Alpine 1968 Renault R8

[Steve Swan]

Be careful with short check straps. My experience was a near disaster. Think about it basically,if you had to be on 3 wheels with your R8 you would want 2 rears on the road and one front in the air for a bit of understeer. The reverse can only give..... That's right oversteer. Been there done that. You want to keep as much roll articulation as you can ,as a swing axle does not add or remove camber in roll but the change in camber with vertical movement is huge, so that's to be avoided. Frans runs a locked rear axle on his R8 racer, so it is a gokart, not much use on the highway in the wet, as gentle use gives terminal understeer. This is why I favour the spring rates and set up I use. Power comes into the equation too as low power set ups can run a more oversteering set up than high power setup which can power slide on throttle. Be advised when it decides to swap ends if you don't catch it in the first 10-20 degrees, you won't catch it. You have to let it spin off all the Energy and start again. I don't recommend trying this out on the public Carriageway.

 

[Adey]

I've left some space there, they aren't holding the axles still as in my head it was a recipe for disaster in daily driving. I live in the sticks with most roads having a decent amount of undulation and change. What I had was all the gap and space with the straps in their original position allowing a lot of movement. I'm thinking of them more as a kind of anti body roll when in travel but still retaining some, if that makes sense?

Really tempted to get it to a big empty space and have a play, just to see and get a feel for how it behaves when on the edge or provoked

 

[Steve Swan]

Roll ok, vertical travel not ok. Can only be properly managed with a camber compensator or z bar. Need to read up on old beetles. Fred Puhn's a good start. You you can even read How (not) to make your Dauphine handle....

 

[Steve Swan]

Control roll from the front axle.

 

[Adey]

 

[Adey]

Took the car out for a little run to a shop called Retrosect. Little car meet up, retro shop with plenty of nostalgic bits and a retro car show room. Oh and beefy boys, a local burger place. Turned up, let the car pose a bit and stuffed my face. Here's a few pics that have popped up so far.

 

[Wheelers Workshop]

Hi Adey,
Its looking good on those wheels, is the motor running to your liking now?
Happy New Year!
Dave

 

[Adey]

There's a tiny flat spot really low down in the revs where it'll give a little splutter, more so when cold, but runs great otherwise. Enough power to get down the road with most modern traffic.

Happy new year to you too

 

[Adey]

Managed to get a steering boss from Moto-Lita for my period correct Moto-Lita steering wheel, adding to the cafe racer feel of the car

 

[Renoholic]

Adey, I'm feeling a little like I have hijacked your thread.

The trigger wheel is complete, and I started the car today. It started instantly with the sensor mounted inline with the wheel, sensing the 3mm edge of the teeth.

I have made the mounting so that it can slide up and down to calibrate the TDC position. I never knew at what point of the tooth passing by the sensor was the trigger point. Previously I would check the timing marks with a timing light and compare that with the laptop settings. If the laptop setting was 10 degrees at idle and the timing light showed 13 degrees, I would have changed all the settings with an offset and downloaded that. Now that I have moved the sensor so that it corresponds to the laptop and I know that 10 degrees is 10 degrees. No more human memory losses!!

Time will tell if this is a successful mod.

As a matter of interest, I also have a little PLC that I programmed to cut the alternator out when racing. (an extra horse or two for free). It will sense the warm-up lap and charge the battery right up to when the lights go out. Then I will run on battery only until the end of the race when it will sense the end and turn the alternator on again charging during the cool-down lap and into the pits. I used that inverted signal to turn the fans on of the oil cooler because I had huge issues with oil overheating. I noticed that at the end of a 12-lap race, the battery voltage was dangerously low and below 10 volts. I bought a little temp controller from Ali-X that can be programmed to switch at any temp. Unfortunately, the max range is only 120 degrees while the oil goes to 150 degrees. So I had to bullish!t the sensor input and halve the reading with a little PC board and extra resistors. Now it can read up to 200 degrees. At a true 100-degree oil temp, the fans will kick in and give the battery some 4 - 5 laps resting period. This is now installed and tested as well. Just filling in some free time to keep me out of trouble.

Here is the final of the trigger wheel as installed.








Regards, Renoholic.

 

[Adey]

Cheers for the update, feel free to chip in

I need to do one too though these items have turned up over the last few days



36-1 trigger wheel setup for a C series and a nodix gen x mapable ignition ecu, un terminated loom and a bunch of sensors

 

[Renoholic]

Cheers for the update, feel free to chip in

I need to do one too though these items have turned up over the last few days

View attachment 221900View attachment 221901

36-1 trigger wheel setup for a C series and a nodix gen x mapable ignition ecu, un terminated loom and a bunch of sensors

Interesting. Is it a full computerised or do you still need the distributor?
I would get the old motor out and fabricate the mounting of it on there. It will then be easy to transfer it to the new motor.
If it is a distributor-less system it is very nice and much more accurate than the one built into the distributor.
Renoholic.

 

[Adey]

This is fully mapable with a modern coil pack, can ditch the dizzy and coil now.

The crank sensor bracket is designed to use 2 of the oem chain cover points too, hopefully it clears the r8 water pump

 

[Adey]

Anyone else really pissed off with the state of the roads?

I decided to take the 8 out for a run this morning before I start pulling bits off ready to do the ECU conversion. Its not as low as it looks but wow, went on a road I've not been down for a long while, and completely obliterated the splitter after dropping into loads of potholes. To top it off, when I pulled over to inspect it the fuel pump gave in.... Only about 4 miles from home, I figured out it would pump if the revs were high enough but would slowly die off at idle. Fix to get me home was, suck a mouth full of fuel out of the tank, spit it down the carb giving it enough to pick up revs and drive it flat out home..... was not a fun morning and even after a shower and plenty of mouth wash I can still taste and smell fuel.....

 

[andybond]

You are right the roads are shocking at the moment.

Good job you weren’t doing the brakes and getting a mouthful of brand fluid. Mind you , ar least you could have stopped when you wanted ..

 

[Adey]

viewer discretion advised, bad language, I did try and edit it out

 

[Renny 5]

Videos are getting better Adey, what you using now?? Noticed you’ve got a mount on the window

 

[Adey]

Videos are getting better Adey, what you using now?? Noticed you’ve got a mount on the window

Cheers bud, I've got a HERO9 still which get most of the work, recently started using an insta360 as well (for some reason it gave everything a blue hue though) a selection of clamps and mounts, got my old gopro some where too.

To use the insta I have to quickly edit in its own program for what I want it to be looking at (due to the 360degree recording) then output that as a file to then put it into VSDC an edit as normal

 

[Steve Swan]

Could have been worse,could have been Diesel. Petrol is like Prosecco compared to that .

 

[Adey]

Out of the pile of spares I've bodged together another splitter (really I was bored over the weekend)