DW86 Meets the ASCAR
So you’ve bought an old ASCAR on a whim, and it’s sitting next to an old tired Toyota AE86 Corolla that doesn’t run right. What do you do? Well, when you first suggest the idea that you will be melding the two into one, there are ‘some’ concerns from the worlds Hachi Roku fans. But as the build progresses, and the vision of Driftworks company directors Phil Morrison and James Robinson starts to become reality, it quickly becomes one of the most popular drift car builds the world has seen.
So what is the goal of this build?
To create a unique and competitive drift car that allows the use of big tyres and a big NA engine, but is at the same time respectful to the original AE86 styling.
This is not the worlds highest budget drift build. We have recycled as much of the ASCAR as possible, and used our knowledge of building our past competition cars to hopefully keep this as simple as possible.
Below is a timeline / summary of the media surrounding the build of the car. There’s plenty of pictures and videos, and this page will be kept up to date with all future media, so please check back!. NOW LETS GET CRACKING!
A quick look over some of the ASCAR components as we take it apart:
It’s an awesome bit of kit with it’s frock removed. LS1 engine, dry sump, Jericho dog box, Winters drop gear axle, AP brakes and some trick suspension parts.
For our international followers, and those too young to remember: An ASCAR is a low spec NASCAR built for the UK. It runs a very basic LS1 engine. The cars were built in the US by Howe Racing for a series held at the UK’s brand new (at the time) Rockingham Raceway. Aside from the engines they share a great deal of components with a real NASCAR. So as a donor car for an old live axle Toyota it ‘could’ work very well!
Before we stripped it, we had to have a little blast in it.
Prepping the shell
The Corolla was stripped, and, Dynotorque, who are doing the vast majority of the build for us threw an LS block in to see exactly how much work we were looking at to get it in the hole.
Here’s a quick picture of the original 86 axle verses the Winters drop gear axle. There is a considerable size difference! It might be a tight fit.
The cutting out, and strengthening was started on the 86 shell. Phil had already had a lot of the car welded before it was ever intended for this project, but none of us anticipated how much prep and welding would have to go into this shell to make it structurally sound enough to handle the power and grip we intended to throw at it.
We mocked up the front suspension. The car uses Driftworks CS2 Nissan S13 coilovers / Geomaster hub knuckles / Driftworks lower arms / tension rods, all mounted simply using a modified original AE86 crossmember with an S14 steering rack fitted and some AE86 CS2 coilover top mounts. Then Craig set about clearance for the front tubs. We loved posting this picture on FB as people thought we were grinding into the actual block. In fact it is a cracked block Dynotorque use for mocking up LS conversions. I think that our AE86 is the 31st car that Dynotorque have converted to LS power!
Some slight clearance needed for the Jerico gearbox and prop.
New tunnel going in.
The car went on the spit so we could stitch / seam weld the underneath.
After many ear bleeding and lung filling days of grinding and welding it’s starting to look quite strong!
Nickson Motorsport take over for a beautiful T45 cage build and some further chassis reinforcement… One of the major criteria for Phil Morrison who will be driving the car, is that it’s safe. Which means a lot of metal has to go into a 30 year old shell. Yes you heard right. We’re not tearing every bit of metal out of this car to make it as light as possible, we’re adding a shitload in to make it strong and safe…. Luckily Nickson’s work is second to none, and he listened carefully, and delivered on this point. Nickson’s website is here Nickson Motorsport
The Throttle Bodies
The Jenvey Throttle Bodies arrived! We actually won’t end up using the carbon airboxes as it would need a huge bonnet extension which would suck!.
Here we’re looking at the rear tubs, so machine out the centre of some of our Rota MXR wheels normally used on the DW R32 to test it all.
And the other side, along with a new floor and mounts for the tank.
After getting ripped off by American Company: Thunder Racing for £3,000 of parts for the LS1, we decided to cut our losses and invest in a brand new crate LS3. Here it is with the dry sump and clutch fitted.
The engine sitting on its mounts ready for header fabrication
Here you get a small idea of the work that was involved in getting the engine low enough with the oil pan, whilst clearing the S14 steering rack that is custom fabricated to fit the AE86 crossmember.
