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sadlerau
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Men of my vintage should be seeking other pursuits like golf or gardening, than thinking about building new racing cars, but I didn’t plan it like that. The old EF [which has been featured in other threads] is still a weapon on the track after 10 successful years of competition but with more and more competitors using 2 litre, fully developed motors it was getting harder and harder to stay at the front with a worked B18C. After years of developing, firstly B20, then stroked and/or sleeved 2 litre B18 motors that proved un-reliable, mainly due to inadequate engineering capability here in sleepy Western Australia, I decided to fit a K20 into the old girl EF.
So I purchased a K20 and mounting kit, and had my good mate Shane, the car builder, look into installing it. It became bleatingly obvious very quickly that to fit the K20 under an un-modified EF bonnet [an IPRA strictly enforced regulation] was going to require some major re-engineering of the car. Then two facts emerged to intervene in my plan. Firstly Shane admitted to me that such an engineering effort was now beyond his patience [we are both not getting any younger] and the IPRA approached me and asked me not to do a K20 powered EF. The IPRA’s reasoning was that I had the only pre 2004 log booked EF IPRA car in Australia, and a new regulation introduced in 2004 required EF’s to race at a minimum 1045kg racing weight, if fitted with a K20. My EF, because it was built before 2004, was exempt from this requirement. I could make my EF as light as I could, which in effect meant running as low as 960 kg [Racing Weight includes the driver, 95 kg in my case]. The result would mean that it would be a very hard car to beat, and none of my fellow competitors could hope to match or even approach my power to weight.
In the interest of fair play :) I acquiesced to their request and pulled the K20 out of the EF’s engine bay.
So now I was left with a K20 power train looking for a home.
Enter Gavin Reynolds. I had met Gavin a few years ago, and he had impressed me with his driving in a self-fettled B16 powered EG Civic which I would occasionally come across on Tuning Days at the track. Not only could he drive the wheels off of that EG, he was a nice fellow to boot. I had often talked with him about his becoming a fully-fledged participant in the local racing scene, but he had made it clear that he did not, nor did he expect to have a reasonable budget anytime soon. So as I contemplated what to do with the K20 power train an idea gelled in my mind. Why not offer the K20 to Gavin, who would do the installation required with funding from me, and then I could race it for a year or two while he accrued the budget to finally get out there to race? I am after all nearing the end of my racing life, and his was just about to begin.
It took him a week or three to be convinced that I was serious, but eventually he appreciated the chance I was offering [and probably appreciated the amount of hard work that would be involved] and agreed to become my partner in a new racing car.
The K20 nestled into the EG’s engine bay. You would swear that it was always designed to fit in there; indeed it fits better than a B series motor IMHO.
The driver’s work station. Because of IPRA regulations, we can only use 5 speeds in the race car, so a simple plate screwed onto a corner of the plastic gear change nacelle, which effectively locks out 1st gear, works a treat, helping to make 3rd gear selection easy [I had some problems with the 3rd gear gate before the modification].
The safety cage is a work of art, beautifully put together by a true craftsman.
The result you see in these pictures is the end product of many hours hard work, and not a little bit of money. Due to constant and frequent delays in parts delivery what started as an easy build in February 2010 became a nightmare of approaching deadlines and all night busy bees. Gavin built the car by himself with just infrequent help from me and other friends, and working 10 hour days in a Honda wrecking yard, then starting work on the race car build in the evenings sure tested his patience and endurance! In the end we only had two test days and a minor meet before the National Championship meeting! Indeed the timing became so tight we did not even have time to give the car a decent look :(
The main reason for proceeding with this build was that the national IPRA championships were to be held at my home track, Barbagallo Raceway for 2010. This opportunity to compete for a national championship with a home ground advantage was not one I considered missing [indeed it was the cause of wanting to go K20 with the EF car].
