Duncan

ooo very interesting. do they fit in that offset without scrubbing on the shock or inner guards?

too much hooning around with a heavy car in 40 degree heat on too soft tyres I assumed. I checked the wheel alignment after, except for the bent left rear it was still OK so that wasn't the issue. There was obviously lots of camber wear but I don't see that was the underlying problem

oh I see. was deluxe, same issue with whatever I just changed to. But now I can't select "change theme" again to work out what I changed to

I'm in my own skin man. weird question.

lol best description of the issue I've ever heard.

uh-oh

Which brings me to the most recent event, Kel and I headed down to Targa High Country last month with Neil and Mark as an excellent support crew. Day 1: Kel is a very experienced navigator and dragged me into recce for the day 1 courses. There is no doubt when we got out there that it had been very helpful. We went along really well before lunch except for my rookie error in going full pace when the stages were easy to clear. Still, at the end of the day we were 8th in early modern, 1.02 behind the leaders. The car was awesome and poor old Neil and Mark had nothing to keep them awake all night (except the snoring) Day 2: The morning was excellent and the car was still going great. Come lunchtime we were 6th and getting into the rhythm. Stuff if I know how but Kel had read the squiggles she calls pace notes and not made a single mistake (and that continued for the weekend). Unfortunately on the stage after lunch the brakes departed..they worked properly about 1 in 3 times, but I would never know which would work and which would not leading to lots of pedal pumping well before any big stop which really slowed us down. We were still 6th at the end of the day but heading down the timesheets not up. Neil and Mark worked most of the night on the brakes, changing pads, bleeding brakes, bleeding brakes, bleeding brakes but it was not getting better. For some reason (that I still dont really understand), the ABS kept delivering air bubbles over and over. At about 1am we decided to change the master cylinder as a last resort (I brought a spare because I had not been happy with the pedal feel even before the event). The only issue was we had no flare nut spanner to get the lines off the old cylinder and nothing else was working. Facebook delivered the offer of a spanner down in Mansfield at 2am but we decided to start again at 6 and see if we could find one on the mountain. Luckily we did and the cylinder was changed and bled in record time (those guys are good!) and we were ready to go. Day 3: Which was all good, except that none of it had fixed the brake issue..so we spent the day going as quick as I was happy to without brakes, and bleeding the ABS after every stage. We were down to 8th on the stage after lunch with everything except the brakes going well (umm except for the little remodelling of the rear quarter against a bank on Big River)....however one of Kels (billion) rally mates asked how the front tyres were holding up.......and the answer was they were destroyed. Both fronts had delaminated and would certainly have failed if we had continued. So we changed one tyre for the spare we had on board and rolled through the next 2 stages at the rear of the field. Neil and Mark changed the other front for our final spare before the last stage and we enjoyed the last hoon up the hill, finishing 15th overall. Id decided to only take 4 new tyres and 2 very old spares to save $1k and that decision had bitten.

It took some time while we were finishing the house to get all that sorted, in the meantime the race car was in it’s usual resting place of a paddock up north. In about June this year (2 years later…..) I finally rescued the car, tidied it up and headed out to some more events. I was asked to be part of the SAU team for the Nulon Nationals rd1, which was the hill climb at Bulahdelah. Unfortunately I was not able to get the engine run in on time, and Neil made the very generous offer for me to drive Cheryl for the weekend. Which I did; she ran great and I can confirm borrowed cars do great burnouts  The next event was the Nulon Nationals day at Wakefield, this time the race car was ready to go and I set a PB at Wakefield, a 1.06.9 which I am very happy with considering the tyre size (235) and power (300kw) that the car makes. The car again ran well all day.

