running lean, simple as that. I bought a neat little kit that included everything one needs to measure AFR, with the added bonus of it being able to send the reading directly to my on board logger too.

New anti-melt toy

Large LED readout with colour coded bars around the edge

The AFR gauge is very simple in that it actually consists of a wide band lambda sensor that goes into the exhaust pipe anywhere after the turbo, and the gauge itself. The gauge measures the voltage from the lambda and translates this to an AFR. A very simple and completely stand alone system, and an easy way for me to make sure no in-engine melting takes place.

Once all this was fitted and the car was ready, we needed to get it mapped. We started out by simply recalibrating the existing map for the extra air and then carefully drove it down to Mace for a tender loving thrash on the dyno.

Herman started off with his knock sensor attached to the engine to determine how much boost we could run with the standard fuel. The result was a rather low 0.3 bar. We added some NF Black octane booster and things looked much better at 0.45 bar.

After much fiddling and tuning, Herman eventually called it a day at 261kw and 502Nm of torque under only 0.45 bar boost. The turbo itself is good from over 2 bar, but we would need to convert to avgas or ethanol if more boost was desired with our current compression ratio. I was happy with the numbers. Some 60 extra kilowatts and over 100 Nm of torque was going to be fun and games in a car already endowed with a tail happy streak. There is still plenty of room to expand as well, so we are starting off conservatively. Reliability is still very important.

Now, while you may be thinking.."260kw? I can get that from a tuned egg box", bear in mind the Type 6 only weighs 900kg giving it a power to weight ratio of 395HP/Ton. Still not convinced, take a look at where this places the humble Type 6 in the BHP/Ton standings.

Playing with the big boys

Video: Herman, working his magic

Nice smooth curves, always a good thing

It was now time to hit the track to see if the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.

Typically, Cape Town was raining on the day of the track booking, but thankfully it cleared up just in time for me put in around 30 laps or so.

So, what's the verdict you ask. Well, the car was always pretty fast. With lots of torque low down, it would come out of corners like a scalded cat and I would easily reach 215km/h down our, fairly short,  back straight. The wing and larger wheels have eroded some of this urge. The wing by adding drag and stealing 10km/h from my top end, while the larger wheels by changing the gearing and putting me lower down the torque band on fourth gear corners. 

The turbo has fixed all that and more. On my initial runs, and I was taking it easy given that everything was still shiny and new, I managed 220km/h top speed. Lap times were nothing to shout home about, but then it was wet and I was being a little cautious. 

It's a curious effect though. The turbo has added a whole lot more power and torque with no perceptible lag. Booting the throttle launches the car toward the horizon at an astonishing pace, which just seems to keep going until your either run out of nerve or road.

Driving the car on public roads now requires quite a bit of concentration. You can't just be tootling along in third gear behind granny and then stomp on the throttle when a gap appears. This can elicit  a lot of scrabbling from the rear and some unwanted sideways action. 

Grannies generally disapprove of big black noisy cars coming past them sideways.

All told, the conversion has been a success so far. Time will tell if we have messed with the excellent reliability of the car, and I'm sure we will be presented with some teething problems as the season begins. The truth will, of course, be in the first full blown race day where I hope lap times will show a significant improvement. 

But for now, I just love stomping on the throttle to feel the massive urge pushing me into the seat followed by the raucous hiss of the dump valve just behind my ear as I come off the load pedal.

It really is quite addictive. I think I might be starting to like turbos again.

On a wing and a prayer

Spoilers. Wings. Fins. Negative lift devices. Aerodynamic aids. Call them what you want, I have never been all that partial to these things folks bolt to the boot lids of their cars in the mistaken allusion that they will magically transform the dubious handling of their family sedan into that of a race bred machine. At best they will add drag and slow the car down, at worst the wing might be ripped off at speed and slice the head off some poor sap following on behind minding his own business.

Look Mom, I'm a race car!

Personally, I like the name "spoiler", since generally that's what they do to the lines of a car.