The race has now been run and won, the outright winner was my good friend, and the fellow occupant of our trackside garage Kevin Ledger, in his stunning WRX [stunning in pace and cost to build]. You can see the car in the background in one of the photos. But equally I was lucky enough to win the 2 litre class, fulfilling one more item on the wish list! And luck had a lot to do with it. Having run out of time to do any development work on a brand new racing car, our track pace was well short of where I wanted it to be. But one of my main competitors blew his motor on the Friday practice and was without a spare. Shane driving my old EF race car [which at the moment is still quicker than the new car] had fuel pump gremlins that kept him sidelined for the first day, only to find another, ignition gremlin, on the Sunday! And finally the only other car that had the speed to win had their own electrical gremlins develop on the Sunday as well. So in the end the race was run and won easily, but that is motor sport at an amateur level.
Driving out of the last corner onto the finish straight.
Diving into Kolb Corner, hard on the brakes.
Car Specifications –
EG Civic
Engine:
JDM DC5R K20
Toda Baffled Sump
Toda Sports Injection Kit [Quad Throttle]
Toda High Power Carbon “Surge Tank”
Toda Spec C Camshafts and Valve Springs
Toda Heavy Duty Tensioner
Toda High Compression Metal Gasket.
Gearbox.
KAAZ Competition Plate Type LSD
Heavy duty Clutch, Pressure Plate.
Racing Flywheel.
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notyper
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A win is a win is a win. Gotta start, and finish, before you finish first, so take pride in the victory.
When you need more power in the next year or two, if I may suggest, dump the Toda throttles and cams. Both are extremely outdated in the K-series market, mainly by dint of being too small. But, because they are Toda, you should be able to find some brand fans to pick them up with minimal loss.
There are a couple of manifold choices, and a couple of cam choices that should net you another 20-30 hp when the time comes to add it.
SC
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sadlerau
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I've been competing for twenty plus years Shawn, and I've lost as many as I've won through luck, I never knock a trophy, because I know how hard they are to win :)
I would really appreciate a "heads up" on your choice of cams and manifolds. I have a spare motor, and next years championship is in South Australia at a track I've never seen, so any improvement will be considered. PM me if you wish.
One of my main competitors on the east coast [who didn't make the trip to the west] runs his motor into the high 9000 band, and I have it on good intelligence that he is already 30 - 40 up on me.
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CR-V9
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Congratulations on your win!
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notyper
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For your purposes I really like the Drag Cartel (don't let the name throw you) stage 4 cams. You could also go with the IPS K2 cams, although they are a bit old (should be some updates soon).
Intake manifold wise, either a ported RBC manifold, or a Skunk2 will work well for what you are doing.
SC
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sadlerau
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2011, another year passes and we continue to play on!
[img=" "]
After last years triumph against adversity, 2011 went much more to plan.............sort of :)
This year's Australian Championship was to be held in November, at a small flat, featureless track called Mallala in South Australia. One of it's redeeming features being that it is within an hours easy drive of one of the best wine growing regions in the world :) :)
Never having competed there, we felt it necessary to go there in June to participate in a local race meeting to make sure our car would be suited to the track. We did have some developments in the car, starting with Toda Fightex dampers and proper race Alcon front calipers. Engine wise I had commissioned a fully built Toda "race spec." engine with ALL the goodies, and built by a Sydney engine guru who has proven to know where the real horsepower is locked away :) But that engine was not due till later in the year, in time for the November "Nationals".
It proved to be a very successful meeting for us, as we came away with the track record for our class, beating the old 79.4 second lap by over a second! That put it up the locals, as you can imagine :)
Anyway it showed us that the car was suited to the stop/go nature of the track, a very different proposition from the flowing nature of my home track. For the Nationals we had new two-way adjustable remote canister Teins and the said new engine. Or at least that was the plan.............
Despite sending the Sydney man our spare engine, and paying for the new engine in May, by the start of October we were still waiting for it to arrive! As of today we are still waiting :(
So off to the Nationals we went, two thirds of the way across the continent with one very tired engine! I won't bore you with the usual last minute dramas that caused the odd sleepless night working on preparing the car for it's trip east, suffice to say that as we, the very tired crew, boarded the plane, were hoping for a change of luck.
