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POWER AND PRACTICALITY? GREEK EVO X IS THE REAL DEAL
GE
Timteack at
HOME-BUILT
DRAG
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STAR
budget blasters!
SELF-BUILT CIVIC PACKS 600BHP TO TAKE ON THE DRAG SCENE’S TOP TUNERS
O’D M A C P H 600B URBO B16 T
TURBO’D MX-5 BUILT ON A DRIVEWAY FOR LESS THAN £3K THIS TURBO’D MX-5 IS THE ULTIMATE BARGAIN BUILD
WORLD TIME ATTACK’S HOME-BUILT HERO STANCED SCOOBY PROVES LESS IS MORE JP’S GUIDE TO MODIFYING ON A BUDGET
£4.35 No.128
SEP ’11 www.chpltd.com
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e l t t i l a With m o r f help s d n e i r f s i h od n Sherwo Words: Da rdt a nh ei St Pics: Phil
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KE A M S D N A YH N A M Y A S LSO A Y THEY E H T T , BU K R O W T H LIG ARD D N A T S A HELP TURN TO A 600BHP N EG CIVIC I ILE KING QUARTER-M
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he orange glow from the overhead strip light illuminates a grease-covered hand gripping an equally greasy spanner. Empty and half-drunk cans of Relentless energy drink litter the floor alongside the various remnants of cardboard takeaway containers and well-thumbed tuning magazines. This is about as far from the clinically clean and well-stocked premises of a professional tuning company as you could get, yet, at the centre of this cold, dark and spatially-restricted unit, is one of the country’s most potent front-wheel drive drag cars. But if the premises seem unlikely, what is even more surprising, is the fact that the guys wielding the wrenches aren’t well-seasoned drag racers with decades of straightline quarter pounding experience to call upon, but a bunch of car crazy mates in their late teens and early twenties.
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’ n i h c r o c S
ics: nare s & P Word lle carbo a d o din
ELITE S ’ K TAC EVER T A E TIM S15 IS N N O G H TAKIN ELF-BUILT Y, BUT WIT G, IN A S TO BE EAS CH RACIN UKIGOING ROM SCOR FREAK SUZ BEST F HELP ESE SPEED WITH THE JAPAN MIXING IT S SAN I
t o H
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Under Suzuki-san’s left hand a Hollinger H6S six-speed sequential gearbox is ready and waiting to provide him with super-fast gearshifts to allow all that power to be transmitted to the tarmac in the fastest time possible. An essential ingredient to lapping Tsukuba in 55.563 seconds
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Reality Bites
BUILDING OUT-ANDOUT RACECARS IS ONE THING, BUT MAKING A TARMACCHEWING PERFORMANCE CAR THAT YOU CAN LIVE WITH EVERYDAY IS THE HOLY GRAIL OF MODIFYING. JP GOES GREEK TO SEE IF AUTO ERGONOMICS’ MITSUBISHI EVO X IS THE REAL DEAL S: WORD AND PIC ras Alex Lychna
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o s t o N
mellow yellow
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WITH A RETINA-SEARING YELLOW AND BLACK PAINT JOB AND A POTENT HOME-BUILT TURBO CONVERSION, AYSHE SHAKIR’S MAZDA EUNOS IS ANYTHING BUT SUBTLE
I
Another name often seen in MX-5 circles is Raceland, who make some of the best value coilover kits around. With kits available through eBay from around £150, they may not be the best, but for anyone on a tight budget, they may be worth a look
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t may be the best selling two-seat sports convertible on the planet, but Mazda’s MX-5 – or Eunos if we’re talking about the imported versions – has never really been a car to get your juices flowing in the same way as say, the insanely high-revving Honda S2000. Its dependable, middle-of-the-road performance and styling is what has won it so many fans across the globe, but is also what has kept it from gaining true cult status as a truly desirable performance car. However, with prices for early models now at an extremely affordable level, and the variety of parts and tuning options also in abundance, the humble MX-5 is gaining momentum to becoming a real big hitter in the modified car scene. Just head out to any Japanese-based car show and you’ll be amazed at the quantity and quality of mighty Mazdas on display, each one dispelling the myth and sentencing the age-old hairdresser stereotype to history. One such car that is anything but average is the bumblebeecoloured creation you see on these pages. Owned by 21-year-old admin manager Ayshe Shakir, it’s the perfect example of how to transform Mazda’s middling two-seater into a true tarmac terrorist, and she’s done it all for less than a WAG’s weekly handbag allowance. ‘My first ever Jap car was an MX-5 and it was great,’ remembers Ayshe. ‘Apart from a set of Rota rims and some shocks and springs, it was standard, but it was such a brilliant little car. In fact, it was the car that got me hooked on Jap cars – now I’m a total Jap-addict.’ But as many of us do when we get our first taste of addiction, we tend to strive for that next big hit; that next step up the ladder that’ll give us an even greater buzz. For Ayshe, that meant selling the MX-5 and diving in to turbocharged territory with a Rev 2 Toyota MR2 turbo. ‘Unfortunately, I never really took to the MR2,’ shrugs Ayshe. ‘It was great when it worked and was pretty powerful, but it was plagued with constant niggles which, while not anything catastrophic, were never easy, or cheap to fix.’ The final straw came when the Toyota’s drive shaft decided to give up the ghost and ended up costing a small fortune to put right. ‘I’d spent so much time and money fixing things that went wrong on the MR2, that I’d just had enough,’ Ayshe explains. ‘After the driveshaft was fixed, I put it up for sale.’
