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Old 05-08-2013, 10:52 PM   #1
Badger
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Talking Badger's Lantis Type R budget racer.

Hi all,

Thought I'd put this up here as it could be of interest to a few of you.

Over here in NZ we have a race series called the 2kCup about to start up. General rules are that you have to buy a car for NZ$2000 or less and race it with no major modifications. Rules state that the car must be older than 2000 with an engine size of 2000cc or smaller. No forced induction is allowed.

Cars aren't allowed to be modified beyond the following:

- Tyres are free, although must retain original tyre sizes and have treadwear rating above 200 (so no specialist track tyres), original wheel sizes must be retained.
- Springs are free.
- Brake pads are free. Discs/callipers must remain stock
- Cars must run a fire extinguisher in accordance with MSNZ rules.
- Cars must run full interior although a race seat and harnesses are permitted for safety (although not compulsory) as is a roll cage.
- Airbags may be removed, weight cannot be stripped out beyond removing non-functional items or removing optional extras (like spoilers, fog lights etc) provided the same model car was available without them.
- Worn parts can be refreshed with OEM parts.

There's little point in spending much on the car as the organisers can exercise the right to buy the car off you, outright for $2500.

With the car of choice being the SW20 MR2 amongst most of the more serious guys and the odd Honda DC2 Integra (which were suspiciously cheap!) my mate Richy and I thought we'd think outside the box and get a Lantis R as we wanted a sweet V6 howl, and if we couldn't be the quickest car out there we'd be the best sounding! We weren't the only ones as a bloke called Simon (Rolly on here) is doing the same.

We were a bit late getting off the mark with our purchase and have missed some of the test rounds but aiming to be on the grid at the end of September.

A month or so back, we bought this,a car we affectionately christened "the cockroach":



It's a 1995 Lantis Type R, with 25X,XXX km on the clock. It's a trade-in special and cost us the princely sum of $1000. It's in good(ish) mechanical nick and okay apart from some average paintwork, a cracked windscreen which prevented it from attaining a WOF. The car came with remnants of stockings stretched over its indicators and rear lights and evidence of a removed big stereo install, indicating that it had been a phat ghetto ride recently. It also STUNK like an ashtray, and had obviously been smoked in regularly.





Oooooh yeah....yummy. Someone spent a lot of time grooming this car at the caryard!


So the first task was to get it up on the hoist and have a look underneath and see what we had to play with. The car looked in overall good nick, but a vibration under acceleration indicated knackered inner CV joints. We replaced the right hand driveshaft and CVs as it was falling apart and the vibration remained.... so we had the left-hand one (which was unavailable new) rebuilt.


We also replaced the shocks with new Monroe Reflex OEM-replacement struts and Tein SpecS springs for a slightly more sensible ride height and firmness. We also went on the scrounge at a wrecker's to scavenge some bits of missing and broken trim. When we got it back on the ground it was already looking a bit better!



More to follow....

Last edited by Badger; 06-08-2013 at 12:31 AM.
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Old 05-08-2013, 11:26 PM   #2
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Next step was to remove the air conditioning. It was completely non-functional and the bearings on the compressor were a bit grumbly... so off came the front...


And out came a pile of useless crap...


Gear oil was replenished with something that'd be kind to the LSD... Some Motul FF-LSD Type II I had lying about.
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Old 05-08-2013, 11:26 PM   #3
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Now, the next thing we wanted to tackle was the sunroof. The other Lantis-R in the series was a non-sunroof model, as most of them seem to be. Also, with the lower headliner of the sunroof car, fitting inside with a helmet is a bit of a squeeze so we thought we'd like to remove it, and help remove a bit of weight.

The seats and carpets all came out of the car for cleaning to try and de-cigarette them, so figured we'd make a mess while we were there and started pulling out the sunroof...


The idea would be to swap the sunroof out with a bonded-in carbon-fibre sandwich panel shaped to the roofline. Having never worked with fibreglass or carbon fibre myself before (at least not in terms of laying it up myself) I thought it'd be a cool way to learn, on a car I didn't care too much about if the results weren't 100% perfect.

With the seals removed, the roof was flush enough to lay-over with packing tape to enable the mould to pop off the roof once cured:



Then, layers of chopped-strand fibreglass were cut to rough size:


And then wetted out with PE Resin and laid over and rolled into a laminate:


An oil column heater in the car helps the resin cure in the mid-winter cold!


After a day's curing, I could pop the mould panel right off the roof, and here's what it looks like!


Now, because we were going to be laying up Carbon onto this mould and vacuum-bagging it down, we wanted the mould to be stiff enough no to distort so I took some Polystyrene off-cuts, some newspaper and some more fibreglass cloth and laid up a strongback on the rear surface of the mould, and again employed a heater to cure. The PE resin stunk out my garage and house something chronic! Awful stuff!


Once that was done, I cut up some carbon cloth to size as well as some 3mm CoreCell M80 core-foam I had in the form of off-cuts from my work. This would enable me to build a sandwich panel with a single layer of carbon either side.... stiff enough but very very light! So on with the carbon, foam and epoxy and here you can see me laying out the peel-ply onto the sandwich before placing the bleeder cloth and vacuum bag.


Once it was all vacuum-bagged up it was left to cure overnight:


Here you can see the carbon, still on the mould after the peel ply was removed. This is the underside of the panel. Only one flaw where our initial vacuum was too high and pulled the resin out of the cloth. This is just the underside though and of little consequence:


When we pulled the panel off the mould, we did have a couple of air bubbles between the top surface and the core foam. This was due to us not getting the vacuum distribution quite right. If it had been on a more important project I'd have re-made the panel, but I was able to back-drill through the underside and fill these air bubbles with epoxy, and strap the panel back to the mould to re-bond them. This worked a treat and although there are a couple of small tell-tale ripples in the final panel, it came out looking more than good enough for a $1000 car!

