Hayden's Cars- Annual update!

[Hayden]

@SVX- I did a bit more digging and found this in an article-

... in Improved Production, front and rear bumpers can be of free design but must retain the silhouette of the original and cannot extend past the foremost part of the original bumper. Hislop isn’t sure how much it aids the performance of the Falcon but maintains mechanical grip is most important.

I think I'm just going to have to cut it off. I'd probably get away with a small basic lip but it's not worth the risk of getting disqualified from an event or making the competitors think I'm cheating. Thanks for the idea though mate


Good news! I've laid out the fibreglass on the spoiler and it all went pretty well. After two layers of chopped strand mat, the NASCAR inspired wind block looks like this...

It was a good thing I taped some cardboard to the car at the last minute as an emergency bib. A few drops of resin did manage to hit the car, but I was able to wipe most of it off before any damage was done to our $50 paint job. I'd recommend anyone working with fibreglass to cover everything properly with masking and duct tape. I was planning too but unfortunately ran out of the latter.

The next step will be doing some trimming, shaping and designing to the part. Then it will cop a layer of fibreglass cloth, a coat of black paint and finally receive a layer of that famously lightweight and horrendously expensive black material that all car guys love so much. I'm pretty excited for that bit actually

Now if you were wondering why I'm using my time making air dams and spoilers instead of driving the very recently completed race car, here's your answer.

Dad had a hunch that something wasn't quite right after noticing a rather large puddle of oil on the car trailer after our second track day. So last weekend he decided to do some investigation and guess what he found. Knock, knock, whose there?

Our theory is that when the dyno man got the car "a little bit hot" it may have caused some minor damage that we've made worse by pushing the car to its limit. Another possibility is that we did something wrong while putting it together, but let's just ignore that one. Regardless of the cause, the heads are off to get cleaned up again and we've got our hands on some much stronger and more expensive forged Pistons that should hopefully hold up to the abuse a little better. The bottom one is one of the new guys.

So for the near future I'm going to keep playing with fibreglass until this thing...

Is back where it belongs

 

[Hayden]

Sorry for the constant updates folks, but I've been getting a fair bit done. First on the hit list tonight was removing the front splitter...

The only cutting utensil I have for plywood is a cheap jigsaw and due to its width I couldn't get it close enough to completely remove the splitter. I measured it up on the car and it doesn't seem to stick out the front of the "front most part of the bumper" by much if at all. As such and as suggested by someone, I've decided I'll trim it up nicely and build it in to a small but functional lip. Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite me


At the back of the car, I took off some tape, then pulled and pried until finally the spoiler came away from the car. I then pulled off the rest of the tape off and sat it back in place to mark where I would trim it.

Then it was a matter of quietly trimming away at the part with a dremmel. It was a slow process of constantly checking side to side and trying my best not to make any cuts that couldn't be undone. After a while It looked like this.

I'll be trimming the centre tab on the back and these on the front once I decide exactly where I'll put the bolts through the brackets.

I then tried using plaster of Paris to add some shape to the front of the spoiler, but after letting it dry it all cracked to pieces and fell apart. With that in mind I'll be using body filler to get the shape I want.

Cheers!

 

[SVX]

Hahahaha, love the easter egg!

 

[Hayden]

Tonight was pretty productive. I spent some time drilling and bolting. It was an extremely nerve racking experience to physically drill into a car, but with a lot of care I got it all fitted up nicely. Using a total of 8 bolts, all going through metal brackets, the spoiler should not be coming off (involuntarily) anytime soon! (I will be using washers underneath on the final fitment)

A little bit more trimming came next. It's still not quite finished but it's constantly getting closer to where I want it.

Finally I did some sanding. I spent a while doing it by hand before remembering that when I bought my drill years ago, it came with a a multi-purpose tool that had a sanding attachment. After digging through some moving boxes it turned up, and made much lighter work of knocking back the fibreglass.

Up close the surface is still wavy, rough and inconsistent. Duct tape makes for a great cheap release agent but it's habit of creasing, stretching and releasing has really bit me on the ass on this one. Normally I wouldn't worry about it, but seeing as the final touch on this part will be carbon fibre, I need to get it as smooth as possible. I have a bad feeling that the sexy shiny stuff will show imperfections like nobody's business and the material really deserves better than that.

After yesterday's failed attempt with plaster, I tried using fibreglass body filler but I found it was too clingy and stretchy to use it the way I want. My 3rd attempt will be with good old fashioned bog and I hope to cover the whole thing and work it down to a nice even surface.

