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Post by hydrolastic on Aug 12, 2019 3:22:17 GMT
Hello again, We entered the lemons race in the landcrab and the 1100 running both cars. The officials are getting wary of us though because they put Maxine the Landcrab in class B with the BMW's and Porsches. We couldn't argue with them and were resigned to last place or maybe a little better if other cars break down. This was not to be the case however. First though the 1100 was in a strange category because you can't or shouldn't put a 1963 mg 1100 in class B with the beemers. But we won class C last year so they let us stay in class C but with a 35 lap penalty. The race started and the 1100 was doing well everybody that drove it were doing 2:18's . Maxine however was a stunner on track and pretty quickly on, the times were dropping. On lap 88 Greg did a 2:09:9 a fraction under 2:10 and our first lap in the single digits. On the second day it became clear the we were climbing up in the standing and were somewhere halfway up in class B the 1100 lost the drop gears and we had to put the spare engine in. This took two hrs and the chance at anything. Maxine however was charging on and my turn was coming up. Got in and was surprised at the handling of Maxine it was kind of spooky and flightly It took a while but i worked out a 2:15. and i did my stint of almost two hours. at the end however i drove off track with severely faded brakes so i came in the bleed them turns out the pads were totally gone and we had to put some good used ones i had just to complete the race were were back out in short order and only lost two spots. We worked back up a few more spots but the teams drivers were going slower and slower with our fastest driver complaining about the handling while doing 2:20's being an endurance race its all about laps so we stayed out and went round and round checkered flag dropped and Maxine was 9th overall in 54 cars and 4th in class B! We did way better than we thought we could. After the race with the car at home i found the eccentric bolt for aligning the right front wheel was completely missing!! Attachments:
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Post by hydrolastic on Jun 20, 2019 4:47:30 GMT
Hello Andrew, Somehow it seems i have never talked about the engine in maxine. I originally chose this engine because the track on a mazda6/probe gt is 66 inches close to the austin 1800 of 63 i believe. Here in the US the version of engine is called the KLDE 2.5 liter 60 degree v6and it is a really cool engine with 4 valves per cylinder and DOHC and fuel injected obd1 system. This engine was apparently the first engine built by robots and was tested to a sustained 9000 plus sustained rpm. interesting thing about this engine is when they put it in the mx 6 and probe as the GT they put a set of cams that emphasized the low end off idle and as the rpm went up the power would just fall off at about 5000 rpm i had the car on a dyno (rolling road) and it made 143 hp at 5000. Then around the time we went to laguna i was saying to the team that we would be needing an engine soon as the blue smoke was getting worse. A couple weeks later it showed up and the team surprised me with a new engine but this was the JDM KLZE version of the engine i hooked it up and we ran the first race with it. It had a funny power band and it would come and go but not linear. I realized the engine needed a different ecu. i could not get one from the original car so we went megasguirt. In the 90's when the megasquirt came out there was a lot of development that went into the maps and such and the map provided was specifically for the KLZE. It also got rid of the cone type airflow meter VAF it is supposed to put out about 175 hp but i think with the headers cold air intake and better camshafts it feels like 200. The interesting thing about these cams is they just get more powerful as the rpms climb and it just pulls harder. We have done several races with this engine and since then we have installed a limited slip differential and Gregg and i made a rear sway bar. The new dirreza 3 tires all have contributed to our times lowering from the initial 2:30's @ the ridge to the 2:16 last year. Next month we will be there and i hope our times fall some more. One of the other cars is an actual probe GT and is called the PHO King. "Its their play on words." but they have always been faster than us. Last year the owner of the car came by our pit and talked to us and was saying his car's best time is a 2:06 and that he had his ferrari under 2:00 there. Yes it was as pretentious as it sounded but i am hoping the new engine and suspension mods can at least equal the PHO King. By the way we are continually asked what is the car we are racing?. Last year we had a porsche boxter claim we were blocking him on the course and we got to ask him why he didn't use his power to pass a "1970 Austin 1800"
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Post by hydrolastic on Jun 16, 2019 1:10:22 GMT
This race is a two day event and is normally 7 hours each day. With 6 to 8 drivers on our team we normally go an hour it takes about 8 minutes to fuel and change drivers. we have found that we can go about 1:50:00 or almost 2 hrs on a 15 gallon tank so sometimes we skip the fueling and run two drivers on a tank. We have in certain times run a single driver for two hours. Which is the maximum allowed. We found a clock in the car is the best way to keep track of time. Its not original lots of the cars have them but i am amazed its what a lot of people comment on.
