I think you're right in most cases, sequential gearboxes in front/four wheel drive applications are often based on a production box with modified selectors (for more straight forward RWD applications the whole box is normally replaced with a generic unit). I'd consider the selectors part of the gearbox, and in an F1 gearbox the selectors are capable of selecting gears in any order (though the driver/software never requests it).
Sitting for long periods of time with the clutch down is bad practice, it wears the clutch bearing out and it means you have to keep your foot held down for no reason, which is uncomfortable and if your foot slips the car will lurch forward.
Drag racing cars are very different, the requirement is all about power delivery, unlike a racing car which has to change up and down and deliver drive as fast as possible a slow torque converter can do the job quite well for delivering the power off the line when the engine produces far too much power. It doesn't do the job as well as a conventional dry clutch and slipper mechanism employed by the fastest drag cars though.
Sequential boxes are different in that the selectors are physically only able to move sequentially (hence why sequential gearboxes require no electronics or hydraulics).
They are making a TV program again and did catch some good video which was shown at the prizegiving party, I don't think it's on youtube yet though, there are lots of shaky handheld videos already up. This is what it's all about
After the rally there is a special fun stage at Bushy Park, a small tarmac race circuit that's like a flattened version of Lydden. Last year they built that ramp intending it to be a permanent feature but removed it shortly after the rally due to safety fears of circuit racing cars hitting it, which is rather strange seeing as the pitwall was made of loose tyres and one Starlet quite literally went through the perimeter fence out of the circuit. They ran Bushy Park with cars three abreast this year.
As one of the locals said, the rally is the fun part the parties are the serious bit
Yep it has no shortage of character and a sense of hopelessness that everybody loves, the amount of attention it gets both from local fans and in the motoring press is amazing given that it's the slowest and oldest car on the rally, bought for £300 on ebay. Getting publicity is crucial for us because without the help of so many people and companies it would never be possible to get so far literally without a budget.
The locals love the flamer as well
Got back today and what a fortnight we've had.
Thanks to the generosity of the locals we managed to stay in a beach house and the car stayed in the Ullyett's Machine Shop. Quite a few of the local rally cars were built and maintained here, notably Nigel Recce's white Datsun (Toyo R888s on the front budget tyres on the rear), a trio of matching yellow Starlets and Jonseys awesome 2.4 Sierra Cosworth engined mark 2 Escort. For the locals winning the rally is second to entertaining the crowds and huge drifts, gratuitous use of the handbrake and the odd donut are obligatory for the Bajans!
First Sunday we did the King of the Hill hillclimb, and to some people's embarrassment didn't finish last! The car ran fine on this shakedown event (the return road offering a literal shakedown for the car) on Tesco 99 that it had been brimmed with before it left.
Nigel's Datsun, that had just been finished the night before, didn't fair so well, a rocker fell off, but that didn't deter them from going back to the workshop and finding a spare one and fixing it. He then had a puncture in the next run and then melted a bearing in the following run (the fact the engine was revving to nearly 10,000rpm within 30 seconds of being run for the first time probably didn't help). In the week before the rally they decided rather than rebuilding the current SOHC engine they'd build a completely new twin cam engine, gearbox, exhaust and propshaft for it in 4 evenings, the rate of progress was astonishing, right down to reprofiling camshafts with a file!
All the cars were ready (just) for driving off the ramp on Friday night and starting the 2 days of stages on Saturday. We ran into problems after the first few stages on Saturday with fuel starvation, we were running the rally on a 50/50 mix of race fuel and local pump petrol. Something in the fuel was persistently clogging the carbs and we ended up doing the majority of the rally on two cylinders (though the Suzuki hire mpv thing still couldn't keep up with it!). Stripping and cleaning the twin SUs at every service wasn't really ideal. We guess the problem was either caused by the hopeless local pump fuel, which the locals later told us is known for producing chewing gum like residue from the wax that naturally forms in petrol when the correct additives aren't put in it (we found stuff just like this in the filter and assumed the race fuel must have attacked the sealant on the sender but the wax explanation makes sense), or it could have been caused by the race fuel attacking something and bringing it into the carbs (rubber hoses). Whatever the issue we could do nothing about the fuel because we did not have enough race fuel to run it neat and running anymore pump fuel would have been too risky.
