2nd Mountain Mill Mall Worcester Gymkhana

What a event this turned out to be, not only the fun part of racing the Bakkie and the Golf but the planning, building of it to. Me and Ruan learned the hard way to not work on vehicles the week before a event, everything should be done and tested a week before the event, but NO, this time I ignored my own advice and did a lot of work in the week before the event.

All started with the new front suspension the bakkie received a week or two earlier, we struggled with front end grip, once that was sorted it resulted in either the driver or navigator on the other one’s lap or a face against a  window, the standard seat and seat belts just wasn’t up to the task to keep occupants in there place to concentrate at the job at hand.

On Friday, the day before the event, Jan and I drove threw to Worcester, finalized all the paper work and learned the track, after that we where buy until 12 o’clock the evening adding another 25mm of height to the seats to allow me a better view of obstacles around the nose of the bakkie.

The day kicked of with everything on time and running very nicely, the bakkie went out first and I felt very unsure about the rear stepping out with the slicks on the very nice tarmac. After the run I did not know what to do, drive it harder, softer, I was lost. The golf came out a few minutes after me, Jan drove some good lines for a person that was competing in his first ever gymkhana, not making one mistake on the route, always the first objective for a new person in the sport. He had a lot of trouble with shifting from 2nd to 1st.

The day continued without any problems, this was the first time that I navigated for a front wheel drive vehicle, and boy I can tell you one thing, I was scared shiitless when we entered a few of the corners on normal street tires, we actually hit the tarmac with the outer lip of the wheels, leaving some nice fresh marks on the alloys. I was just reminded why we spend a lot of money on good racing tires and try to get rid of body roll, it is just not fun hanging on when you need to concentrate on driving or navigating. After the first run with the Golf, it was decided that a the poor little Golf need at least 2 Semi Slicks in front, that will help a lot with traction and confidence.

After the second rounds was done, we where informed that there is only time for a third, automatically this meant that the last round was the most important one, and indeed it turned out to be exactly that, The bakkie had to get a time in the 1m 6sec bracket to finalize a 3rd place. I was so excited as this would have been my first 3rd place. As I completed the run I knew the time was good, but then, I stopped 20mm to far and received a 10sec penalty and lost 3rd and had to settle for 4th place in my class. Jan finished the day with a 5sec improvement from his first run to his last one, indicating that he learned heaps on the day.

Lessons learned: Always compete against your own abilities and never against other people or there times. Mistakes are way to easy to make.

Please feel free to have a look at a in car lap of the bakkie going around the route. Link

Ruan indicated that he will be present at the next event in Langebaan @ Mykonos Casino as he is deprived of the smell of racing in Zambia. We look forward to the event and hope that all will be in order to make it a very memorable event for us.

Datsun Coil Over Build

Just have a look at these. They are an absolute blast to drive with, but do believe me, it took way more time than needed to plan and source the correct parts for the build, in fact the build went off without a hint of trouble.

All parts where sourced from local RSA suppliers, in my opinion this was the hardest part of the whole build, especially the shocks.

The biggest success to the build can be coupled to good planning. My biggest single piece of advice to anyone that plans on a build like this, spend a lot of time on the planning, it makes life easier.

Parts Used:

• Datsun B140 LDV original Struts
• Volkswagen Rabbit Shock Cartridge Inserts
• 250lbs x 8inch Race Springs
• Thread Tubes
• Retaining nuts and cap
• 14mm Rose Joints

Have a look at some of the images – Datsun Coil Over Build

Keep an eye out for a complete HOWTO on building a set of coil over’s. The HOWTO will be based on the set in question, but will be easily adobtable to other makes of  vehicles with good planning and some forward thinking added to the mix.

A12GX Head – A14 Sub – Dual SU’s – Lightened Flywheel

What a busy few weeks getting the Bakkie in order.

Just want to give all that provided me with tips and tricks some feedback.
Got the Datsun Comps spec on the flywheel, took the flywheel and a new pressure plate to the dude that does my machining, he got it down to 5.78kg, he also balanced the flywheel and new pressure plate for me.
Installed the A12GX head with worked ports and valves.
Fitted a 4-1 branch manifold, already had a 50mm Stainless Free flow System
HS4 Dual SU Carburetors, intake manifold ports matched to head intake ports
Fitted a electric fan, switch comes on at 85degrees, removed mechanical fan on water pump
Had to purchase a new Temp Sensor, could not get the old one out of the A14 head.

Here comes the interesting bit, somewhere down the line, they changed the resistance on these sensors, from about 560ohm to about 360ohm at 16degrees.
This caused more than enough problems. All of a sudden the temp gauge needle climbed way more that it should.