I ordered a couple stickers today so if anyone has any ideas of where to put them on this thing, let me know

 

[Hayden]

You may remember that I toasted the brakes last time we took the car out. Well it took some saving and digging but we have a solution. A little while ago we had two large boxes arrive. Inside were our new 4 pot front and 2 pot rear, Brembo brakes from a 300c SRT8!

Our car's standard 2 piston front and 1 rears just weren't up to the track day task. Throughout the day they glowed red hot, faded terribly and eventually warped the rotors to the point that the car shuddered violently under braking. The increased rotor size and stopping power of these big guys should hopefully solve that problem!

They came complete with the struts, so it wasn't too hard a task for us to put them on when they arrived. Some little parts were missing though, so with those finally arriving this week, we were able to finish our conversion yesterday.

Unfortunately, our front wheels don't clear the new callipers. We had a guess and bought 8mm slip on spacers just to find out they were too thin and that the wheels still fouled. So I went back and got some 12mm ones that allowed the wheel to bolt on. This unfortunately leaves very little thread on the wheel studs so we will probably be getting extended studs to compensate.

The 8mm spacers will go on the back and with this increased track the car should apparently have slightly less body roll and better handling. Add the improvements made to the stopping power and the extra 25kw gained by having red brake calipers and all in all, brembo brakes were a very worthwhile upgrade!

The engine started the day looking like this. Concerned that the engine's premature detonation may have been a result of our assembly, Dad rang up his mate Luffy and asked him to give us a hand putting it back together. Luffy is a 6 time national champion in motorbike drag racing and won every title on bikes and engines he built from scratch in his dirt floored shed. Needless to say, he knows his stuff.

So with another pair of trained hands on board, everything went back together very smoothly. Apart from the Pistons, which when fitted with their rings and placed in the compressor kept fighting us when being put in their chambers. Dad had this problem last time and patience won out in the end. While it was in pieces, we decided it would be a good idea to fit a double rowed timing chain to prevent a potentially catastrophic breakage.


On Monday, I took the heads to a specialist who promised he could have them back in working shape in time for this weekend. Even though he came across a couple bent valves on Thursday and had to rush order parts from interstate, he managed to have them both done by 2pm on Friday. The valves were a surprise, and his theory is that the tuner had set it to run far too lean, causing the car to ping and ultimately creating all the chaos that we are currently cleaning up. Maybe it wasn't our backyard assembly skills after all


By the end of the day, our engine looked like this, and looking forward to this afternoon it should hopefully be back in the car, running and driving straight on the trailer for an appointment with a (different!) dyno shop on monday.


Cheers

 

[Punknoodle]

Do you have a wideband on it? Having a wideband and having my ECU set up with O2 limits in the engine protection parameters saved my engine when I had a fuel pump issue. It's a must for a race car IMO.

 

[Hayden]

@Punknoodle- No we don't. The dyno tuner we took it too last time told us that we shouldn't need one and not to worry about it. Obviously that wasn't very good advice because having a well set up wideband definitely could've saved our bacon. We live and learn I guess

Yesterday went pretty much according to plan, with the rest of the engine going back together pretty well. When it came to putting it in the bay however, things got a bit tedious. We'd decided to put the water pump on before dropping it in, and that made the engine a little bit longer than it was last time we did this. That little bit made a big difference and it ended up taking us nearly an hour to get it squeezed into place with the engine crane.

Then we hit another issue, as it turns out, the clutch wasn't quite aligned perfectally and as a result, the input shaft wouldn't slide in happily like it should. We were forced into the annoying process of gradually pulling the 'box and engine together with the bellhousing bolts until they finally married up. The extractors were less of a pain than usual and everything else went back together like clockwork. While we were at it we fitted an SRT8's intake manifold and fuel injectors. This makes the engine look a lot bigger but more importantly, should allow more air and fuel into our worked Hemi.

With that all done it was just a job of bleeding our new Brembos and firing it up. The engine roared to life instantly and sounded a lot healthier than it had before. With that done we drove it on the trailer and I dropped it off at the dyno man this morning. This guy is far, far more enthusiastic than the last tuner and is looking very forward to seeing just how much power he can squeeze out of the thing. He also uses a hub dyno rather than a traditional rolling road, which should allow more consistent runs and more precise tuning. We're confidant we have the right man for the job this time


And in slightly more boring news I've covered the spoiler with bog. It's pretty far from smooth so I imagine it's going to take a few layers to get it to where I want it but with my trusty multi purpose tool and its sanding attachment, I should have it whipped Into shape in the next few days.

Obviously several layers of body filler isn't exactly light, but if I get carried away with weight reduction down the road, it shouldn't be too hard to make a mould of the boot and spoiler and make it again as a single piece of carbon fibre.