So, it was with more than a little trepidation that I started considering fitting a wing to the rear of my car. My thinking was, however, helped considerably by the last couple of outings following my recent upgrades. You see, I had taken the car out four times since the wheels, brakes, pedals etc had been upgraded and, of those four outings, I had managed to spin during three of them. The spins were also a little confusing. You can generally tell when you have overcooked something and will be mentally ready for the inevitable consequence. I have done this plenty of times in the past so it is not all that new to me. I quite regularly seem to run out of talent in certain corners. However, these last couple of spins where totally out of the blue. They all happened in corners, as one would expect, but not where one would expect them to happen in the corner. The most impressive was probably the spin into turn 3 during the first practice following the upgrades. I spun just at the entrance to the corner, did a complete 360 and exited the corner as if nothing had happened. The others were a little less impressive and a whole lot more alarming. Notably the spin in turn 4 with Quintin on board. I think he might still be picking the sand out of his ears. We had spun mid corner during a track day and engulfed the car in a cloud of mole hill sourced debris that I am still finding in nooks and crannies around the car. 

Anyway, discussions regarding the problem pointed to my lack of recent driving practice and the extra front grip the new wider tyres introduced into the equation. The concept was that with the, now, much increased front grip, I was entering the corners as I always had - expecting some light understeer - and was thus inducing oversteer instead. Oversteer with my car was not good, and was exceptionally difficult to catch, unless you were really expecting it. In these cases I had not been expecting it at all and thus ended up farming.

The solution to the problem was to, firstly, improve my driving skill, but more realistically, to increase the downforce on the rear wheels. This meant I would need a wing. I mentally relented and a wing was duly commissioned from Team Harper Headquarters. After much beavering away at the factory, Craig eventually requested the presence of my car for the fitting of the wing. It was a week before race day and I decided that it would be a good idea to have the car serviced and generally check over at the same time. I had been racing the car for close on two years now and, excluding the recent upgrades, not much had been done over that time, save for an oil change and some rear bushes.

Craig set about the car in earnest, which was good, given the short time frame. A phone call a little later in the day shed a staggeringly bright beam of light on the spinning problem. During the routine checks on the car, it was discovered that the right hand side lower ball joints were ever so worn. To the extent that my right rear wheel had its own version of dynamic rear toe adjustment. Rear wheel steering is nothing new, and never really caught on. I can assure you that random rear wheel steering will definitely never catch on. It causes you to spin at arbitrary places in corners. This of course brought up the question of whether I still needed a wing. It was a moot question as Craig had already fitted mine. 

I finally got to see the car on Friday morning, the same day I was scheduled to practice for Saturdays race day. My first impression was "Wow, that's a rather cool wing". It was large to be sure, and wide, and large. Did I mention it was quite large. It stood proud over the back of the car and added a serious dose of race cred to an already mean looking vehicle. I was suitably impressed with Craig's design efforts. Now it was a case of seeing if the wing would make any difference, so I set off to join the practice. Craig had a few things to finish off on the wing and was scheduled to meet me at the track in time for the last practice slot. I was going to run in the midday practice without the wing and gather some "before" data that could be used for comparison to when the wing was fitted. This plan was royally scuppered by some road works that had me inching along in bumper to bumper traffic and eventually arriving hot, sweaty, irritated and too late for the practice slot. I now had a two hour wait before my next slot so headed to the club house for some lunch.

Eventually it was time to head out for some testing. Craig arrived in the nick of time and we bolted the wing to rear of the car. I took the first couple of laps easy just to see if anything would would fall off. The car felt fantastic, but this was more due to the new ball joints than the presence of the wing. Finally, after a couple of warm up laps, I managed to stretch the car a bit and could immediately feel the effects of the wing. I was able to brake much harder without locking up the rear wheels and the car was feeling much more stable under hard cornering. Sadly the practice session was littered with visiting Sports & GT cars, down for the GT Invitational race the following day, so I only managed a handful of clear laps. On the upside, I was treated to the glorious sounds of a Ferrari 430 Challenge downshifting at full song next to me as we entered turn 5 side by side. 