We finished 65th out of 66 finishers and 91 starters, winning historic class by default, not quite the rally we had planned, hopefully we'll be back next year with the problems sorted and some opposition in the class.
Nigel's week got more expensive after going into a bank after bursting a damper and underestimating the effect it would have under braking, doing minimal damage (as seen in the first photos) on the Saturday. Then he got over ambitious sliding on the Sunday and went into a concrete wall hard, that the locals know well as a place where people go off (and of course the Bajans are obliged to go sideways wherever the crowds are!).
The rally was won by Kris Meeke after local hero Roger Skeete had a big off on off on the Saturday (both Subarus). There was a fantastic selection of cars including an Aston, a totally bonkers Mini (2 litre Astra engine, still front wheel drive and still steel bodied) and lots of M3s (which have to take the prize for best sound). The most impressive car for me in the rally though had to be Phil Collins seriously fast highly developed mk2 Escort, with fully independent suspension, a sequential gearbox, a really tidy enigne bay and new block cast in some special material it was licking at the heels of the WRC cars and was amazing to watch.
Overall it's the locals spirit and kindness which make this rally and the parties so special and so unique, I couldn't think of a better way or place to spend two weeks
No I wasn't able to leave until the 22nd May and flew to St Lucia and got a local connecting flight to Barbados (which was an adventure in itself).
Thanks to the generosity of the locals we managed to stay in a beach house and the car stayed in the Ullyett's Machine Shop. Quite a few of the local rally cars were built and maintained here, notably Nigel Recce's white Datsun (Toyo R888s on the front budget tyres on the rear), a trio of matching yellow Starlets and Jonseys awesome 2.4 Sierra Cosworth engined mark 2 Escort. For the locals winning the rally is second to entertaining the crowds and huge drifts, gratuitous use of the handbrake and the odd donut are obligatory for the Bajans!
First Sunday we did the King of the Hill hillclimb, and to some people's embarrassment didn't finish last! The car ran fine on this shakedown event (the return road offering a literal shakedown for the car) on Tesco 99 that it had been brimmed with before it left.
Nigel's Datsun, that had just been finished the night before, didn't fair so well, a rocker fell off, but that didn't deter them from going back to the workshop and finding a spare one and fixing it. He then had a puncture in the next run and then melted a bearing in the following run (the fact the engine was revving to nearly 10,000rpm within 30 seconds of being run for the first time probably didn't help). In the week before the rally they decided rather than rebuilding the current SOHC engine they'd build a completely new twin cam engine, gearbox, exhaust and propshaft for it in 4 evenings, the rate of progress was astonishing, right down to reprofiling camshafts with a file!
All the cars were ready (just) for driving off the ramp on Friday night and starting the 2 days of stages on Saturday. We ran into problems after the first few stages on Saturday with fuel starvation, we were running the rally on a 50/50 mix of race fuel and local pump petrol. Something in the fuel was persistently clogging the carbs and we ended up doing the majority of the rally on two cylinders (though the Suzuki hire mpv thing still couldn't keep up with it!). Stripping and cleaning the twin SUs at every service wasn't really ideal. We guess the problem was either caused by the hopeless local pump fuel, which the locals later told us is known for producing chewing gum like residue from the wax that naturally forms in petrol when the correct additives aren't put in it (we found stuff just like this in the filter and assumed the race fuel must have attacked the sealant on the sender but the wax explanation makes sense), or it could have been caused by the race fuel attacking something and bringing it into the carbs (rubber hoses). Whatever the issue we could do nothing about the fuel because we did not have enough race fuel to run it neat and running anymore pump fuel would have been too risky.
We finished 65th out of 66 finishers and 91 starters, winning historic class by default, not quite the rally we had planned, hopefully we'll be back next year with the problems sorted and some opposition in the class.
Nigel's week got more expensive after going into a bank after bursting a damper and underestimating the effect it would have under braking, doing minimal damage (as seen in the first photos) on the Saturday. Then he got over ambitious sliding on the Sunday and went into a concrete wall hard, that the locals know well as a place where people go off (and of course the Bajans are obliged to go sideways wherever the crowds are!).