Edit: I've just noticed how rubbish those photos are. I must've got some oil or something on my phone's camera. Sorry about that

 

[SVX]

Edit: I've just noticed how rubbish those photos are. I must've got some oil or something on my phone's camera. Sorry about that

The car is so fast that it's causing you to pan before it's even completed.

 

[Eh Team]

The car is so fast that it's causing you to pan before it's even completed.

No, it's "soft focus." That oil is really vaseline.

 

[Hayden]

Unfortunately our cam timing appears to have been slightly out so the dyno man couldn't get the numbers the car deserves. We'll resolve that as soon as possible and take it back to get another spin up.


While the Chrysler was away, I got busy with body filler to try and get the spoiler into the shape I wanted. Obviously, I could've just taken the waves out of it and called things a day but I wanted to bring a bit more detail into it than that. NASCARs occasionally run small ears on the edges of their spoilers for tracks that require higher levels of downforce. I always liked how it looked and decided to take it as inspiration for mine. I mean if a cartoon character can pull it off, it should look alright on our Chrysler right?

While the spoiler was still on the car I measured straight up from the position of the body lines that surround the number plate. I figured this would be a good place to put a slight drop on the top of the spoiler that would get the look I want.

This line would also carry down on the front and back of the spoiler to create a proper body line that should match the style of the car. I used my cheap knockoff dremmel to cut a guide mark. The plan was to sand one side of the cut down to flush and leave the other side high, creating a ledge which would ultimately be our body line.

I knew the top wasn't very even, with some parts ducking under the regulation limited 125mm of height that I was going for. So I sat some spare corflute under the spoiler and covered it, along with the rest of the thing with my leftover fibreglass filler.

With the filler dry and corflute pulled away, it left an impression of the lines in my fibreglass. I measured the 125mm and drew along the line that would become the top of the spoiler. I also included a slight drop that would match up with my body line in progress.

Then I trimmed it down and back filled it to make it a nice smooth join. What followed was a lot of sanding, made far easier thanks to my purchase of an orbital sander. This tool made short work of the filler and after a while, my spoiler was really starting to take shape!

I decided to trim down the back bottom mounting point in line with my body line because it was making the tail light seem to stick out how it was.

There's still a lot more sanding and a bit of trimming to go, but at this stage I can finally get an idea of how it's going to look. The one thing I'm not sure about is how clear the body line is.What do you think guys, should I make it slightly less bold or keep it as is?

 

[Hayden]

i was having a lot of trouble seeing imperfections on the spoiler due to it being 50 different shades of pink. So I decided to get the rattle can out and make it one shade of black.

Spoiler: More pictures

With the whole piece the same shade, things like this are far easier to see, so hopefully I'll catch them all before the final finish.

 

[Hayden]

The spoiler is still happening folks, as is a custom built wing I intend to start building next week. Everything went on hold for a while as we turned our attention to some serious mechanical issues that properly sidelined the car a while back. Dad's got the car at his house and is in the processing of reassembling our engine after a horrific timing issue caused massive internal damage.

The car is booked to compete at the same hillclimb it was meant to debut at last year. On that occasion I had to cancel last minute and use the 86. We've got until the middle of November to prepare and test, so my fingers are crossed that history will not repeat. Today though, I turned my attention back to the front airdam/flat floor and that's what this post is about.

I decided, to keep it legal, the slight piece of splitter I had left should probably get the knife. So I drilled some holes along the edge of where fibreglass meets plywood...

Flipped the whole thing upside down, played connect the dots with a black texta, then used the jigsaw to trim away what was left of my well intentioned front splitter.

I then came along and tidied it all up with my orbital sander. At some stage I'll use filler to correct the waves in the fibreglass of the airdam and this puppy will come along and make the whole thing silky smooth.

Next up I indulged a little idea I had a while ago. You're on GTPlanet so you've probably seen a SuperGT car and their vented fenders at some point. The gap in front of the door is both a way out for trapped hot air from the brakes and an outlet for a small difusser located on the flat floor. Difussers are pretty simple but can be extremely powerful in creating downforce.

So if a GTR can have Difussers at the front, why can't a Chrysler?
I measured up and drew a grid on the bottom of my flat floor so I could make sure it stays semmetrical, then I marked with dots where my diffusers would go. I went as close as practical the the attachment points for the bumper, to get the longest ramp and most powerful difusser possible.


Having the mouth of a difusser ramp up in a curve, rather than a sharp angle change, helps the airflow stay attached and ensures that the difusser will suck out as much air as possible. I got the ramp by cutting all sides but the front with my jigsaw and bending the plywood upward then simply shoving something under them to keep them in place. These ramps curve to 13* which is pretty much the most you can angle a difusser before it loses efficiency.