The Winters rear axle came off the Nascar with 3.5* negative camber on one side, and 3* positive on the other (as it was designed to go round in circles). We really wanted to run it with -0.5 negative to have a good compromise between drift and track setup, which meant ordering and replacing the outer tubes on the axle. First they go into the freezer for a night to shrink the metal.
Then into the press! Or if your press isn’t big enough, use a 4 post ramp with your mate’s really sweet Camero on it!
Here it’s reassembled
And back in the car with it’s custom dropped brackets laser cut from stainless. These amongst other parts are made to help give as much traction as possible!
You can also see how huge the wheel wells are in this shot.
Some of the pipework is now going in along with the dry sump tank. You can also see one of our Driftworks hydraulic handbrake handles!
We want to use the ASCAR AP brakes, but as we’re using Nissan 5 stud front hubs we had to make some new bells and brake bracket adapters.
Thanks to Rota Wheels for lending us some wheels to check clearances and offsets, We are one of the biggest Rota wheels dealers in Europe, and have a great working relationship with the guys.
Huge thanks to Samco for supplying all silicone hoses for the project.
We got the car on it’s feet and on the scales. It’s still got a load of parts and weight to go in, but it’s a promising first figure of 946kg in it’s current state. At this point we estimate a full weight of 1100-1200kg
Craig made the shroud for the rear Driftworks SuperCool radiator using recycled interior panels from the ASCAR. This shit’s more environmentally friendly than a Prius!
James got stuck in to routing the rear perspex screen.
Craig then set about making the exhaust
The whole system has perfect ground clearance, and we used a couple of decent quality low profile Magnaflow boxes to take the edge off the inevitable volume.
Here’s Craig Taylor, the man himself from Dynotorque showing you that perfect ground clearance on the exhaust.
First fire up
We started the car for the first time – It’s on a generic map so won’t run properly yet..
And here’s the first time Phil ever drove it. Just onto the trailer on its way to Protuner – Still without a map so almost impossible to drive.
And here’s a quick cameo from Greg at Protuner, running the new engine in on the dyno.
Unfortunately then we got some not so great news: The second time we went to the dyno after changing the oil. The car was partially mapped, and it made 560bhp, which is very good for the spec. However it developed a small rattle. On investigation all of the shells are worn, and one of them had deformed slightly. Everything was spot on with the car with new oil and great pressure. The issue appears to be that the dry sump system is aerating the oil. So we are replacing the shells and invested in one of these.
The Arches
Magic Aero were the company we tasked with the aero on this car. You can check them out here: MAGIC AERO FB PAGE
Phil is incredibly particular about how a drift car should look, and lots of the many weeks of work done to the shell, were done to ensure that it could ride super low despite the 18″ / 17″ wheel setup. Paul from Magic Aero and Phil had many discussions, and it was agreed that they both had the same thing in mind, so Paul came to stay in Birmingham for 6 days for the original stage of the design process.
Expanding foam is poured into makeshift cardboard boxes to give a block ready to model.
When we first posted this picture, some people thought that this would in some way reflect what the arch would look like….
Many days of pouring and sculpting later, Paul and Phil had settled on the arch design, and are very happy with the overall look, which ticks the most important box of all: To be truly respectful to the original 86, despite the MASSIVE wheels…. “Hey everybody! Come and see how good I look!”
At that point Magic Aero pull the whole foam plug off the car, and take it away to make the first set of moulds. There are three stages to the moulding, then re-sculpting and moulding process before we will receive a finished product. Even at this early point Magic Aero have put around 60 hours work into the car.
So now the car has essentially been 95% built, and kind of driven. So it can finally be broken down for stripping and paint. So back to Dynotorque it goes:
And it was delivered to Soda-Blast-Systems UK to take care of removing all the remaining paint and mess from all of the welding. They are a Midlands based company, and you can check them out here: SODABLASTINGLTD
After blasting – How much better does it make all the fabrication look!
Because of the weather and a lack of an enclosed trailer to get the shell back to Driftworks, we had the Soda-Blast guys prime the car too. They did an awesome job.
