A little over 10 years ago I decided I was going to start racing. I had a decent job, decent wage and it was something I'd always wanted to do.

I knew my way around X1/9s and parts weren't a problem so I decided that would be my chariot. Sounds simple but as you can surely guess, nothing ever is.

I landed an MOT failure for pocket change and set about stripping it out and converting it. The engine was screaming due to a dying timing belt tensioner and it had a water leak due to a sheared off bolt but other than that I couldn't find much wrong.

Several hundred pounds later and I had a roll cage, seat, harness, fire extinguisher and electrical cut out all ready to fit and the car was pretty much bare bones. Sadly that's where it all went a bit pear shaped because I bought my first house (and emptied my bank account).

That's about as far as that car got. I ended up selling it to a neighbour who put it all back together and it turned out to be a really great car when he'd finished with it.

Project #2 was a ready built car - converted to a dallara replica by Avanti, with a nicely worked 1300 engine. It even came with a trailer.

I sold my Integra Type-R to buy it, reduce my spending (stupid insurance premium every year) and get a towcar. What I didn't have was anywhere to put it - it ended up outside my parent's house for a few months before I found a friend willing to look after it while I got the drive on my new house sorted out. In that time someone stole the fire extinguisher and had a good root through it.

Then another friend asked to borrow it on the promise that if he bent the car he'd pay for the repairs. I dragged it off to Castle Combe for him and watched the race - or rather just the qualifying. Three laps down and the engine expired in a cloud of smoke...

It turns out that the engine was hugely overbored and then sleeved but the sleeves weren't pinned and had started going up and down with the pistons and had then lunched itself.

Back to square 1 again...

Plan B was to use an Uno Turbo engine to replace the tuned up 1300. This was no small task thanks to all the extra wiring and the management systems which didn't like the engine cut-out.

Anyway, a few months later it was all running and I was out racing. It didn't go well for a couple of races. The first one saw the throttle stop screw split in half and foul the throttle plate so the throttle wouldn't close - this made for a seriously scary experience, a couple of very fast laps and then me pulling over before someone got killed (me most probably). The second race saw a stone go through one of the front tyres - not a big stone but it was enough to kill the tyre.

Then it all started to work - a run of reasonable finishes resulted, some nice silverware for the cabinet (all since stolen) and a new plan to get even more power.

Plan C - fit a gas flowed head (we were still running a stock 1300 Uno Turbo engine at this point) and replace the mechanical water pump with an electronic pump to maintain optimum cooling at all times.

The head came from Evo Engineering as a ready to use item from one of Barry Waterhouse's Uno Race engines. The water pump was sourced new and my friendly engineer fitted it all for me.

Initial results were very good but cooling wasn't quite what we had hoped for.
Three attempts at a rolling road session and two head gaskets later we thought we had it sussed. Not quite though, every race ended up with a new head gasket being needed. The head wasn't warping but it just kept overheating.

Everything looked ok, the only thing that looked wrong was the engine was running lean and the management wouldn't let us change the mixture further. The next step in the plan was to fit an aftermarket ECU so that got moved forward.

The rolling road results were great and the engine really pulled now - dyno showed we were hitting 170bhp with just a tiny bit of extra boost.

The next race proved it wasn't quite right still though - more overheating...

Back to the drawing board and I decided to replace the radiator with a proper race unit - which is where I discovered the water pump was incorrectly plumbed in and the radiator was only getting about 25% of the flow it should have been seeing. Which might explain all that overheating. The amazing bit was the engine was still going!

That's pretty much where car #2 ended - a week later, at the same circuit I started at it all went horribly wrong. It was wet, really wet and while my car was going brilliantly other people weren't which sounds like it should have been a great race. I ended up battling with a fast Uno that was shedding oil, I got past him, spun on the oil he'd dropped on the previous lap, lost the place again and then he spun on the oil he'd dropped, bounced off the armco, back into the track and the front of the car.

A lot of people tell me I should have quit at this point but I wasn't giving up.

Car #3 then....
This was a barn find - a 1977 1300, basically sound but seeing as it was going to loose most of the bodywork that wasn't a big worry.

It got stripped out thoroughly and sent off to have a full rollcage fitted at Rollcentre.

It came back looking very meaningful and then we really went to town. Any remaining bodywork that wasn't needed was cut out and thrown away. A flat bottom was fabricated for it and new moulds prepared for the bodywork from an original Dallara (or as close as I could get).

The engine was the big headache. I needed something bulletproof and with a lot more power. The regulations in my race series were changing and I would have been racing a 150/160bhp car against 300bhp touring cars...

A friend pointed me to Wolf Direct Racing who jumped at the chance to play around with the spec. Ultimately the entire car ended up in their hands for the full preparation

The engine spec was fixed and two prototypes built (and about 20 blocks thrown away as useless). One of the prototypes lived in an engine dyno cell for testing, the other was fitted to a Punto Gt that lived in france. The owner of the Punto used it for drag racing where it earned a reputation for being the fastest Gt in the country.

I'd asked for 250bhp - the Punto ended up with 300bhp. The dyno cell engine was tested to destruction (literally - it finally blew up after hitting 15000rpm). The cylinder head was rescued, refurbished and ended up in another road car. The final engine for the race car has been dyno'd and mapped thoroughly and has given even more with an overboost ability that gives me stupid levels of torque for short periods. On the downside we aren't allowed to use the 105 octane fuel it was originally built for so we have to make do with 100 octane fuel instead.

The specification is full-on race engine. The head was prepared by an ex-Ferrari engineer who used to build the cylinder heads for their F1 cars in the V12 days. The flow achieved is incredible, as is the price of the valves!