And that is exactly what happened! :) From the time we unloaded the car off the truck, till we packed it back on Sunday evening, everything just ran like clock work. The really hard yards Gavin and Dev put into preparing the car paid off in spades.
[img=" "]
The racing was quite un-eventful from my point of view. Our only real competition from the other 12 cars entered in our division was a Queensland based Datsun 1200 Coupe, with an SR20 motor in the 'bay. Qualifying showed we had a good half second up our sleeve on their best which really took the pressure off me :)
I managed to beat him in our one, common heat, and I had good runs in the other two [unlike last year where I was a bit rusty and under prepared] and we actually lined up nose to tail on the grid for the final.
It was an interesting first three laps while the traffic sorted itself out, with the Datsun passing me twice under brakes into the corners, but both times my better line into the corners allowed me to put the power down earlier and I drove back past him down the next straight. Once the track cleared a bit the [Over 2 litre turbo] faster cars in front cleared out and allowed me to settle down into a nice rhythm, that allowed me to pull a gap without hurting the car in any way. Job done.
Next year we travel about as far away as we can, to Tasmania for our once a year gathering.
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MalcolmR
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Good on ya, sadlerau.
Malcolm
:)
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sadlerau
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Start of a new season for us, building up to our next major meeting in November.
I have hung up the helmet, not permanently, but I won't be doing any major races anymore - so Gavin Reynolds, who built the car, is taking over the driving duties, of which he is more than capable!
Although he has plenty of experience in sprint type events - sort of Time Attack, but with 3 or 4 cars on the track at one time, this was his first meeting as a genuine race car driver :)
He continually bettered the old lap record during the 3 races he contested on the day finally lowering the old 65.11 record down to an excellent 64.08 - with more to come! Indeed the fastest lap was set on Lap 2, which included the big "moment" going up the left-hander.
Car has just had the fully built race motor installed, and as always there are some engineering issues to resolve, so the car is still a long way from being optimised.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EIhKNwAN8HE
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notyper
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Looks like you need a 6spd gearbox :)
Car definitely had the brakes and the power on the DC2. Considering that the DC2 has superior aero to the EG, the way your car pulled up on the straights was excellent.
SC
Last edited by notyper on 06-08-2012 22:41
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sadlerau
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notyper wrote:
Looks like you need a 6spd gearbox :)
SC
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We are actually running the DC5R six speed, but our regulations only allow us to use 5 speeds - if that is what the car came with. We actually have 1st locked out, so we can use 6th, but it would be too "tall" for the short time it would be used - with the standard gearing.
It was the first time we had run the car since the installation of the new motor, so it was a suck it and see where we end up. We have oil cavitation problems not allowing us to run the full 9,300rpm [rev limiter was set at 8,800rpm], which may help at this track [already ordered Hytech Exhausts oil pump "fix"]. Now we are in the process of deciding whether to use Spoon's close ratio 5th and 6th, or to run a different final drive? Much discussion and arguing to ensure I'm sure :)
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sadlerau
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I have to say that this years' Nationals seemed almost surreal to me, what with being away on holiday for several weeks during the critical car preparation period, and then not actually having anything to do with the driving, I have felt rather detached from it all. Unfortunately advancing years have caught up with me, and my physical aptitude for driving means I'm no longer quite capable of doing the driving at the required level. So for 2012 Gavin Reynolds who does most of the mechanical work was stepping up to do the driving duties.
The reports I was receiving while overseas were that the preparation was going well, with the American oil pump fix for the oil cavitation problems seeming to have done the trick, and the installation of the Spoon 5th and 6th gears having gone smoothly.
With 1 week to go till the car needed to be loaded onto the truck for the long [3760km] haul to Hobart the car was sent off to the dyno for a last "lick" of the engine tune before the final systems check at Barbagallo Raceway.