And the car was brought back to Driftworks, where Phil would take on the unpleasant job of a few days of structural foam reinforcement and under sealing.
And Paul from Magic Aero’s back with the first set of moulds and overfenders
They still need a lot of work at this point.
The wheels arrived from CCW in the States! They are 17×9 ET-15 5×114.3 front, and the rears are 18×10.5 ET-15 5×5″. We received them unfinished as at this stage we were on an extremely tight deadline to get the car ready to show at Autosport international on the British Drift Championship stand.
The wheels would be powdercoated Satin black centre and gloss black outers. Sacrilege to some to paint a polished lip! But all part of the bigger picture of making this car look right. Phil felt making the wheels black would balance out the fact that they are effectively way too big for a car of this size.
We’ve obviously been contaminated by all these parts from the US that we’re using in the build, as we thought it’d be a good idea to change our rig for the 2014 season to a jacked F250 XLT SuperDuty and Pace trailer.
Time for paint
We had dropped off the shell at a local painter, who we have used for years. Collecting it was supposed to be one of the major high points in the build, as finally all the hard work that Dynotorque and Nickson put into the shell prep would be shown with it’s shiny covering of bright orange paint.
Unfortunately that is not what we saw when we arrived. The paintshop had possibly done the worst job possible to the most important car we have ever asked them to paint. See-through thin paint over the entire car. It looks more like brown than orange it was that thin. There were areas missing paint completely. It was an overall completely half arsed terrible rushed job.
After 12 months of more work / stress / cost than most people could have ever imagined, we literally could have cried. The worst bit was that he wouldn’t even admit it was a terrible job. His words “no, that’s the best that any painter could do. I won’t re-do it”. The car was promptly removed, and we set about finding someone to sort out this complete mess, as we were now put back massively on a ridiculously tight deadline to get this car assembled and to Autosport.
Our buddy Paul Jackson came to the rescue. He only normally does small smart repairs, and his ‘booth’ was our dusty freezing cold second unit at Driftworks. We painted until the middle of the night, and pushed the car into our new Pace race transporter with a gas heater in there to cure the paint. It came out AWESOME! We can’t thank Paul enough for stepping up under such difficult circumstances.
After a night curing the paint, we got the car back into Dynotorque to start assembly (very gently).
Craig worked his ass off, and things started to go back together very quickly.
The Oil Aeration in the dry sump system had done more damage to the crank than we’d originally thought. So we decided to pull it apart properly and fit some new parts. It’s still a relatively simple spec of a standard balanced crank and rod setup, just with some forged pistons, a lairy cam, valve springs, pushrods and roller rockers.
The damage to the old crank.
And the new forged pistons going into the block. The crank, rods and pistons were all balanced in the states for us by a company called Nook and Tranny who are great to deal with.
At this point Phil started work on the fibreglass doors and the bootlid. They were ‘rally spec’ parts, and quite honestly we’d never seen fibreglass with such a bad finish before.
The TRD spoiler was glassed to the bootlid and Phil set about making it look like it was meant to be there.
I think this photo was taken about two days into the relentless sand/fill/sand/fill process. The patience was wearing thin.
All coming together
Meanwhile, the awesome Cobra Sebring Pro seats turned up. Huge thanks to Cobra for getting them sorted!
And local Alloy Wheel refurb specialists Speedwell Tyres are doing an awesome job on the wheels. They also did a great job of all of the general powdercoating on the car, like the crossmember, panhard rod, hinges etc. Check them out here: SPEEDWELLS
And to mount the rear wheels we had some custom wheel studs made that convert the ASCAR Winters rear axle to an M12x1.5 stud. Keeping the NASCAR style quick start dome heads that theoretically eliminate the chance of cross threading during our ever so frequent wheel changes.
We’d had Paul Jackson and another buddy, Twin, come in to finish the prep and paint on the doors and bootlid which came out very well again, especially considering our unideal paint booth (the toilet in our other unit).
Once again our temporary ‘drying booth’ came in handy.
They were fitted, and Phil and James spent an age drilling and mounting the NACA ducts in the bootlid to vent air into the front of the radiator.
Speedwells finished painting and assembling the new wheels!
