Classic Japanes race series in car footage.
 

Just finished a weeked racing at the former A1GP circuit at a place called Taupo here in New Zealand.

Went via a Megasquirt tuner (with Dyno) and finally got my MS2 enhanced installed and working nicely. We ended up with 245HP at the wheels and a bit of a problem...

The new manilfold has longer runners than the previous (constantly cracking, 7 year old one) and now the boost comes on at 5k (up from the previous 4k)....it really has exagerated the fact the T28 with a .86 hotside is not suitable for the little 1600cc engine. So that is the next stage...find a smaller hot side hopefully...open to suggestions..

Anyway the race meeting went pretty well...

However, going from 60 odd HP to 200 ish at 5000 revs made for a pretty difficult car to drive! took the whole of Friday to get used to not spinning out on corner exit and then all day saturday to not do it while in and trying to pass traffic.....

The great news is we qualified 2nd of 17, came 4th in race 1, 7th in race 2 (a handicap start of 55 secs and equal last off the grid) and race 3 came 6th (same handicap) AND we posted the fastest lap of the weekend with a 1.44.9 and the only road legal car in the field, full wind up windows, glass etc.... With the boost issue fixed we will now have a truly top, competitive car for the Classic Japanese Class and hopefully give these worked Hondas etc a good run for their money!!!

Hopefully the link here will work for in car of race 3 where I finally get a good start (full throttle and dump the clutch) only to blow it 3 corners later :noob: :facepalm:

All the videos are private.

sorry, resolved that now... i think. Both videos are the same, I always screw up the insert somehow...

That looks like a fun series.
All time handicap based or do the throw weight at you as well ?

No we dont't, none of our series tend to use weight for handicapping, even the top classes.

I have a feeleing that is more a U.S. thing, be interesting to hear from other countries about that though.....

Can't remember if ACJS goes to the South Island or not?

You running an EBC?

No just Hampton Downs, Pukekohe consecutively and then one meeting at Taupo. South Island would be great but travel probably too costly for our class.....

Yes EBC solenoid was fitted in conjunction with the MS2 and working but we just had it at full 14psi all the way through for the time being. I will be playing around with staging the boost eventually but was just happy to have the extra PSI (up from the 6.5 we had been running i.e wastegate) and the MS2 running properly, after the second time installing.

Looks like i have found a .64 (?) hot side so that should help bring the boost down in to more realistic rpm's and the Trackspeed inconel studs are due any day so that should help prevent the turbo from unbolting itself and leaking boost before it gets in to the motor :)

Fair call on costs. Just figured would be cool to run the MX at the new Highlands track.

Have you done the coolant reroute? I'm still twiddling my thumbs on when I can do it lol.

Absolutely, would love to take the car (or bike) there. Just missed out on the big tour of the south island tracks in March including there.

Re the coolant re route. Not sure if you should or not but here is my experience....

My first motor (1600, stock internals with a td04 and link G2, with over size Ali radiator) overheated on track if i revv'd it over 6500. Kept under 6500 it would run fine...which was a pain and took a while to figure out :vash:.

So I bought the M tuned re route and resolved that problem.

I then bought this built motor and it doesn't over heat at all. Did a few track days 3-4 race meetings no problem.

However, having the re route just sitting on the shelf....I figured best use it just to be on the safe side, so when we installed the MS2 and ebc a few weeks ago we installed the re route too. No noticeable difference on the (stock) gauge.....but I feel better and figure that no 4 cylinder should be lovign it's life a little more now...

Sweet vid. Looks like a fun track. Racing against all those EG Civics takes me back to the 1990s. Your race livery looks really cool and modern, too. Any better pics of the car in your signature?

Had a few photos recently so thought i would add them here (a bit belatedly...)

nice paint scheme and i love that COPs rail. did you make it or buy it?

Kiwis do all their own work...just wiki John Britten. :)

Thanks, I am rather proud of it!

The COPS bracket was bought from a friend who designed and sells the kit....he also builds and sells Megasquirts in NZ and has his own Dyno he built...Of course if I had time I could easily do all of that too... :giggle:

He track days and runs an 1800 MX5 stock standard on 20 psi and is forever telling me to crank mine up.


I did use to race on track with the britten back in the day though (I was a different class but often tested and appeared at practice sessions during national race meetings at the same times), he was one clever dude. A bit nerdy/geeky but clever none the less!

It use to intrigue me, how a slightly nerdy, and somewhat awkward, clutzy type guy could dream up and then make such lovely things.

Though he did have a LOT of help that went somewhat unacknowledged publicly with the bike.