First Car Trial in the Freestyle

Matt and I entered our first competition last weekend. Had a great day.

Video quality is not brilliant but it will give an idea what we were up to.

Keevil Track Day

Matt gets his first drive in the Firefox. What a great day, he was flying in no time.

Firefox "Black" and ready to go

Making good progress and will soon be ready to get back out on track.

New roll cage with side impact protection has been fabricated & fitted.

Roll cage mounts improved - now 3 bolts.

Seats tilted futher back to give better drining position.

Lower seat belt mounts moved further forward.

New dash layout with Acewell digital dash and nice big red shift light.

Tidy up the dash wiring.

New rear mud guard mounts - may need to change these as I think they may be a bit to flimsy.

Fuel gauge and sender fitted.

Speedo fitted.

Font lower wishbone bushes replaced.

Passenger footrest for dad to brace against

Hope to refit the body work next weekend.

Firefox Rebuild

Well having had 3 years of fun & track days with my Firefox I decided to completely strip the car down to the bare chassis and rebuild it. I wanted to check the chassis for any signs of fatigue, give everything a really good clean and spruce up. I will also be looking for "weight saving" opportunities as I am re-building it. Reducing weight is a much cheaper way of improving performance than trying to add more BHP.

Having stripped the chassis right down the first changes I decided to make were to reposition the seats to give a better driving position (more laid back) and to make new "lighter" seat mounting frame.

The seats were originally mounted onto 2 flat pieces of steel that ran across the chassis and were bolted to the side rails. Both rear pieces had bent under the weight of driver/passenger on both sides so have been replaced by stronger angle iron. The new mounts are welded in not bolted and have captivated nuts on the underside to make fitting & removal of the seats easier.

With the sub frame separated from the chassis I started to remove the lower wishbones so that I can replace the tired Metro rubber bushes with some nice new Poly Bushes. Three of the wishbone bolts came undone without much effort but the last one was a real pig. It was so corroded that the welds holding the captivated nut to the inside of the sub-frame broke. To remove the nut I had to cut into the chassis to get access. With the nut removed the bolt was still completely seized inside the bush and had to be persuaded out with the angle grinder and drill.

Once the wishbones have been re-fitted the hole in the sub-frame will be welded up.

Freestyle ready for Newark kit car show

Colerne Track Day

Started off this years track day season at Colerne with Motorsport Events last weekend. Have to admit it is the best "Airfield" track I have done and we had a really good day. Its a well laid out track with a great mix of slow and fast corners. Having made a few modifications to the Firefox over the winter an airfield track is ideal for testing out the car and making sure everything is working as planned.

Main changes this year were to fit a Janspeed performance exhaust manifold and ITG air filter as well as make some improvements to the induction. Also fitted a nice oil catch tank and strengthen the gearbox/engine mounts that were showing signs of stress after Cadwell Park last year. Moved the radiator and oil cooler to improve air flow/cooling.

After making these changes we had to have the Emerald ECU re-mapped. A trip to Bradley's garage/rolling road near Chipping Norton resulted in a very nice 156BHP, thats 15BHP increase over last year! Not bad for car that weighs less than 500KG.

Also replaced the rear 200lb springs with 400lb springs. Main reason for this was that we had noticed some rub marks on the rear tyres where the mud guards had been touching when the springs were fully loaded. 400lb springs were recommended by David Golighlty from Onyx Sports Cars to stiffen up the rear suspension to improve handling and also stop the rubbing. Worked very well on track but not a good idea for road use as your fillings will fall out.

Thanks to David Bence for the photos.