A Car is Born

Its been a long time (again) but I'm back, and back with a vengeance! Back intime during the wet weekend at Brands i mentioned we had ordered a new chassis as a basis for our new car, so let me expand.....

Things have changed alot over the past few season, with class R cars being highly developed and becoming more and more like proper race cars, with the gap in performance widening between the old furys, pheonix and 7's. Apart from a few 7's (like the MNR Vortx & MK Indy RR), development by the manufacturers has stopped on most class F cars, plus it seems almost impossible to purchase a kit from the manufactureres as they are a little unreliable. The few 7's that are being developed and easily available to purchase as kits are not an option as it has been proven that the front running, front engined cars need bodywork to help with the aerodynamics, especially now that its open season on the upper body areo development. This has meant class R is thriving but class F is just limping along (even though entry numbers are still good). I/we believe that class F is the foundations and life blood for RGB and being class F committee rep i am committed to trying help it stay alive. It is for this reason that when we decided to build a new car, it had to be a class F car, but with a twist that would maybe help close the gap on the class R cars.

As we see it there are 3 main reasons why the class R cars will out perform a well sorted class F car:-

1. Transmission losses are greater through a prop and diff (15-20BHP) compared to a chain drive (5-8BHP)
2. Aerodynamics, the class R cars have been developed as race cars, not pretty road cars
3. Weight distribution - class R cars manage to get the bulk of the weight close to the centre of gravity of the car, meaning less moments of inertia, although the engine at the rear does create a greater pendulum effect during turn in but increases rear end grip when applying power.

So if we designed a front engine car that used a chain drive, moved the engine closer to the centre of gravity and designed a body that was more race track orientated we could gain an advantage over all the other class F cars, maybe close the gap on the class R cars and generally move the game on in class F.

So the plan back in April 2012 was to order a bare Fury chassis, that we could modify to sit the engine as far back as possible and still meet the RGB regs, use a chain drive down the tunnel and reuse our developed fury bodywork form the existing car, albeit with the new rear deck we made and tested at the Birkett (see later post).