356 Race Car

[john ruston]

There are two Flat Four races being organized by Peter Auto this year.

The 356 can be raced in two hour Patrick Peter GT race at Spa..

Lots to do with them including FISCAR but they are standing starts rather than rolling.

[steve wright]

Brilliant, where do I find details John? We like standing starts as Ian is a drag racer so usually makes 3 or 4 places on the grid before the first corner

[steve wright]

ah, just found it http://www.peter-auto-racing.com/index. ... ang=dpx_uk looks brilliant!

[steve wright]

Well a bit of good news. I've just got off the phone from the HSCC because the 2012 results were posted. I couldn't understand the results so called the nice chap who looks after the Guards Series. Seems that you have to do a minimum of four rounds to qualify in the championship, so one of the MGB's who had finished higher up but only done three races was deemed ineligible and consequently I was moved up to fourth at the end of the year: result!

The winter rebuild continues apace. The engine is with Ian, who has most of it scattered amongst machine shops, cam grinders, etc. When we pulled the gearbox apart for a replacement hockey stick because of the broken one that ended Ian's last race we realised it was 7:34 tooth-count ring and pinion rather than the taller 7:31, so no wonder we were flat-out on some of the circuits. As a result we decided to keep it as a short circuit box as it's got 3A and 4A gears. I managed to locate a completely rebuilt box from a very reputable engine builder in the US for good money, so that will go in the car.

And I've been tapping away with the lightening stick: 7kg's with the removal of the passenger seat and harness, 0.5kg's with the swap from the standard licence plate light holder to smaller ones, removing the rear carpets took out 5kg's, and I've managed to take 1.5kg's out the engine lid, which was already a Carrera replica, by removing hardware and drilling the steel frame. I've also started on some of the mechanical components allowed under the reg's, such as brake drum internals: drilling them removed a few grams. Not much when you compare it with other weight saving measures but it's unsprung weight at the end of the axle, so it all makes a difference. In total I've managed to take 24kg's out the car so far, to get it right on the legal FIA weight of 780kg's. We'll put it on Paragon's race scales once it's all back together and put any ballast back into the passenger footwell, where it's nice and low and further forward than a lot of the weight that's come out the car.

It all helps...


60 minutes work for a few grams...


More next week....

[steve wright]

5 weeks until our first race and the car is still in a 1,000 pieces.... However, the engine has come together really well, the lightening stick continues to be wielded, the new gearbox is currently having the LSD installed, the drums have been drilled by Crosswaite and Gardiner who are local to me, and the interior is getting a repaint. Six hours of cleaning the interior down revealed a completely rust free and solid interior and no nasty surprises, but did yield half a kilo of sand, carpet adhesive and a mouse foetus. Now it's ready for paint...

[Lightweight_911]

Why are you bothering to paint the mouse foetus ?

[louis356]

Will the paint not ADD weight?

You are going to all this effort to save a few grams and then painting it with all that heavy paint!!

[steve wright]

Hi Andy, I did think about hanging the mouse foetus on the rear view mirror as a tiki style token but its all weight!

Louis, you don't know how much I agonised about the weight of the paint... but in the end I realised it had to be painted as the HSCC regulations stipulate a "high level of mechanical and cosmetic presentation" - they wouldn't stop me from racing but it would be frowned on, and this was the lightest solution I could think of

[steve wright]

Well it's been a frantic but productive few weeks. I've continued to find peace and tranquility in the drilling of holes in metal, Ian has screwed the engine back together, Pete at Cogbox has checked and assembled the gearbox, and Barry has worked his magic by "unbending" the previously wonky bonnet and installing new, safer bonnet pins. Crosswaite and Gardiner drilled the cooling vents in the drums, while PRS handled a number of requests for bits, the last being a Saturday last-minute plea for a new hockey stick, which Mike kindly obliged on by opening the garage after hours. And Martin Taylor of Taylor Machine Services has finished a set of beautiful solid mounts for the gearbox and a new, stronger accelerator pedal. Meanwhile Lee Maynard did a beautiful job porting the cylinder heads while Stephen "The Machinist" did all manner of balancing and lightening jobs for Ian in his pursuit of a sweet-running and high revving little boxer engine. Johannes of JPM fame worked out a completely new camshaft for us to get more lift and duration inside the confines of the 356 crankcase, and SPR Painters in Hailsham bare-metalled and did a beautiful job painting the lightened engine lid. Speaking of which, we've managed to take almost 35 kilo's out the rear of the car which I'm pretty happy about.

