Quick little project to tidy up the body work and prep for paint, getting rid of the wiper hole and rear grab handle latch thing on the hatch. As well as fixing a few rust bubbles in the window seal.
stripped the push in rubber seal out and wire wheeled/scraped/ ground out the rust before applying rust converter.
Next i made up some plates to blank the lock mechanism and wiper hole and tacked them in.
then a liberal smear of bondo and some primer!
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I'll come back next weekend and blend it all in and throw some colour at it.
I went back later and cleaned up the line along the bottom edge because it annoyed me. Happier now. Two weeks to state titles!!
And done! Good from far.....
sponsor stickers getting done next week
That cleaned up nice. Good work. I'm looking forward to seeing the new livery.
Thanks Scott, i need to paint the rear quarters next to tie it all in together.
Had some time to tinker with the RX8 this morning, really should be machining bits for the cross kart but didn't feel like cleaning up swarf from the lathe again!
Working on a pattern for the rear firewall, will be cut out of 1/8" aluminium and bead rolled eventually.
also made some packers for the tie bars on the barina to bring them closer to level, and gain me some clearance between the exhaust and sway bar.
New sponsor on! Tie bar packers in, state titles this weekend!
Ok, State titles run and done, happily the suspension issue is fixed, it now goes around the track behaving itself nicely, the same however can't be said for the brakes.
Fought rear brake lockup all weekend, couldn't work out why i was getting oversteer in the hairpin, wasn't until my partner locked it up in the same place I could see the rears locking and not the fronts. So I'll take my spares in and get them rebuilt before the next round of club championship.
First two places were taken by high dollar cars which left the rest of us battling for third. Two cars, four drivers as both cars were double entered and it was a great weekend of racing, constant changing of positions but in the end I got edged out of third by 1/10th but was still happy and had a great time.
I ended up fourth in class and second fastest female overall and my partner scored 6th in class and 3rd fastest female in Queensland.
Quite happy with that! We've got work to do but know which direction we're going and also hoping to have the cross kart out next year as well.
Brakes in being rebuilt meant that I actually had some time to work on other projects, while my partner turned bushes for the crosskart on the lathe i got the dash cut out and installed, and just to see how they look started fitting the super blackbird dash. Very pleased with that!
Then i spent Sunday morning turning the pattern i made for the rear firewall in the RX8 into an alloy reality. Many times in and out to get it fitting how i wanted it, Need to do the parcel shelf section and bead roll it next before the cage build starts.
Couple more photos with decent light
Rebuilt callipers ready to go back on this weekend ready for rd 3 next weekend. Hopefully this will balance the brakes better or I'll have to go digging into ghe master cylinder.
Can you run a brake-bias valve? Or the fancy method would be going to a dual master setup with a bias bar.
I have a bias valve here for it but it has double brake lines right through so I would need a second bias valve or I need to replumb everything to a single line. I can also get a bias brake setup for this car that bolts in in place of the stock booster/master cylinder off the shelf which I am thinking hard about but again I would need to replumb brake lines.
Not sure how much more time and money I want to spend on this one.
On the plus side rebuilt callipers are on along with the slightly larger disks they fit with and the pedal feels much firmer than previously so maybe there was a trapped air bubble that's been fixed now
Seat , dash and pedals in and starting to really look like something. I may yet change the dash setup but I'll wait till the wheel is in to get final setup.
Oops! Partner spun it in the second loop and nose first into the catch fence, which did it's job even if she did take out three posts.
Guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow! On the plus side it was cosmetic damage only and we taped it up and ran the rest of the day taking third and fourth in class.
scratches from the wire fencing included free! Also took a chunk out of the bottom of the bumper, dent in the centre of the door and moved the bumper reinforcement 2 inches sideways, more photos tomorrow
Knocked things back into shape today, quick stitch up on the bumper damage and she's good to go again in three weeks. At some point I'll replace the bumper and guards if I can find any in decent condition.
July has already been a big month and it's not over yet!
we went racing at an event we haven't been to before, Goldrush hill sprint. About 700km's north of home outside a town called Mt Morgan. Basically they close the two lane highway up the range and let us race on it. 3km's and 200 metres of elevation. And it was an absolute blast!!
The little Barina performed flawlessly throughout the weekend with only a little bit of clutch slippage on launch . Which given i launch at rev limiter in second gear doesn't really surprise me.
We ended up 8th in a field of 17 and my overall times put us middle of the field in the 2 litre to 4 litre class above us so quite pleased with the result!
New plugs and leads going in for club championship this weekend and a new ceramic button clutch being custom built for it in the next couple weeks.
waiting at the top to go back down, 75 cars at a time.
event was livestreamed on Blend Line TV on YouTube if anyone wants to check it out. Or on our bookface.
Round 4 of club competition run and won, unfortunately not by me...... The porsche engine bug continues to lead the way and the pesky hyundai showed up with a new set of super sticky tyres which together with my slipping clutch left me in third with my partner fourth.
So today engine out, gearbox off, clutch out to confirm it is absolutely fried, good thing I'm changing the flywheel
and with a severe case of while I'm in there there are plans being hatched of some welding , some bracing and a few other jobs. Stay tuned, i have a month to get it back together!
In my defence i was left unsupervised with a new air saw to play with.....
and then i cut some more out....
Ok, so I needed the clearance for the strut brace I'm welding in and it also needs to be low enough so ITB's can poke their trumpets over the top of it. At least that's the theory.
Also picked up an electric water pump so I can delete the cam belt driven factory unit. Couple of reasons, frees up some power due to not dragging on the crank and also the stock water pump cavitates at higher than stock rpm which is not a good thing when the plan is to up the rpm.
Very nice, Steffi. I'm watching with interest as it goes back together.
I am allowed in the rules to add a strut brace, no one said it couldn't be welded in roll cage material.
Plenty of hours later and starting to show some progress!
spent some time de-powering one my steering racks, was previously running it looped but we'll see if it makes a difference.
Also added a sun strip to the windscreen, sun gets annoying in the afternoons at Mt Cotton
touch of seam welding on the front suspension crossmember/ radiator mount.
and plugging the holes left behind by the heater box removal. Happy to say that steering rack and all the associated pipe work will be gone this week!
scored myself some genuine unicorn rocking horse poop I've been hunting for five years! New old stock from Germany. Engine mount for a car without power steer and aircon but in a power steer chassis. Very hard to find one year only part.
