1994 Vaux Senator 24v - moar plans

[Mystery Machine]

Have to agree - an AWESOME weapon!

Love the whole theme and those new rims take it to another level....nay.....another league!

Just lovely ;D ;D ;D

[rob0r]

Faptastic, it looks amazing.

[mustang427]

Cracking drift weapon.How much has it costed to build? less than £2k?

[Colonelk]

Thanks for all the kind words chaps

Mustang.... if I don't include the cost of repairing it when I tanked it, but including these new wheels the whole thing probably stands me at about £1300ish. Thats for the car, buckets, paint, exhaust, wheels, harness, battery box, extinguisher, steering wheel etc. If I was being strict with myself and only modding what the car needed to go sideways it would be much cheaper and before I bought these wheels it stood me at less than £1k.

Thats not including the lightweight flywheel Ive just bought though heh.

[bstardchild]

Aug 22, 2008 19:32:54 GMT Colonelk said:

nah no track for these matey. Ive got some 17x8.5 Merc rims I'm gonna throw my old Paradas on and some random scrap tyres for the rear. Should look equally pimping, just with less dish LOL

are they 5 x 110?

[Colonelk]

nah they are 5x112 but I have teh evil wobble bolts and correct spigots (the merc rims that is, the Rials with the dish are 5x110)

[lewist123]

that looks the biz mate! those wheel work very well with the car

A couple more grafix on the doors and it will look ace!

Have you decided what to do about the gear box yet? only thing letting her down now! You can't look cool grinding the cogs!!

[tigran]

Phwoooar, absolute filth mate. Just stunning wheels. Looks nice sat on them n'all.

[usedabused]

Needs air Monsuer Colonel K....

I've put two Carlton's on air and you can get the sills on the deck with no work..

[tigran]

I feel that may be defeating the 'stripped out' theme of the whole car.

Would look cool though.

[sootyridesagain]

Aug 26, 2008 12:47:42 GMT lewist123 said:

that looks the biz mate! those wheel work very well with the car

A couple more grafix on the doors and it will look ace!

Have you decided what to do about the gear box yet? only thing letting her down now! You can't look cool grinding the cogs!!

That box has been grinding since i originally bought the car over 4 years ago....

www.zippyvideos.com/3245817015384116/marham_track_day_lesson_1/

[Colonelk]

heh thanks for the kind words guys.

Lewis, the lightweight flywheel is here now so its staying on with that in case the springless clutch kills it.

Tigran..... how many cars doooooooooo you have man I just noticed the sig!

usedabused..... out of interest how do cars handle on air? As Id need it to be stiff as possible when low. Cant go drifting when jacked up now can I?

Speaking of drifting.... went to a 'fast' DWYB on wednesday. The car had had overheating issues last time, so this time I fitted an electric fan, and after lots of curse word about with oil thermostats not working, I decided to remove it, if only for the drift day, so as not to nuke my oil again. the design of the oil take offs for the cooler on this car means it gets minimal flow even then! I also replaced the oil with a thicker variant. Good stuff. Still had a worry about the hairline crack in the rad, but it only ever weeped, even when hot.

So got there, and there were pretty much only 10 people there! The guy in the box said a total of 16 were booked in for the whole day! This was looking good (there are 50 cars at a 'normal' DWYB) It was even predicted to be sunny-ish!

So, fitted my tyres and went out on the donut/figure 8 area to warm up. Car felt good, diff was behaving itself and locking. Sweet. After nuking a pair of tyres rediculously quickly (its quite rough on the figure 8) I came off and pottered into the pits. Push the brake..... soft brakes. "Hmmmmm havent been using the brakes?! How can they of faded?" was my first thought. Got out the car to be greated with a puddle by the drivers side rear. Whipped the wheel off, and one of the bits of canvas from the tyre carcas had looped onto the hub somehow and wrapped round and round it, crushing the brake pipe and splitting it at the caliper!

My 'pit lane neighbours' came over to have a looksee.

"You know whatll fix that.... molegrip the flexi then hold it on with cableties...... here have my molegrips" (caged mate..... total legend..... and tommahawk tooo for also suggesting it!)

Flexi duly molegripped, prodded the pedal, nice and hard, and no leaks! SWEET!

Decided to 'test' its roadworthyness by flying round the intermediate track. Solid as a rock. Well if its that solid.... be rude not to carry on for the rest of the day no?

So late morning Id got the intermediate track down, not to a tee, but pretty good all the same. It doesnt really suit my car anyways, the super tight corners on the end of the kidney shape its layed out as meant my diff kept going totally open which was annoying.

Anyhow.... time for the fast track! Put my helmet on, and waited til it was a bit quiet.... only 1 car out there.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH its fast! 3rd gear most of the time in the dry with big concrete blocks laying around is scary, but immense fun!

Sadly, second lap JUST as I was getting into it, spun on the big superfast corner and hit a cone. No biggy really, hit a million of them in a similar place with almost as much gusto before. Sadly this one held onto the bottom rad mount and bent it out, which took the rad mounting peg with it massive hole in rad = end of day

Took it back to the pits, dried the rad out and filled the hole with araldite. Really wanted to say 'screw it' and take her out again but couldnt be bothered to wait a few more hours for some araldite to cure if this stuff failed.

Ah well, at least the rad was scrap anyways, I got home under my own steam, met some sound people and am now seriously addicted to 'proper' drifting as opposed to 'skidding in a car park' heh.

Craig mate, drop me a PM with ya mobile number. Want to pick up a rad soon

[bstardchild]

No pics - never happened ;D

Sounds like fun apart from the damage inflicted!!

[v8chevette]

Cool car mate! good to see an old Senator being used and abused.

