Round 5 of the Remote Housing Systems 2010 Motorkhana Series was hosted by the North Australian Motor Sports Club at Hidden Valley Raceway on Sunday 16th May.
23 cars and enthusiastic drivers attended in windy conditions to master the challenging driving courses.
Series leader Tim Feehan had a below average result finishing 6th for the day, but doing enough to retain the overall Series lead after the five completed Rounds.
Title challenger Darren Ford shared brother Bens Toyota Supra to finish best of the siblings in third place on the day ahead of Ben in ninth and Jarrod in eleventh. Showing that Motorkhanas are accessible to anyone, the boys mother, Colleen, finished a creditable 16th in her second ever event driving a Honda Jazz.
First time competitor Brad Retzki in a S13 Nissan performed above expectations to finish second behind Round winner Norman Millington driving a Cooper S Works Mini.
Last week HighRPM recently brought up Anthony Rodrigues from Maztech of Melbourne to do car tuning here in Darwin . We picked up Anth from the Airport, with what seemed like a nice case of the Mexican flu and blocked ears and headed back to Ed’s house for some Bacon, Eggs and Coffee and a good old chin wag.
The big day started at Pecky’s workshop at 8am with the usual good morning and hello chat to Mark, Cheryl and Keelan and once again the cleanliness of the workshop had us totally amazed.
The 1st car on the rollers was Stuart’s Honda Civic, running a D16y4 Turbo with 20psi of boost, which ended up with 220 front wheel HP. This car surprised a lot of people at the powercruise and walked away with some good race wins down the main straight of Hidden Valley during the cruise session.
2nd on the rollers was Leigh’s Powercruise 24 Power Skid Winner’s Mk2 Toyota, which these days are rare as hens teeth. Things where looking good for the old girl, but after some getting stuck into it, we found the boost levels were going well beyond what the old 7m motor could handle. So back to the workshop for the Corona, and a new Turbo Wastegate was replaced, the car was then thrown back on the rollers to put out a healthy 397hp at the rear tyres. When Anth was tuning Leigh’s corona his exact words where “this thing is going to be a tyre fryer” and sure enough the prediction was proved at Powercruise that weekend.
The 3rd car on the dyno needs no introduction when it comes to the drifting scene in Darwin. The Series 6 Rx7 of Jay Bourchere was sounding strong as. With new bigger fuel pumps and a new fuel map this Rx7 put out 360 HP at the rear treads on 16psi of boot. The car put on a strong display for the crowd at Powercruise 24, with some outstanding driver control shown by Jay.
The day was getting on and food was needed, so it was off to the unknown within Winnellie to pick up some fettuccini pasta (quite possibly the worst pasta I have ever eaten in my life - I think Anth would agree with this). A few more Powerades and some flu tablets for Anth we were back into it.
The final car for Thursday was Rueben’s 58 VW air cooled Beatle. The car runs a 1915cc’d air cooled VW motor, running haltech EFI. After some poking and probing the little Beatle started to show it true potential. It put out 128 rear wheel horsepower, which is pretty outstanding for such a small naturally aspirated motor. Keep in mind the car only weighs around 800kg. Friday morning we headed off to Premier Fuel injection to tuning some 4 wheel drive cars.
Mitchell's WRX was the first car on the rollers on Friday morning. Only 5 mins into the tuning, we found that the dyno had a faulty O2 sensor. Once we got that replaced the air fuels were starting to look ok. “Rextacy” was taking everything thrown at it, the more it was giving the more it wanted. In the end it was putting out a mammoth 385 horses at all 4 wheels.
Next up was Aiden’s R34 GTR Godzilla. I’ve personally never been an R34 man, but after seeing this beast, I was totally hooked. It still had the RB26, but with new after market turbos. Once the timing and fuel maps were sorted, things were looking good for the Godzilla. That is, until a hose blew off somewhere. “That's not good” was the agreement and with the help of Keelan from Pecky’s and his pocket torch, we found the blown off hose. After pulling the car apart to get the hose back on, the Godzilla made a whopping 462 at all 4 treads. Following the nice numbers from the Godzila, it was schnitzel burger time. Definitely a marked improvement on the pasta fail from the day before, and again polished off with powerade and flu tablets.
Next car up was Harry’s WRX. This car was a no expense spared ex-circuit car. It really did have the best of everything. The only let down was the ECU, but still on very low boost the car made 313 all wheel HP. Following this was Kym’s GTiR, an awesomely nice neat little car. After changing to bigger injectors Keelan arrived from Pecky’s with the Nistune software to plug into the GTiR and with the usual Anthony touch the SR20 Turbo was punching out 258 all wheel HP. Impressive for such a small pocket rocket.
It was now getting close to flight time for Anthony, so we quickly got Matt’s 180sx on the dyno to tune out 295 rear wheel HP.
Talk about cutting it fine with time, we packed up and headed off to Darwin airport for a couple of Bourbon’s before Anth got on a 6:25pm flight back to Melbourne. Once again we have had a great time with Anthony. To say the customers were happy with their tunes is an understatement.
Ed would like to Thank Anthony from Maztech, Mark, Cheryl and Keelan from Pecky’s and Premier fuel injection service.
The race weekend of 16th - 18th April was a busy 3 days of Northern Territory motorsports action starting on the Friday night with round 2 of the Hidden Valley Drag Racing Association's "Beat the Heat" series. Over 50 teams took part in the LP Gas Solutions Off Street quarter mile gauntlet.
Brad Fletcher took out the Hogs Breath Mini Eliminator in his Holden VY Commodore Ute with a 13.573sec pass at 106mph, defeating Marion Bujnowski in the Beat the Heat Ford XR6 with a 15.23 @ 88mph.
In the bikes, Josh Schuit defeated Brian Smith after Smith ran under his handicap, breaking out with a 10.72sec pass on an 11.00sec dialin. Schuit crossed the line with a 13.252 on a 12.8sec dialin.
Schuit also recorded the fastest reaction time for the night on his 1981 BMW Motorbike with a 0.410sec reaction. Alvaro DeCastro came away with the fastest reaction for a car with a 0.425 in his Nissan Skyline.
The Perfect Reaction Jackpot remains unclaimed and will rise to $300 next month when the John Sorensen Memorial will be hosted on Friday 14 May at Hidden Valley.
The rest of the weekend sessions were followed up with a busy Saturday night schedule with the Darwin Karting Association and a great day of Circuit and Drifting with the North Australian Motor Sports Club, highlights video below.