We started it up, all was fine, no bolts, pistons or valves flew around, tuned the su’s. The electronic fan came on, everything working as it should.

Once on the road it was a different story, torque there is a lot of, it is clean, revs up nicely, pulls excellent from 2k rpm right thru to the limiter (currently at 7k rpm), there is not even signs that you are about to hit the limiter, this means all is working together, producing nice bottom down torque and decent top end power.

Then, all of a sudden the motor gets hot. After a day or two and enough swear words to make a sailor look like a beginner. We figured it out. Once on the road there is enough air travelling over the switch to cool it down and not switch the fan on. This caused me more time under the bonnet than needed.

Obviously if the water gets way to hot, pressure builds and want to escape somewhere, the place it picked was between cylinder 3 and 4 at the water ports on the intake manifold gasket. After taking it apart, I also noticed that the one exhaust manifold washer was pressing against a piece of welding on the branch. Smoothed it down, reassembled the lot. Also re-fitted the old mechanical fan on the water pump to be on the safe side.

Took it for a drive, no issues what so ever anymore, the fan doesn’t even switch on after some heavy spinning and gymkhana practice.

Saturday we have our next race meeting and look forward to the added power and overall better A14-A12 inbreed.
Just hope I will be able to keep the wheel spin to a minimum, we are expecting rain also, and that sure as hell wil not help.

Thanks a lot to all that helped and gave advice. Special thanks to Einstein(My Brother), My Father and Ruan.

Datsun Head Prep & Engine Mounts

Look at it,isn’t she just beautiful. All shinny and almost completely assembled.  With ports so big and smooth…….. almost got sidetracked there.

Received her back yesterday from the machining shop after a very gentle skimming job just to make sure all is in good order and ready for some serious hard work and alot of abuse on the gymkhana tracks. The only thing that is still in the back of my head is the water ports that show signs of damage, but at least this was approved by my father that has a lot more experience than me.  Just need a final cleanup after the machining and the last few parts must be prepped before we can start with the rebirth of the A12GX head on the A14. What a nice combination these to will be, coupled that with the pare of SU’s waiting there turn. A nice change from the standard DCOE route in SA. Hopefully tonight the installation can commence.

Last night Ruan and I installed the new set of engine mountings, the old ones started tearing, so we upgraded them to some serious mounts. This stuff is so tough, I wonder if it wasn’t made for V6 or V8 engines. Lets see if the poor 1400 can tear them this round.

Luckily for us, half of the engine bay is stripped, to get a grinder in next to the dizzy and the strut tower is a task of immense struggle. After a hour or two, both mountings was in place and a set of happy eyes starred them down.

My brother and I also finished with the CAD drawings for the Camber/Castor plates. We printed them, took a pair of scissors to it and trial fitted it to make sure the new wholes will be in usable spots. On the Datsun it was a success, let’s hope the same for the Escorts side. Then we can get the first sets lazercutted and assembled.

Datsun is treated to a lightened Flywheel and bigger Clutch

Last week I found an old Datsun A12 flywheel in my garage that my brother used a few years ago on A12 and A14 motors. This particular flywheel was lightened a bit, but the two of us thought that as the years went by, we can greatly improve what was done to it previously. In a moment of superior thought, I remembered I have a few pictures of lightened flywheels from  “Datsun B110 Competition Tune-Up Manual, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., Tokyo Japan 1974″ that I have sourced from http://datsun1200.com site.

And so it began. I sourced a 190mm LUK clutch kit (had an idea the current clutch is only 180mm), found a a guy that does machining and dynamic balancing, made a appointment with him. I showed and explained the drawing to him, the next day I picked the super light flywheel up and was very pleased with the end results.

Here is a table comparison of the A12, A14 and Lightened A12 Flywheels

On dissembling, my thoughts where cast in stone, indeed the old clutch and pressure plate was only 180mm units. This meant that the clutch and pressure plate was still the original units. I need to give credit for Datsun, wow, that says a lot for quality.

After the gearbox was put back in it’s place and all the other nuts and bolts tightened up, my father and realized there was no clutch. And then it hit us, the A12 flywheel is much thinner than the A14 unit. This meant that the release bearing was unable to travel enough to get to the fingers on the pressure plate. This meant double work, one thing that really ticks me off. Work started dissembling everything again. After some serious measurements, we decided to increase the length of the pivot point that the fork pushes against. The original unit was replaced with a alancap with a shank and a nut to lock it in place, added some locktight and it is in place to stay.

Assembly started again, after all was done, clutch was good and we just double checked everything to make sure that the release bearing retainer does not move off, of the slide if the clutch is operated, that could lead to a locked clutch. Almost like trying to drive with the gearbox in neutral. What a lot of fun this could be.