The Sunday best rims are spot on

[Robinxr4i]

Sounds like an great laugh (minus the damage obviously) Hope the repairs are not too costly ;D

[sootyridesagain]

PM sent!

[lewist123]

chin up chap!

sounds like you had a good crack anyway on the day!

we are thinking about going to the euro drag finals at pod at the end of september... fancy it??

[Colonelk]

Lewis....... we shall see chap, I'm on Marham prep now so as long as the cars done its all good.

BC... ya jolly pain in the backside! But yeah, no pics sadly Sent that cheque this morning

Robin..... everythings been in stock in my barn nay worries except the rad..... but things are happening on that side.

Soooooooooooooooooooo...... done another 2 drift events (still on the glued together radiator LOL) and the old girls been running fine. First was TDSW down in Somerset..... lots of pics here.....
www.flickr.com/photos/stuntmonkey/sets/72157607144769935/
Despite a severe weather warning, and some of the worst rain Ive driven in ever on the way down, when I arrived to camp on the friday night the sky was clear, there was no wind and it was almost warm enough for t-shirts! Stayed nice in the morning and they we got occasional mini flash floods coming through every now and again.

Next up was Santa Pod DWYB yesterday. An awesome day as I saw a lot of old faces and met a lot of cool new people too. Was one of the best atmospheres for a while. And the car didnt even blink all day (well, apart from the heater blower packing up for no apparent reason before Id demisted the windscreen in the morning! Fuses were fine sooooooooo)

But yes, the day itself! WOW! I had so much fun and FINALLY got some decent 3rd gear practice! I even ran 225s on the back and STILL got 3rd...... in the dry Need some fronts with stiffer sidewalls though as I ground the rims on the floor occasionally. No kerbing damage, just tarmac heh. Had a huge delamination at one point which blew my bumper to shreds, launched part of the tyre onto the windscreen and blew a hole in my boot floor (seriously!) but somehow managed not to mangle my fuel filler *phew* Hence the damage shown in some of the pics.




on the rack!


The pits

Expecting some more soon as the official photographer took over 1000 images and is still processing them

There was also a chap there in a caterham having as awesome time, hes done a lot of track days and things, but this was his first drift day and he loved it!


loads of pics here....
www.driftworks.com/forum/media-section/66120-alot-pics-santa-pod-sept-10th.html
www.driftworks.com/forum/media-section/66176-andyc-pics-dwyb-100908-a.html

Going to retire her until the marham trackday now though so I can sort some of the issues that have arisen Top of the list...... radiator! Some better cooling too, sort the exhaust out, fit the lightweight flywheel finally and then whatever else I can muster. So probably nothing

[Colonelk]

Well, the old girl is still alive!

After a break over winter (as I had run out of holiday to book at work..... and most driftdays are on week days! (noise)) I decided to get back into the seat. Shes now sporting a sexy but dirt cheap s/h Nissan S14 Aluminum radiator which fitted with minor fettling. Good news.

Feb 4th... Lydd International Raceway (its a big kart track )

I had wanted to do a proper track for ages as I supposed it was much more challenging that just avoiding cones! They don't like it when you ruin the grass! Anyhow, this opportunity came up and I jumped at it. Lucky for me, not many other people did, so I shared the track with a whole 9 other people!! track-time-tastic!

It was really tricky trying to get used to the lines to take at first, especially as the handbrake is no good for initiations on the senator (the pins in the back plate arent really strong enough), so I had to use other techniques. No problem as I was familiar with them, just not on a narrow track! It was a steep learning curve....
To throw extra difficulty into the mix, many sections of the track required you to loose a lot of speed mid slide in order to deal with radically tighter corners. Now all my previous attempts at braking mid slide had resulted in spins pretty much guaranteed. However with my extra steering lock (more on that later) and I guess the extra practice (esp at Marham) meant I managed to put it together fairly easily... and do it well! My oh my is it rewarding when you pull together some laps linking pretty much the whole circuit!

I'm sure you're pretty bored of drifting pictures by now so Ill only post 2.....

Yee-haa!


Lock-tastic + Angle-tastic

and no... I didnt spin

Other vehicles of note were my friends R32 which went well, a nutter in a BMW M3 E46! and a lovely E30 318iS with a 4 cylinder M3 engine conversion. Mmmmmmmmmmm

Now then, why do I need extra lock? Well as a drifter it gives you.... the ability to hold much bigger sideways angle and if you go beyond that (and have enough lock!) it makes for excellent spin recovery as well. (see above heh)

On the senators / carltons it seems reasonably straight forward to increase. I removed the wishbone lock stops wish gave me a small increase. Then I removed the secondary chassis lockstops which gave me some more. After tidying them up I should gain yet more, and to go beyond that means modifying the knuckle to take the lock tab off (again just grinding and then smoothing so there are no stress raisers) at which point the inboard steering arm will hit the exhaust downpipe...... which needs modifying anyway However all of this is pretty much free. The Japanese guys can end up spending some cash doing this! Go Vauxhall!

She didnt really miss a beat all day..... only problem was losing all the instrument lights on the way home on the motorway :lol:

Hopefully next one is Llandow in wales on the 21st.... may even try out for a British Drift Championship license!

To Do:

-Definitely need a welded diff now, I can really feel the unpredictability of the standard one holding me back now as far as consistency goes

-Fit all the parts Ive got sitting around and waiting to go

-Fix those dash lights!

Oh yeah, I have the front suspension parts I need to go mega low now Which means I JUST NEED TO REMAKE THE BLOOMIN EXHAUST (I will do it one day, honest, just like finishing the paint job!)

Rest of the pictures from the day here......
www.griprebels.com/photos

[Carter]

looks fun! Great pics too.
Love the 'to punish and enslave' parody. What else you doing paintwork-wise?