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 Rob Roy Hillclimb (currently 6,276 views) |
| Phil Smethurst |
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Medium Member
Posts: 147
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| Round 1 of the Victorian hillclimb championship and got the Mini Marcos out for a run. 05:30 start to drive the car 1.1/4 hours to Rob Roy and the car generated heaps of interest with the officials and spectators and fellow drivers and a good day was had. completed three consecutively quicker runs the last two with badly bogged starts so should have been 2 seconds quicker realistically in run 4 but never got there as the heavens opened in biblical proportions and we bailed to try to drive home. The car copped a beating driving home in a torrential downpour and freak hail storm but not too much damage and nothing that stopped us making it home eventually so plan is to venture out for round 2 in February. |
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| Phil Smethurst |
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Medium Member
Posts: 147
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| official photographers picture. |
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Reply: 1 - 8 |
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| Phil Smethurst |
Posted on: September 29th, 2020, 22:47:36
 Attachment: in_the_paddock.jpg - 66.31 KB (3696 views) |
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Hurrah.....after the rest of the 2020 season was cancelled it looks like the 2021 season is planning to kick off in January - Covid dependent of course - so we might be able to give the MM another run.
Watch this space! |
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Reply: 2 - 8 |
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| Graham Bichard |
| Posted on: October 3rd, 2020, 14:35:17 |
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Maximum Member2
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Fingers crossed for you Phil. Car looks super shiny in these photos too.
Can I ask - what have you done to the bonnet? It looks something like what Ferrari have done (S duct?) to extract heat from the radiator. |
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Reply: 3 - 8 |
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| Phil Smethurst |
Posted on: January 4th, 2021, 04:03:12
Attachment: mm_bonnet.jpg - 100.33 KB (1259 views) |
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Sorry Graham with all the Covid madness and personal excitement at the kids returning to school and things returning to some sort of normality here I've not logged onto the forum for ages. My car initially seemed to suffer from overheating. I had a Mk1 Metro rad and an aftermarket fan (turned out to Chinese Ebay rubbish). Last Christmas I fitted the club ally rad and twin fans but thinking i may still struggle I decided to butcher the original bonnet mould and make a hot air outlet directly from the rad to come out over the bonnet.
It turns out that the fans were the issue and hence at Rob Roy last year the car sat in the line up in full sun and 30+ ambient and never looked like getting hot staying at 75-80 with fans cutting in out. I'll post some pictures of the new bonnet |
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Reply: 4 - 8 |
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| Phil Smethurst |
Posted on: January 4th, 2021, 04:05:18
Attachment: mm_bonnet_2.jpg - 33.03 KB (2759 views) |
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Bonnet shape can be seen better here before I painted the stripes on at 6pm the night before the hillclimb!.
Not doing much better this year......engine has been out for a road cam and road head swap and its not even been run yet and Rob Roy is 2 weeks away!. |
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Reply: 5 - 8 |
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| Phil Smethurst |
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Medium Member
Posts: 147
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After a few frantic nights (the clutch seal failed Thursday night) and running the car and filing a needle until 7:30pm Saturday night, yesterday we made it to Rob Roy Hillclimb for Rnd 1 of 2021. quite cold and a bit slick early on so 1st run was a second slower than the best last year but each consecutive run was quicker and ended up with a time just shy of 4 seconds quicker overall compared to last year, which I was quite pleased with after de-tuning the car to more road spec but it works better as package now and I can get it off the line better.
Only down side was the MG car club stuffing up my number in spite of registering #64 for the 2021 season so a dodgy sticky taped 72 was made up. All in all though a good day and a write up to go to Craig for the club mag in the very near future. |
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Reply: 6 - 8 |
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| Neil KilBane |
| Posted on: January 18th, 2021, 12:36:42 |
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Maximum Member2
just a little fine tuning left to do.
Location: Newtown Forbes, Ireland
Posts: 1,392
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Good man Phil.
Have you ever had the car on a rolling road ?
I've found that a session on the dyno with someone who knows what they are doing is money very well spent. |
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Reply: 7 - 8 |
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| Phil Smethurst |
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Medium Member
Posts: 147
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Hi Neil,
thanks. The only time the car went on the rollers was for initial set up/needle profile at Minisport in the UK. I then sat the car under a tarp for some years before bringing it to Oz. I sued a friends AFR wideband gauge to set the car back up here after I'd messed with the mixture whilst cleaning the carb out of old fuel etc and this showed Minisport did a great job with the needle initially. I was told it was a BBC needle but have just removed it after my serious de-tune and change from Kent 296 to SW05-07 to find it was a reprofiled BDL needle and this has now been seriously reprofiled by me last week whilst trying to get the car running properly prior to Rob Roy. I struggled to find anybody who even sold SU needles for the HIF 44 never mind sorting it on a rolling road. Its also horrendously expensive over here for a R/R session. Fortunately my own AFR wideband and a couple of different needles (not used!) saw it sorted at the last minute. Fortunately I have a 1/4 mile uphill road at the end of the street so it got a good working out on Saturday for 10 separate runs/reprofiles to fix the lean top end. It still needs a bit more work but it didn't blow up on Sunday and the recent mods (1-2-3 programmable ignition, Club rad and fans, better bonnet, more std head and cam) have made it a much more civilized car that can genuinely be driven properly on the road with no issues. It lacks a bit more torque and the 3.4 diff doesn't help for competition but the driver needs a heap more work before the car needs to get faster for now. Round 2 entry for Bryant park, Haunted Hills on 13th Feb submitted yesterday....followed by the 2nd Victorian Marcos meeting (at the same venue) the day after.....Craig's going to have more stuff for the mag and hopefully I'll have a car still in 1 piece and ready for Round 3?!. Hopefully attached is a taste of what was running including this superb conversion of a Volvo 240GL with Corvette 6.0 LS3 motor. |
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Reply: 8 - 8 |
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