Photo’s by Erik van der Schaaff.
Last weekend started with an open pit lane training day where we could scrub the tires in. You may remember we did a lot of work to our 1974 RSR The Hulk over the winter, so I was anxious to know how it all played out… Just lapping at an easy pace (at least that’s how it felt) I was already doing race pace laps of last year! Clearly the car had been transformed by Lex Proper, our TwinSpark partner RSR guru.
I called it quits after one session as the car handled just right and I wanted to save the tires for lap time that really mattered.
The changes implemented on the car were:
Fine tuning the MFI pump settings on the rolling road.
New, stiffer, adjustable sway bars or “stabi’s” as we call them, in original lightweight RSR spec.
16 inch BBS E50 rims and AVON radial tires.
Let’s review the impact these measures had:
Fine tuning the MFI pump is more than the standard adjustment with the CO screw. To get the best of it Lex set up all the butterflies from scratch and adjusted the settings inside the MFI pump until he achieved optimal combustion at all revs. Combustion is measured with a lambda sensor through the exhaust fumes. Every time you make an adjustment, you run the engine through an acceleration cycle to see how the combustion improves and what bhp is generated. This way The Hulk got to factory spec horsepower and wonderful torque. Driving the car with the centrally fed Schrick camshafts you hardly notice the bias towards high revs and the engine runs super smooth. Lex spent nearly a day on the rolling road but the work totally paid off.
Last winter we hooked up with a new supplier of RSR replica parts, who has direct access to the OEM examples. Among other great parts he makes our sway bars in a standard and lightweight version, with the original style brackets. As we try everything ourselves before selling it to clients, The Hulk was equipped with the latter type. With no real adjustment the car already felt so much steadier, it was amazing. The 16 inch wheels did the rest.
During qualifying we had a downpour and I scored P2 despite a flying entry and exit from the Tarzan corner gravel trap. I had braked a bit late and a bit too much and once the grip was gone it was too late to avoid the off. A quick shift into 1st allowed me to keep rolling and I made it back onto the track and continued qualifying.
The races were a hoot and three podiums are a dream start to any season.
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