This meant we could finally junk the heavy sunroof:


Leaving "the cockroach" with a nice hole in the roof:


And here you can see the panel trimmed roughly and sitting over the hole. Here it still needs a final trim to size before being bonded in:


Once trimmed to size, the panel was stuck back onto the mould with double-sided tape. This allowed us to use the mould to position the panel flush with the roof. A couple of Lotus wheels to help with the necessary hold-down force and some tape to secure it in place and voilą!


The edges of the hole were then all sanded down to form a good bonding surface.

So followed a couple of hours inside the car, upside down laying strips of carbon-cloth pre-wetted with epoxy around the edge and the end result is rather successful I think!





The finish isn't 110% perfect but it's better than I thought I'd be able to realistically achieve, and it's very functional and light!

You can see that the panel matches the curve of the roof perfectly:




We're now going to fill in the slight gutter we left around the edges to blend it into the roof prior to a light buff of the panel then we'll blow it over with a coat of black and you'll never even know it ever had a sunroof

That's all for the moment
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Old 06-08-2013, 12:24 AM   #4
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And there i am, wishing my car had a sunroof
Nice project though
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Old 06-08-2013, 10:34 PM   #5
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Ha, ingenious!
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Old 06-08-2013, 10:56 PM   #6
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haha your the first person I know that took off their sunroof instead of installing one.
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Old 07-08-2013, 06:27 AM   #7
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I must be getting old as I found it draining even reading through each post & pic haha I know the steel sunroofs, complete with tracks & all for an MX6 are heavy.

Full marks for effort on the work you've done & all best with the race!
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Old 07-08-2013, 06:44 AM   #8
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If you think that was tiring and long to read, don't look at my other build.... it got slightly out of hand!

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/t...winter+Refresh
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Old 07-08-2013, 11:35 AM   #9
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Oh you evil bugger, I've just spent a couple of hours going through that thread. You should change your title to engineering pornographer.
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Old 07-08-2013, 02:55 PM   #10
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What can I say? I'm a bit of a perfectionist! In a way it's nice to have a car like our tatty Lantis to work on as I'm able to not be too fussy about how stuff turns out. On the Lotus only the best will do!
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Old 18-08-2013, 11:11 AM   #11
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"The Cockroach" had its first track-outing at Hampton Downs yesterday. It was just a trackday/shakedown session aimed at getting a baseline and seeing if we could/would break anything on the car.



We managed four sessions before we broke it, finding the radiator end tank seal wasn't up to the task. Also we're cracking the front strut tops quite badly so we'll repair/remake these.

So all in all, a successful day. The car ran well and demonstrated the kind of pace and consistency that should allow us to compete up the pointy end of the field! It's also shown up the weak points we need to address

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVkEJH_RM2I

Also, it's done 260,000km and didn't use a drop of oil! Brilliant!
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Old 18-08-2013, 02:16 PM   #12
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Sounds nice and the understeering was at least consistent.
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Old 06-09-2013, 12:27 PM   #13
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All road legal as of today!

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Old 06-09-2013, 03:34 PM   #14
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Nice! Now wear your helmet every time you drive it to mess with traffic.
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Old 21-09-2013, 06:40 PM   #15
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Been chipping away at the car the last couple of weeks. Just finished making some custom brackets to mount the race seat which should get us nice and low in the car.

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Old 21-09-2013, 08:07 PM   #16
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Nice piece
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Old 22-09-2013, 05:50 PM   #17
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Got the seat and harnesses in today, so much lower in the car now which is great, and should hold me in nice and secure



This means we've just got a wheel alignment to go this week and we're all ready for Round 1 on Saturday

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Old 30-09-2013, 06:23 PM   #18
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Hi All,

Well we had a pretty interesting weekend, but it came out quite well. The conditions were tricky, being wet and changeable and with a massive grid of 46 cars, track space was always going to be at a premium. I managed to get 3/4 of a clear lap in a damp qualifying and managed to qualify second, which put me on grid 2 for the first race.

I got a good start and managed to lead for the first part of the race until it started to dry then the faster cars like the DC2 Integras reeled me in. Unfortunately suffered some panel damage when trying to slip under one of the DC2s after he outbraked himself and then turned right into me not expecting me to be there. I also had another nudge when I collected a Toyota Celica when putting a lap on him, that one was my fault in that he braked early and held wide as he passed the blue flags and I dived for the inside thinking he was letting me through... unfortunately he hadn't seen me and he closed the door on me and we touched.

Thankfully front guards are in plentiful supply around here although we'll just repair the ones we've got and buff them up! Nothing else damaged, just a scratch





Here's my footage from the first race, fighting back to second at the finish and narrowly missing out on the lead as the leader ran into issues at the line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2azA33_gztE

Then in the second race it was dry and the quicker cars were unable to be held back as they just had too much straightline pace for me and mugged me up the hill each lap. I fought as hard as I could though. I had another touch with a 205 who decided he'd not give me racing room, but it wasn't really a bother to me as it only crunched the guard that was already damaged from race 1.... the 205 was immaculate before he started... less so now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqWiczjdwq0

I ended up 6th which was the best I could do given the circumstances. Ended up third overall for the weekend, which may become second as there's rumours one of the cars ahead of mine is to be excluded from the championship for cheating... we will wait and see.

This coming weekend we'll pull the guards off and get to work with the hammer and dollies
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Old 30-09-2013, 07:04 PM   #19
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That was actually pretty good to watch! The lack of power really hurts you, i can see. Interesting that you make up so much of it in the corners.
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Old 01-10-2013, 03:49 AM   #20
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So what's the best way to tune the v6 without changing any parts?
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