The ones you see on the back bumpers of roadcars (like my 86), with there massive angles that aren't connected to a flat floor, are little more than window dressing.

Next post I'll be using fibreglass to make my difussers into a permanent fixture. It's going to take several layers to make it strong enough to hold against the rebound force of the bent ply, but once I'm finished, these simple little ramps will be capable of adding back a bit of the front downforce that I'm not allowed to use a splitter to get. Whether this experiment ends with massive SuperGT vented guards is too be determined


The wing I'll be building will be laser cut foam with an aluminium RHS structure, that I'll cover with fibreglass and mount via aluminium end plates. The professionally cut foam will cost me $70, I've got the fibreglass and RHS already and I'm hoping to get some cheap 6mm aluminium plate from an engineering shop's scrap bin for a bit of pocket cash. My goal is to build a wing that is as efficient as I can possibly make it for as cheap as humanly possible. Good time attack wings (like pictured) start around $2k and I am budgeting a tenth of that

The final goal with all this is have two useable aero kits. An improved production approved combo of the airdam and spoiler, and a time attack friendly setup with a massive splitter and my homemade wing. Then I'll test both, along with the standard setup on a track day and see how well (if at all) this stuff actually works.

 

[Hayden]

Yesterday I was reminded how much better fibreglass cloth is to work with than fibreglass chopped strand mat. I used the mat for the bottom side and it took a lot of resin to wet out and I did a pretty poor job applying it, which left the surface quite uneven. Then, for the top side I used two layers of 200gm fibreglass cloth.

So much better to work with . Wetting out didn't require much resin and the finish was pretty smooth and consistent.

After letting it dry, I cautiously knocked the little brackets I had holding it in bent position out and i was very happy to see the difussers hold their shape. Next I flipped it upside down to deal with the lumpy, bumpy mess left by the mat. As you can see, it wasn't very pretty.

After trimming off the big bits with my dremmel and doing a lot of tidying up with my sander however, I managed to get it look a bit tidier. Much more important than looks though, is that the surface is now smooth and air should be sucked through them to make me my downforce!

I'm trying to think what car's bonnet the bottom of my flat floor now looks like but I'm drawing a bit of a blank. It's really reminding me of a muscle car of some sort

 

[Ze Elephant]

That flat floor is looking really good there, and I'm getting some big 1971 Mustang Mach 1 vibes from it.

I'd definitely say to keep up the great work, Hayden. Every time I see a thread update I get more and more excited to see what you do next.

 

[Hayden]

@Ze Elephant Thats the one!
Thanks a lot for the positive words! I'm learning a lot and having a heap of fun playing around with this stuff, but the coolest part is getting to have you guys along for the journey with me!

So, with the diffusers done, I decided it was time to build the time attack focused splitter. After much tracing, cutting, trimming and sanding, I got it to a point where it sits nearly perfectally flush with the front of the airdam.

I used some off cut pieces of ply to screw the two together from the underside to keep them attach and make sure nothing moves to throw everything out of whack when I'm fibreglassing. Next I checked the regulations for SA Time Attack, and seeing as our Perspex windows and roll cage put us into the Open class by default, decided to build to those regs. That means a splitter that can extend 15cm from the front most point of the standard bodywork and must follow the shape of the standard bumper.

Next, I got a little bit creative. I had some corflute laying around and in wanting to make the most of the regulations, decided I could make end plates for my splitter. These are mostly seen on high end time attack builds and ensure that as much air hits and stays attached to the top of the splitter as possible.

In the process I figured I may as well put a wall in front of the tire, because the turbulence cause by moving tyres is one of the worst contributors to a cars drag coefficient. With the spacers required to clear our Brembos, the wheels now stick out of the guards by a fair way and if I could put something solid in front of that, I could help make our car that much slipperier.

A ramped section rather than a vertical wall would also have the bonus of adding extra downforce. So with all that in mind I cut some slots in the splitter along what would eventually be its leading edge and slid some corflute into it.

Next I placed a piece of corflute from the line you can see in the above photo, to the top of the back of the side plate. I got it to a curve I liked, used tape to hold it in place, then marked the curve on the side plate and cut holes and tabs in the pieces so they could slot together.

Then it was just a matter of filling all the gaps and holes with tape, covering the surrounding area with tape and attaching it firmly with, you guessed it, tape. Finally I threw two layers of fibreglass cloth over it and in just an hour I'd created my ramped tyre walls and my end plates into one piece.

