Historic cars

[midgetman]

>>>>>>I also seem to remember something similar with one of the F1 teams not having a computer old enough to run the software

Yes I'd heard that story too. Rings a bell with any one of us who has "upgraded" to Vista and found their peripherals don't work!

Do you reckon a reasonable hacker could make the codes work? But then would the might of the Peugeot legal department come down on you for software piracy, evidenced by the very fact you got the damned thing to run?

I so enjoy reading the articles in Motor Sport about when guys just hitched their cars behind an old Transit and went racing. No chance of that now, and in a few years no chance in Historics either!

[Greem]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

If your "old tech banger" has electronic ignition then it would be totally beyond me.

It's a box with tiny dragons inside. A tiny supervising gnome pokes them with a cattle prod and they provide the spark.

Apologies to one T. Pratchett, Esq and anyone who doesn't get that

[grantp]

Originally Posted by midgetman

>>>>>>I also seem to remember something similar with one of the F1 teams not having a computer old enough to run the software

Yes I'd heard that story too. Rings a bell with any one of us who has "upgraded" to Vista and found their peripherals don't work!

Do you reckon a reasonable hacker could make the codes work? But then would the might of the Peugeot legal department come down on you for software piracy, evidenced by the very fact you got the damned thing to run?

I so enjoy reading the articles in Motor Sport about when guys just hitched their cars behind an old Transit and went racing. No chance of that now, and in a few years no chance in Historics either!

Hmm. Wonder if the 'lost software' was in the post 'traction control' and 'Start launch' era?

We have been along these lines of discussion before and the nearest example you can get currently is probably the BOSSGP sort of development and maybe the more esotric Group C stuff (i'm guessing knowing little about how they keep those cars running)

As Simon says above, where there is a will (and the budget) there will be a way to get the cars running around a track. How close they will be to original (or some variant of original) is another matter. And whether that matters .... who knows? If people want to run them no matter what to satisfy their pleasure needs does it matter?

If people want to watch them because the shape looks about right compared to their memories even if what is underneath is substantially different - does it matter?

A purist might well say it does matter but pragmatically what alternatives are there?

Give it 20 more years and one may wonder if there will be anywhere left to run anything no matter how original (or otherwise) it may be. (By which time a number of us may not care about the answer much anyway ...)

On that bright and cheery note I'll get back to editing some recent 500cc F3 photos ......


ETA: " hitched their car behind an old Transit."

Better still if they just drove them to and from the circuits.

Formula Ford with lights and mudguards? (Or even, according to one story, no lights or mudguards and the need to get from, iirc, Oulton to Brands on a Saturday night .... Can't have been true surely?)

[SAMD]

I knew a guy who was actually at Uni doing Theology. And was driving his 'road car' and towing his stock car to a track outside Belfast when the 'road car' cooked itself, so the cars were swopped over and he continued to the track in the stock car whilst towing the 'road car'. But that was in the '70s in NI and you could get away with murder then.

[GORDON STREETER]

When I was doing the Heritage series 5 years ago one of the guys (who shall remain nameless) broke down towing his Morgan to a Snetterton meeting and promptly unloaded it and drove it to the track.
He said that as he was late he got a serious speed on and as the car was totally illegal for the road a speeding fine was the last thing to worry about !

[zefarelly]

Not sure if it was Turrel or Differ, but they arrived at Castle Combe, easter weekend with the Alfa SPrint GT towing the Abarth, raced both, respect for that.

running a std MK1 COrtina as an everyday road car wore me down a few years ago, I love my Subaru for the abuse it can take, however I do like being able to look after my own cars, and knowing whats goin on below the carpet/rubber mats.

as far as modern classic racers . . . surely its just a matter of time before we start seeing more nerds and lap tops at historic evenets . . . we already see a few.

[Cliff Ryan]

My Jaguar XJRS race car originally came with a Zytek tuneable ECU. As a road car it is allegedly a destined version of what ran the XJR LM cars at Le Mans.

The first thing you do when converting to a race car is rip out the Zytek & replace it with the Lucas system from the normal road card as no one has the 20 odd year old technology to tune the Zytek systems for racing with a manual gear box. However, there are people who uprrated the Lucas system for fast road use with a manual gearbox in period, so thats what we use. The alternative is a brand new bespoke tuneable system, but that's expensive & hardly historic.

Also, there is a rumour that the Zytek systems are lifed & have a finite Pre set number of running cycles in them, so I have two spares in the garage ready& waiting for my road XJRS!

[zefarelly]

In an odd way you could argue that the proliferation of electronic ignition sytems has had a direct effect on the quality of traditional points based systems. Having said that, I've seen a few petronix type kits fail at high revs on the rollers. I have a small safe in the workshop with a stash of NOS 45D's in it

[johngee]

Originally Posted by Cliff Ryan

Also, there is a rumour that the Zytek systems are lifed & have a finite Pre set number of running cycles in them,

What concerns me, in the context of this thread, is that this is a 'rumour'. Surely such information should be in the public domain ..... or am I being naive? - I'm not a 'techie', take one look under the bonnet and phone the dealer - or more likely, an independant specialist!

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by zefarelly

In an odd way you could argue that the proliferation of electronic ignition sytems has had a direct effect on the quality of traditional points based systems. Having said that, I've seen a few petronix type kits fail at high revs on the rollers. I have a small safe in the workshop with a stash of NOS 45D's in it

We have some NOS rotor arms for the MG too. Indeed one of them failed in practice at Spa last year.

We run electronic on the Capri and one set failed in 2008. I tend to change them every five years so a new set is due next year. Expensive I guess but we need reliability.

[zefarelly]

I did back to back runs with petronix and NOS lucas, revving to 8k, no difference. Obviously NOS is hard to find, the new blue rotors are good peter, I did have some good blue caps as well.

[midgetman]

>>>>>>>We have some NOS rotor arms for the MG too. Indeed one of them failed in practice at Spa last year

Yes there are a lot of those failing in the MG world. MGD and I had a stock of second hand original rotors ripped from cars we've stripped for spares, and they have a much higher reliability record. Every time we sold a dizzy it was "you'll be wanting to put your own new rotor arm in of course!"

[GORDON STREETER]

I've had rotor arm failures a couple of times over the years when I've been in a winning position (once on the last lap) !
I think it's a luck of the draw in what ones fail as they weren't designed for the continuous high revs that we give them.
Normally I put super glue round where the brass bit joins the plastic and I also glue the rotor on the shaft.
I did notice a Lotus Cortina at Spa one year that although it had all the normal distributor and leads fitted it was actually running a crank sensed ignition pack cleverly hidden with a specially designed "Lotus" cover over top of the plugs !
However I don't think it was in an appendix K race

[zefarelly]

I thought that was compulsory for lotus cortinas as you can barely get thecap off anyway

.

[GORDON STREETER]

Originally Posted by zefarelly

I thought that was compulsory for lotus cortinas as you can barely get thecap off anyway

.

You can if you use the 711M block

[zefarelly]

Its good to start the week with a bloody good laugh