That's when the trouble started. During the dyno run Gavin still wasn't happy with the oil pressure at 8500+rpm so he decided to add spacers to the oil pump to increase the working pressure. On the Monday Tuning Day shakedown the dreaded injector blockage scourge we have experienced since going over to E85 fuel returned. Gavin organised for a totally different brand of injector to be sent over from Sydney, one which had a better reputation with E85 fuel. After lengthy discussions over the phone about exactly which injector was required, when the package arrived the injectors were too long for our application and would not fit under the bonnet! They had sent a completely different part!
While this was happening Gavin had sent off the front calipers for new piston seals, something we do every few meetings as our brake temperatures are higher than we would like and the seals take a beating. More engineering to come in that department.
On the injector front Race Torque, a local company that prepares cars for the Asia Pacific Rally Championship, came to the party with some injectors they run on their rally cars which actually fitted and worked out ok, but we really need to address the E85 situation for next year. The car was finally put together again Thursday night and they finally got around to bleeding the brakes. Bleeding brakes!! Somehow, the brake specialist that Gavin has always used had managed to really balls it up. One piston was stuck, and the other caliper was leaking!!
In an effort to find out why the first piston was not working, Gavin thought it might be the Master Cylinder, so he decided to change over the master cylinder [we had a new one on hand] hoping it would solve the stuck piston problem. Nope, still wouldn't budge. By this stage the car was due on the truck, so it was driven there with only the rear brakes working, loaded onto the truck and sent on its way to Hobart.
In the meantime, a new overhaul kit was ordered and delivered to our "home base" in Hobart ready for when we arrived. The national brake distributor put us in contact with a reputable brake specialist in Hobart who was less than 5 minutes from our Hobart home and only 20 minutes from the Baskerville race track.
The car arrived Thursday afternoon at the race track, was unloaded and driven to the brake specialist. The calipers were re-built with the new kit, installed and bled. The piston was now working OK, there was no longer a leak from the other caliper - but they could not get a pedal, nada, nothing.
I arrived from Perth Friday morning [another Midnight Horror flight] with another 4 bottles of 660 AP Brake Fluid as back-up in case they were needed, and also yet another new master cylinder kit - just in case. When I got to the workshop in the hire car they finally had a pedal - it was still hopeless straight after bleeding, but left for 10 minutes, the pedal magically came good!? We finally washed the 3760km of road grime off the car, wiped it down and headed to the track. Less than half way there the Black Beast’s [as it is affectionately known] brakes locked on - they had set the pedal box up a little too tight in an effort to get some feel in the pedal, so as soon as the brakes warmed up they grabbed. Of course all our tools were at the track, so I hightailed it back to the brake specialist in the hire car to borrow a couple of spanners.
Finally got to the track by 1pm, roughly sorted ourselves out and got the car ready for the track - and Gavin's first look at it. But by now the weather had done a trick on us - it was raining after a bright and sunny morning. Still at least Gavin got to see the race circuit and get a [wet] feel for the track. Only it kept on getting wetter and wetter.
Gavin's feedback about the Baskerville track was that it was very hilly, very tight and gawd awful very bumpy. Not high powered FWD friendly then. But Shane Seward, who had raced at the track in 2006 for their last Nationals round, had warned us, so we expected it. Gavin confirmed that Turn 4 was just about the worst bit of road he had ever encountered due to the severe bump on apex, and very tight uphill exit. Lovely, mind you in the wet it was helped by the lake sitting on the inside of the corner, half covering the track and moving the effective apex out a couple of meters.
We had already installed our softer set of coil-overs so all we could do was keep softening the bump/rebound and hope it didn't pogo too much. Gavin was starting to gain confidence in the brakes and track layout and started to catch most cars on the soaking wet track, but it still looked like a very busy ride over the bumps. A portent of where we were at in term of set-up was when the local gun in his V8 engined A9X Torana came out and started reeling Gavin in on the soaking wet track - it was an absolute rocket ship in a straight line, but he was also getting the power down so much more than what Gavin could, so we were obviously still way, way too stiff, and nothing we could do about it.