So, with practice wrapped up for the day, it was looking to be an interesting race day as I, once again, would be getting used to a "new" car during a race meeting. Some things never seem to change.

New wing doing it's thing - Photo courtesy of Dieter Dolinschek

Race day was an early affair with us qualifying at 8am and racing at 10am. Thankfully I had made good use of my two hour wait the previous day and had completed documentation and scruteneering. This at least gave me a little more time to get organised in the morning.

Qualifying was a bit of a non event as we had a large field for the day and I ended up only getting in 5 laps of which possibly one was clear. This did not really concern me as I was going to be using the day to get cozy with my car again. This is always best done from the rear of the field.

Race one was called and we lined up for the start. I was fourth on the Class D grid and had Ant's Type 5 and Hennie's Corvette behind me. The lights went out and the three of us roared off into the first corner. During the mayhem of the first lap, Hennie managed to pass me, but as the race settled down a bit and I realised I was catching Hennie's 'Vette. The mist descended and all thoughts of "getting to know the car" where out the window as I focused on the rear of the black Corvette. I quickly realised that, with my added downforce, I was able to out brake him into the corners. Thus, the plan was hatched. Pick him up at turn 5, climb into the air hole behind him down the straight, at the last minute pop out and duck inside to take the corner. Easy enough, but this needed me to be really close to his rear end. 

Going onto turn 5 I was glued to his rear, focussing on the red ZR-1 sticker low down on his bumper. I exited turn 5 in third gear as close as possible, snatch fourth to match his speed down the straight, dropped the clutch and floored the throttle. I was met by what can only be called a howl of protest from the engine as I appeared to have missed the gear. I quickly snatched third, but was too high in the rev band and tried fourth again, but with the same effect. I seemed to have lost fourth gear for some reason. I hopped across to fifth, but by this time I was stone last. Images of little steel teeth happily bathing themselves in the warm oil of my gearbox sump flashed through my mind, but something about the gear shift did not feel right. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what had happened. 

My gear shift is cable operated, with the gear cables being quite special devices having to be both compression and extension resistant while being flexible. To this end, no section of the flexible bits of the cable can be exposed outside of the outer sheath, for if they were, they would simply bend when asked to "push". A  while back a section of my outer sheath had come adrift and I had relocated it with some fuel hose and pipe clamps. Clearly this fix had failed and all push ability of the cable had been lost. This effectively meant I only had "pull" gears, being first, third and fifth. Not exactly ideal considering I mostly use fourth around the track. I decided to carry on anyway and at least finish the race, so spent the remaining laps alternatively buzzing the rev limiter in third or coughing down the straight in fifth. 

Back in the pits my diagnosis was confirmed and I set about fixing the problem again. About three metres of duct tape and an hour later, I had a working gearshift and headed to the club house for some lunch. 

Unfortunately, Ant was having overheating problems and pulled out of the first race, which was actually a good thing since he has now officially eclipsed me as the most powerful Harper, following his recent turbo work. He was certainly showing a significant turn of speed and would likely have shown me a clear pair of heels had he stayed in the race.

Ant hassling my new wing at the start of race one. Photo courtesy of Dieter Dolinschek

For race two, I had drawn fourth on the grid which put me behind Hennie's Corvette and Paul's GT40. I had some unfinished business with Hennie and was keen to get back to the action, this time with a couple of extra gears. We rolled around for the start of the race and three V8's thundered into turn 1. Everyone was well behaved and we exited the other side intact and in the same places. Paul was still trying to get to grips with his rebuilt GT40 and was being cautious in the corners. This was a bit of a problem as I was behind him at this point and I could see Hennie making a getaway up front. Paul's GT40 boasts a significant 5.7l engine and he ambles away from me down the straights. Finally, after around three laps, I built up some courage and applied my new found brake force to out brake him going into turn 5. I had tried this once before and ended up watching him wave to me as I parked up backwards on the exit of the corner. This time, however, my wing did its thing and I stuck to the corner like glue, exiting ahead of the GT40. I could see the Corvette at the end of the front straight. He was probably around 5 seconds up the road from me. This meant I would need to lap around 1 second a lap faster then him if I had any hope of catching him with enough time to pass him before I ran out of laps. This was a tall order, but I put on my race pants and set off after him. This would also give me a chance to get to grips with the car while I had some open track in front of me. The next few laps were a bit of a revelation as I braked later and later and tried to cautiously find the limits of grip in the corners. Craig, who was watching from the stands, told me later that I was indeed catching the Corvette at a rate of around a second per lap, but in the end it was not enough, and we crossed the line some three car lengths apart.

