Total Performance

Due to continuing ill health following my bone marrow transplant in early 2009, I decided to close the Petone workshop in September last year.

My health is on the mend and I now run Total Performance from my new purpose built workshop at home in Kelson.

The focus of the new Total Performance workshop will be specialist work on Race, Rally, Performance and Classic cars. However a great deal of our work is still servicing of everyday cars, so please don't hesitate to contact Ron for a quote or advice.

With over 30 years experience in suspension and Wheel Alignment fault diagnosis we are considered the industry leaders in this feild.


Call Ron on 029-9349349 for any enquiries or servicing needs you may have, or email him ron@totalperformance.co.nz

I've been on the hunt lately for a new gearbox for the racecar and found myself needing to know what all the different variants of the basic Evo gearbox are. Which boxes have a front LSD and which don't etc..

After much searching I have complied a fairly long list of around 20+ different GSR,VR4 and EVO gearbox trans codes. It can be viewed here..

http://www.totalperformance.co.nz/stuff/transcodes.htm

Our new Evo3 race car is back from the painters and work will begin next week in re-assembling the car and fabicating the new suspension setup. Once I've worked out how to post images into the blog I'll get some up.

Wow!! The new race car just blew everything away on it's first outing! I've never driven such a well balanced car.
Gone is the power understeer that plagues most of the early Evos. I put this down to a combination of the Raliart competition center diff and the new Evo4/5 front suspension setup.

We had a few dramas when the car went out for it's first test drive, the custom made clutch was a total failure.
This was sent back to the manufacturer with a "Please explain" note attached. We opted to replace it with a 5-puk Exedy unit and it is working perfectly.

The car is presently in hibernation while we wait for the new Gen3 Link computer to go into production.
From there it will be tuned by Andre @ Speedtech.

http://www.linkecu.com/

http://www.speedtechnz.com

After that it's off up to Manfield for a couple of track days to sort out the rear suspension settings and to get some much needed time behind the wheel in preparation for the "superlap" competition in Taupo in Feb07.

(More details on that later) :)

The race car is coming along well with most of the fiddly jobs sorted. It took nearly a week of working nights to make a blower unit that fitted under the dash and around the roll-cage front supports.

We used a small electric bilge-blower we puchased from a marine shop. These things are like small electric turbo-chargers built into a 4" plastic tube. They sure can move a lot of air!, Perfect for defogging windows and they weigh almost nothing.

I've ducted that into the factory vents and then refitted the dash around the front roll cage stays.

Development on the car has slowed a little lately but it's still making progress.

The brakes have been upgraded to a full set of massive Brembo items from an EVO8.
In order to fit these the factory 4 stud wheels were binned in favour of a set of 5 stud 17x7.5" EVO5 OZ racing wheels.

Motorsport wise it's been a good couple of months with good results from both rounds of the Port rd Street Sprint held on 23rd October and Jan 22nd at Seaview.

For both rounds I teamed up with local up and coming rally driver Pirin Pigneguy and shared the driving of two of his cars.

First round in October I drove his stock std EVO1 into 4th place over-all. Just 1.42 seconds behind the winner Jamie Harbour in his much modified Subaru Imprezza.

The second round saw us pull Pirin's old 1800cc GSR Rally car into service. Despite being well down on the power of the cars at the top of the results table, I still managed to pedal the Lancer to a respectable 5th place over-all.

With the new car expected to be putting out in excess of 450hp once the new engine is completed (more than twice that of either of the cars driven previously) I'm really looking forward to the rest of the seasons racing.

..Ron

There's been lot's of work being done on the race car lately with very good progress in most areas.

Here's a quick run down of some of the tastier bits..

:300x600x75 Custom intercooler fitted (Big thanks to Marc Mulholland for flow benching and runner mods)

:Full Flextech silicone fit out on the custom alloy mandrel bent pipework.

:Custom braided brake lines fitted. (Thank's to Chris@Mossrax)

:Ohlins 20 position adjustable front legs fitted with Tein camber adj pillow ball mounts, and King 400lb progressive race coils.

:Huge custom oil cooler setup (Thanks Pirin!)

:Walbo 255L/H high flow fuel pump fitted.

:Lightwight Dry cell battery fitted into custom frame between rear shock towers (looking for weight balance)

:RaceTech seats now fitted

:Toyo R888 205/70x17 race tyres now fitted.

