JPSC Forum

Morning all,

Just thought I'd say hello. I picked up a Fury last week - not my first kit car and I've spent a lot of time working on them - but it does things differently to what I'm used to!

Having owned / developed a couple of car-engined Westfields over the last 4 or 5 years, I'd developed an itch for something with a bike engine and / or a bit less aerodynamically-challenged, so when this came up locally at what appeared to be a bargain price I knew I had to have it...



I've only driven it once so far and the controls were... challenging. Really short and heavy / sticky throttle, really long and mushy brakes, loads of play / very stiff paddle shift, steering wheel off to one side, etc. So I've played around with these quite extensively and it feels much better now. It also holds my personal record for 'shortest time a car has been owned before it was attacked with the welder', due to no throttle pedal stop in the bulkhead, d'oh.



Still to sort: Get rid of that horrendous carbon wrap on the bonnet (looks to have lots of cracks but I'll get busy with the filler / sander / plastidip if I need to), sort out the huge amount of play in the steering column, check the geo and corner weighting (although ProComp are meant to have done it recently the steering wheel wasn't straight by quite a margin - weird), fluids change so I'm happy with their status, fit a proper front number plate and check the AFR is ok (and then delve into the Power Commander if not) and add to the roll hoop to make it more cage-like. Oh and a full strip down over winter to sort all the chassis cracks. Bum. Never mind, I like a project!


First impressions though - this thing is awesome. The lack of weight, the low gearing and the close ratios really help propel it along at a speed the power output wouldn't even hint at, and of course the lack of inertia really helps in the bends too. Having developed my Westfield extensively and seen what it was capable of (with 100bhp & 130kg more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMpH9A83uFg), I think this will actually be quicker around a lap, madness!

Hope to see some of you out and about soon

Cheers,
Adam

Welcome Adam, looks like you have a plan !

and looks like you have a good deal with the car. Looking forward to your progress with it. Also what arb does it have fitted?

Thanks guys!

No ARB either end at the moment, but I will make some / one up once I've done all the calculations. Having the ability to adjust balance at the track is paramount IMO! The rear will be very light (if I fit one at all), contributing 15% or less to the overall roll stiffness of that end of the car, but the front will be a little stiffer relatively. May mean a spring rate change but that's all part of the fun...

Interestingly all my tinkering with the Westfield (in the video above) gave almost identical numbers (in terms of percentages / relative rates front and rear) to what Caterham went with after developing the SV, just a little softer overall as it got used on the road a fair bit too: http://www.sevener.fr/articles_redac/Su ... am_CSR.pdf - so I'll be giving it the same treatment again.

I read AFR as ARB doh

Aaah, too many acronyms!

Welcome to JPSC. Here's a vid of your car before it had the wrap on a cold damp November day...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmCTjENGb7o

Also here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_vMX-nrgE8

Second one puts the willys up me as I put mine in the barriers in the same spot 20 mins later.

Cheers for that - I had done some 'stalking' and found those vids!

Turns out yesterday that I was at the same rolling road Joe originally had the car set up at a few years back. He was booked in again for further work recently - he felt it wasn't running right and I agree - but didn't turn up... Managed to get a run out last night and there was a lot of popping / banging / flames on over-run, and it STINKS of fuel in the lower rev ranges. Also seems to use quite a lot of oil (about a sixth of the sight glass in ~80 miles, around 100-150ml?), hoping the bores aren't glazed...

Ah, yes, common 'mistake' that at Oulton, you really have to let the car straighten as much as you can on exit to help prevent oversteer moments. Although the setup on this car probably explains the twitchyness, it appears to have toe out at the rear (from a cursory glance and the way it drives). Another thing on the todo list

Hope your ding wasn't too bad?

The "Ding" was more of a "crump" and smashed the GRP around the n/s rear light. Druids was particularly treachourous that day... Three cars went off on the sighting laps!

If it's got Sierra front uprights, it might be worth checking for bump steer. I recently checked mine and found varied by several degrees between full droop/bump. Repositioning the rack has cured it and it's a lot less twitchy. I intend to do a write up when I get time.

Ah, nothing toooo bad then. As long as it was only GRP and not chassis that makes things easier! I guess all of those cars were 4wd Jap Turbo powered? haha

Not sure which uprights they are actually, but planned to do bump steer check both ends - the rack seems pretty level with the steering arms at the moment so shouldn't be too far out. The 'wandering' feeling is definitely coming from the back end at the moment though...