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jimmybell said:
Donington!

Not strictly a Clio post, but it was INTENDED to be a Clio day. until it wasn't.

So it became a GT3 day...

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I did say one day i'd give @burrellbloke a ride in it, so the exhaust tips arrived (titanium JCR silencer tips.. lovely blue shade when bedded in!), the Cup 2s were fitted and the front numberplate 'fell' off. Was great to see such a range of cars, with @EthanMenace @burrellbloke @AndyP - and the 6000 school kids watching Jimmy Broadbent on a simulator in garage 99. To be fair, they were all nice, but i drew the line at passenger laps for the sim racers who wouldn't risk their own car, hah.

shiny blue tips:

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some action shots... Track Obsession photos being as good as ever:

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Vids:

Firstly gently following the guys in the clio to try and learn the lines, see what the GT3 is all about, and somewhat enjoy trying to catch the clio .. working our way through traffic. Clio is much more confidence inspiring in the corners ... probably because i know the clio, and i can afford for it to hit a sausage curb. GT3 wins in the engine dept, as you'll see when you put your foot down fully vs @burrellbloke on the back straight. I should say the ‘sighting laps’ were not sighting at all for me and the poor caterham before me.. both of us had been passed by the second corner lol.


Second vid is a later session with a 'fast' lap and @burrellbloke on board, despite a lot of traffic and more examples of people on the weird 'slow line' on the last chicane before the pits (you cant really see it but the clio wasn't going to lift to let me through, so you can't confidently turn across the chicane). Fun to see the GT3 vs the Clio with ethan doing his fast laps during that session.



trackday was generally pretty good - though lots of red flags, and i was mostly taking it easy anyway. I think the GT3 will get some camber before i take it out again and actually push it. It's definitely interesting driving a car with that much power and brakes - spent most of my time assessing whether the overtake was safe or not, even in the fast lap i'm constantly hesitating over whether to accelerate or just float behind someone.. and equally whether i can outbrake safely without pissing them off ('that twat in a gt3 again!').

as mentioned in the other post i also found (in 27c heat..) the Cup2 seemed to fall off after 4-5 laps and started to hit 35psi .. really noticed it starting to run wide (all 4 tyres). It's controlled and well balanced .. i guess you'd hope so given it's a porsche... but on a narrow section of track somewhat uncomfortable. The tyres also need quite a bit of work to get hot.. duno if that's just the size of them or something lol. The evening session had a few acquaintances in GT4RS and GT3RS who said similar things about the heat and Cup2s.

Again you see the optimal lap time based on my best lines being significantly different to the achieved times, i suspect this will be pretty common for tracks on my first visit. Look forward to going back! Overall very happy, the fact the GT3 can drive there in comfort, flip some switches and do those laps with full A/C blasting out and 9000rpm, and then drive home without issues is brilliant.

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JCR just put a nice Brands Hatch GT4 youtube video up which to me is a great advert for a GT4.
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@jimmybell I hope I wasn’t the Clio that got in your way, though I always do my best to allow quicker cars through
 
AndyP said:
@jimmybell I hope I wasn’t the Clio that got in your way, though I always do my best to allow quicker cars through
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Hah no i dont think so! it was common practice.. actually in the latter video you can see the mx5 REALLY gets in the way in one of the first laps.

Fundamentally it’s a trackday so it’s the car overtaking that has to safely pass.. it’s just a weird corner and a decent portion of the trackday seemed to prefer staying right rather than following the line, which confuses things when the other half are doing the same corner from the left side of the track lol
 
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Are there any trusted or known suppliers of engines? I found some refurbed ones for more than the price of a 182, but that seems wasteful.. and i cant afford that now :/

…would be cheaper to buy and break up a working car..

Ebay doesnt seem great. Fb marketplace seems a little better.

Is it possible to somehow get mileage from the engine alone? All the claims of miles seem a little fluffy if it’s not in the car and readable on the ECU
 
You have 2 options really, you just chuck something in with questionable servicing for 'not much' money, or you go silly with it and buy a replacement and get it rebuilt.
Personally, I would go down the cheapest route, but that's only cus I'm tight.

I think it's more than doable breaking a car, subtracting the engine out of the equation, and breaking even on the money you put in. Obviously depends on keeping her indoors happy when you've got a half stripped car sat on the drive. You've also got the headache of dealing with all the numpties on Facebook marketplace afterwards.
 
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jimmybell said:
Are there any trusted or known suppliers of engines? I found some refurbed ones for more than the price of a 182, but that seems wasteful.. and i cant afford that now :/

…would be cheaper to buy and break up a working car..

Ebay doesnt seem great. Fb marketplace seems a little better.

Is it possible to somehow get mileage from the engine alone? All the claims of miles seem a little fluffy if it’s not in the car and readable on the ECU
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I've got a 120k mile 830 out of my 197. I took it out to Meglio it when the gearbox caused me a complete sense of humour failure. Its got stacks of service history, I've put about 40k on it in two years and changed the oil roughly every 8,000 miles.

It does have an oil leak from somewhere behind the cam cover, I think the rear main needs doing and its due a belt in 2 years or 20k miles from memory, but its out the car anyway which is 80% of the labour bill on fixing it. Drop me a message if its any good to you.
 