Have a look at the pictures of the old and new Flywheels.

Team Race-tech celebrates another Victory, 1st & 8th place Class F

A great day of racing in general @ 22nd Casino Mykonos Langebaan Gymkhana on 18 April 2009

This must be the best event so far, all our expectations were thrown out the door at arrival to the track on Friday evening at early entry. We where so scared of the rumored paving’s that everyone told us about.

What, we thought to ourselves, if your are competing for a decent time and not there to be a showoff the paving’s isn’t that bad.  Obviously from time to time an honest accident from pushing to hard does happen, but hey, isn’t that what racing is about.

Our first few runs went quite well, learning all the correct lines with the bakkie following with the escort. We played around with tire pressures, stiffness of the bakkies rear suspension, while improving our times on each run. I must admit, Ruan is starting to get to grips with the Escort, I honestly believe that the car was driving Ruan around until our 3rd run in it on Saturday, Ruan proved, that he is in control of it and have learned it’s tricks. On the 4th run he was really giving the car a bit of it’s own medicine, locking up brakes, sliding it towards the paving on hard braking, on exits of corners drifting it towards tires.

On the navigation side of things, we had times in the bakkie that there were more confusion than actual facts about the correct routes, but we pulled thru and only had one very badly driven line due my fault and not his, but, the rest of the factual confusion came from his side. A phrase in Ruan’s words:  “Ek moet aan my navigasie werk”.

We learned a few valuable lessons on this event, the bakkie needs more work than we thought, the idea from day one with it was to use it as a vehicle to learn the track better, but hey, we all want to go faster as this kind of motorsport is starting to grow on us. The bakkie will need a lot of work on the front suspension, fitting a set of kick ass semi slicks isn’t the answer. Camber, Caster, bigger anti roll/sway bars, stiffer springs this is what help times. As the Escort is living prove of it. Not even a bigger engine will help, if you can’t get that power to the ground or carry that speed thru a corner, you wasted your money. This goes for the escort to, it needs a Limited Slip Differential or a torsion diff badly. We are confident that this vehicle has not shown its full potential.

We will be doing our home work on getting the bakkies front suspension in shape and drool about a Quaife for the escort. Anyone wanting to donate one, get in touch we will drink your beer and place your own stickers on our vehicles.

One the last run with the escort, just as we entered stage 4 of the route we heard this loud clap, peep peep peep, something is @%$#&^, was the only thing that you would have heard in the cockpit. Just as we exit a right hand corner and where at full throttle the differential gave in. Well as they say, something has to give. But still what a disappointment to a otherwise perfect day.

We will be taking it apart int he week to figure out what was the weakest link in it, we suspect a spirale gear. Welding on leaf spring also proven a very bad idea, as the bakkie broke one on Sunday afternoon as we arrived back in Cape Town. Never will we weld on tempered steel again.

Thanks to all our friends that helped make this day a success, without your effort this wouldn’t be possible.

Feedback: Datsun Rear Suspension Stiffening Experiment

This worked well, but on a rear wheel drive Gymkhana vehicle you need as much possible travel on the rear wheel as possible and a progressive suspension, all or nothing doesn’t work as you start unload the inner wheel when cornering hard. We tested all possible settings this weekend on the 22nd Casino Mykonos Langebaan Gymkhana.

It helps for rear end stiffening, but sure as hell not for traction, body roll is a lot more in control, but in our case we need some to keep the wheels to the ground.

The one thing that we did learn from this experiment for gymkhana setup, the front of a rear wheel drive vehicle should be hard and the back soft or to an extend that excessive body roll starts creeping in.

On another note, never never ever and a day, weld anything to tempered steel like leaf springs, due to this experiment, I broke my left leaf and must replace both now to get rid of this upper leafs with the welded parts to it.

Will be using this as a opportunity to rebuild the rear leaf assembly to get rid of some excessive body roll that is impacting front end roll. All of this is part of the bigger picture.

Datsun Rear Suspension Stiffening Experiment

After my brother and I crawled around the Datsun last week looking for some interesting and cheap ways of stiffening the old ladies arse, we realized that these little bakkies leaf springs are quite interesting.
They have 4 blades, 3 is quite thin and are used for normal non loaded driving, the fourth one is what I know it as a helper leaf. It is only used when the vehicle is heavily loaded and is more that double the thickness of one of the other 3 leafs.
After some more investigation we came up with a plan to clamp the top 3 to the helper leaf, thus the vehicle will be lower to the ground and suspension travel will be limited a lot while stiffness greatly improved.
Yesterday evening Johan and I installed these 10 x 50mm Flat bar pieces to the bakkie. We found a reference point to measure ride height and suspension travel. We were astonished with the results, this old lady is as tight as an 18 year old.

