Well, its been way too long since the last update, Ive been pretty busy with lots going on at college as well as the workshop. To catch up to where we left off; the hydro assist has been dumped for a while. Its causing problems with packaging, and we have got the standard setup working well enough now. It lasted the whole of Dtte fine despite losing oil 2 miles into our 5th lap, but more on that later. We went to driven to the edge (which was awesome, great work Chris Bowler and the AWDC team for setting it up) nearly a month ago now, and had a great time. Lap 1 and 2 went well, putting in a 1 hour 9 lap first and then I think a 1 hour 30 2nd lap. They went smoothly, apart from the clutch getting hot and sticking on the second lap. I really am getting fed up of this now but we cant seem to find the bottom of the problem? As we headed out on the night lap we were pretty confident, as the challenge sections were cut out completely, and replaced instead with the optional bypass routes. This should have been a good fun lap, but as mentioned, it was dark. Note to self, buy light bar. Apparently series headlights dont do much once covered in Welsh mud, and we really did struggle with visibility after about half of the course; before we got to the finish, though, our bad luck began. The battery terminal came off about a kilometer from the finish- losing all the electric obviously meant no lights, thanks to Nobby for pulling us off the track. Clearly an easy fix, we had it going again for the first lap on Saturday, but again, stupid mistakes came into play. I think it was just past the 2 mile mark that we ran out of gas. Yep. Thats embarrassing. At least we now know that its worth filling up in the evening, even if it does mean going into town- Id really rather fill up on site, though, so watch this space on that one. The 2nd lap on Sunday was seemingly going well, until a little further on than when we ran out of gas, and we lost power steering. On inspection we thought the PAS pipe had worn through on the block, to which there was obviously nothing we could do, so we decided to carry on. This lap seemed to go well, though on the river bed we spent around 10 minutes getting the punch, only to get the 20 minute penalty for running over a fence- fair, but damned frustrating! We then did both following challenge sections with no PAS before driving straight through the quarry section, as we would have wasted more time getting the punches than the penalty bore. Once at the pits it turned out that the banjo bolt had simply come undone and dropped the fluid out. So we refitted the pipe and refilled with oil before heading out on the final lap. This was, for me, Im not so sure for Jason, a fun lap. We got the punches on each section, and only slightly mangled the side of the landy. We even drove onto the trailer at the end, and came first in class and 14th overall, not a bad result for the lowest spec car there i think. But its not just about the result, we had a great time and the atmosphere was excellent and to top it off I got the award for spirit of the event with which I couldnt be happier. So that was DTTE, but as ever there is a list of things for improvement. On the top of that list is the supercharger. As we use it more for speed events, its becoming evident that more power is required, the only 2.25 is, despite being fairly heavily tuned, an old heavy engine, and would benefit from the extra power of the charger. Ive got a mercedes 1.8 supercharger which we are in the process of fitting, that should give a healthy increase through a wide range. Secondly is the need for bigger tyres. The need for more ground clearance is something I have generally dismissed, however, in the rocky areas I am noticing more frequently that we need more clearance. So the wheels and tyres currently on it will soon be for sale, and Im looking for a set of 37s and 17 rims. However, I dont want to change the tyres until Ive changed the gearing. I have a 4.6:1 front diff for my axles, but only a 4.1:1 for the rear, so Im looking for a 4.6 rear before I go ahead with the swap. Also on the list are existing things, like speeding up the winch and fitting fiddles, but these are not foremost on my mind. Thanks to D.B Photography for the images of us racing at DTTE
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:21:02 +0000
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