SVX gravel rally car...surely not? Absolutely...

[TomsSVX]

Not way rich but on the rich side... Bring those AFR's up to about 12.7 for an ideal mix... You could get some more out of it running into the 13's but not worth it IMHO

Tom

[dynomatt]

Thanks Tom,

Wondered if you guys had all given up on me.

I've knocked them up a bit...they now average around 12.7 which should be OK for tomorrow. Given I'm yet to put the good engine together, I'm hesitant to throw too much at tuning. Save it for that one.

Thanks,
MAtt

[TomsSVX]

Originally Posted by dynomatt

Thanks Tom,

Wondered if you guys had all given up on me.

I've knocked them up a bit...they now average around 12.7 which should be OK for tomorrow. Given I'm yet to put the good engine together, I'm hesitant to throw too much at tuning. Save it for that one.

Thanks,
MAtt

No worries on too much timing really... The EG33 does not have a fine line for det on an NA engine... Torque just stops climbing once you have reached optimal time... Don't get me wrong, you can still cook one, just no real fine line

Tom

[oab_au]

Originally Posted by dynomatt

More than 14 hours and no comments.

You guys are either way too hard to please, or have lost interest.

Either way...tomorrow's shaping up to be a great event.

The car feels strong...very strong. Not sure if my butt dyno needs recalibrating, but driving it last night in the cool air, and gee it went hard and sounded fantastic. Harder than I'm sure it's gone before.

This is just with headers too...can't wait to get my heads and ITB's on because that should step it up a few notches.

Here's hoping I stay cool tomorrow...if I do, then it's on.

M

Looks fine to me Matt, just keep it out of the trees.

Harvey.

[legacyau]

good luck with it matt , sounds awsome

cam

[NeedForSpeed]

Have a great run
Ron

[dynomatt]

Here's a photo.

Hoping for some video.

We got through 5 of the 10 stages. Had a heater core blow up on the second stage, and then head gasket failure towards the night.

We set some respectable times in an essentially stock car. So I'm happy.

Matt

[Dessertrunner]

It looks good Matt, you have a bit of camber on the front wheels.
Tony

[dynomatt]

And some video.

The first one is a bit long (skip to 1:03 to see it moving properly)
http://vimeo.com/11592042

The second - sounds like I backed off a fair bit...
http://vimeo.com/11593215

[dynomatt]

SO I thought I might pull together a bit of an event report for you guys.

In the leadup to the event, I'd made the decision to only run the car with the headers. The ITB's are sitting there on the spare motor, but I thought it's best to go with little steps.

Tony very kindly loaned me the DMS again, which without them we wouldn't have got very far. He also made me the 45mm thermostat cover.

So it was going to be a test of the enlarged bottom hose and a test of the new headers.

Turns out a bottom hose from a common Australian ute fits perfectly with some cutting and hacking.

5km into the first stage I knew the cooling problem had been solved. The car didn't budge over halfway which was fantastic. And in between stages, it sat nicely at a sensible temperature although a thermostat would help.

We were consistently running up to about 6500rpm (I'm guessing without a working tacho) and it sat there for a long time. The longest stage we did competitively was about 16km, and it was perfect. The headers got hot near my legs though, so I'm going to be fitting some heat shielding under the transmission tunnel to keep the header heat away.

The heater core split on the second stage. That was a bummer, as without that, we would have been a top 5 contender. When it split, the first thing that happened is the windscreen went opaque. Hard to see out of when you're travelling at 150km/h. So we had to pull over. We then realised the toolkit hadn't made it into the car, so we had to run back to the specator point and borrow a screw driver. We then used some dodginess with some sticks jammed into the ends of the hoses to get to the next road closure point where we borrowed about 5 litres of water and then got going again.

We couldn't get any proper hose to fix the problem, so my 1/2 inch drive socket extensions replaced the sticks (who knew that under pressure, pine sticks leak?) and cable tied them down tightly.

By that point we were out of the rally but were allowed to keep going last on the road. Unfortunately this means we started the last few stages behind a very slow Corolla.

On the third stage we caught him quite early in the piece, and he would'nt move out of the way. I was half tempted to test out the 5mph crash front bumper by giving him a bit of a nudge, but I didn't.

In the next two stages, we did some pretty good times. The car started to feel a lot better, and my skills started to come back.

AFter the 5th stage, we had another service break and found it had been using a bit of water, it also showed signs of a blown head gasket, so rather than risk getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a blown motor, we pulled the pin and drove it home.

You can see the results here...we set some 8th place times which I'm pretty happy with.

http://shannons-safari.rallytiming.com/

The next rally is in July. From there, I'm hoping to have the good motor in (heads, cams and ITB's) and a few other cooling system changes and give it another read hot go.

Matt

[svxistentialist]

Effing brilliant progress, that's what I say Matt.

Nice one.....

Joe

[JONES OFF ROAD]

Well done Matt, do you think you have solved the overheating for good?
I am looking forward to getting mine back on the track soon!
Steve

[dynomatt]

Thanks Joe,

Yes Steve, I'm pretty confident that it's solved. I guess a true test will be a rally in February when it's 35 outside, not the 25 it was yesterday.

Matt

[SilverSpear]

Nice going Matt! The videos ROCK and your results are amazing!

[NeedForSpeed]

you've put so much time and effort into the car, it's great to see you having some big fun