This is a pretty long read tho.
I thought I'd put it in the general section, not my projects section for unknown reasons.
Preparation for the rally started a few months back. I was about to spend s fair bit of cash on my existing MR2 race car, to rebuild the engine after a bearing failure, and do a few upgrades to get it rally ready. For some reason, I had a hunt around on trademe just before doing so, and came across a MR2 targa car, already set up with most of the goodies I was after, so I decided to purchase it instead of spending cash on my existing car.
New car as I got it
We had it de-stickered, and I got some photos of it, nice and clean before we did any damage to it doing silly things.
Preparation of this car started a little over two weeks before the rally, as it was already set up for tarmac rally’s, it was in pretty good nick. I went to a Taupo track day with the local car club as a shake down to see if there were any bits on the car I didn’t like. The track day was pouring with rain, so was probably a good run for the expected rally conditions. By the end of a few sessions on the track, I was running on only three cylinders, so we decided it was probably getting water around the spark plugs and grounding them, so we put the car back on the trailer and sort it out when we were back in New Plymouth when the car had dried out.
With two people in the car, and no heater, the front window fogs up pretty good, so I decided to install a heater unit. I found one I liked from here http://speedyairspares.com.au/
It was always going to be a push to get it in from aussie, and installed in time, but we were confident. The heater core arrived on Tuesday morning at my work, so I up and left, time to work on the car.
Here’s a few shots of it before we installed it up under the dash.
Heater photos <> (will be uploaded soon)
We had to have a couple of pipe nipples welded on to the stainless steel coolant lines in the front of the car to get hot water to the heater. We had to get the S/S lines out Tuesday night so they could get welded up Wednesday morning, so we worked till about 1am. The whole ABS unit had to come out of the front of the car to get the pipes out. What a pain. A local fab company welded them up for me for nothing, I should go drop off a box of beer or something to say thank you.
Photo of S/S lines
When moving the car from my man garage up into the wife’s garage to work on it (thanks love, yes my garage really does need a clean out, yes I will do it soon) it was still running on 3 cylinders. So we pulled all the plugs and replaced them checking the cylinders as we went. Nothing too abnormal was noticed.
It took us from moving the car up into a garage with a bit of space to work in on about Tuesday lunch time, till late Wedensday evening to get the heater pipes out, welded, back in, the heater box mounted, and all the ducting under the dash constructed. We also re-wired alot of the switches that were installed, as well as adding a few more so as to be able to turn more fans off when I wanted to while racing, reason being is that the battery in the car is crap, and if I chuck an alternator belt, I’ve probably only got about 1km of driving before there isn’t juice to carry on.
My work sponsored the car, and one of the designers did a quick vinyl up to get printed, and the sign writers turned up Wednesday evening to apply the vinyl too.
When we finally finished at about 11.30pm, I went for a drive out to my co-driver’s house, but the car was still running on three cylinders. We pulled the new plugs, to find they all looked good (used) apart from cylinder three. It looked brand spanking new. That cylinder had not fired. So we replaced the leads and dizzy cap. Still no go. This was about 1am, and I was over it for the night, so left to sort it out in the morning.
When I got up to get back into the car on Thursday morning, I decided to pull the number three plug again for a look, and in better light conditions, I could see the ark marks from the ignition, so it must be fuel.
I checked the injector clips, all in place, so drove it to my local tuner to have a quick look. When we pulled the injector clip, and removed it’s rubber boot, we found one of the wires was snapped at the crimp joint (someone had soldered it as well, this is were it had snapped).
Problem solved!!!
I have ordered all new injector clips to replace the existing ones to get rid of this future problem.
Thursday afternoon was a cruise one, as everything was working. 5pm was scrutneering, and we flu through this, no problem. My sister (just back from aussie) wanted me to take her for a spin in the car before the rally, just in case I damaged the car. Fair enough.
Found a nice little back road, from a standstill, first, second, third, the car has plenty of power to overcome grip levels. Getting into fourth, over about 4-4.5k rpm, the car shoots up to redline.
Ooh oh. That wasn’t wheel spin. So I did it again to check. Yep, that’s the clutch slipping. CRAP.
Gave my co-driver a call a told him I hope he hasn’t been drinking as we’ve got a long night ahead of ourselves.
8pm, we started tearing the car down to replace the clutch. Luckily, I had a spare (second hand) one out of my other car that would be perfect for the job. Exedy HD sprung 5 puck.
We worked till 3am Friday morning, then called it quits to return at 9am later that morning. Just a little side note, removing ALL the bolts around the gearbox makes it much easier to remove.
It took us till around 7pm on Friday night to get the car started and ready to drive. We went and got a few photos before dropping it off in park ferma, and headed to driver’s breefing.
Photos of car all stickered up.
The next morning was a nice and relaxed start to the rally. We were seeded 81st of 83. It was our first rally.
Stage one went ok. I had one little off, onto some grass on the side of the road and strait back on, so nothing major. The stage was pretty slippery, being early in the morning, and being up over the mountain rangers. About two thirds of the way through, the car started bucking and cutting out and the temperatures were getting up. As we crossed the finish line, the temps were rocketing. We only got about 400m further and had to stop. This meant we had to temporary withdraw from the rally. We missed stage two and went straight to service.
We tacked back on to stage three, the longest of the rally at 33km. We had another little off road excersion onto some loose gravel, doing a bulldozer impersonation at high speed. Notes said 5 left, and it was much sharper than a five. This did a bit of damage to the front bumper, but nothing serious.
We got 27km thru and the car decided that this was far enough, and wouldn’t go any further, overheating again. Once again, we had to temporary withdraw from the rally. We could have tacked back onto stage 5 & 6, but thought we would get to service park and try and sort out the cooling again.
We jumped back onto stage 7,8 & 9, be it at a max of about 4k rpm, and half throttle. Racing like this is no fun, but at least we got to cross the finishing ramp.
All in all, it could have gone much better, but it could have gone much worse also.
The new car is very quick (when it isn’t overheating), and I think I need something stickier that the Dunlop 245 DG03’s I had on the back.