Here's a few photos at various stages to give you a sense of the work that's gone into the rebuild. First race next weekend at Donnington, yet another track we don't know, so it's going to be exit pit lane, and wonder which way the first corner goes. Madness really, but we've always been good at going in the deep end

Sweet looking little engine with every trick built in that Ian knows:


Drilled backing plates - saved a stack of weight in drilling these, the handbrake lever, the shoes and the drums themselves, and all unsprung weight at that!


One of the more interesting experiments we're doing, removing the oil cooler from the fan shroud. A great design for a road car but less so for a race car: not only does it shroud number three cylinder head so it gets hotter than the others, requiring retardation on the distributor for this cylinder, but it's also radiating heat into the engine bay at a huge rate, which is then sucked into the cooling fan.... Because our car has never seen more than 80 degrees at a race, despite being raced at high rpm, we thought we would try just the front oil cooler for a couple of races and see how we go. Also saves over 1.5 kg's when it's full of oil, right at the back of the car. If it doesn't work we'll simply re-instate it:


Another experiment, very much along the same lines. As engine rev's go up, so does the fan speed, to a point where it's being over-revved. Given we've now got a more efficient engine and cooling hasn't been an issue to date, we'll try the smaller pulley. Ian had the original balanced along with the rest of the crank assembly so we can revert to the old one should the need arise.


And while it's taken me moments to write about each of these items it's taken the individual responsible an absolute age to get the particular item repaired, developed, calculated, refined, lightened or built, and there are a host of heroic tales: Martin Taylor finished the gearbox mounts at 1.30am yesterday, Barry was still up at the workshop on Mother's Day when I left him there at 6pm, and Ian has done more hours bringing it all together than I care to contemplate.

So a huge thank you to everyone who has helped in getting the old girl back on her feet and ready for another season of racing; hopefully faster than last year.

Here's to another great season of racing!

[Mike Smith]

Steve,

There has always been discussion over the temperature of No 3 Cylinder

Did Porsche design the Air movement in the Fan housing knowing that they had blocked off some of the air to No 3 ?

Will you have upset the air flow in the Housing with the cooler removed ?

I do not know the answers, I am just playing devil’s advocate BUT you might want to stick some Temp gauges around the motor (in your spare time) and find out

If (?) it is a problem - you can always add a fake cooler in there, in the form of a drilled plate

Your statement about the heat it generates and disburses in the wrong area is VERY VERY VALID

The small crank pulley should work really well - ideal Oil temp should around 100 c

Just my £0-02 worth

It is great to see someone trying new stuff

[one-two]

One n in Donington Steve - see you there! Best wishes for the season, Robert

[Mike Smith]

Steve,


Save more un-sprung weight

I should have told you that we also have - Aluminium Spreader Bars for the rear Brake Shoes

LIGHTER (Heat Treated) and stronger than the cast ones

[neilbardsley]

