Geoff Page Racing F1 turbo powered Dax rush

Very nice! I'm often down on the same complex as GPR, I'll be sure to keep an eye out.

Found it !

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xSRx0M2XTx4&feature=relatedtext

http://www.daxcars.co.uk/anti-roll-suspension-01.h...

just a pic

some things gone funny with your link

doug

Great stuff!

Gas Turbine - From a Helo IIRC. Try you tube as there is some vid of it starting.

You're right - he was actually Australian as far as I can recall. I was taking a pop at his 'big American software company employer' …

I do not know where you fit into the equation, but here for the hell of it, is what happened from my point of view. You might find it enlightening, but make of it what you will …


Read through my post on 2/6/08 :-

http://pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&amp...

The above piece humorously described what probably happened mechanically when you experienced the 'sideways at 100mph' behaviour.

The mechanical fault meant you were driving a 580bhp rear-engined front-wheel drive monster. And it was intermittent. No wonder it went all over the road sidways ….

This fault occurred a couple of times, and before we found out what it was numerous 'experts' suggested that it needed lots of expensive investigation/repairs, such as 3 new viscous diffs, a whole new transmission train, and new everything else in between, and all for at least £10k yadda yadda. But as you'll see in my write up, it all came down to something costing a few quid, and needing someone with experience to pinpoint the problem.


As for the new owner of my car … well, read on... The purchase was very unusual, with payments spread over many weeks. I only met the actual owner once, on day of collection, and two intermediaries handled everything else. Each intermediary was earning a fat fee for handling the deal and were keen to just rush it through. No one seemed to have a clue what they were buying but were adamant they wanted it none the less, despite me repeatedly pointing out it was a heavily modified road legal Group-B more suited to track days than the road, and it certainly wasn’t a car for popping down to tescos. Most of the time the car was trailered about, but sure I used to have fun on the country roads round here as well. They didn't even want the mass of spares I'd accumulated, or understand that cars like this don't have off-the-shelf parts.

But when it was set-up correctly, it was utterly amazing with immense grip, traction, power that was virtually untouchable on the road by anything with 4 wheels or 2 ... I've got Datron print outs of its performance with results like 50-100mph being the same as a Mclaren F1. IE, it was bloody quick. Read the 1994-5 Guinness book of records, and you'll see an RS200 Evo in there instead of the Mclaren F1 …

It was continuously built up over 10 years, and doing half a dozen track days a year, and I think it had 3 or 4 engine upgrades / rebuilds, and numerous box swaps, suspension changes and so on. As a fairly unrefined and hairy 1980's road legal group B rally car it was always going to need a lot of attention and money spending on it, and on a very regular basis, preferably with a full team of mechanics on hand behind it. It certainly wasn’t a ford family car with 15,000 service intervals which is what the buyer seemed to think.

I recall wasting hours on the phone to the new owner(s) explaining the cars idiosyncrasies, and even wrote up a "How To Look after your unique RS200E" manual before exchange. Nothing was straightforward with it. But, I knew it was all falling on deaf ears. Given the state of engine tune (about 580bhp from a 1984 hybrid long stroke 1.9lt BDT engine using an evolution head) it also needed special treatment when warming up, or cooling down, and some absolutely VITAL things like a can of additive for each fill up with 98 ron petrol from a decent supplier etc.

On the day of collection is was abundantly clear that the new owner intended to just 'hop in' and drive the car for his first time himself, then go from my place in the midlands, down the M1, through London to demo standing starts to some friends, then straight onto the Nurburgring … all in one weekend … a 2,000 miles round trip, just like that, having never driven it before … with a few laps on the ring thrown in for good measure … Sure, modern "super-cars" can do that, but anyone who's owned a real or heavily modified RS200E will tell you that its just luck if nothing breaks in 100 miles of use.

As strongly as possible I suggested that it was not cut out to be driven in traffic jams, let alone a 1,000 miles to the ring and that he should PUT IT ON A TRAILER (I've still got the emails) if that's what he wanted to do. Even the tyres were soft and good for only 800 miles at best. And it had only averaged 750 miles per year in my ownership, most of which was on the track. The clutch was a competition paddle clutch, and not exactly easy to use, and the engine was tweaked to the limit, and rebuilt every 1,500 miles or so.

I spent a great deal of money on that car, and I was a tad pissed off to receive a series of phone calls within days of handing it over saying everything had 'gone wrong'. The specialist given the job of 'fixing it' called me and relayed a tale of woe, including how the new owner had destroyed the competition clutch trying standing starts (nearly impossible anyway), and put plain 95ron unleaded in from a supermarket forecourt and then half melted the head under full-boost and drop-clutch starts. The engine needed 100+ ron to be safe. By the sounds of it, all the clutch dump starts had shreded the rear drive shaft which is why the 'sideways' behaviour makes sense - as described in the link above. And I strongly suspect that what you drove at the ring was a car that had been totally buggered in the space of a few days by an naive new owner getting one to many 'fixes' from the 580bhp / ton experience that it was capable of delivering.

Last I heard about it was in 2005 (or thereabouts) from a chap who'd bought the remains from an advert on ebay for the rolling chassis, less the engine - that was in a shed in Essex waiting for a £29,000 engine rebuild including a new head, and repairs to a cracked block or similar.

Hearing about what had happened to it within days of leaving my place was heartbreaking bearing in mind how much effort had gone into it during my 10 yrs of ownership.

So let me just repeat, the car you tried driving round the ring was probably on its last gasp and in need of serious attention and should never have limped over there in the first place. No wonder you thought it needed a major sort out.

A real shame.

Great story. What a shame though!