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Post by kiwicanfly on Apr 10, 2016 10:27:30 GMT
I hereby state that I have been blinded all these long months by the precious things that are Red and Shiny. I have been on a fools errand seeking out such trivial trinkets of false worth. No my friends that quest has been left behind, indeed I have escaped it's clutches for there are more important things in life........
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Post by kiwicanfly on Apr 11, 2016 10:17:39 GMT
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Post by mawdo81 on Apr 11, 2016 17:04:53 GMT
Fit the paddle shift...it'll be quicker to find reverse ;-)
Could always anodise the actuators red and shiny :-)
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fatboy
Full
142.5 bhp on a almost stock 1.8
Posts: 197
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Post by fatboy on Apr 11, 2016 17:23:50 GMT
Its good when you run out of corner ;-)
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Post by kiwicanfly on Apr 18, 2016 8:04:18 GMT
Decided that, after my experience with loosing my coolant, there was no option but to -
Remove the seat belts so I could - Remove the seats so I could - Remove the COR so I could - Remove the centre tunnel which entailed - Removing the gear lever cover and - Removing the handbrake cover so I could - Remove the sub-tunnel so I could - Remove the pipe insulation which was Red and Wet (but not shiny) so I could - Tighten the six hose clamps which I had not previously rechecked!
Rechecked the system using my trusty little 12v pump and it sat at around 24PSI but the expansion tank cap was venting like crazy (opens at 21PSI).
All seems good, no evidence of weeps any more.
However, in a way, finding evidence of a small leak made it all worthwhile and now I can -
Replace the.......... I think you get the idea.
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Post by kiwicanfly on Apr 18, 2016 8:17:59 GMT
johnp noted that he thought he had heard the sound of a man riding the clutch in one of my uploaded videos, I can certainly say it had been something I found myself doing in a couple of the first events I did last month. So made a few changes to the pedal position. First I moved the pedal as close to the bulkhead as the piston adjustment allowed, I could have gone further but the shaft started to foul the back of the peddle. Then I replaced my patented Kiwi Clutch Pedal Shortenerupper with the latest MKII version. Smaller, lighter and more streamlined. When testing the peddle is as far forward as it can be, (without having to put the old Shortenerupper on the bottom of my shoe) otherwise I would have cut a bit off the piston thread to gain the last bit of travel. The pedal now disengages the clutch with no undue excess over-travel but is far enough away that my foot does not tend to put undue pressure on it when not in use. The new MKII Shortenerupper will now go through extensive road trials and if no further tweaking is required I will make an aluminiun one, or a carbon one or sand it and paint it black
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Post by kiwicanfly on May 23, 2016 8:50:43 GMT
Added a set of external jump connectors so that, should I get caught out, I can easily jump start the car without taking the COR off.
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Post by kiwicanfly on Jun 25, 2016 4:43:35 GMT
Decided that as I seem to be spending more time doing club events than general driving it was time for new sticky tyres. As I am going for the softest compound I don't want to use them for general use so I am keeping the 16" Momo for that so new wheels were required. Unfortunately the 4x108 stud pattern is not so common in NZ and the choice of wheels is thus limited so a set of wheels with common studs, 4x100 or 4x114.3 were looked for and fitment was to be by the use of adaptors. I Ended up with these, 15" Sparco NS2 with a dual stud pattern. In the end I decided to use the 4x100 option as it had not been used before by previous owners, the nuts are slim tuner style and are not common so using holes that may have had incorrect nuts in them seemed not the wisest thing to do when there was a choice. The more eagle eyed of you will understand why they were chosen. Yep the large offset of 53mm. So combined with a 25mm adaptor the final offset was 28mm, 7mm less than the standard 35mm but a lot closer to standard than starting with 40mm or less which a lot were. I got the adaptors from China from Bloxsport www.bloxsport.com/ and I am pretty impressed with them and the company. 4x108 don't appear on the website and I was told that this was the first set they had made with this combination. All up there were US$215 landed, In theory I could have made them for less but spending a number of lunchtimes working away to save US$40 was not worth the effort! I do have to grind a bit of the rear upright to get them to fit though, far more than I expected. The tyre that is on is only what came with the wheels, now I know all will fit I will order the tyres in the week. Then it will be final tweaking of the fenders.