Before packing up and heading home [the cars stay at the track for the weekend] we bled the brakes - again. This time we had some of Western Australia’s best race mechanics [there were 7 competitors from WA competing at Baskerville] on hand to give their opinion on why we were having the trouble, and how to fix it. The Black Beast’s brake system is on two circuits, one master cylinder for the front, and a separate master cylinder for the rear. Since the car was built we have never had a problem with bleeding the brakes, an exercise we go through at least a couple of times a meeting. So this sudden drama was something totally un-expected. After much deliberation it was decided by the guys with Formula Ford experience, that the brakes needed to be bled one side at a time – that is the left front and left rear in tandem [actually bleeding the 2 calipers at the same time] and then the right hand side, even though the front and rear circuits are on different master cylinders. It worked, to a degree, there was now a pedal, but travel was long and spongy, and again, after 10 minutes it was much better!
The next morning dawned cool and sunny, with the forecast of fine weather for the rest of the weekend. The pedal felt ok, if a little spongy, but it was what it was, and Gavin duly went out in 1st Qualifying for his first look at the dry track. The little Black Beast managed a respectable 59.95 lap, compared to the fastest outright time of 58.44, and a couple of tenths under the existing Under 2 litre track record.
After a very wet Friday, Saturday turned out to be a sunny and warm affair.
Qualifying 2 was an hour later, and after some minor adjustment to tyre pressures and damper settings Gavin came in with the 9th fastest time outright, a very fine 59.52 which compared favorably with the next best 2 litre time of 59.76, and incidentally 0.6 seconds quicker than the class lap record. So it was going to be a close one.
Our first heat race was at 4:30pm, and after another minor adjustment to tyre pressure and damper settings Gavin started from P4 on the grid and brought it home in 3rd place, actually harassing Kerry Wade in his V8 Commodore [Pontiac G8] for 2nd place over the last few laps, until a small loose on one of the fast corners calmed Gavin down and he backed off. His best time of 59.33 was 0.65 faster than the next fastest 2 litre competitor.
After he came in we set about getting the car ready for the last day of competition, and Gavin confessed that his loose was due to fading brakes and a too fast entry speed. So bleed the brakes it was - again! Again we had a lot of help from the rest of the WA crew, and the Formula Ford method was tried again. It worked, to a degree, but the pedal felt worse than it had the previous night. In desperation a master cylinder change was called for about 7:30pm, with fading light and no electricity. By 8:30 we were bleeding the brakes in the glare of vehicle lights, but it still wasn’t good! Gavin was having a “panic attack” of sorts worrying about what sort of car he would have for the rest of the meeting, and at this point Kerry Wade [he was in the process of replacing a flywheel in his Commodore] came back for another “chin wag” and came up with the idea that the brake balance bar must be affecting the bleeding of the brakes somehow? Gavin crawled under the dash, head down and feet over the back of the seat and set to work disconnecting the link to the balance bar, and manually pumping the front master cylinder for the bleeding process. On the second crack of the valve we got air coming out of the caliper, which hadn’t come out just minutes before. Eureka, of sorts. The brakes came up as good as they had been all weekend, still not 100% but better than they had been. We all headed home, tired and cold at 9:30pm to try and find somewhere other than McDonalds to have dinner, in a very quiet and sleepy Hobart town – such is the life of a race crew.
Sunday dawned bright and sunny, and even a little warm by the time we got to the track. The second of our three points scoring heats was at 10:20am; Gavin lined up on P4, had a great start and settled into a good rhythm actually harassing Matt Cherry in the monster, 500+hp Monaro [GTO] over the last couple of laps. He set his fastest time of the meet with a 58.67 lap, a good 1.3 seconds quicker than McKenzie’s Escort, the next 2 litre car and 1.33 seconds under the old lap record.
On such a tight and twisty track Gavin managed to monster the Outright cars right till the end of the 8 lap races.
