My day at Castle Combe sprint today.

MarkTurbo

Well-Known Member
A picture paints a thousand words :doh: The car lasted about 2 1/2 mins, although it was a bloody quick 2 1/2 mins 8)

Luckily its baking hot and there's a bar here so not all bad :lol:

 

MarkTurbo

Well-Known Member
I destroyed 3rd gear in practice this morning, pretty sure theres no teeth left on it :doh: The annoying thing was i managed to do well over half a lap with no 3rd and end up only 5 secs behind the quickest car in the class, i wasn't last either :lol:

Oh no! Not your new engine I hope
The new engine was the cause of the problem, too much torque i think!

I've decided now i won't be doing anything else until i've got an uprated box in there.
 

bensmith907

New Member
So did it go because of abuse or do the gearboxes go from the pure power going through it

What I mean is- I never do launches and I never dump the clutch in an effort to save it but is my gear box likely to go from just putting my foot down or engine breaking?
 

lakeview

Active Member
i say you would be fine ben,ive had 2 high power gtirs as daily cars and never had a gearbox go yet

rob
 

red reading

Active Member
i say you would be fine ben,ive had 2 high power gtirs as daily cars and never had a gearbox go yet

rob
maybe your car does'nt have as much power as you think, marks has stripped from power, like 450bhp and 400+lbft of torque from a 2.4 litre engine.
 

lakeview

Active Member
maybe your car does'nt have as much power as you think, marks has stripped from power, like 450bhp and 400+lbft of torque from a 2.4 litre engine.
or maybe they did

since late 1999 ive owned 4 gtirs 3 were regular daily cars 2 were quite high powered.one was about 380 ish and one was about 450 ish(though only owned it for a year)
not making any comments regarding marks car the answer was to ben and id say he shouldnt worry about breaking his gearbox
gearboxes can break in any car whether its a gtir or bugatti veyron

rob
 

wrc

Member
Very true.

There are lots of contributing factors, hence why you hear of 400+ cars being fine - yet someone running the 1 bar mod can have issues straight away.

It literally depends on the condition of the box, condition of the gear oil - i mean who knows where they have been over the last 20 years all these standard boxes - 20 years if a long time when these cars arent exactly designed to be driven slow... You are always gonna be on borrowed time and have to be careful running high power.
 

red reading

Active Member
torque is the killer of these boxes, 3rd and 5th are the two weakest gears (from the tooth pitch and size) . having built more boxes than most have had hot diners i can tell you that you are on borrowed time, age definatley and abuse does have an effect of course but that does not defeat that the gear is simlpy weak machined cast shit to start with, for most people you could get away with putting aftermarket 3rd,4th,5th in the gearbox. having also built a box with new gears i can also say it lasted about 2 mins with 420lbft torque and gave up and striped 3rd.

You can actually see on the gears from high powered cars gearboxes the pressure causes the tooth to compress and push out on the sides too...........not good.
 

red reading

Active Member
Also some don't realise they have aftermarket gearset's already i have rebuilt 2 for people that were whining and noisey to find they were aftermarket (one quaife, one unkown), becker gearboxes for instance have helical gears and sound the same as standard (as you could get syncro from them as well as dog).
 

MarkTurbo

Well-Known Member
Even if 3rd hadn't of gone i think i would have soon had problems with 5th. I've only ever had to go upto 4th at castle combe before in all the years i've been going there but the car is so fast now i'm having to use 5th gear :shock:

Thats a bumer so sorry to read this, hope all is fixed soon.
regards
Phil
Thanks Phil, the car was performing better than i could have imagined before the box went so with an uprated box it should be very competitive 8)

So did it go because of abuse or do the gearboxes go from the pure power going through it
Just from the power and torque. I had a feeling it would go sometime this year, just didn't think it would be so soon :lol:
 

Bispers

New Member
Hi Mark, in practice your car certainly shot off the startline from my viewpoint there, so I was sorry not to see you re-appear for the timed runs. I hope you get everything sorted and thanks for showing me your car and chatting through specs as you got ready at the start of the day. Andrew
 

MarkTurbo

Well-Known Member
Hopefully some of what i said was of use to you Andrew, the scrutineer turned up just at the wrong time really!

Didn't realise you were helping out with the event, hope you didn't get sunburnt out there on the start line all day. If you need to know anything else you can usually find the answer on here by searching or asking. Hope you haven't been put off by seeing my car break, they don't always do that!
 

Bispers

New Member
Hopefully some of what i said was of use to you Andrew, the scrutineer turned up just at the wrong time really!

Didn't realise you were helping out with the event, hope you didn't get sunburnt out there on the start line all day. If you need to know anything else you can usually find the answer on here by searching or asking. Hope you haven't been put off by seeing my car break, they don't always do that!
Yes I thought I'd better leave you to the scrutineer. You were helpful thanks and I'll try not to be put-off by your experience. There were many people who experiences issues unfortunately - engine, gearbox, suspension, wheel failure etc. The event was run by my Motor Club so it was good to help. Startline radio was a busy place!

Combe is a bad place for gearboxes. If you noticed a winding trail of cement dust through the paddock that was covering the gearbox oil from my car at a recent Autosolo, which ended-up with a big hole in the 'box casing.

Hope you get everything fixed-up and are back out soon. Andrew
 

MarkTurbo

Well-Known Member
Hope you get everything fixed-up and are back out soon. Andrew
Thanks Andrew. I'll be back out racing as soon as I can afford an uprated gearbox, it'll take more than something like this to make me give up!

I drained the oil earlier and as expected found this, I expect the rest of them are stuck to the magnet in the bottom of the box.

 

MarkTurbo

Well-Known Member
Had a slightly better day at castle combe yesterday. The car came home in the same condition it went in too (apart from the tyres :lol:) which is a first as i nearly always breaks something there. I finished 5th out of 11 in my class which isn't as high as I would of liked but I was still pleased with that and the car is still in one piece 8)

I haven't got the gearbox brace on my quaife box yet either so I didn't launch the car yesterday which probably cost me a place or 2 as the results where really close. Next event is another Sprint at clay pigeon kart circuit next Sunday.

These are the times from the 2nd timed runs yesterday to show how close it was, the only change from the first run was the guy in the boxster who was 2nd overall.

 
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