Lancer is the answer! What was the question?

Well, that went well.

Today was the Light Car Club of Canberra’s 4-hour. El Wifeo, Petey and I were entered in the Lancer.
We ran the car on old A050 tyres because they were going to die of old age otherwise.

Qualifying was fine, with the #351 Pulsar ahead of my 64.1 with a 63.9. Then Pete set a 63.8 and followed it up with a 63.6 putting us on pole.

The car was much nicer to drive with not-warped brake rotors, and the good tyres were ridiculously forgiving.

So, onto the race start… it was a non-event: Pete lead from the start, and pulled away from the pack without trouble.
I drove the second stint and lapped up to second place by the end of the stint…

El Wifeo continued the trend and kept the Lancer the fastest car on the track for her stint.

We were five laps up by lunchtime.
At lunch, we went to swap the tyres front-to-back, but discovered one of the tyres that came off the front had started to delaminate, so we fitted the Toyos off the rear of the Mirage to the rear of the Lancer.

This slowed the car down on the restart, as it developed a bit of lift-off oversteer. We were still the fastest car on the track, but had to work harder for it.

So yeah … we ended up winning by 7 laps.

Feeling very pleased right now, but the car needs to be faster for the Deputy Four Hour events. It might actually be ok if it does 65 second laps on cheaper tyres but it should definitely be under 63.00 on the A050s.
Time will tell.

Today was a good day.

With much crappier tyres than we usually run, I finished 5th outright and 2nd in class with a best of 64.4 seconds.

But what makes it a good day is way The Boy’s driving improved through the day.
He started off with a solid 71.high after the first session.

Then he over-drove like a teenager in his second session and went slower. This included an incident with another car where the other junior driver looked like he was letting The Boy pass… which resulted in a rush of blood from The Boy and he made a mess of the corner and the two cars contacted.

The Subaru was almost entirely unscathed except for a scuff on the blue vinyl graphics.

Third session was where he started to get it together. MUCH smoother and more considered driving dropped his best time to a 71.low, but was now on the right track.

He kicked me out of the car after this, and continued to improve although he did learn a lesson about FWD lift-off oversteer in turn 3 when he has a spin.

His regular khanacross sparring partner Brodie’s BMW shat itself, and Brodie drove the Lancer.
The competition was great for both of them, with their respective fastest times tumbling throughout the afternoon - literally whoever was in the car last set the fastest time between the two of them.

The Boy managed a 68.9 in his last session, which Brodie just pipped with a 68.8, and then beat more convincingly with a 68.4.
Unfortunately for The Boy, that was the last session of the day, and he didn’t have the opportunity to try to equalise.

I think Brodie finished 16th outright, and The Boy was 19th, from a field of 36 - fantastic work from both of them in their first competitive drives on tar.

The Lancer ran faultlessly all day, and having the two teenagers driving it is exactly why it was built. Their times would have been perfectly competitive at the LCCC 4-hour, but neither of them will be old enough to race in it for 7 months and 15 months.

Actually dragged the Lancer out of the shed yesterday!

The LCCC event is on in four weeks and I figured that I should see if the car still works.

I turned the battery isolator back on, turned the key and it started immediately and idled perfectly! That was nice.

Less nice is that the Fullriver battery has some very unattractive bulges in the case. Not sure how this has happened while sitting around disconnected…

Along with the boring prep work like swapping tyres on rims and changing the oil and filter, I fitted a rear sway bar.

There has been a bunch of inconclusive talk about fitting the rear sway bar from a CH Lancer.

I had one, so this is how I did it.

First up was to make a bracket for the driver’s side. There’s two holes with captive nuts in each chassis rail, so they were the obvious place to start.

I started with the driver’s side, using some 65x5mm flat bar, simply because I had some in the shed.
The M8 bolts are actually threaded into the bracket, just to make them captive.

