Trip to see Chris.

Howard Jones

Supporter
Me and bud took a drive down to Monterey to say hello to Chris, and to let me put a couple of hours at a time on my newly built engine.
 

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Howard Jones

Supporter
After all the trama poor Betty went though she doing very well now. Runs real strong with her nice reballanced motor. Not quite enough time on her to get her a real go but she seams REAL WILLIN.

The weather got a little warm cooming back and I got a first test of the cooling mods I've done. With air temp at about 93F ish I had a water temp about 185-190. Oil temp about 180F and rock solid. No big temp spikes with sitting still or putting my foot in it either.

All in all the old lady is runnin just fine.
 

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Howard,

Some good pictures there that have me intrigued. Is it a trick of the light or are you running with canard wings on the front to increase front downforce. I notice that you have also added the alloy flap to the rear thus adding to rear end squat potential. What improvements to handling have you encountered please with both systems in place ?

Regards,

Graham @ GTA.
 
Sweet, real nice guys...How's the transaxle behaving Howard?


If the New England boys don't see some if this action next year, I'm bulldozing everything into a pile for a fire.......

signed
Disgusted in New Hampshire................
 
Relax, Brian, those west coast guys get an extra 9 months of building weather each year, that's why they all drive GT40s to their get-togethers and we drive Hondas and pickup trucks. :)
 

Howard Jones

Supporter
Yes I did put on some canards. I haven't had the car on track yet so I really can't tell you if they have had any effect that would be felt at road cornering speeds. The idea was to balance the aero on the car with the rear adjustable plate.

The adjustable plate on the rear of the car does have quite an effect as I have had it on the car for a couple of years and I've fooled with it's setting from time to time. I haven't seen much effect below about 80MPH but it will create quite a bit of down force above that speed. It is adjustable from 0 inches to 3" of height. At full effect I can feel the increased drag at freeway speeds, 70-80 MPH, I currently have it set to about 1 1/2" as kind of a middle setting.

It also makes a very nice license plate mount.

The gearbox is still in the getting use to stage. I think that the straight cut gears, 1st and 2nd, make it a little difficult to make the change up from 1st to 2nd. Matching engine speed to the gearbox on up-shift makes it quite a bit better but I'm still trying to find just the right throttle blip to make it work.

The ratios are on the other hand perfect. Especially the rev drop between the 2nd to 3rd gear change. It puts it right back on the top of the torque curve. The car really pulls the hardest when it goes to 3rd now.

The Quaife diff is magic. Before I could induce power on wheel spin by just thinking about it in the first 3 gears. Now I have to force the car to spin the tires. This is felt to the most effect in a corner that is right in the sweet spot of 2rd gear, about 45MPH or so. Before the LSD I had to just roll through the corner and wait until the car was nice and straight before adding any real power. Now I can start adding a little power just before the apex and roll on the throttle aggressively at corner exit without any wheel spin. If I just mat it as the car srtraightens out coming off the corner it will lightly spin both tires but go nice and straight without any drama. Before, doing that was unthinkable. Putting on that much power that early would have put me in the ditch with massive over-steer. I think my favorite corner near my house, I call it toolies, will become a 3rd gear corner in the end.

The clutch on the other hand must be fully engaged before power is added now or it will slip. Before the tires just spun instead. I don't think a stock Renault clutch will work with even a mild engine tune if you install a Quaife. I have a Centerforce rebuilt Renault in mine that works well enough for now. But any more power and it will have reached it's limit. I will guess my motor is at about 375Hp. Maybe a little more after the balance and rebuilt to spec work I just completed.
 
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