Tape isn't an ideal base, so it's a bit rough, but once I've sanded it all smooth these pieces will come up pretty nicely. Most importantly though, with the amount of air they're going to displace, these pieces will create a pretty useful amount of downforce, keep air off the tyres and best of all, make the car look a bit like a snow plow

There will be some trimming required to get these to fit the bumper, but with the car 400kms away, it was always gonna be hard to judge exactly where it needs to stop

Cheers

 

[Punknoodle]

Nice work, I'd be interested in comparing data between sessions when you test different set ups. What do you have in the way of data logging?

 

[Hayden]

@Punknoodle I'll take you up on that! Previously I've been using an iPhone App which records GPS speed as a line graph, and stores laptimes which can easily be compared. It's functionality is limited, but it's been useful up to this point.

Looking forward, I'm planning on having a much more in depth logging system in the car before it next hits the track. I'll take this opportunity to ask you for some guidance on which way to go, because this is well and truly uncharted territory for me.

https://www.autosportlabs.com/product/racecapture/
This product costs between $275-$370 and plugs into the OBDII port. It's got a customisable dashboard that can display sensor readouts through a tablet, a 3 axis accelerometer and a 3 axis gyro for roll, pitch and yaw. All of which are reviewable and comparable. It can also display through the tablet a sector based best lap chart and real time predictive lap timing. It also has inputs for ride heights for all 4 corners, AFR (which we need), tire temps, steering angle and plenty of other gauges. Honestly it looks pretty good to me.


http://www.prospeedracing.com.au/motec-c125-colour-display-dash-race-kit-enabled
Motec's C125 seems to be pretty similar in spec but the price tag is pretty nasty! I know it comes with a screen and shift lights but is there something else that makes this kit worth 10x the amount of the race capture set up?

On that note, Haltech's data loggers are also very pricy and like to be paired with their equally expensive ECUs and dash screens.

What system do you use @Punknoodle? What other features should I be looking for and have you heard anything bad about the racecapture set up? the more I research the alternatives the more it seems like a bit of a bargain.

 

[Punknoodle]

@Punknoodle I'll take you up on that! Previously I've been using an iPhone App which records GPS speed as a line graph, and stores laptimes which can easily be compared. It's functionality is limited, but it's been useful up to this point.
View attachment 672869
Looking forward, I'm planning on having a much more in depth logging system in the car before it next hits the track. I'll take this opportunity to ask you for some guidance on which way to go, because this is well and truly uncharted territory for me.

https://www.autosportlabs.com/product/racecapture/
This product costs between $275-$370 and plugs into the OBDII port. It's got a customisable dashboard that can display sensor readouts through a tablet, a 3 axis accelerometer and a 3 axis gyro for roll, pitch and yaw. All of which are reviewable and comparable. It can also display through the tablet a sector based best lap chart and real time predictive lap timing. It also has inputs for ride heights for all 4 corners, AFR (which we need), tire temps, steering angle and plenty of other gauges. Honestly it looks pretty good to me.
View attachment 672876

http://www.prospeedracing.com.au/motec-c125-colour-display-dash-race-kit-enabled
Motec's C125 seems to be pretty similar in spec but the price tag is pretty nasty! I know it comes with a screen and shift lights but is there something else that makes this kit worth 10x the amount of the race capture set up?
View attachment 672880
On that note, Haltech's data loggers are also very pricy and like to be paired with their equally expensive ECUs and dash screens.

What system do you use @Punknoodle? What other features should I be looking for and have you heard anything bad about the racecapture set up? the more I research the alternatives the more it seems like a bit of a bargain.

Yeah so there are plenty of options as you've seen and it really depends on what you already have and what you plan on being able to do with it.

Personally I use a couple of different things, my Haltech ECU has on board data logging, but obviously this is just the engine parameters and speed. This is handy for looking back at my engine temps etc and checking the tuning.

For in car lap timing I'm just using an app at the moment too, called Harry's Lap Timer. It's basic but good enough to gauge difference in speed and g's per corner and log laptimes.

The full featured dash loggers like the racepak or Motec dash will act as a display plus also log all your engine parameters as well as speed and gps so you will have a visual indication of where you were on track for each parameter. The Motec you featured is just the display I think, doesn't have a gps or accelerometer included, they will be extra.

What you get with the Motec for the money is extreme quality, high resolution and one of the best names in the business. Refresh rates from the gps will be quicker, the refresh rates of the parameters will be quicker (obd2 is very slow) and it has a tremendous software package (i2, which I use with my sim racing telemetry).