Well it's been a frantic but productive few weeks. I've continued to find peace and tranquility in the drilling of holes in metal, Ian has screwed the engine back together, Pete at Cogbox has checked and assembled the gearbox, and Barry has worked his magic by "unbending" the previously wonky bonnet and installing new, safer bonnet pins. Crosswaite and Gardiner drilled the cooling vents in the drums, while PRS handled a number of requests for bits, the last being a Saturday last-minute plea for a new hockey stick, which Mike kindly obliged on by opening the garage after hours. And Martin Taylor of Taylor Machine Services has finished a set of beautiful solid mounts for the gearbox and a new, stronger accelerator pedal. Meanwhile Lee Maynard did a beautiful job porting the cylinder heads while Stephen "The Machinist" did all manner of balancing and lightening jobs for Ian in his pursuit of a sweet-running and high revving little boxer engine. Johannes of JPM fame worked out a completely new camshaft for us to get more lift and duration inside the confines of the 356 crankcase, and SPR Painters in Hailsham bare-metalled and did a beautiful job painting the lightened engine lid. Speaking of which, we've managed to take almost 35 kilo's out the rear of the car which I'm pretty happy about.

Here's a few photos at various stages to give you a sense of the work that's gone into the rebuild. First race next weekend at Donnington, yet another track we don't know, so it's going to be exit pit lane, and wonder which way the first corner goes. Madness really, but we've always been good at going in the deep end

Sweet looking little engine with every trick built in that Ian knows:


Drilled backing plates - saved a stack of weight in drilling these, the handbrake lever, the shoes and the drums themselves, and all unsprung weight at that!


One of the more interesting experiments we're doing, removing the oil cooler from the fan shroud. A great design for a road car but less so for a race car: not only does it shroud number three cylinder head so it gets hotter than the others, requiring retardation on the distributor for this cylinder, but it's also radiating heat into the engine bay at a huge rate, which is then sucked into the cooling fan.... Because our car has never seen more than 80 degrees at a race, despite being raced at high rpm, we thought we would try just the front oil cooler for a couple of races and see how we go. Also saves over 1.5 kg's when it's full of oil, right at the back of the car. If it doesn't work we'll simply re-instate it:


Another experiment, very much along the same lines. As engine rev's go up, so does the fan speed, to a point where it's being over-revved. Given we've now got a more efficient engine and cooling hasn't been an issue to date, we'll try the smaller pulley. Ian had the original balanced along with the rest of the crank assembly so we can revert to the old one should the need arise.


And while it's taken me moments to write about each of these items it's taken the individual responsible an absolute age to get the particular item repaired, developed, calculated, refined, lightened or built, and there are a host of heroic tales: Martin Taylor finished the gearbox mounts at 1.30am yesterday, Barry was still up at the workshop on Mother's Day when I left him there at 6pm, and Ian has done more hours bringing it all together than I care to contemplate.

So a huge thank you to everyone who has helped in getting the old girl back on her feet and ready for another season of racing; hopefully faster than last year.

Here's to another great season of racing!

re your smaller pulley. If the idea that that your fan turns less so you have less resistance or that the pulley is lighter so you have less weight? Maybe both? Has tried different types of fans? For example a less agressive fan, for want of a better phrase, what could be used on cool days?

[steve wright]

Neil the benefit is weight and fan speed but it's the latter primarily. There are two fans as far as I know, a 28 blade and a 16. We're runnin the former as that's what it came with, but I'd we don't suffer from overheating then we'll move to the 16 blade version as you're shifting less air and consequently creating less drag, which uses less power.

Mike, thanks for the pointer on the ally spreaders - I'll add them to the development list, and thanks for opening up the workshop late Saturday for the hockey stick; much appreciated.

On the oil cooler my personal view is that it's one of those classic compromises that any production engine has, in this case it's just beautifully thought out by Porsche, but it's still a compromise. An external cooler adds cost and complexity which I imagine Porsche would've shied away from. We're taking our cue here from VW drag racing where the cooler has long been ditched to get better cooling to number 3. Of course the heat build up is over a much shorter period but the compression ratios tend to be a lot higher (12:1) so the heat generated is consequentially higher. Either way we'll try it and see if it works.

Robert, looking forward to seeing you at the weekend but wondering if they race in the snow? (it's just dropped an inch overnight here in tropical Sussex so heaven knows what Donnington will be like....

[neilbardsley]

What time are you racing at Donnington? I'm up in the Midlands this weekend so might drop by to watch.