Which is where it all got a bit painful for a while. A workshop built a new engine and installed it for me, but within 30klm it failed. I was really impressed when, with no bullshit at all, the workshop organised for the work to be redone at their cost. Unfortunately the second engine also failed again (this time it made 70klm) and I decided to take it elsewhere. So I took it to a shop Id known for years, who had made all sorts of guarantees about how they could sort all the problems that all these other dodgy places had been causing me. $22k and 3 days racing later that engine failed too. The shop had removed the filter gauze in the custom oil pick up, overtightened and broken a cam cover bolt, and the oil pump had sucked the bolt head in. The shop, and their insurers lawyer team told me clearly that in their opinion a bolt in the oil pump would not cause an engine failure, and that the issue was undoubtedly in the design of the custom sump that I supplied and they bolted on to the engine. After spending all the money on the engine, and with building a house at the same time, I made a decision not to spend thousands more on legal costs to recover the money Instead, I took an engine from a half cut I imported with Pete, and chucked in unopened in the race car, took about 1 days effort. Took it to the SAU Sutton Rd day in 2012 and did the fastest runs of the day. Unfortunately while the unopened engine ran fine, it turned out the block was cracked where the water pump bolted on, so I decided to build another engine; that engine is still in the car today.

yeah man that my favourite track for sure....launching the car over the curbs at suttons, heading blind over the flip flop....ahhh.....kids these days don't know what they are missing anyway, back to the story......

I said flange, and then Roy said he greases his nuts. Then Neil got all serious again

hmmm not sure that the solution to 1 website not working is to change my whole computer setup....

actually I can't.....I know they match a 6pot AP caliper but I'm not sure what model....there are plenty of manufacturers that make pads to suit

I bought mine from the local repco, chrome/steel. The flange style is excellent for seating them in the socket when asking them on and off, and they last forever. Not sure that a closed end nut will work on a long stud though

yeah I woukdn't think twice. also spares (pads, discs etc) are readily available.

Over xmas I sorted the clutch, and headed out to Oran Park for a sad weekend. It was 16-Jan-2010, and Irace were running the last race meet at the track. The car ran faultlessly all weekend and I won the last Production Car race held at Oran Park; the bulldozers literally arrived on the following Monday to tear the track up and replace it with much needed treeless suburbs that could not have been built anywhere else. And then, at a track day a couple of weeks laterI blew an engine.

looks good, I like that conversion. I think I spotted you on the M5 the other week (or if not, another white r34 fronted silver c34...)

yeah I have the same issue, with ie. Hit the first toggle in the icons above the reply box (BBCode mode) and paste will work

From there I went on an invasion of Victoria for 3 events in 4 weeks. First up was Mt Buller Sprint in mid Nov-09. Prior to Targa stealing the event, the Mountain Motorsport guys ran Mt Buller as a series of runs up the same stage with about an 8 minute run. The event really suited me because while it was a driver + navigator event (yep, Kel loaned herself back to me), the multiple runs really let me get a hang of the track. It was a bit of a painful weekend because the car had a water leak somewhere that I just could not find; at the start of each run we would fill the radiator with nice cold water from the river and it would only start getting really hot in the last minute or so.the hottest I saw was 130 degrees but the engine survived OK. For once.. 2 weeks later the National Supersprint championships were held at Phillip Island, and I won the Production Car class..adding a National Championship to the state round win...Stu Inwood was also there with his 33 and won his class which meant SAU took out both touring car classes, awesome weekend. Here's a cheesy trophy pic And then the week later, Glenn Ridge organised for Targa cars to be a support race at the v8 supertaxi round at Phillip Island. It was great racing in front of such a big crowd, but unfortunately my run of mechanical luck ran out. I got a great start, but it was only when I went to grab 2nd that I discovered the clutch was welded to the flywheel and wouldnt release. I finished the race without the clutch but lost a lot of time, sadly its not the last time Ive had that trouble, even with different clutch setups. I was inspired by Skaifey's start in 91 (although I got away with it, he got a drive thru...) Also its a great example of how well Nissan's good old ATTESSA system compares with an Evo 9. And here's Neil and Neil rubbing shoulders, presumably swapping skyline racing stories

haha they are some old vids, eh? That oran park one was from the endure where we ran out of fuel, and the eastern creek is the same one where I won the state round Nigel it is all production cars, its just that around then 6l commodores were the thing to have. I was the only skyline on the grid and the evos and wrxs were towards the back. And yes, I got up and said "you are all a pack of very nice people". I thought I was funny.

