Fair Enough
Took the SD1 Rolls Royce over to a secret RAF base for first shakedown, weather was fine and winds light, we would like to thank the MOD for allowing us runway time, although we outstayed our allotted time slightly and had an encounter with a Eurofighter, they were understanding and declined to arrest us under 'terrorism' charges.
We chose an SD1 because it was cheap in Autotrader, we had done some research into Crispy Bikes and their potential benefits, but google proved fruitless.
Performance
So far performance is impressive, after getting through 15 clutches we finally got it moving, the car can do 120mph at just above idle revs in 1st gear, and easily accelerates to 260mph at which point the SD1 suddenly tries to fly. Theoretical top speed if we get the aerodunamics sorted should be around 320mph.
Engine and Gearbox Notes
Running fairly smoothly, some minor problems such the ingesting of dirt, small animals and some other stuff that wasn't nailed down, but damage was only minor. Fuel mixture a bit rich, resulted in burns for those standing by open exhausts, am glad to hear it's not too serious. Am yet to hear from the land owners over the large grassland fire which also occured.
We had some special gear ratios made for optimum top speed with a slight sacrafice of acceleration, 0-60 time is now a less impressive 1.5 seconds
Tyres
Slight traction problems for standard Dunlop road rubber.
Chassis and Suspension
Currently being hammered back into shape as I type, Rover clearly did not design the SD1 shell with having a 1600hp 27 litre V12 installed in mind, a very short sighted move in my opinion, which probrably lead to their eventual downfall. Limited budget means we cannot afford new shell or custom suspension. Ride is very comfortable but perhaps car will flip in high speed cornering.
Handling
Added weight of engine causing minor understeer trouble, we hope that straight line performance will offset this.
Offroad perfromance nonexistant.
Aerodynamics
Backflip at approx 260mph, Demon Tweaks have front spoiler in the post.
Brakes
Team have decided that they are too troublesome and so decided to do without them.
Weaponary
303 Gun proven effective against nearby cattle, we have added a second 303 and have them trained to focus on a point 200 yards up the road.
Managed to bag an ex RAF Gyro stabilised gunsight for £10 at North Weald market.
Rear flamethrower is proving tempremental at the moment, sometimes lighting sucessfully and sometimes not and dumping oil onto road, however this can be used as an additional oil slick mode.
Electrics
Using standard Rover alternator was perhaps a tad optimistic (original WW2 one was missing when we purchased the engine), was not up to the job and it soon burst into flames, has since been replaced with an industrial grade one often found on small ships.
Just incase S14 Drift enters the race, we have bought a rack of surplus stadium floodlights off West Ham United and have mounted them on the aftermarket roof rack that the previous owner of the SD1 had fitted, the plan being to flash them repeatedly to distract him off the road.
Regrettably, Haynes do not do a manual for any Merlin engined vehicle, so finding out what which control switch for the engine does (no panel was provided with the engine, so no labels for switches) what has taken us some time, however we have found the switch for the higher boost setting for the supercharger, giving us a gain of around 50mph in speed.
We have installed a HUD in the car made out of a sheet of glass that was lying around at the nearest builders merchants, and a projector we found from 'somewhere' wired to my mate's PC which he doesn't yet know we are using, ducktaped to the floor in the passenger footwell and powered off an adaptor from the cigarette lighter. We are hoping that the UKCT people will lend us a copy of the X-system to provide data and stats for the HUD to display. We have yet to work out how to get insim applications to connect to real life.
As for Radar, the WW2 set we acquired from a breakers yard is too big and heavy.
Driver notes
Driver complained of noise and lack of comfort, as well as chronic understeer and the engine's apparrent urge to fly like a Spitfire again above certain speeds, we told him to shut up or he wont get his free lunch.
He does however, complement the car on its acceleration and speed and the fake wood trim interior.
Other
We doubt that the DVLA will give it a certificate of road worthiness, even if we try to convince them it is a kit-car, but you can't blame a man for trying.
Notes and To Do List
- Find a longer runway.
- Pay fine for destruction of airfield noise meter.
- Pay for destruction of local prize-winning heifer.
- Install front spoiler and CTRA X-system
- Contact US govt over possible purchase of this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5bPu58fSc0
- Contact British government and request multi million pound bailout.