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+tech are a couple of common terms to be aware of. ‘Cold winding’ relates to the manufacture and offers a better Suspension bushes process for long-lasting springs that will sag less over time, Used to separate individual components in a car’s suspension, although the process is more bushes are one of the smaller – yet still vital – components that expensive, so you may pay a affect handling and your car’s safety. slight premium. Generally factory items are made of rubber, but can perish and Another term you’ll come split due to time and the elements, so our advice is to replace them across is ‘progressive winding’. with longer-lasting polyurethane bushes that have better absorption On progressively-wound properties. A top company like Polybush can supply a complete set springs the coil’s pitch gets from £250 depending on your car. tighter closer to the top, creating a shorter spring for the Strut Braces lowering factor (the spring itself If you're serious about your handling, after replacing the stock isn’t shorter, the progressive suspension, the next step is a strut brace. Under cornering, a car's chassis twists slightly as (especially at the winding makes it so) and giving increased resistance the more it front) the suspension towers are connected by the car’s body, which is compressed. can flex. A strut brace provides a physical link by bolting to the tops With prices starting at just of the two suspension posts, making it more rigid, reducing flex. over £100 for a set of springs, for those looking for a slammed Anti-roll bars stance on a tight budget, this is Doing exactly as their name suggests, anti-roll bars combat a a great way into the world of vehicle’s roll as it corners. Effectively they connect the bottom of the uprated suspension. suspension components together, transferring any motion applied to Now a couple of words of one side to the other keeping it flat and more stable. warning. Shorter aftermarket Like all suspension components, from the factory they’re biased springs will subject your towards comfort, so there’s plenty of scope for improvement and aftermarket items can dramatically improve road holding and traction. factory dampers to more stress as they’ll be operating a shorter throw than they were Corner balancing/alignment designed for and, ultimately, So you’ve got youre trick new suspension, uprated your bushes and fitted a strut brace. An expert service, corner balancing and alignment they'll fail quicker. And NEVER be tempted to chop your is well worth the £150-200 you’ll spend as it makes sure each corner applies the same force to the ground – relative to each diagonallyopposed corner – and that it is applied in a manner that keeps the car’s tread flat for maximum traction. This can transform handling.
OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER...
springs to reduce your ride height. You’ll weaken the spring’s integrity and are very unlikely to get an exact match at each corner, throwing your suspension out of kilter. Just don’t do it, OK? Next up, as tempting as it may be, don’t lower your car too much. Although that sillscraping stance looks cool, going too low is detrimental to both handling and stability. As your suspension bottoms out under hard cornering loads, the end that goes first will viciously snap out on you. So although touring cars sit a fag paper away from the Tarmac, they ride on snooker table smoothsurfaces, on the road they would suck – big time.
Suspension kits The first real entry into proper performance suspension comes with a matched lowering spring and damper kit.
Ohlins’ DFV Dual Flow Valve technology allows the damper fluid a consistent flow in both directions, giving the same characteristics on both rebound and compression, ensuring maximum grip and stability at all times no matter how imperfect the surface
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Full coilovers allow you to adjust the ride height of your car by using a set of ‘C’ spanners to unwind the locking plate further down the damper body
Dampers ‘dampen’ (hence the name) the vertical motion caused by driving along a rough surface. If you had just springs your car would wallow and bouce around like a drunken North Sea ferry and eventually vibrate itself to bits. They absorb larger bumps, so the upward movement of the wheel and tyre isn’t transmitted through the rest of the chassis, and keep your tyres planted as flat as possible in relation to the road surface for maximum grip. More technically, they are a velocity-sensitive hydraulic system, so the faster they move, the more resistance is created to that movement. As part of the suspension system, the spring allows the energy generated by the movement of the wheel to be transformed into kinetic energy, whereupon it is dissipated by the damper. The damper does this by forcing oil through a constriction valve. Adjustable dampers allow you to change the size of this hole, and making it smaller stiffens the damping. More budget kits have fixed-rate damping and a progressive spring that will give generally a -40mm or -60mm ride height reduction. Higher-end kits bring damper adjustability to the party. More of this in the next section… Prices start at £350-400.
Coilovers Coilovers are an all-in-one system that carries both the spring and the damper, with a threaded body that allows you to compress the spring, depending on the ride height or stiffness required. This makes them ideally suited to more demanding track work or for the more ‘enthusiastic’ driver. The spring itself is narrower, and by artificially compressing it, you alter the vehicle’s ‘static sag’ – the amount of suspension travel consumed by the car when it is sat still. For example, you may want to increase the spring preload on the rear of your car if you run a heavy ICE install, or lessen it if you’ve stripped out the rear end. An adjuster valve on the damper allows the control of either/both compression and rebound damping. Compression damping is the resistance from the damper’s steady state to its compressed state, for example;
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Ohlins Road & Track range also include a unique needle bleed valve that expands proportionally to an increase in temperature and reduction in viscosity of the damper fluid under hard driving, closing the gap the fluid travels through to maintain consistent damping. An extension cable allows for compression and rebound adjustment for applications where access may be difficult by hand
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