The engine was back in, using some Pipercross filters on the Jenvey Throttle Bodies.
Phil had a go at the bonnet, and quickly gave up… Damn massive engine!
Off to the Dyno
So it was loaded up to go back over to Protuner. The stupid tall rear tyres fitted here are our dyno tyres. They are 275/40/18 and give us the ground clearance needed to keep the rear lower arms off the rollers.
It had a long running in session, then an oil change for some Motul 300v
Then a quick map. At this stage only taking it to 6900rpm. It made about 585bhp again, and 610ft/lb torque. After there’s a few more miles on the engine we’ll be revving to about 7400rpm, which will really bring the massively peaky cam into play.
A little throttle blip after a pull
Meanwhile, ‘oop north’, Magic Aero was busy making the second version set of plugs
And the moulds
Testing with smoke
Craig wasn’t looking forward to this job. The rear firewall between Driver and the hot radiator / oil tank etc. It’s made from thin aluminium shaped around the back of the seat (which sits through the main hoop of the cage)
It was then flocked by Speedwells, and although it’s difficult to see, there’s three pieces of perspex fitted and sealed around the cage at the top. You can’t see much in the mirror as the NACA ducts in the rear screen warp everything, but it was done so we didn’t make the cabin claustrophobic.
Here you can also see the extended steering wheel boss made that’s mounted to the Driftworks Nardi steering wheel. The clear pipe is a filtered cold air feed that goes into the top of the drivers helmet.
We had a little smoke test to see where the leaks are that need filling.
One of the small things that bugged us that you can see in the two pictures above is the lack of black trim around the front side windows, so they were removed, some lines masked and painted in a satin to match the trim colour of the rear side windows. A set of carbon mirrors were fitted as well.
Magic Aero came back to Driftworks to check the fit on the version 2 overfenders. These are still not the final items, they are just to get us to the Autosport show, but they look incredible!
Paul Jackson again came and painted them for us. Again he had the privilege of using our incredible spray booth: The bathroom in our second unit.
And the bumpers were sprayed black
Ready for Autosport
And the day after, after months of work by lots and lots of people, the car is visually almost complete and ready for Autosport.
Off to Autosport it goes:
So we made it to the Autosport show, and the car went down very well with our friends. But it is being used competitively this year, and as we all know, new builds have their teething problems and bugs to be worked out. So again we push to complete the mechanicals and electrics so we can actually test the car.
We weigh the car with half a tank of fuel, (we haven’t set the corner weights yet) and we’re very happy with the results. We always knew it was going to be quite a heavy car, so 1193kg is okay, but the balance is what matters, and a perfect 50/50 weight distribution should make this perform incredibly well.
First burnout test
You know what we were just saying about bugs to iron out? Well this was the first burnout test (an essential first test before heading to the track).
The first burnout went okay, the second not so much. We smashed the original ASCAR propshaft UJ which took out the nose of the diff, and a large portion of the exhaust. But heyho, at least we got to do one burnout 😀
Some of the damage. This is what’s left of the bracket which mounts the UJ onto the front of the diff:
This was ‘inconvenient’ not least because we’d just received a parcel from Winters Axles in the US, so had to order again. However they are a great company to deal with and quickly we had everything we needed to repair the front yoke, replace a slightly leaky seal, and at the same time replace the unpredictable detroit locker LSD with a spool (a completely locked diff)
It’s easy to forget how massive this axle is when it’s hidden underneath the car.
All apart, ready to get complicated!
Phil and Craig fitted the ring gear to the spool, then set about shimming it. Doing this is quite tedious on a live axle, and even more so on a massive heavy one. They had to call upon a third man (James) to stabilise the one half while Phil lifted the other half on and off, and Craig did the shims…. Fun!
It came back together nicely though, and was shortly back in the car and mated to a new much stronger propshaft made for us by Dave Mack Propshafts.
Dry sump change
After the rather quick expiry of our first engine in the car, we still had that little question in the back of our heads: “Have we completely solved the issue with our dry sump system?”.