The rally was won by Kris Meeke after local hero Roger Skeete had a big off on off on the Saturday (both Subarus). There was a fantastic selection of cars including an Aston, a totally bonkers Mini (2 litre Astra engine, still front wheel drive and still steel bodied) and lots of M3s (which have to take the prize for best sound). The most impressive car for me in the rally though had to be Phil Collins seriously fast highly developed mk2 Escort, with fully independent suspension, a sequential gearbox, a really tidy enigne bay and new block cast in some special material it was licking at the heels of the WRC cars and was amazing to watch.
Overall it's the locals spirit and kindness which make this rally and the parties so special and so unique, I couldn't think of a better way or place to spend two weeks
No I wasn't able to leave until the 22nd May and flew to St Lucia and got a local connecting flight to Barbados (which was an adventure in itself
).Time for a few more then, taken at the somewhat slower environment of a production car trial, probably at least as tough on the car though.
Says the man who believes coasting round corners is a racing technique...
Sol Barbados Rally
I'm part of the Oxford Universities Motorsport Foundation (OUMF) and
we've been invited by the Barbados Rally Club to compete in the Sol Barbados Rally for a second year in our Riley 1.5 historic rally car, of course it would be rude not take up such an invitation!
The cars already out there thanks to the generosity of the Barbados Rally Club and Philips Tyres of Oxford covering the shipping for us! You can see it hiding behind the white M3 here. As you can see we've definitely got the smallest budget and the slowest car on the rally, it's been described as wonderfully hopeless which I think sums it up nicely (but somehow managed to finish 46th out of 89 last year).
There are six of us going (four of the lucky sods already out there) and I'm flying out with my mate tomorrow morning, courtesy of Virgin. We're doing a shakedown/rallysprint event this weekend and a two day tarmac stage rally next weekend, with a week to fettle the car and party on the beach in between (I should emphasis that this is not a holiday).
Hopefully I'll be able to keep you informed and post some pictures from out there, if not the Barbados Rally site should be updated regularly.
Attached photos of the car on the rally last year and on display at Race Retro (sorry about the size I've got nothing to resize it with on this PC).
we've been invited by the Barbados Rally Club to compete in the Sol Barbados Rally for a second year in our Riley 1.5 historic rally car, of course it would be rude not take up such an invitation!
The cars already out there thanks to the generosity of the Barbados Rally Club and Philips Tyres of Oxford covering the shipping for us! You can see it hiding behind the white M3 here. As you can see we've definitely got the smallest budget and the slowest car on the rally, it's been described as wonderfully hopeless which I think sums it up nicely
(but somehow managed to finish 46th out of 89 last year).There are six of us going (four of the lucky sods already out there) and I'm flying out with my mate tomorrow morning, courtesy of Virgin. We're doing a shakedown/rallysprint event this weekend and a two day tarmac stage rally next weekend, with a week to fettle the car and party on the beach in between (I should emphasis that this is not a holiday
).Hopefully I'll be able to keep you informed and post some pictures from out there, if not the Barbados Rally site should be updated regularly.
Attached photos of the car on the rally last year and on display at Race Retro (sorry about the size I've got nothing to resize it with on this PC).
American tracks are funny, they all (road courses and ovals) have a rather pointless concrete wall about a foot high down the middle of the pitlane, I'm not sure what the logic of this is, presumably it's intended to stop cars spinning through the pit entrance and into the garages/personel who are not working on cars, I doubt it would be very effective though and it gets rather irritating when doing pistops at Rockingham. Frighteningly though a lot of the ovals (including Daytona I think) have no other barrier, so cars and mechanics in the pits have nothing but a bit of grass between them and the cars on the track. I think in the states on all ovals and most (if not all) the road courses they do not have a conventional European pitwall with people standing on it.
No you can't, my mate who has an F4 car (similar kind of thing to Tristan's but spaceframe and a bit slower) had his tachometer intermitently fail and eventually pack up altogether on an old dashboard (which also acted as the rev limiter) in the car, three rebuilds later he conceded that trying to save money fixing the old dash wasn't working... Now if he's been racing for 20 years and successfully racing the same car with the same engine that he built for the last 5 years and can't manage to do a race without overrevving and damaging a mildly tuned production engine then you would stand very little chance of listening to the revs of a lightweight high revving engine with no track or race experience at all.
