[Auto Futura-CAV Factory]

Hi All
As promised, some more information re the Le Mans car. We got the car up and running last week, but with the noise from the exhausts being excessive, we decided to fit a silencer. (I think that the neighbours weren’t as impressed as we were with the raw animal grunt of the car prior to her new silencer face-lift.) Still sounded beautiful…!

Day before yesterday we took the car, as well as another two CAV’s through to the track. We left the workshop first thing in the morning (attached photo) and headed for the local race track, Killarney, about 50 km’s away. Once at the track, time was spent setting up the suspension, corner weights, ride heights, etc. As you all know, setting up a race car is vastly different to that of a standard road car.

At 10 o’clock or so, all was ready and we could get down to testing. It took a few laps to get the brakes bedded and up to temperature. Unfortunately for me, the car was needed in a photo shoot for a program to be aired on DSTV. With that out the way, it was back to the fun stuff…!

The car did exceptionally well. Cornering is brilliant; she sits like shit in a blanket. Even though we were running with large 15” rear tyres which flex a lot, I was amazed how much she was able to hold without letting the tail break loose. We are running a stiffer front anti-roll bar which gives a fair amount of under steer, and this helped a lot to keep the baby on the road.

The braking is brilliant, and once the fore-aft had been adjusted, she was doing all as expected. She is running with six pots at the front and four pots at the rear.
The engine (virgin) had very little run-in and survived her day at the track. I didn’t go all the way to 6500 RPM, but the power was fantastic and the torque unbelievable. My thanks to Brian and Peter from Raceparts Distribution, for their help, advice and speedy delivery of this engine. The new ZF cable shift had been fitted to this car, and I am happy to report that it works very nicely - the gears are easy to find and the shift is direct.

With the afternoon sun, the mountain in the background and another fantastic Cape Town day drawing to a close, the photographers took over…taking hundreds of photos for the local and international press. It’s at times like these that one, realizes the beauty of the car as well our privilege to be part of the team that builds these recreations of the legendary GT 40!