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Post by hydrolastic on Jun 14, 2019 4:09:17 GMT
Hello again, Here is a link to Greg driving from inside the car. Count how many times he shifts to 4th gear but it just grinds horribly pretty funny in a way good thing you can find transmissions for these car all day long for a hundred dollars.
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Post by hydrolastic on Jun 14, 2019 3:13:21 GMT
Race Fans, Maxine was out and with several improvements we were able to improve last years time by many seconds at pacific raceways in Kent Washington ( BTW Kent was named after the british city. Its where the Hops for beer is grown) Maxine is getting faster every year and we hope to get to the next race in Shelton WA (the ridge) in this clip we had lost 4th gear so we would rev to 7000 and shift into fifth. flic.kr/p/2gdNE3w
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Post by hydrolastic on Nov 24, 2018 6:03:39 GMT
Hello, Still full of turkey from the thanksgiving dinner yesterday mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry. A couple of days off i have just been rebuilding a local mini racers 333 gearbox and decided to take out Gromit for a drive. The drive was great in a local route top speed was 35 mph. I will be taking it on the freeway soon and i will let you know how it goes. One issue though is the rear motor mount. Even though it was a NOS unit that came with the car. It has begun to sag and is starting to tear. The radiator is starting to touch the shroud. Really wondering if there hasn't been a better mount design. I wonder if there couldn't be a mount where the weight was on top of the rubber instead of using it in shear. Another thing I want to ask about is "what is the engine color supposed to be" i don't think this is an original color. Aaron
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Post by hydrolastic on Nov 21, 2018 3:06:52 GMT
Hello, It has been down towards freezing the last few days so i hooked up the battery. Pulled the choke knob and he fired right up. The best he has run since i have owned the car. The temp gauge has been just barely moving and does not tell you if its overheating. i replaced the sender unit and it now reads just on the high side of the N range. Drove around with no change in temperature. Oil pressure is good even at idle. Aaron
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Post by hydrolastic on Nov 11, 2018 21:49:58 GMT
Hello guys, Gromit is fixed, I disassembled and inspected the 2709 head reassembled it and put it onto the car this morning. I set the valves roughly to .014 at first but it was hard to start and was backfiring sometimes. So i set them loose at .016 and it ran smoother after a few time around the block i decided to go down to the autoparts store and get Gromit a gas can and some antifreeze / washer fluid. BTW the radiator is holding water nicely and just need a length of hose to get the expansion tank working again. Unfortunately i was starting it up before i decided to hook up the choke so i will get to see how it starts cold in the next few days. I also stopped off at the gas station and put in three gallons and the gauge moved from 1/4 tank to just under half. All of this is making it run better and better. Aaron
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Post by hydrolastic on Nov 3, 2018 23:11:15 GMT
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Post by hydrolastic on Oct 28, 2018 2:53:14 GMT
Hello, It was a nice day so i decided to get Gromit out for some exercise. Started right up and went out. In the last six months there have been these huge speed bumps installed to slow traffic down and discourage people driving through neighborhoods. I started to realize that the 1800 hardly even notices them what fun! Its now my favorite car for the city. Out for 20 minutes then noticed steam out from the hood. Overheated and the radiator is steaming out from the upper tank seam and the temp sender fitting. So i will take it out and take it to the radiator shop. Will post more when its fixed. Aaron
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Engine
Mar 31, 2018 3:46:41 GMT
Post by hydrolastic on Mar 31, 2018 3:46:41 GMT
Hi guys, as for someone who has shoehorned a different engine in a land crab TWICE there are some issues and drawbacks. The first time i put the ford V6 in the engine compartment i used all of the hydrolastic front suspension but i made the hubs the interchange and the ford driveshafts and bearings but it was steered with the austin steering rack. The wide tires and increased hp made for very heavy steering and after several hours in the race car my arms were very sore. Under race conditions the front displacer hoses blew out. The engine mounts and exhaust around the displacers were very tight quarters and i would not like to try and sort out that puzzle again. The second fitting i cut away everything under the windshield and attached a ford probe front clip. I agree... why? It removed a lot of the 1800 feel. In my case it was because the original engine was missing most of its bits and i needed as much HP as possible. The V6 configuration is a problem. It would have been a lot easier with an inline 4 cylinder or if there is a transverse inline 6 out there. But I would like to suggest something even better. Something that is done in the mini world and developed by my friend Greg Temkin. Install a 16v DOHC fuel injected cylinder head on the Austin 1800 engine. In the end you would have a cool, smooth idling, powerful (30% more HP at all rpms ) with the exact same feel of the Austin because everything is intact as original. The Hydrolastic system is the best part of these cars (i think anyways) and anything to preserve that should be the priority. Aaron P.S. With all that said though 200 HP floored in the 1800 is a lot of fun.