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Post by martinw on Jun 25, 2016 8:16:58 GMT
The more eagle eyed of you will understand why they were chosen. Nope - nothing obvious to me. Can you give us a clue? I'm pretty sure the real reason is nothing to do with the offset.......! Martin
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Post by kiwicanfly on Jun 25, 2016 10:54:43 GMT
But surely you recall my post at the top of this page? So there you have it, no more Red and Shiny. No I want "Pleasemisterwillitmakemycargofaster" nigel can you make up an appropriate Smiley for me please. Of course if it will make my car go faster and happens to be Red and Shiny then of course I will weaken Do race tyres come in Red and Shiny?
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Post by kiwicanfly on Jul 10, 2016 5:58:13 GMT
Finally got the new wheels sorted today, if anyone is thinking of putting 15" wheels on a Rocket I would check very carefully whether they will fit without major surgery at the rear. I am sure some are easier than others. I have had to grind quite a lot of my uprights and adjust the shape of the hand brake arms in order to clear the rims. This is the work on the hand brake levers, before and after. Also found that the clearance between the wings was insufficient to get the wheels on whilst they were in place but then they couldn't be fitted afterwards. Fortunately I had fitted them on aluminium tubes bonded onto the wing with GRP. However the securing screws were under the wing so had to solve that issues. First I drilled through from the outside of the wing and then fitted helicoils in order to give the GRP enough strength, for those who have not come up against helicoils they are inserts that fit into a material and look like a spring. You drill over-size and then tap with a special tap to create a new thread, the insert is wound in using a tag which is then snapped off. Often they are used to repair stripped threads but they can also be used to create a stronger thread in soft materials. The insert is on the right, the grubscrew on the left. One downside though is that the kits are horrendously expensive, insert are only about 75p but the kit is around UKP50, a lot for a one off job. However if you "know a man" or a place with lots of kits in a cupboard you are laughing I then ground a flat on the wing stays for the grub-screws to clamp against. I was then able to slide the wing out and then fit the wheel finally setting the position of the wing after the wheel is in place. The other thing I had to do was put more negative camber on the wheels, the new tyres are Dunlop DZ03G soft with a recommended camber of -3deg. I don't have a camber gauge so I figured that instead, as my wheels had been laser aligned, I would use the camber adjuster to move a specific calculated amount. For the front this amounted to about 2.7 turns per 1 deg of camber and for the rear 3 turns per degree. I marked each adjuster with a angle grinder cut on the appropriate corner and marked the bone with a marker pen, then added the turns required. I felt the key thing here was not adjusting by an exact number of degrees for the required angle but ensuring the adjustment was known and equal each side i.e. I didn't make 2.7 turns at the back but worked in full turns which I noted on a worksheet. After finally taking the car out for a spin I reckon I have too much in the front (I added four turns) and just right at the rear (3 turns) this was based on the temperature measured with my hand. The rear was even across the tyre whereas the front was noticeably cooler at the outside. So a bit of a final tweak and then a hill climb next Sunday to see how it all feels.
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Post by kiwicanfly on Jul 17, 2016 8:59:41 GMT
New wheels and tyres were 'final tweaked' (yet more grinding of the uprights) all in preparation of the hill climb today. The day dawned wet windy and generally awful but the event went ahead. Fortunately only the first timed run was fully wet and the day dried up nicely. However the car is no longer Red and Shiny but now is Wet and Muddy. But I figured a bit of water wouldn't cause me to melt so I did the full set of runs. New tyres gripped well, even in the wet compared to the originals (which was good considering) and each run got faster. I really wanted to go under two minutes and in my final and fastest run I did 2:00:56 However I am now getting closer to other cars in my class (1.6l to 3.0l) and beating a far few of them. Just got to up the nerves to pull more of the available speed out of it. Looks like a good few hours of cleaning for me in the week though but at least I did not embed my car into the side of a fence strainer post and write it off as happened to the top car but he did get a nice certificate to put on his wall for posting the overall fastest time of the day so I guess he'll be happy
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Post by Paul (madeye) on Jul 22, 2016 12:48:45 GMT
God I've been away a while, I've missed all this lot.
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Post by kiwicanfly on Aug 29, 2016 0:24:04 GMT
For Sale - One StickSort of short and pointy with a nice carbon bit at one end to make gripping easier. From the website Wildside www.wildsurvive.com/outdoor-camping-forum/index.php?topic=4850.0 there are "a thousand uses for a stick" Here are some examples of suggested uses You can repetively put a stick places that would hurt your hand. You can thow a stick when you need to throw SOMETHING. You can use a stick to intimidate when you don't want to have to hurt. You can use a stick to help keep your balance. You can use a bunch of sticks to build something. Originally used for changing gears by means of a couple of flexible cable thingies. No longer required as that method is so last year :-)
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Post by kiwicanfly on Oct 30, 2016 8:29:04 GMT
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