We fitted the Spintric air oil separator which we’re confident has solved that part of the problem, but after speaking with Gary from Armstrong Race Engine Systems for nearly three hours while he was over at the Autosport show, he showed us some potential other issues with the Moroso oil pan setup we’d used from the ASCAR, and we decided to eliminate this doubt from our minds and take the plunge by replacing the sump, pump and a few other components.
The new ARE dry sump parts are beautifully engineered.. Unfortunately we’re going to have to modify the sump to clear our crossmember as we suspected, but this will be done while bolted to Dynotorque’s dummy block to eliminate the chance of warping while it’s TIG welded.
Craig loves the thought of milling brand new very expensive parts.
While Craig was in the mood for some fabrication, he got onto making a drop mount for one of our tow hooks to come through the original hole in the bumper.
The front was a lot easier and just bolts to the chassis rail.
We’d had some issues getting the coolant to bleed, so we made a huge filling pot for the highest point of the pipework, this obviously is removable, and has worked perfectly.
And Paul from Magic Aero’s back (He can’t stay away!) to make the final plugs and moulds.
We’re giving ourselves a little more clearance on the rear arches, not to have more of a gap between arch and tyre, but so we have the ability to run bigger tyres at a later date if we need to.
Paul’s then done a lot of prep work, and is taking final mould actually on the car, which he will pull and take away to create the final arches in some posh semi flexible material.
Here’s the car as it stands with the gel coat layer of the mould applied. This will be left to go off a little before the fibreglass is applied. Then the lot will be left overnight to cure, and will be removed tomorrow.
The moulds finished and cured:
It takes quite a lot of effort to release them. The plug (completed overfenders) come off with the mould, as Paul has to complete the finer parts of the mould on the bench, like the edges around the lip. This is much easier to do on the bench than upside down while on the car.
Back in Fabricationville (Dynotorque) Craig’s making a mount for the Race Technology Dash2 – This is a great dash. Check them out here: RACETECHNOLOGY
While fitting the dash, Craig’s also wiring the Cartek wireless steering wheel buttons.
Craig wired in the front facing brake light required for the 2014 regs:
Does it drift?
We then managed to get a very last minute first test session in at our local track Birmingham Wheels. The car is brutal! A rear caliper bracket span on the axle so we lost 90% of our braking on the first run, but thought we’d carry on anyway, and managed to do two new sets of 285 Federal RSRs to the cords.
Delivery from Mr Magic Aero. The final overfenders! Made in a semi flexible and very strong Kevlar weave. With a nice touch on the back as well!
And we found a new local painter to prep and paint them in a bodyshop instead of the toilet here 
. Looking at the quality of the ‘out of the gun’ finish, I think this one’s a keeper!
Craig has had the car next door again for a few days. The new Alcon clutch is in.
And he’s currently working on the optional rear silencers. These will not be used unless absolutely necessary for track DB limits.
And we got our air tank back from testing. It’s now filled with 4,000psi. Lets hope that’s enough to lift our heavy car.
Turns out it is enough pressure! Airjack test video!
Mr Magic Aero’s back in the DW house today! This time to have a look at the bonnet! Phil didn’t want a hole and was worried about a bonnet bulge being too big. There is a plan though! It involves cutting down one of the fuel rails to give much better clearance, and creating a subtle bulge. We’ll see whether it works out!
The plan for the bonnet worked! It was a rushed job so needs refinishing at some point, but Magic Aero did an awesome job! Looking at previous pictures you wouldn’t believe that the massive V8 is underneath there!
Finished article
We got the car back to Birmingham Wheels for the Banzai Magazine photoshoot, which was a lot of fun! Here’s some of Rich’s photos.
With just five days before our first round of the season in a brand new car, we finally got to properly test the car. Of course it being a brand new very complicated build, it wasn’t long until we broke it. But that’s already being fixed, and over all the test session was very useful. As this video shows, if it’s possible to learn to tame this wild thang, it might end up being quite competitive.
Warning, it isn’t a great quality video, but the soundtrack makes up for it.
End of season MegaUpdate
It’s been one hell of a season! We’ve done 9 events, and I’m happy to report that after the driveline failures in the first two outings for the car, it has run flawlessly for the remainder of the season. We have made a load of changes to not only keep the the driveline together, but also to how the car handles, as it is nothing short of insane to drive! But perhaps the biggest change we decided to make in the early part of the season was to remove the awesome built LS3 engine, and replace it with a 454 (7.4litre) LSX.