 

[Hayden]

Due to the issues we've had with tuning, we have been weighing up an aftermarket ECU for a while now. It would be ideal to get a fully integrated system that could work with a nice display but the cost factor is definitely an issue at this point in the build. Thanks for the advice man, I'm pretty new to the whole "real racing" thing and telemetery is something not many people talk openly about. I'll keep my eye out for second hand Motec and Haltech's setups to see if that's a viable option

I got some news from Dad and to say it's exciting is an enormous understatement. I won't go into detail just yet but I will say that this wing and splitter better do their job- and very well at that- or i'm going to be in a huge amount of trouble.

So with the fear of death weighing on my mind, I went about fine tuning my wing design in my go to CAD program, Sketchup. What I came up with first was this. It uses end plate mounts which are both the most efficient way to mount a wing and allows for easy adjustment of the wing angle. the width is 10mm wider than the surrounding body work on either side and it's positioned inline with the rear most point of the back bumper.

I took a closer look at the regulations and made some adjustments. Wing #2 pushes the limits on width (100mm wider than the car's widest point) height (in line with roof) and is 100mm further back than the rear bumper. Moving it back has also allowed the wing chord (aka the width) to grow by about 25%. It's sheer size and ideal placement makes this a very powerful wing, but it does raise some major concerns for me when it comes to mounting. A massive amount of twisting force is being placed on the two points it mounts to the car's bodywork and a failure at high speed could be extremely dangerous.

The final evolution is #3. It shares the dimensions with #2, but uses a much stronger mounting platform that includes a solid piece of aluminium connecting the end plates, which would be welded to mounts that travel through holes in the boot to be bolted to the chassis. I'd need to make a fibreglass piece to fill the gap between the aluminium centre piece and the top of the boot. This design would be a bit heavier than the others but would be extremely sturdy and strong. Part of me thinks it may even be overkill for a single element wing.

Which brings me full circle. I decided early on that an end plate mounted wing would be the go, due to it's improved efficiency. But after trying to figure out a way to mount one, I'm beginning to realize why so many race cars use swan neck or straight up mounts instead. It's just plain easier to sit the wing as far back and as high up as possible and I can see that the excess front surface area required by something like #3 could do more harm to the drag coefficient than good. Swan neck wing mounts are a fair bit more efficient than traditional straight up wing posts, but for a backyard-er they add a fair amount of difficulty to the construction process. All this thinking has helped me decide that I definitely want to mount the biggest wing possible in the best position allowed, but It hasn't cleared up the 'how' quite as much as I was hoping. At least it was an excuse to have a quick play with rendering though I guess

 

[Hayden]

If you’re a car person and you’re on the internet, like I know you are, you’ve probably heard of Mighty Car Mods. The guys made their first trip to Adelaide in seven years this past weekend and I was there to see them.
The event was a bit of a mix between a track day, a show & shine and a YouTuber meet & greet. I knew these guys were pretty popular but I was completely blown away by the lines for the signing sessions and the sheer number of awesome cars that turned up. It was a real eye opener

With the Chrysler in the midst of receiving its secret weapon and The Zed about due for a new clutch sometime soon, I decided to bring the 86. While it’s done a good handful of hill climbs, this would be the car’s first proper track day and I was interested to see how it stood up to the constant abuse.

The first few times I drove at Mallala, It was in the Skyline at drift events, so when we brought the 300c here, I found myself trying to use drifting lines for grip driving. Coming back in the 86, a car that's predictable, quiet and not too fast, gave me a great opportunity to relearn the track, as an actual race track for the first time. My lines and lap times both improved very drastically throughout the day and I was reminded, yet again, of how brilliant the little Toyobaru really is. If I could only own one car at a time, for the rest of my life, I think I'd be driving this thing 'till the day I died

A definite highlight of the day was playing around with the driver of this 185RWKW supercharged BRZ. Session after session we followed each other out, then spent our entire 15 minute slot encouraging each other to go faster and faster. It was just a bit of harmless fun to us, and we weren't getting close or overtaking each other, but we did get a little talking too from the officials. We were both a bit surprised about it, but learnt our lesson and laughed it off. As he said "We weren't racing, we were just showing off!"

By the end of the day, I had the track and the car pretty well figured out. I was hitting 170KPH on the back straight, heel-toeing all my down shifts, hitting apexs consistently and pushing the 86 as hard as I could. I had the driver of a red 86 that was there, along with his dad approach me and ask me what times I was doing. When I replied with 1.29.995, they were both pretty shocked. Apparently he was about 6 seconds slower per lap. I showed the driver an app for lap time recording, chatted to his dad about the 86 for a while (apparently he owns 4 between him and his kids) then jumped back in my car for another session.

