The weekend before last was my first SEMSEC race meeting of the year, there was an earlier event but I missed it because the car wasn't quite ready.

Before I get started on that a quick update on the car.

At the last meeting of last year, the long suffering K Series was starting to show the strain of 5 years worth of racing and track days without a rebuild. It was starting to spit out more and more oil into the catch tank and developed a slight 'chug'.

As mentioned in the K Series thread, I was running on standard pistons and they were well overdue a failure so we decided not to put off the rebuild any longer and risk an expensive blow up.

At the same time there was an announcement that there was to be a change in the class structure for the 'SEMSEC Saloon & Sports Championship', to make things fairer for people running less powerful cars. The current classes meant my weedy 130bhp 1.6 was up against some of the full house, 250bhp 1.8s.

The new class (for up to 1600s) would also include up to 1 litre bike engined kit cars which are capable of some quite impressive bhp/tonne figures so you can see what's coming

The original plan was to rebuild the engine with just a few tweaks, probably to the spec of Jo's megagrad engine. But, a friend of my brother's came along with a hardly used, rather nice spec cylinder head complete with cams and everything for a rather nice price.

To cut a long story short, to do the head justice I had to up the spec in other areas too so here's an off the top of my head list of what it ended up like:

- Aforementioned head, cams etc.
- Jenvey DTH throttle bodies with Bernard Scouse airbox
- Emerald ECU
- Forged pistons
- Fully floating little ends
- Lightened and balanced bottom end
- Uprated flywheel and big end bolts
- Lightweight R500 flywheel and clutch
- Other stuff I can't remember and wouldn't understand anyway.

It was put together by a couple of guys with outstanding credentials and with advice from K Series guru Dave Andrews so hopefully it won't be too much grief. I have though, been warned that it's still a K Series

All the running in was done on the rolling road in the end which meant two sessions but the end result was 187.6 bhp at 8000 rpm. It was still climbing at that point but I was told the max for the standard rods is 8300 so I thought 8000 would do for now.

This is taking longer than expected and I've got to pop out so more to follow.....

 

 

 

Pretty good figure - my Elise was 191 at 8300.

But it scared me every time I got to the limiter that it would let go.

Hopefully with a DVA spec. engine, yours will be reliable.

 

I can see how people get addicted to the numbers, I'm really curious about what it could make if it was allowed to rev more but that would mean shiny expensive steel things for the sake of a few bhp at peak and that money would be better spent elsewhere.

It's the numbers that come down that I'm really interested in

I was scared of revving it at all on the first outing but that didn't last long The problem is, it's so keen to rev it feels great so it's probably hiding it's fragility

 

While the car was in bits I took the gearbox off to be stripped down and checked over, like the engine, as far as I'm aware, this hadn't been looked at for about 5 years either.

It turned out it needed quite a lot doing but it was still a relatively inexpensive exercise.

Apparently the 6 speed will go for a long time without needing attention at the old power level but I've been advised to get it checked out yearly with the new engine. Not really a problem as it's so cheap if you don't let a small problem turn into a big one.

Aside from lots of small things I've long since forgotten about, the rear shocks and springs were replaced as a precaution and because the front suspension is almost brand new following my off last year.



It's first outing was a Lydden Hill test, sorry, track day a few weeks back.

It was quite a nervous affair, I didn't have my brother to hold my hand as he was very selfishly off doing some motorsport of his own, I was scared the engine would blow up on the trailer if anyone looked at it in the wrong way, or it if it did make it to the track it would try to kill me etc.

After some pretty appalling driving and lines in the first couple of sessions I got braver and started to give it some proper stick.

I was disappointed at first because it didn't feel a lot different, I knew it was going to be cammy but there didn't seem to be much difference under about 6000rpm.

I've since realised that's it's so much smoother than before it's actually quite deceptive.

It's more torquey everywhere and just goes mental over 6000. Obviously the aim is to keep it on cam all the time but as I learnt with the S2000 it's not always as black and white as that, especially not somewhere as technical as Lydden.

It also sounds like a race car now

I wasn't able to do any timing that day so just spent it getting used the way it drives now.

One of the things I found myself doing is braking way too early at the end of the "straights" because the car was accelerating harder (as in it was actually still accelerating ) when the corners were coming up. I suspect I'm still doing it now, but I'll sort that out over time.

By the end of the day I'd also solved my dilemma about whether to go for wider tyres at the rear.

I'm very reluctant to make things bigger and better at the expense of feel especially after my tyre change from Avon CR500s to Yoko A048Rs at the end of last year. That actually turned out to be a very good move for racing (cheaper and faster) but it would be the CR500s if I were only doing track days.

The back end seemed to be OK to begin with but all of a sudden, towards the end of the day it turned into an oversteer monster, absolutely brilliant fun but no good for racing.

I thought it might just be me getting too cocky but when I checked the tyres, I'd destroyed a one meeting old outside rear in less than a day. I was told that might happen. I ordered some bigger wheels and tyres.

Race report in a bit.....

 

interesting stuff, keep it coming

 

I bet Andy was loving the fact that you were changing things again mate

 

Your bank balance, Graham?



I must say the mysteries of developing a bestter breathing NA engine intrigue me. How different does the engine sound (clearly an important issue when racing...) ?

 

He doesn't exactly discourage it, in fact he seems to enjoy spending my money, apparently I need a sequential box now!