First of all, here’s what we did to keep the axle in the car, and stop breaking the propshaft joints:
The lower brackets are dropped so far because the axle is so high. Some shipbuilder style triangulation strengthening was in order as this was the part that snapped at Drift Allstars in London.
The 3 other things we did were:
1: We had Dave Mac make the biggest and strongest propshaft that can be made. It’s 3″ and uses the biggest UJ’s availale. It’s basically the same thing you will find on a 2500hp drag car.
2: We fitted an adjustable clutch damper valve to take a tiny bit of the hit out of clutch engagements. It’s not noticeable on the pedal It just takes the edge off the hit.
3: We changed one end of the lower link arms to polyurethane instead of the solid rose joints.
So onto the new engine. Lot’s of people asked why we were doing it. The LS3 was already 570bhp, and the car seemed to go very well. Well the simple answer is because it was completely unnecessary and a completely dumb idea. The 454 LSX was a really stupid engine to fit into a 1986 Toyota Corolla so therefor it must be done…. Man logic!
The LS3 was removed, and stripped of ancillaries to be weighed like for like against the LSX
In exactly the same state, the LSX weighs 48kg more than the LS3. Rumours of +50kg were correct! Having a bit more forward weight in the car was certainly not going to upset the handling, as it was rear biased weight balance with the driver in position before, and this made it an extremely snappy and challenging car to handle.
Roughly an hour after Partsworldgroup dropped the crate engine over to us, we had the thing unpacked and had the dry sump pan and throttle bodies fitted.
It’s actually a different set of Jenvey ITB’s fitted in the photo above. They are only slightly different to the set we had on the LS3 (60mm instead of 58mm ITBs) but there’s a slightly different inlet manifold too, so we decided to go for the correct kit to make sure it gets the best air feed, and still all fits under the very tight bonnet. Craig spent some time port matching them for the heads.
A quick glimpse of the forged internals before the sump was fitted.
We had a custom camshaft specced and made for high RPM power, and fitted it with some nice new extremely heavy duty springs and retainers
Craig is a dab hand at engine work with LS’s. He’s got to have worked on about 100 of them now.
Heat management is going to be a high priority with this big lump of steel, so just before the engine is landed in the hole, Phil gets busy with some expensive shiny stuff.
And the engine fits! Well it should! Externally the LSX454 is the same dimensions as a normal LS. It just has a few more litres of space inside. The LS3 rocker covers have to go on until we find somewhere to mount the coilpacks inside the car.
Now onto the exhaust. This is going to be TIGHT!
The old LS3 had some modified 1 & 5/8’s headers. They were really not going to cut it for the air this things going to blow. So the decision was made by Phil (much to Craigs joy) that it needed custom 2″ Primaries, and twin 3″ exhausts.
Custom head flanges were cut.
And Craig assumed position, surrounded by stainless pipe.
New 3″ silencers were needed. Again we went for Magnaflow as they are exactly the same size box as before, just with 3″ pipe. Obviously as always absolute top priority is to not compromise ground clearance. This thing will always run low!
Craig had dealt with the nightmare of a job making the headers, so it was Phils turn to have a nightmare wrapping them.
The car was back together, and we had a 2 hour running in session at our local oval track. One of the more monotonous and sickly driving jobs Phils had to do in his career.
So then it was time to go and see uncle Greg at Protuner again. The new engine was running great. Unfortunately the tyres weren’t such a big fan of the new power combined with relatively low gearing. So despite chucking over 120kg of ballast, and having another 200kg of fatish people standing in the boot, we weren’t able to get a power reading, and the map was just made safe at the top end.
We knew the new engine was a fair bit more powerful, but we’d just have to wait and see how it felt on track.
That first event for the new engine was in Ireland, at IDC’s Global Warfare, and it’s safe to say that the new setup blew everyone’s minds. Ourselves included!