All told, it was a good day. The car was very much on song now, and the wing, which turned out not to be a spoiler, was showing some serious benefits. Later lap sector analysis would show that, while I had lost around 10km/h top end on the straights due to added drag, I was faster through almost every corner. This has two direct spinoffs. Firstly, I now need to spend time with the car to explore the limits and reassess my brake markers, but secondly, and more importably, I need more power!

Now where did I put that turbo....

A moss covered stone

It's true. A rolling stone does indeed gather no moss. Unfortunately, for the last couple of months I have been a rather stationary stone. Consequently I am covered in moss. This was proved rather embarrassingly a few weeks back when I rolled out onto the track again for the first time since my moss gathering began. 

Ok, so I do have an excuse. All racing drivers, however wannabe they are, have excuses. But, seriously, mine are good. You see, I decided to make some changes to the car. Most folk do this over the Christmas period, when there is lots of time to get everything done. Me, I decided to do it mid season. And not just a small change or two. No, a complete change of the wheels, hubs, brakes, pedal box and clutch. Of course, all for good reason.

The structure for the new top mounted pedals. Much stiffer than before!

Thing is, it always takes longer to finish than you think, especially when you are making significant changes that require aftermarket parts to be matched to an existing system. Anyway, subject to Craig's considerable skill and dedication, the niggles where all eventually sorted out and the car was ready. At this exact point I decided to go overseas on holiday with the family. So, by the time I finally drove out of pit lane, some three months later, and the Saturday before race day, I could hardly remember which way the track went, let alone how to drive my car.

Thankfully, the brain does appear to have some sort of muscle memory and within a couple of laps things started to come together. Now, the main reason for doing all these changes was, obviously, to make the car go faster. At this point in the practise session things were not looking good. I was barely managing to break 30's let along storm in the 23's as I  had been hoping. It was time for an egg and bacon roll and some expectation reassessment.

The second practise session yielded somewhat better results as I realised the car had much more grip than before (due to the wider tyres) and much better brakes. It was now a matter of finding the limits, without crashing into something hard, all the while adjusting the brake markers. By the end of the session I was back to lapping around 25's. Not stellar, but at least back to where I was before. It was only during the third, and last, practise session that I started to realise the car handled quite a bit differently. We had upsized the front tyres from 195's to 225's. Consequently, the car had a lot more grip on turn in. I had been driving as before, balancing cornering for the slight understeer I knew the car had. I was rather euphoric  about my massive discovery, so much so that I promptly spun going into turn 3. It was a neat spin though, the marshal hardly had a chance to bring out the yellow flag, before I had completed my unscheduled 360 and was scampering down the track again, a little less euphoric. I managed to sneak in a high 24 during this session, but was now painfully aware of the fact that the car was very different to what it had been, and I would essentially have to learn it all over again. This moss was proving to be rather sticky stuff.

Thus rolled on race day. It was a long weekend so numbers were a little down. I figured this was a good thing since it would mean less things for me to hit. I arrived nice and early and parked up next to Paul and his GT40. Paul was eventually back after his fire induced rebuild, but was having all sorts of small issues so was not expecting to do that well. The car, I must admit, looks awesome. It now sports a much racier look, with low front defuser and aggressive rear arches over its massive slicks. As always it sounds as good as it looks. The GT40 really is one of my all time favourite cars.