:Full gearbox rebuild with front Plate LSD, and Viscous LSD centre diff.

:Plate LSD obtained for rear (Big thanks to Murray O'Neil)

:Base engine now in place. Fitted with HSK race cams, Murch TD06 turbo and a TurboNetics wastegate.

:Carbon/Kevlar race clutch fitted.

..More later in the week..

Well it's been an amazing couple of weeks in motorsport for the Flextech/Total Performance Team.

In late October we travelled to the Sunny Hawkes Bay to compete in the Te Onepu and Pukeora Hill Climbs.
This two day event was run in conjunction with the Hawkes Bay car club http://www.hbcarclub.co.nz/ and the Vintage car club.

The entry list saw everything from a 1906 Darrock LeMans racer, to BDA Escorts, EH Holdens and late model Impreza's.

A fantastic weekends racing saw the Flextech Evo running second over-all on both days, with the only car capable of beating it being the super lightweight Yamaha powered single seater of Graeme Sutton.

Next we travelled to the South Island to compete in the Koni Racing Hillclimb series being held at Akaroa.
http://www.ratec.org.nz/

Again this was a two day event with two hillclimbs being held, one at the Akaroa summit road and the other in Little River.

Saturday's first run saw me hitting a bank after loosing traction on the grit covered mountain road. We lost the rear bumper and destroyed the front splitter (spoiler).
The left rear wheel was buckled and the suspension was leaning completely the wrong way.

Within ten minutes the car was cable tied and race taped back together and back out for another run.
However I found it very hard to regain my nerve on the loose surface and that combined with massive drop-offs on the tight corners had me taking a rather conservative approach to the rest of the days racing.

That didn't stop us from coming a very respectable 2nd over-all for the day against drivers who posessed a lot of local knowledge of the hill's 30 or so corners.

Day two was a lot better road with more grip, however it did have one very scary corner that had no armco barrier and a good 300 metre drop-off!

The times were a lot closer this event and we just pipped out of second place by an Evo3 powered mirage (a margin of .2 of second). First place again going to local man Carl Vaughan in his awsome Evo1 RS racer.
Our combined times for both events were good enough to take second place over-all for the weekend.

Carl pretty much owns every Hillclimb in the South Island so theres no shame in coming second to this man!

I've uploaded all our in-car footage to You-Tube, so if you want to catch some of our hill-climb runs follow the link below.



You Tube videos http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=ADBF85B7A1376535

Well it's been an extremely quiet time on the motorsport front lately for 3 reasons..
1: Following the failure of a factory waterpipe during the last run of "Race to the sky" the brand new 2.3L race engine suffered a complete melt down. We are in the process of building another engine from scratch and this should be done in about another 2 months.

(Some nice extra goodies will be the addition of 1mm over-size stainless valves, HPC extreme ceramic coating of the turbo and exhaust manifold (more heat energy getting to the turbo) and a Turbosmart E-Boost2 electronic boost controller that will allow us to punch a lot more boost into the engine at lower revs.)

2: My chemo treatment has been changed to a different drug regime that see me having treatment every second week. This cocktail of drugs has me feeling like I've been poisoned (strange that!) for around 7 days afterwards. I then get 7 good days in which to do as much work as I can before it all starts again. My last CT scan showed that I'm well on my way to recovery, but there's still another 14 weeks of treatment left. I can't wait to get my life back! :)

3: Other than a couple of hillclimbs in Wanganui and The Hawkes Bay there has been very little sealed motorsport to be had. So in that respect I haven't missed too much from the above..
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Those of you that have witnessed the very slow rebuild of John Grant's 1966 105E Anglia that had languished in a corner of my workshop on and off for the last 4 years will be pleased to know that the conversion was completed last week (05/07/07) just one day before his wedding. (John planned to arrive at the church in the Anglia).

specs: Mint condition 1966 Anglia DeLuxe, Koni race suspension, 4-link/leaf rear end, coil-over struts front.
Willwood 4-pot front disc brakes. Cortina Rocket gearbox, Kevlar H/D clutch on a custom steel flywheel. 1700cc Lin Rogers race engine (detuned for road use) twin 40 DCOE Weber carbs on a hand built alloy inlet manifold. Custom 1/2 bucket seat install.
Plus dozens of other mods to make this a total period faithfull conversion.

Hope you enjoy the car John and all the best for the big Day!