Not only did the car have an ability to lay down smoke like nothing before. It also seemed to propel itself forwards well too, and in the top 32 we beat D-Mac in his own mental AE86. This was the first ever battle we’d done in the car, so the result against a seasoned driver and car was unexpected.
One of the highlights of the IDC event for us, was Robbie Nishida and Daigo Saitos love for the car. To hear the words “This is by far the coolest 86 we have ever seen!” from two of Japans best drifters really brought home how well received this car has been.
Here’s a quick video from qualifying of Rd4 of the British Drift Championship. Phil had put in a safe run, so decided to test the new driveline a little.
And here’s a battle between Phil and our buddy Lluis Lopez
Before both of these events we had changed the final drive in the diff to be much longer. This meant we’d now have a chance of holding power on the dyno. So after BDC, we popped over to see our friends at MSL with their new dyno to do a power run. Turns out the new engine makes quite a bit of power. 646hp@the wheels to be exact (just over 750bhp flywheel), and this is with mapping still not complete!
One of the things Phil has really battled with over the season is the car’s short wheelbase and twitchyness at high speed. It’s a 50/50% weight distribution car, and getting the car to smooth out it’s reactions and not try to kill Phil every 2nd run has been a challenge. There have been a lot of suspension tweaks throughout the year. But the biggest difference made to the car in terms of handling was to finally find a way to fit a rear anti roll bar. There is literally no room underneath the car for one, so a NASCAR circuit bar set up was adapted to fit. Set in a high mount position on the roll cage inside the car, with links through the boot floor to the axle.
It’s still not finished in this picture as we have a thicker bar being made in the US at the moment, to hopefully make further improvements.
Another of the problems with the car was the inertia of the 7.4litre engine, and a 2kg (yes two) flywheel. The throttle response was off the scale ridiculous, and particularly when coming off throttle when following in the chase run, the car would snap violently trying to straighten.
So we made a custom flywheel with the machining expertise of our buddy Martin. The new flywheel weighs 14.5kg, and as well as helping dramatically with engine inertia, it also has the added benefit of vastly improved heat dissipation from the extremely abused triple plate clutch.
Ever since the car first hit the tarmac Speedhunters have wanted to do a shoot. Throughout the season because of the various stages of work we’ve done, our timetables always seemed to clash. But finally it happened, and we made up for the delay by doing an almighty burnout!
Here’s a video of said burnout
And it wasn’t just burnouts
And here’s an interesting side note. After that burnout, and 3 runs of what you saw in the other video. The new incredibly grippy and smokey Achilles tyres we’re using and supplying, still looked like this!
Now the season has ended, we’re already working on many improvements to the car. The biggest of which right now is fitting this:
It’s a Quaife Engineering 6 speed sequential gearbox! NOW WE’RE TALKING!
There is nothing wrong with the Jerico box that’s currently fitted. It’s really held up well. But it’s only 4 speed, and because it’s really designed for a left hand drive car, the linkage is the wrong side of the car. This can lead to difficulty shifting down into 2nd gear, and as anyone who drifts competitively knows, a missed shift generally means you pack up and go home. The Quaife sequential will hopefully eliminate missed shifts completely.
Here’s the Quaife and the Jerico side by side. Those extra 2 gears on the Quaife really do make it a fair bit bigger, and heavier
Because the car and gearbox tunnel were designed around the small 7 & 1/4 clutch bell housing, we were unable to use Quaifes bell housing, so we decided to modify our existing bell housing, and also set the whole thing up so we can carry the Jerico as a spare, and literally throw it in at the track if we ever needed to. We use an internal hydraulic release bearing setup. So this meant there were quite a few measurements and modifications needed to make sure both boxes fit without reshimming every time.
First we had make a slide shaft nose plate for the hydraulic release bearing to slide onto.
Then Craig welded a plate to the bell housing to extend it down for the 2 lower mounting holes on the Quaife. This was then milled back to the face of the bellhousing for a perfect fit.
The bellhousing fitted
And the Quaife Sequential now in place. We had done a lot of measurements before buying the gearbox, and new it was going to be tight, so having it fitted is somewhat of a relief.
We’re now just waiting for the new propshaft from DaveMack, and we’ll be able to give it a little test.
More soon!