Normally they don't actually wait for you to prove you've destroyed it, they used to ask for the end of the cable in the post, but I got another wheel despite not sending them anything. The shifter and probably the pedals are bound to sell on ebay, even better if you don't have to cut any cables so someone without a G25 already can connect them and use another wheel.
There are many things you have to do when driving fast, watching your revs is just one of them, you should be able to watch your rev counter and do everything else at the same time, if you can't multitask then you're not going to be safe in a mentally and physically demanding environment such as a racetrack.
When have I ever riddled anyone for installing useful instruments or wheels and tyres, for purposes other than looking good. Granted getting bigger steel wheels when I've already got a set of alloys, to maintain the standard look of the car is modifying/spending money on it for looks, rather than performance and if we're considering rice as being changing things just on looks, which maybe isn't the right definition of the word then yes it is.
Going quickly on the road and going fast are two totally different things, to drive/ride fast you have to be mentally getting your machine to cover distance as fast as you possibly can, not ambling along. If you're not revving it at least slightly over the peak power point and getting the tyres sliding slightly then you're not driving/riding fast, until you're doning that you won't be going round a track at a safe pace and won't get anything out of being on a track anyway.
Hence why they stick their shift lights right in the drivers line of site and make them really bright so that they see them without having to try.
You have to constantly have an eye on your rev counter, if you don't you're either going to damage the engine or not go anywhere in a hurry. When you're truly driving fast and near your limit and having to concentrate on other things, you do not have time to listen to the engine revs, there are far more important things to do, like listening to your tyres and for any mechanically worrying noises.
What possible logic are you using to come to that conclusion? I don't see how using a vehicle for a use it wasn't intended for is chavvish behaviour, presumably production based competition cars, ambulances and hearses all qualify as being chavvy in your book then?
Clearly you have never been on a track then...
I highly doubt they can hear much of the engine at all, as is typically the case in mid engined race cars, the chance of being able to judge the revs of a very fast revving engine like that even to the nearest 1000rpm whilst being thrown about at 4G with a whole manner of other noise is very low.
About the only form of competition car that don't need a rev counter are those that only use one gear, in other words some oval specials and karts, a lot of them still have a rev counter though because the result of getting gearing wrong either means throwing away a lot of time or money.
Driving down the road you do not need a rev counter, driving fast consistently trying to shift at 6000rpm (or whatever you feel comfortable taking your enigne to) is a completely different matter.
With respect like Dan's Astra my car was not intended for fast road use, unlike your machine which was designed and set up for it.
You go by valve bounce do you? What a ridiculous statement.
Not really because the grounds for buying them had nothing to do with the cosmetic side, they were just a cheap set of wheels that did the job in the right size. Actually I would like to swap them for a nice set of painted steel wheels appropriate to the car, but it's hard to find them in the right size, now that is rice
That's beside the point, alloys on cars give a performance increase as well, it's just not the reason they're used.
But the advantage you get from your exhaust is so negligible that not having breakfast will have more of an effect.
Yes because the manufacturers intended purpose was not to make a car for track use. The race car is also a lot lighter, has a different weight distribution, a lot more power, slicks and a lot stiffer bodyshell/rollcage. So standard suspension would not be right even for road use in this case.
Your bike is standard and is being used for the manufacturers intended purpose, there is no need to modify it.
Drilling holes in your airbox makes lots of noise and feels faster...
Sort the machine before you accessorise it. There is a minimum safe level that any vehicle must be prepared to, more so one that gets used hard, and hoping that a cross threaded bolt will stay put is way bellow the level of basic safety required in any form of automotive engineering, you may as well not bother to torque your wheelnuts because you couldn't afford a torque wrench.
Your point being? The only modifications I've made to my vehicle are basic safety measures (harnesses and a fire extinguisher) and parts necessary for looking after the car (rev counter). Having said that I have got a set of alloys in the garage for it, which have little advantage over steel wheels, which I couldn't find in width and PCD I wanted for sensible money, they'll be a little stronger the kerb weight will be reduced, I highly doubt I'm going to notice that effect though.
