Autosport International 2008

The Autosport International Show is without doubt the best motorsport orientated show in Europe. Its packed full of newly released cars, new parts, concepts and a massive array of memorobilia stands. This year it was bigger than ever with the introduction of the Pistonheads show which showcased some more performance car orientated products and machines rather than pure motorsport parts.

If you're into your motorsport or are busy preparing your track weapon then this show is definitely not to be missed.

Axle progress

The rear axle I'm using for this build has come from a rally spec Ford Escort Mk2 and so has a lot of stregthening and various bracketry and bits that I don't need for the kitcar so it all has to be modified or cut off to make room for the trailing arm boxes. I've been grinding and cutting on the rear axle casing for two whole nights now and I've cleaned up one end completely to the point where I can test position the trailing arm boxes. There's not much to show for two nights progress but at least it looks rather shiny!

Here's what the original setup was (left side of the axle)

and here's the cleaned up right side of the axle with the trailing arm box just taped roughly in position for the photo.

Chop shop continues...

Some more progress then. I've got all my nuts and bolts together so that I can mock the rear suspension up and as I thought I was going to run into problems with the trailing arms hitting the top of the Tiger chassis on upward strokes so there was nothing else for it but to completely chop off the rear section of the chassis to make way for a completely new tail end. This should be entertaining...

Shortly after chopping through the tubes:


After cleaning up the remaining bits, its now ready for new sections to be added:

Tiger Cat E1 progress

The Tiger is finally beginning to take shape. I've managed to get 90% of the front suspension together for mock up purposes now, all that remains is the top ball joint. I need to find out what ball joint is used for the Cat E1 front rocker arms before I can set about finishing and tidying up the ball joint cups fixed in the Sierra hub carriers.



I've had a bit of a garage clear out too to make some more room to work in so I've ended up throwing most of the body panels on the car to see how it looks... its getting there... slowly.

taff*tune hoodie

Well here's the first taff*tune hoodie to materialise. The quality seems great and they've turned out better than anticipated.

If you're interested in getting one yourself, get in touch with me here

Kitcar woe..

Well todays work has just been one big headache! It all started off well and I breezed through modifying the second seat frame for the passenger seat. I welded the whole lot up and bolted it to the seat, job done sorted. The next job was fitting tubing in the chassis to bolt the seats on to. I cut the tubes, stepped them so that they sat 15mm above floor level as per the drivers side but then realised that there was a distinct lack of space on the passenger side compared to the drivers side.. I measured it up and to my surprise the whole of the passenger side is 10-15mm narrower which means that the seat is a tight squeeze. I'm going to wait until I get my rear axle before I commit to positioning the second seat as it does foul on the rear bodywork when fully back so I need to know where the wheels sit before the bodywork position is fixed and then I can set the seat position.. My god, some things aren't as easy as they seem!

Kitcar build up

Its time to add some words and pictures for the kitcar build thats currently going on out in the garage. This is meant to be my engine fund for the drift car so I'm trying to put a reasonably spec'd kitcar together on a budget. The base kit is a Tiger Cat E1 that was sold to me as a barely started unfinished project almost three years ago but has taken a back seat whilst I worked on other things. Now is the time to build and finish it.

Here's how it stood in the garage 3 years ago:

Since then the chassis has been sat outside the garage and the bodypanels have been in storage.

The first decision I'd made when I restarted the project was that the rear end was a complete mess and just a mass of tubes that linked up to a heavy Sierra rear suspension setup had to go. So the cutting wheels were unleashed and the whole rear section from the back of the passenger area was cut off and cast aside. I'd also decided that the front of the chassis was a bit too square and front lower chassis member needed to be raised and tapered in under the nosecone to give it a neater look from the front. The standard Tiger nosecone is slightly twisted so I've mounted that up rigidly to the chassis and it's been sat in place for a couple of months to try and take the twist out of it, I heated up the rear edge too as it was slightly wider than the chassis, rachet strapping it in place whilst it was warm pulled it in to line up neatly.

Over the last week I've been tidying up the area that sits in front of the scuttle panel. The original chassis design used a Ford pedal box mounted above the chassis which is extremely awkward and untidy. Needless to say the whole pedalbox was cut out to make way for a nice floor mounted pedal box with bias bar brakes. There is no longer anything above the chassis rails infront of the scuttle panel which will give me more space to mount some reservoirs for the brakes and cooling system.

Another change to the original design was for the steering column. The original used a standard Sierra column as is and simply mounted on two simple tabs on the chassis tubes. This allowed a great deal of flex in the column and the bearings in the column housing were pretty sloppy. I decided to strip the column completely to its two main component parts. Now the plan is to mount the column in a 30mm kart rear axle bearing and carriers to a stiffer bracket mounted on the chassis. This also allows me to have the option to move the column out slightly to bring it in line with the seat position.

The original Tiger seats intended for the car were, to be kind, rubbish! They consisted of two blocks of foam that simply sat in the cockpit so I bought two fibreglass shell seats and a pair of OMP sliding seat rails instead. The seat rails had to be modified slightly to make them longer by about 15mm and wider by 37mm to fit the mounts on the seats. The original tubes for the seats were cut out of the chassis and replaced by two tubes mounted 15mm higher to ensure that the nuts used to hold the seats in place weren't the lowest part of the car.

Hopefully in the next couple of days my English axle will turn up along with some wheels so I can get on with building a new rear end for the car and get the chassis work finished. The next thing to source is a Vauxhall XE engine... watch this space.