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The REAR floor strap should be used for the lap/sash seat belt. Thats the one that the seat does NOT bolt to. (Lap/sash seat belts are designed to mount rearward of the driver's lap). The harness on the other hand bolts to the same strap as the rear of the seat. This results in the lap strap...

I guess many people have had the occasional urge to design and build thier own race car. Well done for taking the next step. So do you expect it to resemble the GT40 in any way other than the obvious mid-engined layout and the two seats?

Well done Loundsy. As I’d hoped, he wove his magic at the top of the mountain to stave off those pesky Holdens down the straight. Just one more thing. Production car racing is NOT a thing of the past here in Australia. It has been going on in some form or another all along. And you will be...

My hope is on Craig Lowndes. The parity formula had the Fords and Holdens very even last year with the Holdens better at the top of the mountain and the Fords better in the horsepower. Unfortunately HRT seem to have made up the difference in HP so Craig will just have to weave his magic on the...

The Motor-Inn keeper where we stayed at Invercargill knew Burt Munro in his later years. He told us of a story of Burt’s drag bike. Burt decided that his bike was too slow getting off the mark because it was too highly geared. His solution? Build a small swiveling stand at the rear to hold the...

And talking about Invercargill, while on holiday in NZ recently we decided to make the pilgrimage to the birthplace of The World's Fastest Indian. A great true story and if you haven't seen the movie, then do so immediately. Colleen and I thought we'd be lucky if we got the chance to see the...

It’s a pity that the manufacturers refuse to see the obvious. Motorsport at this level is a dollar spinner, not a dollar drain. Ford Australia failed to recognize this for almost two decades and saw their sales and customer loyalty plummet. Not at the start, and not in the middle term, but much...

I agree with you whole heartedly Ross with regards to driving within comfort zones. To expand on my comment about the car having much more in it, it is more to do with me than the car. I’m definitely driving within my comfort zone at the moment. In an ideal world I’d have a big enough budget to...

I can assure you that the RF40 is a very capable track car right out of the box. My car is basically standard right down to the street tyres, emissions-legal engine and the “under-developed” rear geometry. But I gave some fire breathing track cars a real run for their money as can be attested in...

The series is a parity sport and not really a production car series. The only thing that remains from the production cars is the body and this is what most of the critics seem to complain about. A lot of effort has gone into making these cars equal though and they have got it pretty right. I...

Paolo, This formula of racing has taken the profile of Australian motorsport from the fringe to the third most popular sport in Australia. It has its critics but you can’t ague against its popularity and commercial appeal. The next race on the calendar is the Bathurst 1000 endurance race. Not...

Ron, I might be telling you something you already know. Anti-dive blocks (tucked over the front sway bar) transforms the TR7/8 from a pig into a very refined handler. Talking from experience having campaigned one for a year at club sprints a few years ago. The modification is so common that the...

Standing at the top of “the hill” at Mount Panorama Bathurst, I watched Peter Brock drive that Commodore through Skyline in the wet like it was on a string to come from behind and take a victory. It will forever remain etched in my mind. A sad, sad day. Peter Brock was an icon and the face of...

From memory, what appears to be a sway bar (roll bar) is the front section of the lower wish bone. I don't remember there being a sway bar at all, but that may have just been removed at the time. The "strut" does not connect to the upright. It enters the wheel arch from the rear and then...

FYI. The pics were taken at an open day and a technicians assured me that most (if not all) of the components on show were not the latest spec, hence I don't think that I would be giving away any secrets by posting these.

The rules define which rear diff is to be used (even the ratio) and that it must be a live axle. The rules also define the rear suspension mounting points with some tolerance for adjustability and design. I'm very much guessing here, but I assume that these definitions also dictate that a watts...

A question to some of our more knowledgeable race car engineers. I had the opportunity to look closely at the front suspension of a V8 Supercar (local touring car) and noticed something very interesting. All rose-joints were mounted horizontally (with mounting-bolts vertical rather than...

that lasted seven years

Pete, I can’t comment on what was written in a paper on the other side of the country, but I can assure you that what is written above is a twisted version of what was reported here in Melbourne, where the story originated. I won't go through it word for word, but I will use the example of the...

I've got news for you. Even though John Howard has been described as an extreme right wing conservative, those words have never been published anywhere in the general Australian media. And believe me, if Howard or Costello had made all those comments, they would have been. Not that he didn't...