D1NZ Round4 Taupo Wrap-up

It all began on Thursday morning, Myself and Dave(www.nzparts.co.nz) Who’s ute we borrowed to take Battlecar v2.0 to Taupo headed to our wrecking yard, which is where the car was being stored. Theresa and Sky brought the real Battlecar to meet us, driving another ute on loan(Thanks Matt Sellers for the ute and Chuckie for the trailer!) and helped load up. We headed on down to Taupo, Dave and I went to our batch with all the other S-chasssis crew(Thanks Redwardo for organising it all! Many good times had!). Theresa and Sky went to the track and started setting everything up. We had a pretty quiet night as everyone knew there was to be many crazy nights ahead. Nick and Owen drove MAX170 down arriving around midnight.

Friday morning we set up Max170 and I got out on track about 10am. I was stuggling to link the judged section on the first practice session and the car was really lacking in low down power, not being able to spin up 215’s under 4500rpm!!! On the second session again I was struggling to link the whole section. The third session went a bit better, Tristram(Anrew Redwards Pit cheif/spotter) gave me a few pointers and I managed to link the section, however I was still not hitting the clips how I would like and struggling with the car. Next up was Qualifying and I was not feeling very confident at all, and to top it off we were on our last pair of tyres.

Coming into my first qualifying run, we did one “warm up” lap of the track then came around again into the run that counted then onto a cool down lap to get back into the pits. After coming up to the run that counted I saw 2 cars in front of me, thinking they were on their cool down I tried to overtake them. Russel in the Shirts Addiction S14 saw me coming and pulled out of the way, thanks man! However the next guy, Frank the Tank, was actually on his Qualifying lap and I couldnt get past!!!! So I pulled back and thought I had left enough room, however it wasn’t enough and I caught up to him by the second clip. I straight lined the section and was not happy.

Luckily I got a re-run, Frank actually spun on his warm up lap which slowed things up. On the re-run I was still pretty angry from the earlier mistakes and did not have a good run, It has become apparent to us that Simon can’t drift well when hes angry! I managed to link the section but was well off line and feeling pretty unhappy about it!

The second and third Qualifying run went straight into the run that counted then a cool down lap and into the pits. This format was better than the previous but I had a crap run and had a straight line after the second clip and it wasnt looking like I was going to make the top 16.

The last qualifying run I chucked on some chill out music, turned the Air conditioning on and tryed to take it a bit easier. The car definatly didnt hook up like I wanted it to, but I did lay down an average run. I still wasn’t sure whether it was enough to get me into the top 16, but it was definately the best one out of the 3.

Well I was wrong, my run got me into 6th spot on the grid, lining me up to battle against Alu(Driving Gee Mutch’s D1NZ car). My lead run felt alright, but on my chase run I had a small squiggle through the 2nd clipping point zone, I thought I had lost it but they called a re-run.

 

On the re-run I felt I had a really solid lead run. The chase felt pretty good too, He pulled a bit of a gap on me before the section though which ultimately let me down. It turned out I lost the battle, the 4th bottom 8 placing in 4 events. It is really starting to frustrate us as the car is really lacking the power it needs to be able to keep up with everyone else, with only 2 weeks until Round 5 Pukekohe we will be stuck with the same package for that round too.

Next update will cover the battle cars adventures over the last couple of days!

Battle car V2.0 Deluxe hubs complete!

Big thanks to Nick for taking some time-out from his busy life to get them done!

Battle car V1 is loaded up and ready for the big tow tomorrow, Theresa Is towing it down to Taupo. I will be convoying with V2.0 once we have finished putting it together! Im sure a big weekend will follow…

Battle car V2.0

Well has been an extremely busy last month for us. We had both the cars on display at the Four and Rotary show and shine 29th of Jan, then in the burnout demo’s the following day. I ended up coming second in the battle car after shreding a tyre in 3rd gear on the spot, DE POWER!!!!

Next on the agenda was a new project, we picked up another Battle car base, SR20DE Manual spec. It was stolen and recovered so was pretty rough. After getting under it we found that it had A31 cefiro hubs on the back with cut handbrake cables, so they were replaced with S14 items, We have a heap of them off previously wrecked cars! The cut springs will remain in the rear until we find some cheap coilovers to go in. Up front Nick made up a set of Garage H deluxe hubs, we are running them in a few cars now. These hubs were actually the A31 type aswell, our Jig will work on all Silvia’s/Cefiro’s and Laurel’s. Owen donated some JIC front coilovers to the cause off his S13 so they were bolted up! We stripped the whole car down to the bare essentials, a steering wheel, manual gearstick, seats and a dash. The car already had a lock diff, we pulled it out and found a big nugget of metal stuck to the drain plug, we will be welding up our own diff for peace of mind after D1 Taupo. So this is how it now sits:

All we have left to do is put the wheels/spacers on it, pod filter, sponsor stickers and a few other minor details and then its ready to go. We will have both the Battle cars on track for demo’s at D1NZ Round 4 Taupo this Friday/Saturday. It will be alot of fun at the upcoming Hampton Skidpad days we will be running too, as we have always looked towards the day when we had 2 of them so we can properly get up close and personal without the worry of having wheel marks on the lead car!

On Saturday I also helped Gary from Playday run another Skidpan day. We got a feel for other ways we can run the track, there are so many different options, It is alot better in that respect than Meremere where we have run the last couple. We are holding another Garage H skidpad day on Sunday April 3rd, so anyone who is interested in entering send me and email garagehnz@yahoo.com and I will fill you in!

Now we have another busy few days ahead of us to get everything sorted for Taupo, Myself and Theresa(the new secretary of Garage H) will each tow down a Battle car on Thursday, with Nick/Owen heading down after work in MAX170. It will be an action Packed weekend so if your down there make sure you come and check it out!