[race_prep] My 306 Race Car Build

[Spiky 37]

also i want them bonnet pins, can you take pics when you are fitting them for me please

[Dixon 1]

Will do mate, hopefully do it as soon as I put the bonnet back on.

 

I've used Hammerite Smooth paint for the speed and ease of going over some rust.

[Spiky 37]

ah cool, i used that on mine

 

you using tin or a spray can?

 

my cage is a bit streaky, but i guess that might have been my brush

[Dixon 1]

I've brushed on the floor so it'll hopefully be a bit more hard wearing but sprayed the rest.

[Spiky 37]

yeah good idea

[base-1 17]

Alpinestars GP2 suit

Alpinestars Tech 1-Z Gloves

Alpinestars Tech 1-T Boots

 

That was an expensive day out! Very nice though. Car is looking sweet too, cool build

[trialster 0]

i'm loving the look of this project!

 

fair doos for giving it top effort, the reward when you get to drive it will be awesome

[felix2566 2]

Looking really nice!

 

I was wondering could you give some more info on how your gear leaver arrangement works? Looks really nice!

[calvinhorse 870]

awesome really really nice lookin motor!

[Dixon 1]

Had a bit of a setback with the painting, the hammerite wasn't working well. Was hard work to spray on, seemed too thick and came out of the can all splattery. Temp problem I think but couldn't get around that. Also it wasn't sticking to the car too well for some reason.

So at the weekend went back to the start and went over the whole interior with primer and last night started spraying over it with halfords car paint, which seems to be doing the job better.

 

Picked up the heated windscreen on Sat, looks like a nice bit of kit:

 

New Wilwood Dynalite 4 pots turned up in the post yesterday, with some big ole discs:

 

Calipers are seriously light compared with the standard gti-6 ones!

 

Also picked up some Willans 3" 6pt harnesses and fia kill switch yesterday from Merlins.

[Dixon 1]

Looking really nice!

 

I was wondering could you give some more info on how your gear leaver arrangement works? Looks really nice!

 

It's a rose jointed kit that Colin makes up. Nice bit of kit, looking forward to having a prober go with it.

2 rods from the gear leaver go through the bulkhead and attached to the standard gear selectors. The kit can be installed yourself with some carefull welding, although making room for it is a little trickier. It's going in through my exhaust tunnel so I'm having to get a custom exhaust manifold made up from Maniflow to go around it.

 

[felix2566 2]

Thanks for the pictures and description. It is some thing that I would like to do. But will ahve to wait till funds will allow! I am presuming that it allows you to have the gearstick nearer to the steering wheel while retaining a sensible throw, or probably shorter than standard throw.

 

I dont live that far from Combe, I will have to come up there to see your car when you are racing there.

[hman205 1]

I presume it still works in the same way a standard stick would?

 

Thought breifly from the original pic it may have been a Sequential setup you were running

[Batfink 201]

When Colins car was in Retro Car magazine the caption for the picture said it was a sequential lol

[Dixon 1]

Lol, a lot of people assume that because it's up by the steering wheel.

 

It's a standard 5 speed H pattern box. It's just a lot shorter throw and up by the steering wheel which helps for speed and comfort.

I'm not allowed to use a sequential box within the regs anyway, as if I could afford one in the first place! Crazy money.

[eeyore 0]

Im just finishing a batch of these gear linkages, They will be plated and finished in a week or so if anyones interested?

[averyaaron1979 0]

Im just finishing a batch of these gear linkages, They will be plated and finished in a week or so if anyones interested?

 

colin whats the damage on one of these??

[eeyore 0]

Im not sure on the price as i haven't worked out how much they cost to make yet but i was hoping to do the kit to fit yourself for £220 including all the rose joints, bearings, etc The old price of 320 put people off a bit so this time i made a big batch to reduce the costs. Would be up for a group buy.

[Dixon 1]

Well, some good and bad new for this update...

 

The plans for the weekend were to get it all back together:

Engine in

Dash and seat etc back in

Brakes fitted and plummed in

bonnet and bumpers back on so it looks like a car again!

 

But instead... I managed to get the car up on axel stands and the engine out of the garage, then collapsed on the drive with my back in spasm and an afternoon up at chippenham hospital. And in bed all day yesterady - really friggin usefull!

 

 

Ah well nevermind, on a lighter note we've had a stroke of luck with the pistons.

Long story short - We ordered a custom set of forged pistons before xmas but were let down by the importers and they never turned up! Grrr. And now too late to order others from somewhere else.

So Sandy has done a cracking job searching around trying to find some other pistons that were a close enough size that they could be modified to fit, which turned out to be Mi16 pistons.

They are a little large but I think Sandy managed to cut one down to the right size last Friday.

Then with a flash of good luck some forged mi pistons turned up over the weekend that will hopefully be trimmed to size and shape in time for the engine to go together.

[Sandy 191]

Down but hopefully not out for long Alan!

 

The original idea on the pistons was to have custom ones made, because none of the off the shelf XU ones are an exact fit for the XU7J4. Knowing what I know now, I could have saved alot of time and hassle! I had some Omega Mi16 pistons back along, which I measured, but the top ring land was too close to the crown to allow the crown height (height from pin centre to crown edge) to be reduced (I need 2.7mm less crown height than the Mi16). I set about finding out the other day if there's enough material in the standard Mi16 crown to allow enough machining.

First off I drilled some holes in a scrap Mi piston to establish the material thickness in the crowned:

 

Then turned off the required reduction in crown height around the circumference of the piston, to make the centre into an intruder. Next step was the biggie! After a great deal of time spent setting up Colin's Bridgeport mill (including Colin making an arbor for the cutter with typical casual ease), I could set about deepening the valve cut outs to suit the revised crown height. This entailed establishing the valve guide angles and the exact position the valve centres strike through the head face plane, so that could be replicated anmarked on the piston, to centre the mill head for cutting. After all that I was able to deepen the cutouts simply by winding the mill bed up by the desired amount. I actually broke through to the ring land on one by over cutting it to see how much material there is. After that I restored the mill head to 90 degrees to cut the squish area down to the correct height. Here's the result:

 

This would have been a practical solution for this engine, Mark Shillaber built an 8v 1.8 XU using the same method on the pistons,which has been used competitively with an 8500rpm limit for several years. However the discovery of some new JE pistons that I can convert similarly is even better really!

[hman205 1]

Cool bit of engineering that !

 

Get well soon Alan

Edited February 5, 2008 by hman205

[Dixon 1]

Passed the ARDS test today (don't know why they call it that thought cos it's not that ARD! lol)

Back is getting better so started putting the car back to something resembeling one.

Heated windscreen fitted yesterday, dummy engine put back in, bumper and gear linkages back on.

 

Looks all white!

lol

 

 

Handbrake turned up in the post today looking like a gun! lol

 

Also picked up the championship decals today while at Combe doing the ARDS

[Dj_mini 7]

Are you allowed fiberglass pannels or do you have to stick to a weight due to the regs?

I would be very interested to come and watch you race do you have the dates for this year?

 

Cheers Dan

[Dixon 1]

Have to use standard panels and materials. Minimum weight certainly isn't going to be a problem with the 306, its generally quite heavy so getting it as low as possible is the aim.

 

 

Dates should be:

 

Easter Monday – 24th March

 

May Day – 5th May

 

Spring Bank Holiday Monday – 26th May

 

Dunlop Motorsport Festival 19th/20th July

 

Historic 2 Day – 2nd/3rd August

 

Summer Bank Holiday Monday – 25th August

 

13th September

 

Carnival – 4th October

[sunil_2.0Fiesta 0]

loverly race car