Here are the results:

Clamped	Loaded – 85kg	Measurement	Remarks
Not	Not	283mm
Not	Yes	248mm	35mm travel
Yes	Not	250mm	33mm drop
Yes	Yes	238mm	12mm travel
Adjustable	Pending	Pending	Pending
Adjustable	Pending	Pending	Pending

We took it for a drive and found it losing traction very easily around sharp corners. Obviously this was to much. We raised the bakkie on one corner and realized that it starts lifting the wheel. We basically replaced body roll with wheel lift, travel will have to be increased. Ruan joined, after some more experiments we loosened one of the clamps on each side on the front of the leafs and the travel increased, now we are able to adjust travel and stiffness as needed.

Next step will be to weld the top bracket to the leaf, this will ease installation and adjustment and also keep the clamp in place. Last night this was done, it works beautiful, just a shame there will be no time for some practicing before this weekends race.  Won’t  mind to get time to test and adjust these pieces. – Do not do this, we learned the hard way that welding on leaf springs will cause them to brake and waste your Sunday afternoon resting time.

Have a look at more detailed pictures of the Datsun Rear Suspension Stiffening Experiment

Note: this is not recommended for normal day to day driving

Dual SU Carbs

Just a quick heads up on the Head and Carbs for the Datsun.

The A12GX head is all cleaned up. After a 2 day long cleanup session, everything is ready for fitment.
Ports is as clean as I can get them, gasket areas are shinning and ready for some new ones. The valves Seats are grind.
Yesterday, me and my brother prepped all the clean parts and reassembled the head. It is know wrapped and waiting for an installation date after the 2nd May 2009. We have a month gab between gymkhanas after the 2nd, so this will be the ideal time to install all these parts and eliminate all problems.

The HS4 SU Carburetors have been stripped and checked; so far I can so no damage to the parts. No cracks, holes or excessive wear. The next steps will be to get this all cleaned up for further inspection and reassemble them. Then they can also move next to the head on the shelf for installation.

This is killing me, knowing I sit with all these parts and have to wait to get them installed, o well; at least it gives me time to get everything ready.

Electric fan must be installed and wired up, the brackets for the helper leaves on the back suspension need to be made and tested. Hope this stiffens it up nicely, could be a cheap mod for starters to the back suspension. The branch must be sources and wrapped with Heat Wrap, and let no one tell you different, this exhaust wrap is expensive, R450 for a 15m roll, just enough for a 4 cylinder branch.

I’ll be off to go pull some more hair, this waiting is killing me.

Datsun A12GX Head & Dual SU Carb Project Started

Last weekend, after my official duties at the Toyota Dealership Rally out in Caledon where finished, I decided to drive to my parents in Doornrivier for a visit and to get my little hands on some old Datsun parts.

One of the best decisions in a long time. It took me back a few years when my brother used to tinker with these little motors. These parts is almost like family treasures, as a lot of it came from my dad that also used to play with Datsun engines.

The idea of this project is to get these parts all cleaned up, assembled and installed on the bakkie, if memory serves correct there will be no need for mayor structural changes to the parts as A12-A14 engines are very interchangeable. The head was first on a A12 and later on a A14 that seized two pistons due to,  to much compression and running on normal 97 octane fuel (back in the day of 97 octane in SA).

The motor where rebuild and a spacer where added between the bottom end and head to drop the compression enough. This engine had a lot of torque and also very responsive.

The Head:

• A12 GX Head
• A14 Intake and Exhaust Valves
• 3 Angle Valve Seats
• Double Valve Springs
• Ported

The Carbs:

• Dual SU something something carbs ( will get numbers )
• Ported Intake to match the Head
• Custom Air Filter Housing

Johan (friend) started yesterday stripping the parts and the huge cleanup process. To my amazement the valves came out much easier than expected. I thought these double valve springs are going to require some serious fore arm strength, a knock with a hammer on the valve spring retainer was all that where needed, but still far more difficult than a head with only one set of valve springs.

Later on Ruan joined me, we had a long discussion around the SU carbs as they are fairly new to him, my knowledge on them is also quiet limited, thus it took some time explaining the operation of these carburetors. For more information regarding SU Carburetors, visit Wikipedia

The idea is to get all planned and assembled before 2 May 2009, after the 2nd May we want to start bolting these beauties to the bakkie, in the whole process I also want to swop the flywheel out for one that is  lightened and replace the stock clutch and pressure plate with a Datsun Pulsar unit, these are larger and still just a bolt on.  The other modifications that will be done at the same time is the fitment of a electric fan and a 4 into 1 branch exhaust manifold.