The only (very predictable) problem the car had was with its brake pads. By the end of every session they were badly faded and when I was driving it home, I came to believe I may have ruined them completely. Alas, I knew that was gonna happen and it was completely worth it to have such an amazing day out. I apologize that this video isn't angled very well. I forgot to charge my GoPro so it's recorded on an iPhone jammed into my headrest.


A massive thank you to all the photographers who bothered taking photos of my boring standard car when there was so much cool metal going around the track. If I'm not mistaken, the brilliant photo below may have even been taken by a GTPlanet resident... @Murcie_LP640?

Thanks for reading guys, a whole heap more photos in the spoiler.

Spoiler

Mod Max. An S15 with an LS that wears body armor. Very cool to see the detail and lack there of that's gone into this car in the flesh.

Moog's Type R powered civic. This thing was properly quick and I can only imagine how much fun it was around Mallala.

The Barra powered Cresta. A drag car fitted with the turbocharged Australian inline 6 Ford engine as seen in the F6. From memory this thing did a 9 second pass on the MCM video. With it's slicks and skinnys it wasn't doing great times around the circuit though

I saw this Prelude at the Legends of the Lakes Hillclimb last year and was blown away by just how fast the thing was. As it turns out, the builder has taken the engine from a Mitsubishi Magna and mounted it midship behind the driver, converting the car from FF to MR. The amount of custom work required would have been immense, but watching this thing go around the track makes it clear that it was definitely worth while.

Hello resident MR2 fans!

When I had the Skyline, I got it wrong in that exact spot once. This guy is in for a bumpy ride

I see very few Mitsubishi GTOs getting around but it's a car I'll always have soft spot for. I'm not sure why it hasn't hit the same point of collectibility as the Supra that it rivaled, but I think it's time is coming.

Happy Miata is happy!

This very cool Civic (I never thought I'd type those words) was wearing a defect sticker. You only have 24 hours to drive a car after receiving that ticket so I'm guessing the poor bugger got done the night before. At least the car got to see the crowd it deserved before he has to rip everything off to get it through its roadworthy inspection

Cleeeeeean S14.

Matte Black can make anything look tough!

Such a massive variety of cars out on track. Marty & Moog seem to have a connection with every single type of car guy.

And we'll finish it off with a few more of me

 

[Punknoodle]

Nice work. Just bleed your brake fluid, the pads and rotors should be ok still. Did you have racing fluid in there? You'll want to throw some upgraded pads in if you do end up changing them, especially if you have any intension of tracking it again.

I'd love to try out the track, I've seen a friend's in car footage from a track event he did there and it looks like it would be fairly fun.

 

[Hayden]

@Punknoodle- Apart from the GTS wheels, the 86 is 100% stock from top to bottom. I never really intended to do any track work with it, on account of needing it to get to work and all, but I didn’t want to miss the MCM event and I was curious what times it would do.

I’ve bled through the fluid and the brakes are back to their reassuring firmest. Nothing scarier than stepping on the stop pedal in an emergency and feeling it go straight down!

Mallala is a very fun track. It’s got a nice flow, some challengong corners, a pretty good length straight and some bits that really test your bravery. The most exciting development for me though is happening down the road at Tailem Bend. The first track day on the new course is middle of next year and I’ll be there with bells on

Super happy to say that I made it into the official mighty car mods meet video. The 86 is getting pursued at around the 4.23 mark


Legend of the Lakes hillclimb is just 13 days away and the Chrysler isn’t quite ready yet. It’s booked into the dyno shop for next Friday and I’ll hopefully have my splitter and spoiler done before the deadline.

The reality now is that the first time I get to drive the car with its new enhancement will be at a course with catch barriers and cliffs rather than nice wide run off areas with kitty litter. My first few runs will definitely be handled with kid gloves

Screw it, I’ve teased you guys long enough and I feel like need to tell somebody about this because it’s still a big secret among our friends and family.
Here’s what’s hiding under the Chrysler’s bonnet

Procharger P1X. It came in a full kit designed for the Chrysler and we spent a weekend a while back quietly bolting it into place.
The capabilities of this system are absolutely insane. This car will potentially have way over 800 BHP and it’ll be forcing that through our 245 tyres and an old school manual ‘box. To say I’m slightly concerned about how I’m going to drive it would be a massive understatement. I’m certainly very, very excited to give it a red hot crack though!

 

[Punknoodle]

BOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSTTTTTT

Awesome dude 👍 Punknoodle approves.

 

[Hayden]

The excitement is real

We did some last minute tidy ups last weekend, most of which happened under the car and involved taking off and putting on parts we’ve already dealt with hundreds of times up to this point. The one thing we did that makes a very noticeable difference to the car though, is paint it black... the inside that is!