The block is overbored for maximum displacement with custom forged pistons to our own design. The rods, pins and shells are all custom built. The oil pump was thrown away and replaced with a dry sump system. The inlet manifold is actually based on the original Fiat design but with some very clever porting and the biggest throttle plate they could squeeze in.

The exhaust manifold is a custom design meant for a hybrid T28 blower. The turbo has been built for racing with much of the original internals replaced for durability.

The gearbox has also been heavily worked upon, first of all to handle the extra torque but also to allow the fitting of non-standard gears.

The plan to use a flat bottom on the car was shelved due to yet more changes to the regulations and we are back to using an original(ish) floorpan.

The suspension is all being replaced. I'd had custom front arms built some time ago but the rear arms had to go too.

The front brakes are tarox 4-pot calipers grabbing the biggest discs we could squeeze inside the little 13" rims we use (these allow us to use F3 size tyres). The discs are fully floating mounted on alloy bells and can be easily replaced without disturbing the hub.

The rear brakes are actually from the front of an Uno Turbo - the joys of not having to use a mechanical handbrake!

The brake and cluth pedals are a seperate pedal box with adjustable bias front and rear for the brakes on completely independent circuits.

From the drivers seat it looks and feels very much like an ordinary X1/9 but with the dashboard and interior stripped out and a lot of tubing surrounding the cabin and threading through what used to be the passenger area.

Rollcentre estimated the rigidity to be 3 to 4 times that of the original design (when it was new) but that is still not as good as the very latest production cars. It has revealed that the chassis design is remarkably similar to that of the Elise/Exige once you strip away the external bodywork. Even still it is high enough that the car will not suffer significant distortion of the shell during a race.

What we have achieved is shaving the weight down to a level to give the car superb acceleration. We actually have to carry ballast when racing to meet the minimum weight requirements set out in the regulations.

I'd like to say that we have a fully working sports car now but sadly there is still much to be done.

The wiring is complete, the shell is complete, the engine is installed but we are still without a fuel tank so it is not quite running. Even then we still need to spend some time resolving some air flow limitations of the original Dallara design. First of all there isn't enough air flow into the engine bay for the intercooler and induction system. We also have the car geared to under 150mph to avoid some very nasty aerodynamic behaviour that could see the car trying to take off.

WOW

not much else i can say...

well other than pics?

oh and what size is the current engine?

I'll post some pics when I find them, got a fair collection just not sure where... sadly all are a bit old as the workshop isn't very accessible for me right now.

The engine size is a bit over 1400cc based on a 1372cc block. Originally I had to keep it below 1428cc to comply with the regulations that kept me under the 2001cc mark with an equivalence ratio of 1.4. These days I am slotted into the top class of the regulations anyway after all those rules changes so I could have the biggest engine I could find if I wanted but that isn't practical so the original plan is still there.

well it'd be great to see pics nonetheless!

you shooting for 300bhp on a 1400 well that's impressive what you going to reving to? i pressume it's an uno turbo block?

Actually its a Punto GT3 block, the last version has a few changes to the block design that makes it a little bit stronger.

Managed to dig out some photos - I'll try and put them in some kind of meaningful order.

Car #2 first




Ready to go racing for the first time!



A day out at Castle Combe for testing



And where it all ended for this one....

Car #3


The initial work was stripping the shell back and cleaning it up


Part way and nearly ready for the rollcage


With the cage in but still not ready yet


Finally ready to put it back on some wheels


Back on the wheels


With the new front end in place (for fully fitted yet)

One of the prototype cylinder heads


The enlarged throttle plate on a MkI Uno Turbo manifold

Pure class Jimbro!

Your car looks awesome...first time I saw the whole setup. :worship::worship::worship:

Yap said:

Pure class Jimbro!

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Wow fantastic work Jimbro

that's impressive :slayer: looks like a top qualty job too

when you said you'd cut off as much excess metal as you could you weren't lying, that thing mst be light? fibreglass panels i assume?

cheers posting the pics, i'll be following your progress

jimbro1000 said:

One of the prototype cylinder heads

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Oh i do like good head

fordy744 said:

that's impressive :slayer: looks like a top qualty job too

when you said you'd cut off as much excess metal as you could you weren't lying, that thing mst be light? fibreglass panels i assume?

cheers posting the pics, i'll be following your progress

Click to expand...

It isn't as light as I wanted it to be but still lighter than the race regulations permit so we have to load it up with ballast and that means we can get a near perfect weight distribution.

The bodywork is all lightweight GRP (scarily thin) but cleverly woven for strength with a bit of kevlar in the mix where there is likely to be some flex.

We did have the option of going for a low temperature carbon fibre set of panels but it doubles the cost and sadly I have to keep the costs down where I can. The beauty is that the entire front end comes away as a single piece and then splits into four parts (2 wings, front and "bonnet"). The rear isn't quite so simple to work with but still comes apart. The rear deck is from a prototipo rather than a dallara, this includes a snorkle to feed the intercooler but this may be disallowed under the silhouette regs despite the historical fitting of such an item to X1/9s in rally but I was allowed to run my old rear deck with kick-up spoiler so I have a reasonable argument to keep it except that I also have an original single element rear spoiler that was appropriated from a real dallara a few years back when that was upgraded to a full gt style affair.

Which reminds me, the inside of the GRP panels need painting - the plan is to use a flame retardant paint that expands when exposed to a fire to smother it and put the fire out. If you've ever seen what happens when a GRP car catches you'll appreciate why it is essential. The chassis is already fitted with a lifeline 360 system but these tend to be of limited use as they only cover parts of the car (typically two sides of the engine bay and the driver). This car is a massive investment of time and money and none of us can afford to lose that investment.