Hidden treasures

As the winter has been in full swing and my race car has had a blown engine, I needed to get my gear head fix. So a friend kindly invited me to the perfect place for my addiction, a classic car shop.

At the outer fringes of Romania's capital, Bucharest, lies a place of hidden treasures, a shop that restores classic cars form the ground up.

What really stood out of the crowd of invaluable European iron was this '68 or '69 302 Mustang. It might be a more common occurrence on the other side of the pond, but here in Europe they are extremely rare.

This is actually the first one I've seen up close and it's gorgeous.

The 302 cui (5 liter) engine is assorted with Edelborck heads, intake and carburetor, MSD ignition and yes an AC compressor... I bet this thing rumbles beautifully!

Right in front of the dusty Mustang are some studded winter tires for the Monte Carlo classic car rally.

My friend is helping getting ready a pair of rally Ford Escorts for the rally. It takes place a week later than the WRC event and they even run some of the same stages.

This is what 175 WHP looks like, from a carburated 2 liter single cam engine.

 The shops bread an butter is restoring classic Porches and Jaguars, here we see a mint, if a bit dusty, Jaguar Mark 2.

And a stripped Jaguar E-Type with it's 4.2 lither straight six.

Curvy... Like a beautiful woman...

Here's a 356 Porsche getting ready for the MOT check.

 Random chrome laying around.

The most amazing think about this workshop is that rusty old cars and sheet metal goes in and shiny new cars get out

A rear quarter panel for a Porsche takes almost two whole months to make from scratch, and then it gets carefully filled not with filler, but with lead.

 They form the metal by hammer and then with the English wheel. This is more than craftsmanship, it's almost art.

The Covasna Winter Rally is soon to come so here's a 911 rally car as a reminder. Next I'll cover the work I've done to prepare the BMW for the rally. Stay tuned!

About summer (2) - The first hillclimb

As summer reached it's mid point the hill climb event was approaching. The car had the same old tires and the same damaged gearbox. I was also lacking a critical safety equipment...  A race suit.

I managed to find a suit that still had valid homologation, but it was quite expensive. With race day fast approaching, in the end I bit the bullet and bought it.

My good friend Artan, who helps me with the mechanical side of things managed to extract a few more horse power out of the 210 000 km old engine. But this meant that we had no more time to change the gearbox.

I was going to complete in what was the most competitive class 1.6 to 2 liters 2 wheel drive mostly against hot hatches. So in order to at least keep up with the competition we decided to change the diff to a shorter ratio one. I managed to find a rare 4.44 ratio one and I promptly welded it up and installed it. It was late at night when we finished installing the diff... Next day was race day

With all the suspension settings done I headed out to the local touge. The car felt good, when I was accelerating the car was oversteering just a bit, in a very controllable manner.

Race day came... So I packed my stuff and went out to the hillclimb event. I was all alone so I started chatting with the other competitors. I told them about my mods and because I welded the diff they all said that I would be oversteering all over and that I will be slow.

And they were right I was all over the place... I was oversteering in every corner whatever the gear I was in. On two occasions I actually went offcourse. So I let some air out of the rear tires and that solved only 20% of the oversteering problem.

But I was not slow... Not at all... In my class there were two 200 hp + cars and the rest of the front wheel drive were all at least 250 kg lighter and had around the same power I had.  I did more than keeping up to them... I managed to beat all but the 200 hp cars...

I was competing in the debutant class where one of my adversaries was a 300 hp 4wd Subaru. I ended up being just. 0.02 seconds behind him with my 150 odd horse power BMW, earning second place.

I was amazed that not only I could keep up with the fwd competition but even beat them if we had similar power.

Next up will be the Covasna winter rally, a 90 km or so rally held on snow and that will be quite a challenge for me with no rally experience and no real snow driving experience... 

About summer (1) - Now let's race

This summer came with a lot of changes for me. I moved to a new city and left the car back home, but this didn't prevent me to start testing my skills and my metal.

I managed to register my car as a competition vehicle, a friend kindly gave me a set of old racing tires. They had plenty of thread left, but due to their age they were really hard almost like plastic. The good thing about them is that once they are warm they grip unlike any tire I've had.

With the car ready, me and a couple of friends headed to Făgăraș rally, which was more like a city special stage. It ended up being a battle between drift and grip. After the first timed run I went to check the time and I had quite a surprise... I was first and I had a 6 second lead.

The main competitor ended up being one of my friends with a Toyota Aygo. The small car is very well suited for this kind of event. It's light has quite a bit of power for its size and turns on a dime.

My drift buddies stole the show, but the clock wasn't ticking in their favor.

As the course got cleaner the times started to improve and the Aygo was improving at a faster rate than I was. 

So I pushed harder and harder until I shifted from first to second gear hard and damaged the synchro mesh in the gearbox.

I was still first but would the gearbox hold till the end?

Although a sharp noise accompanied every gear change from first to second the gearbox held. In the end I managed to win the event by a healthy 10 second margin.  

As the event ended I set sight to a way greater challenge... A hill climb, but that in an other post.

Race car getting ready part 2

In the last episode we discovered that I really needed a better suspension. I managed to find a KW rebound adjustable suspension front and rear for a good price. I also renewed the front control arm suspension joints with Meyle HD items and I replaced the stock bushings with eccentric polyurethane ones.

The car was feeling loose in the rear so I designed some solid steel rear subframe bushings. This makes the car predicable and crisp and also raises the rear subframe 6mm to improve the rear roll center.

It all fitted like charm.

A simple trick to improve steering lock is to add a shim to the steering rod.

The stainless steel shock body does look really nice.

The exhaust sound was too muffled and made  a wooshing sound like you hear on newer cars, especially Audis, so I made the cheapest sport "muffler" ever, a 60mm piece of pipe.

Now the engine breathes better and sounds a lot better if a bit loud.

I tried to raise the car a bit, but the suspension adjustment rings are stuck solid. I tired to persuade them in every way but they wouldn't budge. Here's a picture with the car running rally slicks on the front tires.

The kill switch needs to also be accessible form the outside, so I decided to fit it near the lower part of the windscreen. It needs to be attached quite sturdily, so I made an aluminium bracket for it.

The fitment is perfect!

This is the way I installed the kill switch in the center console, I also made a bracket for this. 

Then my attention turned on the fire extinguisher, the mounting bracket and the extinguisher came RRS and they are up to FIA spec.

This is the way I installed the handbrake, a wilwood item with a homemade 600mm lever.

The interior is done!

My friend you see here managed to get us back on the carting track.

This time it was much, much better, the car handled way better, although I think I'll need some stiffer antiroll bars.

The better suspension gave me more confidence so I started to push it. I was able to raise the entry speed to about 110 km/h 

I naturally pushed the car even faster, but I ended up in the kitty litter big time..

A few videos of the day:

 Next up I'll try to enter a hill climb event and after that swap the engine for something with more oomph.