RSRowe said:
You have 2 options really, you just chuck something in with questionable servicing for 'not much' money, or you go silly with it and buy a replacement and get it rebuilt.
Personally, I would go down the cheapest route, but that's only cus I'm tight.

I think it's more than doable breaking a car, subtracting the engine out of the equation, and breaking even on the money you put in. Obviously depends on keeping her indoors happy when you've got a half stripped car sat on the drive. You've also got the headache of dealing with all the numpties on Facebook marketplace afterwards.
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Yeah i agree, i honestly dont want any more power.. just reliability. I think the stripping a donor car idea won't fly with her indoors in current (9 months pregnant) state, although you can get a full 197 car with some useful mods for around £3k now - and at least you'd have service history for the engine. for example https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/790792499225914/

There's some low miler (60k) engines on ebay, and higher miler ones on marketplace.. i'm not sure you can safely say lower miles is better without some history to back it up (and some sense of how it was used). I think we've got plenty of healthy high miler engines on the forum.. and my 67k one went bang, so never a perfect way to assess.

i guess forged internals isn't going to stop bearing wear unless there is a forged bearing set? i'd planned on getting alex to check / replace these anyway given it's less work than rebuilding the entire engine.. and it seems like this is/was the common cause of these grenades.
 
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S24nrc said:
I've got a 120k mile 830 out of my 197. I took it out to Meglio it when the gearbox caused me a complete sense of humour failure. Its got stacks of service history, I've put about 40k on it in two years and changed the oil roughly every 8,000 miles.

It does have an oil leak from somewhere behind the cam cover, I think the rear main needs doing and its due a belt in 2 years or 20k miles from memory, but its out the car anyway which is 80% of the labour bill on fixing it. Drop me a message if its any good to you.
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appreciate that! thanks. honestly not familiar with the F4R or generally that engine aware (at least, i'm yet to rebuild one..) - so couldn't say what the oil leak implication is in terms of fixing that. i can chat with Alex and see his thoughts.
 
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If I was you @jimmybell I'd source an engine with as much of a back-story as possible, which would probably mean prioritising a 'forum' engine over an unknown engine from FB or eBay, even if it has higher miles. I'd rather have a 120k engine that's had regular oil changes with good oil, and taken to the redline every now and again, than a 60k engine that's been driven to the shops and serviced every 12k.

There's an interesting video on the Bathtub failure distribution model when it comes to replacing parts, it's a Land Rover video but the principle is the same:


I'd get that used engine delivered to Alex, with a brief (assuming your funds allow) to health check and build in reliability while it is on the engine stand out of the car. Subject to a good compression test I'd avoid opening the engine up if I didn't have to (for reasons explained in the video).

I'd have the block cleaned and then instruct the replacements of gaskets, seals, oil and water pumps, spark plugs, dephaser pulley and all the belts, and new fluids obviously. Depending on the state of the idler pulley (these seem to have a 'life'), I'd get that done at the same time. You've got an opportunity while the engine is out to do all the awkward stuff, so it would be a false economy to stick an unknown engine straight back in without some preventative maintenance and TLC whilst it's all in bits, whilst keeping any known good engine internals intact.
 
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Just to weigh in on the engine debate.

As a former R53 owner a popped engine was fairly regular for me - I owned the car 4 years and had the same amount of engines give of a take. This has given me some insight. Most bar one good engines when purchased and checked but all failed due to random issues that can only be attributed to it being a mini.

Any way moving on... I am in agreeance with @R20BTG the best way forward would be a forum engine providing you have videos running etc.

Having dealt with a prominent R53 breaker back in mini days. Just because someone is braking a lot doesn't mean they're providing good products. Said engine purchased from this breaker was sold as 75K engine with service history to reflect this. However in reality it was more use as a boat anchor than anything else... a filter full of metallic flakes and copper showing on the crank bearings. Got a quite C:censored: nty response from the seller explaining that as it was to go in a track car no warranty could be given.... even though it never saw a track.

Anyway what that paragraph of a tangent/ vent is trying to do corroborate the above.

Hope it helps.
 
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I guess the issue is not many forum people have spare engines.. they're typically looking to buy them rather than remove them!

seems quite a few avail once you scour around - another handful on facebook groups but seemingly sold by breakers at high prices.
 
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Any opinions on stuff like https://www.engine-dynamics.com/Engine-Builds/cid110/Engine-Builds.asp ?

Aside from the obvious ££££ cost, is it basically £2k to restore an engine (new bearings) to decent condition, or £2.5k for +5hp (racing bearings)? :smiley:

i can just get alex to check/refresh bearings (and seals etc) for a lot less, and maybe spend a relatively small amount to portmatch / gasflow the inlet manifold (MS engineering on ebay from memory)

i only highlighted bearings as the likely cause of my issue and apparently common, but probably wont ever know.. unless i can get my dead engine home to mess around with. i'm guessing 'racing bearings' are stronger..?
 
Iain read my comment 'im trying to keep cost down, not add power and improve reliability' and replied with a £10k race engine.

I think my clio would need to be a lot lighter before i put that in it. and i'd need a lot more money. Bank of England is doing it's best to ruin the fun for everyone..
 
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