It was coming down to decision time on the setup for the final, and the talk amongst the people with Advan AO50 knowledge was that long races were best started with a half worn tyre. That was exactly the state of the tyre when it had finished Heat 2, but Gavin felt it was going off a little, so a decision was made to fit new tyres for Heat 3. Starting from P4, again Gavin brought it home in 4th place with a best lap of 59.32, but significantly, actually slower than the best 2 litre time of Satchwell’s Datsun Coupe which did a best of 59.16. But Gavin had been dicing with Kevin Ledger's WRX and Stringer’s RX7 so he did not have a real clean lap.
During this race the alternator light came on, and an inspection confirmed a broken alternator [broken in a very real sense, the casing was actually cracked!] but with 2 hours till the Final, and a spare in the spares box all it meant was Dev and Gavin were in the way as I gave the Black Beast one last polish before the big one. It was during this final preparation time that 2 decisions were made that would prove crucial. Firstly Gavin decided to go with the new tyres, rather than the half worn ones, and I decided to drop the right front tyre 1psi because it’s hot pressure was a little high on the rapidly warming tack.
I have to admit to feeling a little proud to be standing on the dummy grid with Western Australian’s Matt Cherry in P2, Kerry Wade in P4, Kevin Ledger in P5 with Gavin in P6! We had 4 WA cars in the top 6. Gavin had a sluggish start, conceding a couple of positions in the first lap, but with the 2 main 2litre competitors McKenzie and Satchwell down several grid positions and well over 100m behind on the track it was the right thing to do. On lap 4 Gavin was already being held up by an RX7 which had passed him on the first lap, and coming into the last corner was caught out by the RX7 braking earlier than he had anticipated, causing him to run wide on exit and getting into the marbles. The resultant off track excursion [and brilliant save] cost him about 4 seconds, dropping him back to within 100m of the following 2 litre cars. Once he settled into a rhythm again, he was holding the gap comfortably, until Lap 7 or 8 when he came up to lap some back markers. Going into the same corner in which he had had the previous problem, Gavin was understandably cautious in getting by, but it cost him another couple of seconds, and the following 2 litre cars were starting to edge closer. By the races half way point Gavin’s pace was still brisk enough to keep him clear of the following cars, but he had caught up to the A9X Torana from day 1, whose lap times were hurting Gavin’s pace, but whose straight line speed made it impossible for Gavin to pass. By lap 15 the Escort and Datsun Coupe were on Gavin’s tail, but Gavin was comfortable as it is a difficult track to pass on, and he had the straight line speed to stay in front. On Lap 19 of 25, going through Turn 2, in front of the whole crowd McKenzie’s Escort gave the Black Beast a love tap on the rear corner, sending Gavin into a lurid slide and allowing the Escort through. Most everyone at the track saw it, except the stewards of the meeting………………………….
On the next lap, the Tasmanian Torana that Gavin had spent many laps stuck behind suddenly lost pace allowing the Tasmanian Escort through, but before Gavin could get past the Torana driver had re-gathered himself and sped up again, keeping Gavin behind. Thus the 2litre Championship was lost, a hard pill for Gavin to swallow, and he has been really hard on himself since.
But the facts are that he drove a sensible race, with his lack of race experience letting him down on a couple of occasions. It was only his 3rd race meeting – ever, and he did remarkably well over the weekend. Oh, and the brake pedal was down to the floor by races end. Have to sort those brakes out!! Without making excuses, and with the benefit of hindsight we should have gone with the half worn tyres, and that 1 psi drop was a psi too far. Had we made the right decisions it could have been a whole different story.
So the Black Beast has now raced at 3 race tracks, and has the class lap record at each one. Gotta be happy with that at least :)
After just 3 race meetings as a race car driver a 2nd Place "Nationals" Trophy, not bad for a beginner Gavin!
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RAdams
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Wow, what a story! I was reading the 2012 bit as if it was being fired off to me in the fast pace of a play-by-play announcer.
Congrats to you and your team and thank you for sharing! The hatch is beautiful as well!
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