The latest way to ensure I have no spare time or money...

It's for the X3 circuit racing series, plus I will do some Rallycross in it.

It needs a few changes to meet the X3 regs - replace the extractors and slotted brake rotors with standard parts, mostly.
It's done a 50.8 at Marulan which I was very happy about - the similar spec Excels that turn up to Cheap Car usually struggle to get below a mid 52. But then some bloke one the Excel FB page says he's done a 50.2 in the wet...

And then the gearbox broke. Every gear is a neutral and there are ugly noises from it (remember in the Terminator movie when the bones get crushed during a flashback - sort of like that).
Before the breakage, it was a crappy box - lots of slop in the shifter (even by Excel standards!), and an empty spot in the gate between 3rd and 5th. We think the driver at the time might have found a matching spot between 1st and 3rd which actually engaged both gears at once. Post mortem will give some more clues.
This sounds interesting!

Is it a 12v or 16v?

I can try to track down the 12v parts car I used to have, the gearbox was good and it had a standard manifold.
Thanks for the offer, but I think one of the khanacross ones will be donated to me after the khanacross this weekend.

Mine is a twin cam.

Awesome!
You'll have a HEAP of fun with it!
18 days later
I saw a few of them running around Syd Motor Sports park the other weekend. They looked great and sounded better then the Suba-ota 86's

Because that's important.

And Underdog. Underdog is the best dog.

Giggady.
9 months later
Long overdue update.

Wasn't the gearbox that broke, it was the clutch plate. Apparently a much too aggressive clutch drop on a down change caused the plate to buckle and destroy itself.
Replaced it with a near-new clutch from my GE Sigma motor.

Also bought and fitted a set of lightly used MCA Purple coil overs.
And ditched the extractors and replaced them with a stock manifold and downpipe to meet the rules.

And on Thursday we took it to a track day at Wakefield Park.

It went really well. The MCAs are great - they just work. Made some improvements to handling by fiddling with the alignment - I'm sure that there are further improvements to be had, but nothing stands out as being wrong.

Clutch slurs on the 3rd to 4th gear change, so I will need to bite the bullet and buy a decent one.

The shifting of the new box was no better than the old box, but the rubber shifter cable bush fell out at one stage - I rolled from the back straight almost (almost!) all the way back to the pit garage. After bodging it back up with a big washer, the shifting was much better.

Also spent quite a bit of time trying different lines and pushing myself to drive better - both were reasonably successful, but still more to be had.

Ended the day by punching out a succession of mid-high 1:18 lap times, with the best being a 1:18.44 which would have put me about 2/3rds of the way down the grid at the most recent Excel round at Wakefield.
I am happy with this.

The Excel lap record is 1:15.3, so I will need to find about two seconds to put myself in the fast group. At this stage, I feel like those two seconds should be relatively easy to find - but time will tell! :)

Next step is CAMS logbook and me to get proper racing licence.


8 months later
Overdue update: I sold this, as the result of a rethink about what I want to do, what I have time for, what I have enthusiasm for, and how I want to achieve it all.

It is still in NSW - was purchased sight unseen by someone who knew a previous owner.
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