If it's been modified for looks then yes I would say so. That's not to say the result can't be quite nice (though more often or not it just makes it look worse than it started). I do see why people change things for looks, it's not something that appeals to me, but if you want to do it don't then claim you're any different from the driver of the Corsa with 20" wheels and a bodykit, he to is modifying his car for looks not to make it better by any other margin, just like a lot of bikers...
Definitely rice when they're put on a vehicle they're not installed for a specific purpose.
Better brake pads are not rice. EBC pads are generally regarded as being rubbish though, I'll find out soon got a set for a tenner for the Cougar, certainly wouldn't pay full price for them though.
Negligible, definitely rice, even more so.
It's a comfort/laziness thing, not rice and detrimental to performance. Got to strike a balance though to make your machine usable, any gain from the exhaust will definitely have been negated by lugging this thing around.
As above.
Not so much rice as misguided by marketing bollocks, very unlikely to make anything better unless originally used by the engineer who designed the chassis and dampers. As with most suspension and damper 'upgrades' unless there is a substantial change of use from the original intended by the manufacturer or the cost price of the components is enormous then the chance of actually getting an improvement on a machine that has been designed around the original components is very unlikely.
What's the problem with that? You've been coming back to fill three pages of discussion already.
Then again £6000 worth of car could walk away from both supercar and superbike.
Your point being? 25 insert Heli-coil kits (containing everything you need including drill bit and tap) can be found for about £20, if you're serious about maintaining your own bike (which clearly you're not) then there's no excuse for paying less than a quid everytime you make a mess of a thread.
No not everyone puts pointless shit on their vehicle, you do, I haven't yet. You're the one who keeps saying that common mods for bikers are for cosmetic reasons, so by what you've said most bikers are ricers to an extent.
Yes but the Lambo is much like a bike, it goes very fast in a straight line but can't go round corners due to its weight and size, take any decent sports/track car (ie. completely road worthy and practical unlike the bike, but under 1000kg, RWD, low centre of gravity, sticky tyres and over 200bhp) and it will leave both the bike and the car standing at a track like Angelsey in the video.
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You're the one who insisted that bikers don't rice, by all accounts they do, far more than a lot of car drivers.
Braking and cornering are essential to going fast anywhere but in a straight line, here the bike fails badly. Even my car wouldn't be any slower than your 125 (despite costing less and being a practical form of transport for 4) round a track and a lightweight sportscar or well built production racer will leave road bikes in their dust, despite the fact that car specials often use bike engines...
I'm fairly certain mine is front engined RWD
How are you going to damage the frame tapping a hole and inserting a heli-coil unless you're incompetent and have no idea what you're doing?
A year on the road? I've driven for over 2, done rallies and had track time (unlike you?), I don't consider myself a good driver, better than a lot sure but that doesn't mean anything. You cannot understand anything about how a car or bike works by operating it, you simply find out effects nothing about how or why it works.
What's the point in braided brake lines other than a bit of bike rice and biker bullshit? The effect of brake lines getting compressed is minimal and better feel is a side effect of braided lines, presumably bike racers think they look cool? Braided lines are a safety feature that are only really relevant to vehicles that are likely to be at risk of having their lines damaged, ie. competition vehicles and off-roaders. I'm considering braided lines on mine along with a sump guard for rough rallies and PCTs, not because they look cool or make the brakes feel better...
:doh:
What I'm seeing is a Honda Civic parked in a car park, not something terribly joyous. To make matters worse this one has been lowered, had naff tailight put on it and a bodykit, as well as the obligitory shiny pipes under the bonnet and polished intake.
People I thought people blocking each other and untagging themselves on photos on facebook was immature and pointless, threatening to remove someone from your friends list? Some threat there...
Worn, budget and mismatched tyres don't count. Of course if you take fundamentally different tyres there will be a huge difference, but standard road tyres have a tiny difference, not large enough to worry about so long as you don't just pile into a corner too fast your first time on them. Notions about grip can be very deceptive people make up bullshit based on what the break away behaviour and mostly the noise they make, not actually on the amount of grip they have.
Please tell me you didn't manage to go through the 11 years of compulsory education without coming across a chap called Newton and a few laws he wrote down, the basic laws of motion are part of the second lot of Sats.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG