Duncan's Race Car - The Most Overdue Build Thread On Sau

[fatz]

yea baby

down memory lane

death trailer... i still have nightmares about that massive pile of shit

[Neil]

5 posts on his 1st page and then nothing,,,what a bum.

Cheers

Neil.

[zebra]

That is because sitting around making faces is all he does

[fatz]

more picks of arse crack stat

[Neil]

more picks of arse crack stat

Unfortunatey I only have pics of your beautiful bum crack sweety.

Cheers

Neil

[fatz]

is it true that duncan only posts occasionally because he is too busy being the victorian premier?

[fatz]

would be better with a pick but they are farken twins

[Duncan]

lol you bunch of jibberers! I never said this would be a quick thread, I am catching up on 11 years.....

Right, so I got to the first track day, first engine blow up....

[Hadouken]

what a tease

[Duncan]

so anyway, back then I thought a spun bearing was unusual enough to take a photo. Here's what it looked like.

Since then I've memorised what a f**ked bearing looks like and I don't need pics any more.

Anyway, now I'd had my initial fun it was time to properly and professionally strip and prepare the car. Except that's not what happened.

Pete was kind enough to lend some garage space (back when he had the most awesome 8 car garage under his house) and he proceeded to remove everything that didn't seem too important. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing (yes, that's probably still true) and really did very little prep beyond the basic safety gear.

Once the interior, some tar, ac etc was stripped it was off for a basic rollcage. The car has a very basic cage which would no longer be legal in a new car, just 6 points with a single diagonal between the b pillars. It's light and still enough but I don't want to test it with a big crash.

In the middle of all that I took it to the SAU SHow n Shine up the coast....

[Duncan]

Next it was off for a paint job to make sure the car got noticed, Kel's uncle did this in his garage and I reckon it came up awesome!

We also decided to remove the rear wiper to make it into a real N1; in interests on naming the guilty it was Kel that did this.

I still pull chunks of glass out of the car 12 years later

So anyway, once Shannons resolved that little problem with the one free windscreen per year, it was time to build the motor and chuck it in

Yes Neil, I posted it. You started it.

[Duncan]

The first race was at Oran Park on 31-July 05 for round 4 of the NSW State Champs. Yep, it took 2 years to get the damn thing into a door to door race.

It actually went pretty well with a 3rd and 5th in race 1 and 2 which was great

Race 3 ended on lap 1 with a blown turbo

And it spun a bearing as a result of the crap flying around the motor.

It turns out that a fellow competitor shoved a bunch of bolts in the intake. Oh hang on, that was Jason Bright at BJR. In this case I just f**ked up an didn't notice a washer inside one of the intake pipes when I reassembled the previous engine

[Duncan]

So anyway, I built another motor. Again.

To try and deal with the standard radiator overheating I bought an alloy replacement from a shop formerly in castle hill, now in seven hills.

It didn't fit properly, and fell out of the mounting brackets while running the motor in at Oran Park. That was my record for shortest motor life (under 100klm).....but only for a while....

As I would learn more clearly later with that shop...stuff they sell or do that didn't work is not their fault.

In all this time it is the only motor I killed by overheating, although I did try very hard later on.....

[Duncan]

Anyway, the motor was built and run in and I made a couple of race weekends at Eastern Creek, Oran Park and Wakefield without too much trouble

After those we hit the NSW State Champs at Wakefield park.

Godzilla came along to help, as did the Powerplay guys and Tsuyoshi-san.

Phil Coles and I got to demonstrate why 4wd is useful from a standing start

And then I blew the motor. Again. Tsuyoshi-san was kind enough to confirm by ear that it was a big end bearing. Again.

[Duncan]

From there I did a little more prep on the car that I had never done before, including changing to vspec bremo brakes and matching discs (I was running standard brakes until then). The Production car regs at the time required standard calipers, but considering standard means 324mm brembos on a GTR that was pretty good. Imagine you had to race an 1800kg v8 commodore on standard brakes.....

An excellent support of SAU and my racing personally, Louie from Xclusive Colours gave the car a show quality paint job, it is still running this colour scheme today; and despite the bumps and bruises over the years the paint still looks spectacular. Unfortunately panel beating is a competitive business and he is no longer around

Louie painted both my car and Mark's, I reckon they looked excellent.

After the paint was sorted I took the car to the 1hr Enduro at the NSW State Champs. The car was running awesome for Mark's stint, we did the drive and wheel change with Kel, Neil and Scott's help and I was running 1st after 55 of the 60 mintues.

When it ran out of fuel. Goodbye to my first potential win, I ended up parked on the infield. The tank was just not big enough to last an hour, even at standard boost and back then we had to run standard tanks with no refuelling.

[Duncan]

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.

[Duncan]

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"

[Duncan]

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.

[Duncan]

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.

[Neil]

Wow,,,slow down tiger,,, You have just about summarized your years of racing in a couple of posts.

Please remember some of us have hard drives as well,,,

This being a classic from Kel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaqFaBC2QrI

Go DUNKY.