The Harper contingent was made up of myself and Alan in his turbo powered, slick shod rocket. Thankfully he was way up near the top of Class C. Craig, who was still rebuilding his car and Ant, who was running his new engine in, came to watch with Ant promising to be back for the next race day. Class D was therefore only four cars, myself, Cyril in his new GT3, Rob in his neat Lotus 7 and Nic, also in his Lotus 7. Nic had always been down in Class E and was seldom a concern for me. Clearly Nic has no issues with moss attachment as he seems to have found an indecent turn of speed with his little Lotus.

Qualifying was called and I again applied my, so far, fairly effective strategy of going out mid field. I had five clear laps and managed to notch up the fastest qualifying time for Class D. I was not all that elated, since it was only a rather yawing 26. Most of the others in Class D had run into traffic issues. Still I was on pole, so to speak.

Not that it lasted all that long. As a matter of fact, by turn three of the first race I had been taken by Cyril and had Nic dangerously close behind me. Still, I was not concerned and set off after the GT3. A brief glance in the mirror down the back straight confirmed my thoughts as Nic receded behind me. I set about the rear of the Porsche, but he was too quick down the  straights. Passing would have to be a corner manoeuvre. At the end of the front straight I gave a cautionary glance in the mirrors just in case there was something there and almost missed my brake marker. My mirror was full of Nic and his 7. There was no time to figure out how he had overcome my massive torque advantage and ended up glued to my rear, it was now all about staying ahead. And so the race progressed. I tried to badger the rear of Cyril's Porsche as best I could while trying to fend off the increasing insistent Nic. By the time the chequered flag fell I was panting like a rabid dog, but had managed to hang on to second. Predictably, lap times were not spectacular, as they seldom are when you are covering lines all over the place, but it had been a great dice and that, after all, was why we were doing this.

A post race investigation revealed Nic had only added slicks to his Lotus, the rest all coming from his rapidly improving race craft. The family duly arrived for lunch and we headed to the clubhouse for a break and catch up with the other drivers.

A couple of hours later we were back and lined up for race two. I had surprisingly drawn pole in Class D for this race so was up front again. I was determined to make the Harper as wide as possible and keep both the Porsche and Nic behind me from the start. Alas, it was not to be. While I was on pole for Class D, I was also behind Class C and on my side of the grid this meant I was behind Paul and his GT40. Paul had been struggling with handling issues the whole day and was being ever so ginger into corners. At the start, the lights went out and we stormed to turn 1. I was on the inside of the corner and ended up boxed in by the GT40 up front and a string of cars passing me from behind. By the time I exited the corner I was stone last. Things can happen fast during a race. I quickly dispatched the GT40 into turn 2 and set off after the rest of the field. After a lap or two I managed to catch and pass Rob in his Lotus and slowly reeled Nic in. I was much quicker than him on the straights, but he out braked and out handled me on the back side of the circuit. Eventually after around six laps I was about ready to deal with him. The plan was simple, I would catch him down the back straight, brake as late as possible into turn 5, then overpower him down the front straight and make the car nice and wide going into turn 1. Easy stuff, now just to execute. 

Everything went exactly according to plan until turn 5. I braked late, turned in using my, now much improved, front grip and promptly lost control of the rear. You see, while the wider front had eliminated the slight understeer characteristics of the car, it had somewhat exaggerated the tendency to oversteer. And with a 60/40 weight split, once the rear let go, you needed to be a much better driver than me to catch things. Half way around the spin I did at least have the presence of mind to hit the clutch and keep the engine running. The car skidded to a halt backwards off the outer edge of turn 5, the shower of gravel bouncing musically off the back of my helmet. Through the dust I could see Rob sprint past. I cursed a bit and got the car going again, bolting off down the straight only to be met at the end by a marshal furiously waving the "change in surface" flag. I could actually see the oil on the outside of the straight, right about where the brake markers started. The thought did flash through my mind as to what would have happened had my plan succeeded. If it had, Nic and I would have been side by side at that point and one of us would have possibly ended up smeared across the barrier wall way past the turn 1 run off. We do over 200km/h at the end of the main straight.