AFAIK schumaker's camera was not actually an issue, there has been plenty of comment/articles/etc but no actual statement from either investigators or doctors blaming the camera. I think Mythbusters need to take that one on.

The next race was a real highlight for me. It was round 1 of the 2009 NSW State Champs at Eastern Creek. After a good weekend's racing I ended up with 2x 2nds and 1st in the trophy race, which means I won the round of the state champs. In all the things I've done in racing this was the most satisfying because it is a super competitive field and I both the car and I went great all weekend.

Spent some time fixing stuff, the next race meet worth mentioning was the Day/Night race meet at Oran Park. This was the second time I'd done the event (the first was in Daewoos which was even more insane given how close all the cars were), and it was awesome fun. We had a combined grid of Production Cars and Sports Sedans, of course the Sports Sedans qualified at the front, I was in 7th. I tried to warn the 3 sports sedans in front (1st, 3rd, 5th) that I would be coming past at the start since it was cold and they were all 2wd, they just laughed. I ended up first by turn 1, the launches in this car have always been awesome The brakes worked awesomely. Standard calipers and discs, Hawk DTC-60 from Racebrakes Sydney in the front I ended up 3rd, 2nd, 2nd of the production cars in the first 3 races which was pretty cool.

Oh, we then took both cars to Autosalon shortly afterwards. The chicks digged them. And someone asked if we had "done that just for the show"

So, why go to so much trouble with prepping the car, painting etc? I was getting ready for a major step, giving a tarmac rally a go at Targa Tasmania. Mark had done Targa twice before, and is here demonstrating the difference between "Right 3 after crest" (what the driver heard) and "Right 3 on crest" (what the notes said). Terrible quality vid but remember this was pre HD videos! http://www.hgeconsulting.com.au/targa04.wmv So we got the car ready as best we could, bought all the safety gear, Kel got ready to try and read notes for the first time (getting lots of tips from Scott and some other helpful people), and off we went. Day 1 was OK, made it through without much excitement Day 2 the crew took 4 wheels off, bled all the brakes, replaced 4 wheels, did up the wheel nuts on 3. The first Kel and I knew about the issue was when the front left wheel overtook us on a transport stage which I thought was strange. From there we learned some of the pratical logistical issues of trying to fix stuff on the side of the road in a rally, for example, what f**king use is a jack when the damn subframe is jammed hard on the ground? And what use is a spare wheel if you can't find where the wheel nuts went? Had an awesome hoon around the street stage, all the while wondering while the rear had been so loose and slidey all rally Day 3. We were miles behind due to penalty time but ready to give it a more serious crack. Made good pace through the first 3 stages and were hooning through Weldborough Pass in 4th, at about 150 I'd guess. When the castor rod broke and threw us off the road without warning. Thankfully the trail of destruction ended up on the inside on a bank instead of outside way down in the fields. We took the sad bus back to Hobart, paid the $2k towing bill and the good blokes at Source Automotive stayed open all night to let us repair everything and get back out there. Day 4. A bit bleary eyed and with a 20min penalty for not finishing yesterday, so we may as well go out and have some fun. Which we certainly did until Cygnet where the fuel pump (which had come loose the day before and was only swinging on it's wires) gave out. A nice lady gave us home cooked biscuits while we watched the field drive past. Day 5. 40 min behind now for not finishing 2 days. But hey, this is Targa, and you need to take a never give up attitude right? Well until the huge clunk and no gears were available. At which stage Kel and I gave up and got shit faced. Day 6 But Mark was still running, right? Actually he and Scott had been going really well and were running top 3. All they had to do was finish the last day and enjoy the glory and chicks, right? Well, no. If you can spot the person in this pic...this is where they ended after the little slip off the edge. And the car looked like this. They both walked away fine, and since Mark was an experienced crasher he even had the presence of mind to turn off the motor before it ran dry while rolling down the hill. Autech-san seems to think it was a pretty good effort too. More drinking...that was my last full rally until this year, while Kel went on to fame, fortune, podiums and ambulances in about 50 more rallies in between.