well, 2 test days on and I can honestly say (tongue in cheek) this is the most unreliable car I have ever owned!!!
Oulton Park resulted in the diff bearing collapsing and the gearbox dumping its oil!
Luckily this happened just as the car pulled in to the pits, so no issues with the box internals, they will live to see another day in a close ratio v6 box somewhere, but playing safe, time to bin the diff.
Silverstone resulted in the engine putting a rod through the block, I have seen enough engines let go on race days and trackdays, and plenty of porkas catching fire, but I have never seen the amount of smoke that this produced, the silverstone wing, usually a visual landmark, was nowhere to be seen.
They say things come in three's, hopefully this is the last!
Massive thanks to the marshals, the old boy (retired) in charge of the crane/lorry was lovely and next year will be his 50th year in marshelling for motorsport, these guys are paid a modest wage for trackdays, but work as volunteers for race days/weekends and are very worth of thanks and gratitude, without the efforts of the marshals motorsport would either not exist, or only be a 'rich mans' sport.
Experience tells you when things go pete tong and the car looses fluid, get off the circuit as fast as you can (even coasting the thing) and head towards the nearest fire marshal if you can see one, certainly with this much smoke pouring, there was a potential fire hazard, in this case I was also lucky enough to pull up along side the recovery truck.
No loss of track time for anyone else because the car was well out of the way, happy days
The hole in the engine...the big issue with engines that blow their head gaskets is sometimes they get hydrolocked and kink a rod, quite often so minor it can't be measured, but the kink is now a weak point and on a stressed engine its only time until it fails, we think this may have been the case with this motor.
a bit of exhaust manifold porting before silverstone, what a way to weld, only rover could do it so badly, rather than weld around the outside, they weld the inside, thus reducing flow, its worth a couple of 'free' hp opening this up, and we all like free horse power!
I know this ones been done loads before, but it gets rid of that stupid parachute style mk2 bumper, smooths out airflow and tidies things up a little
and what's not been done before, and I not counting that crappy ebay stick-on vinyl, is a carbon fibre rear lip spoiler, many thanks to a Jamaican fellow and friend I know who still works carbon fibre bike parts and used to build carbon fibre canoe's so light you could lift them with your little finger.
we put a new box in after it failed at oulton, lucky enough to pickup a quaife straight cut gearset with a quaife diff - not my preffered choice, but it was in the box!
ultra close ratios, the car was revved out done hanger straight in 5th at 7300 and was doing an accurate data-logger/gps speed of 115mph.
The ratios have really bought an underpowered car to life and made it quite 'fizzy', I often say the best mod for a v6 is a close ratio box that can be built with std pg1 gearsets (often poo-poo'd because people don't like the idea of a revvy motor) but the VVC is no exception to ultra-close ratios.