RA40 Track Car

[blueRA40]

Hey all

well I have decided not to rebuild the car for the road as i want to start entering hill climbs and track days.

So i have the 18RC in the old girl at the moment and it is going to be changed to an 18RG when I can find a good one..
What I am wondering is what sort of mods would I be looking at. suspension diff etc to upgrade to any help from ppl that have built track cars would be awsome.

to this stage I have stripped the interior. the motor has been refreshed as it was going to be on the road. and new standard suspension and breaks have been rebuilt.

Im hoping this to be ongoing thread and ill come back to it alot posting pics and letting you all know what im up to. With everyones help maybe I can build a nice 2nd Gen celica

Cheers
Bevan

[timbosaurus]

Hey Bevan, good option!

The RA40 should be easier to find parts in any unfortunate incidents.

I've never built a car from scratch, so i'm just throw suggestions out there.

1) make a members ride thread. I think that's more appropriate for your buildup that the tech/conversions sections.
2) 18RG should be good. For a track car you don't need massive poer to have fun... but you do need a free revving engine. nothing better than an engine that progressively pulls to 8k rpm, even if it is only pulling to 90rwkw
3) make it reliable. everything you do, make sure you spend the time to do it properly. Spend the time do wiring properly, planning mods properly, planning maintenance properly. No points rushing to get some u-beaut new guages in quickly, only to find the twist-tie you did on the wires shorts out and blows a fuse, ending your $150 track day after 5 mins!!!!
4) have fun with a reliable, safe, light, and relatively semi-stock setup. Work out the deficiancies, and go from there. You will probably find that the first thing to upgrade is the brakes. Then the springs. Then the tyres. Then the shocks. Then the geometry. Then the power.

[ian]

hey timbo
are you still going to winton next fri ?
ian

[timbosaurus]

Yes.... yes I am! Are you?

The couple of other guys decided not to come, as we'll also be doing the Sandown driver dynamics day on 10May, and they aren't allowed out that often

But I need to go up and shake out any issues with the car.

[blueRA40]

thanks timbo.

im going to start on the suspension. i was just going to put lower springs on the standard struts. could i use any other struts from another car that has a bigger brake setup, for example could I poss use a 180sx strut setup.

[timbosaurus]

I've read that the RA40 and RA23/28 struts are very similar, maybe even interchangeable. So look at what people have done on them. Some people have looked into the s13 gear, but without much success. Apparently fitting the struts alone give pretty poor geometry.

Talk has been made of making the whole s13 crossmember fit in, then you keep s13 geometry by using the xmember and LCA mounts, steering, struts, and SR20DET engine mounts... No doubt a lot of potential, but I don't know if anyone has completed it. Probably a good reason or two.

Honestly, I don't think such a crazy job is worth it for a budget track car either.

sidetrack:

I think it was Infotechplus that said something in a thread recently that made me change my attitude. It was along the lines of, "if you have the right attitude, racing will be fun. You don't need to have the quickest car at every meet to enjoy it"

I took this as.. yeah, you can blow 20k on a new engine, 10k on a new suspension setup, 10k on all your safety gear, and another 10k on making it reliable. But in all honesty, the only real difference between this and someone who simply spends 2-3k on making their budget car safe and reliable, is the wanky bragging rights when you're back at work the next day and people ask you what cars you beat. And honestly... if you get caught up in that "speed of my car = size of my dick" attitude, you'll find $$$ dissapearing like nothing else. (unless, of course, you're racing in a series... then the whole idea is to be faster than others!!!)

So, make your car safe and reliable, and have fun

back on track:

To make your car safe and reliable, you WILL need better brakes than stock, but not much bigger. Especially if you lighten up your car and run decent fluid and pads, you won't need massive 4-pot alloy calipers and 330mm discs. Once again, they're often a showy thing unless you are constanly pulling up from 250kmh.

I think you could benifit from swapping your struts to the ones from the corona (XT130 maybe?) with the opposed twin piston calipers. I don't know how easy it would be to do, but the Peugeot 505/604 (DBA272) 273mm vented discs are reported to fit to the XT130 struts with some work. You'd have to play around with it a bit... i don't think it will be completely bolt together. Look at it as the standard coron/pug/hilux conversion... just without the big heavy hilux calipers.

Install DOT4 fluid and nice pads, and it could work well for a budget setup

[hosking1991]

put rt132 corona struts in they have a twin piston cailper i got a set from the wreckers for 100 bucks

[timbosaurus]

There ya go! As luke said, it's the RT142 struts... not the XT130.

[hosking1991]

im pretty sure there the same

[hosking1991]

Apparently RT132 struts are the same as XT130 ones. According to this page too: http://www.garagedori.com/tech/suspe..._into_ke35.php Confirmed

....................

[timbosaurus]

im pretty sure there the same

Ah... nice one!

[rob]

dont waste your time with puting XT130/RT132 struts and brakes in the car its not worth the cost or effort

i put RT132 struts into my RA40 and there was no difference other than the pedal felt worse

try this for a cheap upgrade http://www.toymods.net/forums/showthread.php?t=25965

just keep in mind i cant confirm that the pajero master cylinder fits on a RA40 booster. It might since RA40 master cylinder is 2 bolt as well.

[The Real Roadrunner]

There ya go! As luke said, it's the RT142 struts... not the XT130.

rt142 give shithouse camber problems. rt132 are the ones to get and grab the lower control arms at the same time as they increase the track by about 25mm (good for handling)

mx62 has a 24mm swaybar factory that will pretty much bolt straight in (get new bushes to suit)

then your just a set of dampers and springs away from decent suspension.

cheers
linden

[timbosaurus]

Well there ya go... like linden said....

As i mentioned, I dunno which corona struts suit, but RT132 rings a bell.

[timbosaurus]

dont waste your time with puting XT130/RT132 struts and brakes in the car its not worth the cost or effort

i put RT132 struts into my RA40 and there was no difference other than the pedal felt worse.

I wouldn't think that having twin-piston opposed calipers, and an extra ~10mm in rotor diameter could be a bad thing if done properly. Maybe the twin pistons need more front bias?

try this for a cheap upgrade http://www.toymods.net/forums/showthread.php?t=25965

This looks like a nice option. Well worth a look!