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Post by hydrolastic on Jan 19, 2018 0:26:40 GMT
Hello race fans, Back from the world famous Laguna Seca racetrack. Had a terrific race. But we blew it right off the start first lap. Disqualified for excess sound. Everywhere we have been sound is 100 db but even though the V6 sounds awesome its never been anywhere near the loudest cars volume. So it seemed safe. This weekend however the db was reduced from 93 to 90 db. So we had to go into Salinas and get a 27" glasspack. Borrowed a welder and were back on the track in 2 hrs and in last place. 60 cars but we worked our way up to 28th by the end of Sunday. We had a couple of foibles but learning the track including trying to wrap your brain on how to navigate the corkscrew. A turn like you never encounter in street driving so dificult to describe. The guys were "jumping" off it by the end of the weekend. Here is a link from our media guy to get an idea of what its like. This is me driving btw i was doing 2:10s while my crewmates were generaly faster 1:57being the fastest. Aaron
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Post by hydrolastic on Jan 1, 2018 23:06:53 GMT
Hello guy,s One thing that has really impressed me is how well the rear wheel bearings have held up. With the 225 45 16 sticky tires and spaced out alloys, and high speed corners. I know i just jinxed it. But since the 1800 was never sold in the states there are no spare bearings here. I do know that there were interchangable parts. What other cars were the rear bearings used on? I have access to autosport here in Seattle and they have a surprising amount of NOS items. I think i need the part numbers for the inner and outer bearing they may be able to cross refence the numbers to a TR6 or equivelent car sold here. or maybe you guys know what other cars the rear bearings were used on? BTW i do have a spare used set i plan on bringing with me to the next race. But i would like to try and get a new set. Aaron
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Post by hydrolastic on Dec 24, 2017 0:42:01 GMT
Hello and Merry Chistmas. I have a few days off, So spending time on Maxine. Time for a new engine! The old engine was still strong but was showing signs of wear I wanted to replace it while it was still in good enough shape to be the spare . Decided to upgrade and will be putting in the strongest version of this engine for a 40 hp increase. KLZE with a megasquirt standalone. Next race Laguna Seca 1/13-1/14 2018 Attachments:
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Post by hydrolastic on Oct 13, 2017 23:38:41 GMT
Hello Guys, Video of our wacky racing here at silversleeves racing.(begining) Our theme this year was "Mr pickles used cars" We were given a 35 lap penalty. Our landcrab ran better than ever with no breakdowns. The 1100 suffered a fuel pump problem we fixed it in twenty minutes. its at 10:50. The hornet was its usual twincam self and except for hitting the wall and being out for an alternator wire issue... it still was 5th . We pride ourselves with running British cars reliably. Everytime we passed a mustang or camaro (and corvette) it seemed the drivers would do a double take. Priceless. Not the 1100 but the Hornet and landcrab can do it pretty effortlessly. Here it is.
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