G-limited soon to be an MR2GR

Hi all.
New to the forum, so figured I should put up some photo and some back story.
 
The car is 1994 G-limited, I bought it off a customer for $1500 with a blown head gasket in 2013.
The whole point of it was get into the local sprint races and Hill climb.
 
After pulling the head and having it tested we found it had gone soft in the area the gasket blew, The cheapest way out was a used engine which came from a  JDM Celica.   One good thing that comes with that is you can mix and match the alternator and crank pulley from the two engine and reduce the drive ration down.
For 2014 we literally raced it how we got it, on the mismatched tyres with full interior for the first half of the hear. the only money spent was on the brakes. We fitted Supra/RX8 rotors with DeltaV adapters.
 
In the second half of 2014 we started stripping the car to go faster, which worked but we were still 2 seconds off the class pace.
This year we are running on Federal RSR tyres and we dropped a bit more weight and that has put us on the pace with the front runners, namely a Datto 1200 ute with a seam welded body, coil overs and an L20B engine (two drivers in the car) and a Datto Stanza with a decent engine and pretty much just a drivers seat.   There is also a late model Lancer creeping up in the times too.
That about does it for any competion in the class, the upto 1600 class and the AWD class hold most of the cars with a few V8s aswell.
 

 






 

Where are you based?
 

B24
Where are you based?
 

Townsville mate.  

B24
For springs and shocks, I did run the Tein at first. These are cheap and a great shock/spring. the other great option is the inverted coilover. Both of these come with (about) a 4kg front spring but these do cause the rear of the car to pitch causing the rear to feel loose. You can disconnect the rear swaybar then fit a 1.5 diff which will settle it down. The other trick is to increase the front spring rate. The SW20 which ran in the Production car series in the 90's ran 10kg (on proflex coilovers) all round with slick tyres. 
I would not bother with the offset ball joint as it was 'vague'. There are adjustable camber/caster plates which are far better options. Do not use 'crash bolts'.
 

HSD coil overs come with 6kg front and 10kg rear,  supplier will change the springs for $120 before delivery.
That car has crash bolts at the moment. But I'm looking at ways to get away from them. We managed 2.5neg camber but it needs more. Went with 1degree on the rear but that also needs more, we stopped at one because one of the tow adjusters was seized and it was a balance between getting some camber with out to much tow so we could get the car on the track.

I have no racing next month and have fixed the tow adjuster,  Trying to sort out castor adjustment during the month and getting the alignment done again before the next meeting.  
I'm going to try -3deg camber front with more caster (unsure how adjustable that is going to be) and 2mm total tow out.
Rear will go to -2.5 camber and zero tow, from -1 camber and 2mm total tow in.

The rear is loose when the body rolls because the rear wheels are going into positive camber.
Hoping to improve turn in with the tow out,   the camber change with the castor change should help stop the front going into positive camber (or close enough to it that the tire is rolling under and loading up the outside shoulder)

B24
I understand a track is very close to approval up your way.

Yeah, there was universal agreement on the land and all enviro and feasibility studies were all good.
The sticking point was an agreement on land from years ago that has since been encroached by housing.
The town planners pushed for no lease on the new land until the State govt and local council sorted out the hand over of the previous land.

Last week Council voted unanimously to remove that clause from the lease agreement.  Should have a formal lease on the new land with in months and there is plans in the works to get sand drags and a rally loop in ASAP to start running events to get some money coming in.   Seems though that Drag racing is getting first dibs, which kind of makes sense as there are a lot of cars in sheds waiting for a new track.

It will be a few years before the Circuit is build, but it will be nice to get on to a real track instead of the Go-Kart track we currently use.
 
I have been looking for adjustable strut tops,  These http://suspensionconcepts.com.au/ are all I can find.  I notice they are the Aust Spax dealer too.

Jeff is a huge part of the push for the track.  He'd know who you were talking about if you asked him about Brad with grey MR2.
The RX7 always turns heads,  It's not a very pretty car at the moment but the LS exhaust note always gets peoples attention.    The Kart track isn't suited to big HP cars, it will be an awesome car to see on a real track.
My own car only gets two gear changes a lap, Up the third and back to second on the front straight, the rest of the lap is all second gear.
 
I'm finally managing to find the right people/companies it seems.  
Drag racing is huge up here and all the workshops/performance shops focus on drag racing and street cars, so it's frustrating me a lot.  Anyone that races anything with corners has to go it alone basically.
Half of the fun for me is modifying car so it's not all bad, But I'd at least like to be able to buy stuff like rod ends over the counter and be able to get advice that is relevant instead of being based of drag racing and speedway.
The best you can get for over the counter rod ends are industrial types from places like Statewide Bearings.
For castor adjustment I'm looking making from adjustable tension rods using 5/8 chromo rod end and chromo tube with a bracket bolted the stock control arm.   Like the tension rods in the RacerX replacement lower arm/tension rod kit.  The sticking point is wall thickness on the tube,  I'm not sure how thin it can be in the threaded section.

B24
You do not need to go past 2.5 for a road spec tyre.

That doesn't make sense to me. 
Everything I've read says camber at roll is what we are looking for, static camber is the result of the camber gain/loss from the suspension geometry and the roll in the body.
I would also think that the castor angle would effect the amount of camber needed with the more neg camber gain as you increase castor angle.
so the static camber for your car would need to be different to my car given the same tyre due to my car still having the soft factory parts.
And what works for me now would not necessarily work with stiffer springs and better shocks.

Happy to be proven wrong though.

Have done a deal with a bloke I know in the panel shop near my workshop.
I replace the starter in his Falcon ute. (he supplied the new starter)
He is going to take the MR2, take all the paint of the seams in the door opening and spot weld between all of the factory spot welds.
There shouldn't be more than 15mm between any pair of spot welds.