After that, the race deteriorated into more of a cruise as turn 2 showed similar oil slick problems. Finally, after another lap, the race was red flagged and we headed back to the pits. The oil presented a bit of a conundrum for the marshals since none of the cars had shown any signs of massive engine failure usually associated with this amount of oil on the track. To mimic the Exxon Valdez you really had to spectacularly destroy your engine or gearbox, both events producing smoke clouds that would make a small WW2 tank proud. But, no smoke there was, which is why the marshals took a bit of time to notice the oil. Thankfully, it was with enough time to alert most drivers. The slick rendered turn 1 unusable and hence the race was stopped.

At the end of the day I managed to snatch a third over all, so was fairly pleased with the proceedings. I had at least managed to provide some entertainment for the crowd as well as Nic. More to the point though, while the actual race lap times were nothing special, my nifty lap timer proudly presented theoretical 23's for both races.

All I have to do now is string a couple of good sectors together per lap and I should be near the top of Class D again. That is, of course, assuming I can keep the car pointing forward! In the meantime I'm off to find some industrial strength moss remover.

-xxx-

For those who want a good chuckle, check out my parking manoeuvre in turn 5 here. 

The full races can be viewed here for race 1 and here for race 2.

A cat in a bag

The cat is out of the bag. It's an odd saying really, and always confused me as a youth until I put it to the test with our trusty, and mostly laid back, family cat. Actually getting the cat into the bag is not a problem as they are naturally curious creatures. They are also fantastically suspicious, especially around the motives of a ten year old with a sack. The furious feline exited the "bag" as a hissing bundle of fur and claws leaving me somewhat bloodied and in no doubt that the cat had left the bag, and would not be entertaining any future bag activities.

I suppose that's more what it's about. Once the cat is out, it's not going back. As it is with certain changes that are going to be taking place with my Type 6 over the course of this season.

A photo appeared on Facebook a little while back depicting some engine parts, one of which was the unmistakable shape of a large turbocharger. Craig then ran a little post on the Harper Sports Cars web site around some upgrades heading the Type 6 way. 

Go faster goodies slowly coming together

The activity drew a couple of comments, but nothing too compelling. However, during the race meeting this past weekend I was accosted by quite a number of drivers around the plans for my Type 6. More specifically they were all Class C drivers and wanted to know what power and torque figures we had in mind. Competition is a good thing, and it's always good to know as much about the competition as one can. While I appreciated the fact that they thought I might be able to compete in their class at some point, I was under no illusions that trying to harness the Type 6 when it sported twice the power output would be a job my limited skill might not accomplish all that well.

Still, you can't get better by staying the same and I tend to throw more power at the going faster problem. Probably not the best way to solve the issue, but it does make for some fun times.

However, I am not oblivious to the fact that making a car go faster has a number of side effects, the greatest of which is that, well, you end up going faster. This is all good and well, but it means at some point you have to slow down again. Upgrading the acceleration parts of a race car without looking into the deceleration parts can turn out to be a mistake you only get the chance to make once. So long before any of the go faster goodies come near the car, we are doing some more mundane upgrades. These include larger 17" rims that can take wider semi-slick tyres, but more critically can house much bigger 300mm disks for massive added breaking force. We are also looking at redesigning the pedal arrangement to a top mount direct push system for a more "connected" feel. 

At this point I would like to introduce you to a new word in the english language. It's a word most sporting folk will be familiar with, but seems particularly relevant in the world of motor racing. The word is "cashcade" and describes the knock on effect of making a small change to an otherwise perfectly fine race car. Thus, to get the new 17" rims to fit means we have to swap from four bolt hubs to five bolt hubs since you don't get 17" rims in 4x100 bolt pattern. Thankfully Toyota have an off the shelf five bolt hub. Then once the hubs are replaced, the rear shocks need to move inward a bit to clear the inside of the rim. The front end does not escape either, since the, now larger, front wheel not only fouls the body work, but also come in contact with the headlights.

A box of Toyota five bolt hubs for the three Type 6's

"Spats" adding to the new brutish look of the Type 6's

Then, finally, the callipers also need to change from the rather lumpy RunX units to the similar sized, but lower profile, Corolla RXi units.  A cashcade of truly epic proportions!

