well ....
i was not going to give up ...... no way
the only way forward was to invest somemore silly money into the project.
i was now convinced that the 4wd was an impossible mission for what power and launches i needed. So we ditched it compleatly..this is how ...
ive known andy for about 6 years now, He refills my nitrous bottles.
this his his game and he was glad to help..... andy is currently the fastest pro mod drag racer in the country, second in europe.
he built, runs, and maintains his own car, as a family team with his wife son and daughter all have major rolls in the team....
when we went to see andy my dreams had come true...
he was in the middle of a project for a customer that was in the same boat as us... kept smashing gearbox after gearbox, and managed to run a 9.93
the pics in my gallery are of the framework in this car... this car is now reliable, and strong enough to do this.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-DIbQQ67JA
another...
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 9&hl=en-GB
this was the first outing for john and only the 3rd run since the car was finished
So the decision was simple.... the finances not..... to date for the chassis £30,500 and thats not a compleate, there is still the lexan windows paint and a <beep> load to finish off.... plus the new engine mounting means we have about 25" of room in front of the engine to mount the turbo and liquid to air intercooler in, so another manifold is now being designed and fabricated, more ££££££
so we now have a car good enough to acheive my goal...
as most of you know the s4 is a heavy old chap, and this is how we have changed that very much......
starting at the front,
there are some very clever mods, we will no longer need the subframe or the front struts and heavy uprights, the engine will be fixed by motor plate to the new bulkhead which is moved back 15" so as to put the weight of the engine behind the front wheels, the suspension and wishbones is all custom mounted by andy on a new chromolly tube subframe, there are no uprights or hubs these are now all integral parts as the fornt shocks have spindle mount wheels, which saves us about 200kilo's in all....
you can see from this pic what i mean....
i chose these fronts..
fingers crossed we will have a full 1 peice front end and therfore have full access to work aroung the engine, but this will not be a priority and come when the budget allows.
Moving inside the car we now have a major head start to our goal with the new transmittion and clutch, mated up throgh a trick titainium bell housing
the jerico 5 speed was chosen by andy as the best route we could go ,this is the box that many pro stock cars are running.
cheap at £5,500 but when you add the bellhousing, another £3290 it starts to hurt...
Then there is the clutch....
another £4230....
this is a purpose built drag racing 5 1/2" clutch ....
it is unlike your normal clutch as it is designed to slip....
in simple terms its like a centrifugal clutch it has small counter weights which the faster they spin bite harder and harder....
principals being when the clutch has full bite it will start to slow the engine speed, as we are trying to keep the engine at full torque all the time, we can do so by changing the amount of weight on the throw out bearings.
More weight will make the clutch bite quicker and less hold off a bit, we can set this up to the engine by logging engine rpm and gearbox input and output shafts, the same principal as bhp and torque that the engine rpm and the full lock up of the clutch on a graph these two meet at a given rpm like this shows...
to be continued ......
...... with a bit of a special mod to it 
