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Took the car to "Cars in the Park" at Zwartkops raceway today. Was a fantastic day in all that was spoilt a little towards the end by a savage headache, probably due to the fact that I only had two hours of sleep last night getting the car ready (was fitting the door catches at 3am this morning). Nonetheless I had a wonderful time sitting in my deckchair on the side of the track watching the world pass me by. The weather was absolutely gorgeous.
available for download 
I would have loved to have made her as original as possible Phil, but sadly, properly strong Renault engines are hard to come by down here (gearboxes even harder, although I did consider a Hewland), and importing the body kit was as far as my budget could stretch. Fitting a Toyota engine (goodness, I've just realised how sacrilegious that sounds) made sense due to the availability of parts.
I spent yesterday afternoon at Zwarkops doing further testing on the car.
I spent yesterday afternoon at Zwarkops doing further testing on the car.
I took the car to Zwartkops again yesterday (I try to do at least one Wednesday per month). I booked the car onto Braam Mullers Dyno for the morning to get the fuel and ignition maps tidied up. The results speak for themselves.
Shown below is brake horsepower (hp) and torque (Nm) measured at the wheels (an odd mix of units, but locally Nm is preferred to lbs.ft). I'm generally happy with Metric OR Imperial. A mix of both seems somehow odd.
As you can see, the car made just over 350hp of power and just under 500Nm of torque at 5100rpm on 95 octane pump fuel. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. I can honestly say that I had not expected to make it over 335hp as a result of previous efforts with this engine. The redesigned manifolds (inlet and exhaust) as well as the GT3267 turbo have made a big difference. So much so that I have now run into issues with the internal wastegate that I had sized for the lower power figure
. I will thus be fitting an external wastegate in the near future. Fortunately I do have room for one. The fact, however, that I am using a twin-entry turbo does make the plumbing to the wastegate a little more complicated, but I'll manage somehow. I also need to look at running the engine on proper race fuel as a result of detonation creeping in above 1-bar of boost. Braam had to back off the throttle above 5000rpm to control this, so the above graph is by no means a full indication of what my car can achieve.
Taking the car off the dyno unfortunately revealed a moderate sized pool of oil under the car. I was too cheap to replace the copper washers around the banjo-bolt where the oil feed to the turbo connects to the block. I tried to tighten the bolt but struggled to get at it around the extremely hot exhaust manifold. So I took the car onto the track anyway, where I was promptly black-flagged for excessive smoking as a result of the oil collecting on the exhaust. A quick look under the car after I came into the pits revealed that the two flex-hoses (the type with wire braiding around them) seemingly act as a sponge, collecting much of the oil that drips from the engine. It quite literally appeared as if I had two smoke grenades strapped to my exhaust
. Never a good idea to smoke out the poor sod in the car behind you.
Too add insult to injury, I took along a borrowed video camera (gaffer taped, Heath Robinson style, to my cage) which produced the most beautiful video footage of the track in front of me, but with no sound! Aaaaaarg :cry: . Next time I'll plug an external microphone into the camera. I have no idea why the microphone on the camera didn't work.
My new straight-cut syncho-less gearbox performed beautifully BTW. I was primarily out on the track to practice heel-toe-double-declutch downshifting and I eventually became quite good at it if I do say so myself. I spent the remainder of the afternoon, after being black-flagged off the track, buzzing around one of the deserted areas of the parking lot. So long as I blip the throttle while double clutching between shifts, then the box shifts down without so much as a grunt or groan. Now I need to start focussing on up-shifts. If the rpm on the engine aren't falling fast enough between up-shifts then I am going to have to look at lightening the flywheel. If the rpm are falling off too fast then I just need to learn to up-shift faster.
All in all an excellent day. I still have much work to do to get my little race car race-ready, but I am now closer than I ever was before, and that means I am making progress!
Shown below is brake horsepower (hp) and torque (Nm) measured at the wheels (an odd mix of units, but locally Nm is preferred to lbs.ft). I'm generally happy with Metric OR Imperial. A mix of both seems somehow odd.
As you can see, the car made just over 350hp of power and just under 500Nm of torque at 5100rpm on 95 octane pump fuel. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. I can honestly say that I had not expected to make it over 335hp as a result of previous efforts with this engine. The redesigned manifolds (inlet and exhaust) as well as the GT3267 turbo have made a big difference. So much so that I have now run into issues with the internal wastegate that I had sized for the lower power figure
. I will thus be fitting an external wastegate in the near future. Fortunately I do have room for one. The fact, however, that I am using a twin-entry turbo does make the plumbing to the wastegate a little more complicated, but I'll manage somehow. I also need to look at running the engine on proper race fuel as a result of detonation creeping in above 1-bar of boost. Braam had to back off the throttle above 5000rpm to control this, so the above graph is by no means a full indication of what my car can achieve.Taking the car off the dyno unfortunately revealed a moderate sized pool of oil under the car. I was too cheap to replace the copper washers around the banjo-bolt where the oil feed to the turbo connects to the block. I tried to tighten the bolt but struggled to get at it around the extremely hot exhaust manifold. So I took the car onto the track anyway, where I was promptly black-flagged for excessive smoking as a result of the oil collecting on the exhaust. A quick look under the car after I came into the pits revealed that the two flex-hoses (the type with wire braiding around them) seemingly act as a sponge, collecting much of the oil that drips from the engine. It quite literally appeared as if I had two smoke grenades strapped to my exhaust
. Never a good idea to smoke out the poor sod in the car behind you. Too add insult to injury, I took along a borrowed video camera (gaffer taped, Heath Robinson style, to my cage) which produced the most beautiful video footage of the track in front of me, but with no sound! Aaaaaarg :cry: . Next time I'll plug an external microphone into the camera. I have no idea why the microphone on the camera didn't work.
My new straight-cut syncho-less gearbox performed beautifully BTW. I was primarily out on the track to practice heel-toe-double-declutch downshifting and I eventually became quite good at it if I do say so myself. I spent the remainder of the afternoon, after being black-flagged off the track, buzzing around one of the deserted areas of the parking lot. So long as I blip the throttle while double clutching between shifts, then the box shifts down without so much as a grunt or groan. Now I need to start focussing on up-shifts. If the rpm on the engine aren't falling fast enough between up-shifts then I am going to have to look at lightening the flywheel. If the rpm are falling off too fast then I just need to learn to up-shift faster.
All in all an excellent day. I still have much work to do to get my little race car race-ready, but I am now closer than I ever was before, and that means I am making progress!
Thanks Nate.Nate said:
Since I last posted a progress report I have installed an external wastegate adjacent to the turbocharger. This required that the exhaust manifold be modified. I then installed a small dash mounted pressure regulator so that I now have dial-a-boost. The car has since been back on the dynamometer to finish off the tuning.
The car is slowly becoming a regular feature at the Zwartkops racetrack, to which the custom gear ratios are well suited.
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