The bright white inside of the car was something we’d both gotten used to, but to say the black finish is a massive improvement would be a pretty big understatement! Considering it only took the two of us half an hour and two rattle cans of matte black, it was definitely worth doing!

With the odd jobs done, and a suitable sticker I got from the Mighty Car Mods meet applied to the back window...

It was off to the dyno shop today. Now it wouldn’t be a post about the Chrysler without it being a bastard in some form or another, but thankfully, despite making some scary noises and bringing back some bad memories, today’s hissy fit was relatively minor.

As it turns out, the standard 1 bar airflow sensor can not keep up with the increased flow and we never got an updated one in our supercharger kit. Alas, the guys put on a base tune and did some gentle prodding on the dyno, until the car started to lean out at around 4000rpm. That problem can only be solved with a fuel pump and 1500cc injectors, both of which (along with a 2 bar maf sensor) are on the way and will be applied to the car for it to be ran on the dyno again on Wednesday.

So far, even with the airflow issues and only revving to 4K, the car has already hit 340RWKW- a good improvement from its previous best of 293. And for reference, at the same RPM point on that previous record, it was only making about 200RWKW. So with another 90KW all but gauranteed from the cam getting to work, another 5 pound of boost still to be touched and a lot of fine tuning to be done, this engine is looking like it’s gonna make some serious numbers!

 

[Hayden]

Ladies and gentlemen! Our Chrysler 300c race car not only made it to the hillclimb, but it performed very well and survived the weekend unscathed! Normally I'd like to do a write up for you guys, but my free time's been pretty short as of late, so I hope you enjoy this video I put together.


Thanks for your continual support and encouragement guys!

 

[Katiegan]

It must take some skill to wrestle a land yacht like that around such a technical course. Well done on beating the Toyota's time!

 

[Hayden]

It must take some skill to wrestle a land yacht like that around such a technical course. Well done on beating the Toyota's time!

Hey! Only I’m allowed to call it that!
I overheard several people saying over the weekend that I wouldn’t be able to turn it around at the bus stop (the u-turn at the top of the run) and that it’s just too big for such a tight course. The bus stop was dealt with pretty easily thanks to the hydro, and once I figured out where the edges of the car was, the other tight bits got easier and easier as the runs progressed.

The size and weight will definitely be a constant hurdle for this car, but now that it actually works consistently, we can dealve into refining everything to get it to feel as nimble as possible. It’s already a predictable and very stable car to drive, but with a proper suspension tune I think it would really come into its own.

I was honestly stoked to beat the 86 in that last run. I’d been getting quicker and braver every run and come very close in the 2nd to last but locked up into the last turn and just pulled it up before the wall. To think that this car is no where near its potential and is already setting a 1.03.2 is very exciting. That’s quicker than a 370z, Saleen Mustang, FPV GT, Porsche 911, WRXs, Evos and about 40 other properly built cars. In a Chrysler.

My goal for next year is to break the one minute mark and have a crack at making the top 50 shootout

 

[lbpomg95]

Damn that thing is a beast. Sounds awesome as well. I wish V8s were affordable or even a little bit viable in this country, but alas my Vauxhall Monaro VXR must wait until I win the lottery.

 

[Hayden]

If you thought that with all the exciting Chrysler things that have been happening in the last year; that I would’ve completely forgotten about the Zed and that it’d been gathering dust in a shed somewhere... I’m sad to say you’d be dead right.

Long story short I’ve been saving for a house deposit for the last few years and with the Chrysler soaking up any and all spare change it can get its hands on, the car that started it all has been completely neglected. But worry not, because last week I handed over the deposit for my new home and much to my surprise actually had some change left over!

So today, for the first time in exactly 1 year and 3 days, I dragged the car out of its dusty home and bought registration for it. I then very, very carefully washed off the layers of dust, drove it straight to a mechanic and told him to give it a good run down. The car will be having a compression test, vacuum leak test, new plugs and filters and then be strapped to a dyno to produce a number. If it all goes well, I’ll get it some new tyres and take it on a cruise happening at the end of the year. Then, in January I’ll bring it back to the dyno man to see what she’s really capable of

For now I’m just super excited to have the first love back on the road as the (fingers crossed) reliable and fun weekend car that it was always meant to be.

 

[Punknoodle]

Just caught up with your post from Legend of the Lakes. Looks really fun, car looked like a bit of a handful and a little understeery - is that how it felt behind the wheel? One day I'd like to go interstate with the car and do an event like this. A friend of mine from a Celica group I'm in who lives down there did the event in his GT-Four, I think his laptime was a low 57s from memory.