Passenger’s side ended up being pretty straightforward. Used one of the CH brackets turned around and it was very close to being in the correct spot - but only one bolt hole lined up and it held the swaybar too high.
Welding some more of the flat bar to the bracket both provided a second mounting hole and lowered it.

Painting the brackets…
Note the sides added to the driver’s side bracket to increase the stiffness of the bracket.

Then the mounts to the control arms.
I flipped the links from inside the swaybar to outside, to slightly improve its motion ratio (ie: make the swaybar more effective).

Interestingly, the links are identical to first generation Volvo x40 rear swaybar links but are 5mm longer. Having a spare pair of x40 links gives me a degree of freedom if I need to change the angle of the bar.
I also made the brackets able to be flipped over for the same reason.

The exhaust touched the swaybar.
I was actually surprised that it was even close to fitting, considering the exhaust was built without any consideration for a swaybar at all - I was incredibly lucky that I didn’t need to completely remake this part of the exhaust!

In the end, about 5mm of spacers between the link and the top bush lifts the end of the swaybar and rotates the swaybar enough to move it away from the exhaust.
I still “massaged” the exhaust with a hammer for some extra clearance.

Seems to be good, even back on the ground. I am not foreseeing any problems, but won’t really know until it does some laps on Thursday next week.

I have made this sound pretty simple, but I had to put a lot of brain power into making sure that the location of the bar was correct in space (ie: in all three planes), then to make sure that the ends were in the right place/angle, and then to make sure the links were at the right angles and that their mounts were in the right place/angle.

Took it out for a track day yesterday.
Old tyres, The Boy and Paulie as the main drivers (although Petey and I both did a few laps each).

The rear swaybar is definitely a step forward, but it wants to be stiffer.
Car is ridiculously benign to drive now, although we took a pair of tyres from “old and crap” to “destroyed” by not monitoring their condition carefully enough.

Simple version is that the rear swaybar massively reduces the need for negative camber on the front.

I want to try some stiffer springs on all four corners, but have completely forgotten what is in the car now.

I also bought this red 1.5 CE coupe a couple of weeks ago.
It was taken out by an XC90 turning right from the left lane (Volvo content! ).
Turned out that the seller is the sister of one of my rally mates and it had been her son’s car.

The parts damage was passenger’s door, front guard, bonnet, front control arm, front strut and front suspension upright. I had all the required parts in stock so that bit was easy.

The main chassis rail is straight, but the upper section has been bent over.
DIY car-o-liner:

I thought I got it right, but it needs to pulled a bit further yet - maybe 3 or 4mm.

I ignored it for a week or two, but found some motivation again today. Specifically, I had a go at tidying up the paint blemishes and scratches.
Lots of sanding with 800 grit, followed by 1200 grit and then 2000. Seems like it will come up very nicely.

This has been good for my motivation: I am now feeling motivated to paint the replacement panels on the next not-windy day.

It still needs a replacement tyre, but I am thinking that it will be easier to sell with the 17s that I have hanging around.

Things went better for the blue Lancer.

The tram was our usual D4H team of Pete, Paulie, El Wifeo and myself.
We qualified 3rd, and were running a very comfortable 3rd when the second placed car (my old silver Fiesta) faltered with power steering issues and then DNF’d with a seized PS pump.

Then we pretty much just drove around, keeping our noses clean.
Petey had an altercation with the leading Toyota 86 when he let the 86 pass and the 86’s driver had a blood rush and the two cars touched. The Lancer now sports a dent in the rear quarter panel, but the wheels all point straight.

The LHF wheel bearing got very noisy with about an hour and a half to go, but didn’t become a problem.

We added The Boy to the team late in the day, and despite some initial concerns about not being fast enough, greatly enjoyed the experience.

We ended up finishing 2nd, breaking our run of three wins in this event. We won by 7 laps last year, and were beaten by 5 laps this year, so I guess that’s a feather in our cap?!

Despite the mechanical carnage, it was a good day.