New vs Old disks, quite an increase

New front brakes fitted

New rear brakes fitted

Eventually all the changes will stop, at which point, hopefully, so will the car. The final addendum to the Type 6 prior to us doubling the horses is to increase the downforce. This will allow us to make more effective use of the bigger brakes and tyres. A rear wing and front splitter is on the cards at some point. Of course, by this point the entire season might be over, or the little bits of paper fuelling the cashcade may be depleted. Time will tell which comes first.

Then, just to add to the whole effect, we are fitting a new clutch. There is a good reason for this however. A while ago my third gear synchro decided it had had enough of this track racing nonsense and went from synchromesh to just mesh. Luckily I use a standard off the shelf Audi gearbox and quickly sourced a new used one off Gumtree. However, once we came to fit the box, we discovered the source of my persistent pull off shudder. The clutch plate was basically spring-less and about to become spline-less as well. With three days 'til race day there was no time to faff about getting it rebuilt so a standard off the shelf Audi unit was quickly dropped in. The clutch felt fantastic and the race meeting went off without a hitch, although in hindsight, I might have felt a bit of slippage near the end of the second race. The following weekend was a open track day and we decided to make a bit of a day out of it. I was planning to take the kiddies for a joyride and Leigh was going to venture out in the car for only the second time. We were all poised for some fast fun when, coming down the back straight as I shifted into fifth, there was a muted bang at the rear and the car lost all forward urge. Thankfully I had enough momentum to coast around and into the pits. This put a rather immediate stop to our days planned activities and the car was duly dispatch to the doctor for analysis. 

The results, I suppose, were somewhat expected given the ask we had placed on the little off the shelf clutch plate.

Manufacturers specs somewhat exceeded

I had always been a little concerned about my clutch and, frankly, am quite surprised it has lasted a whole season. However, there was absolutely no chance the current setup would manage with any increase in power. Something better will be needed. 

After some ernest searching, conventional wisdom was that we needed to fit a more racing biased unit instead of the standard road unit we had. A little later we had procured an ex Nascar twin plate Quartermaster clutch from the fine folk at G&A Promotions. 

Then the cashcade effect once again set in and we finally ended up with a whole new flywheel and clutch assembly. 

New twin plate vs old single

On the upside, the whole assembly has gone from a somewhat hefty 15kg, down to a flyweight 7kg. This should really help the engine spin up!

By the time everything is back together again I'll pretty much have a totally different car and should, once again, be following my trend from last year by pitching up on race day with a whole bunch of new bits. Qualifying will be more fun than usual I suspect.

So what about the actual race day just gone past, you might ask? Well it turned out to be a great day of racing. The weather was fine and slightly overcast making for a cool day. I had a great battle with some Class D guys, notably Hennie in his 'vette, while sadly the other Hennie shortened the front of his Lotus 7 by slamming it into the back of Martin's 7. The two had been furiously dicing and exited Turn 4 literally nose to tail. Unfortunately, as Hennie pulled out to pass Martin, Martin missed a gear. With Hennie accelerating to pass, and Martin not accelerating any more, the two came in contact, forcing both to retire for the day. 

In race two I once again showed my lack of race craft while trying to overtake the Corvette, finally getting the job done after far too many laps. I then, surprisingly, managed to catch a Porsche GT3RS and, even more surprisingly, managed to pass him in Turn 1 while we were tangled up with the three leading Class A cars.

The day ended with a Class D win for me, and a rather nagging feeling that I should be leaving well enough alone. Ant had just fitted an aftermarket ECU to his car and had tuned things up to a nice 200kw. It did not last long, with him melting his pistons not far into the race. 

Maybe that large turbo is not such a good idea after all. But then, I fear the lure of 400kw might turn out to be just too strong to resist.

------------

You can catch some of the action, and watch my misguided attempts to pass Hennie, in the footage from race 2 here. Keep an eye out for the corner action around lap 6 when myself and the GT3 are both passed by three class A cars between the entry and exit of Turn 1.