RE: jimbro1000's Fiat Dallara Icsunonove Turbo

[simonelite501]

I take my hat off to you Sir! £635.00 per mile to run! Fabulous!
I hope you have many a happy mile before the bankruptcy hearing Should you ever be in the position of selling this vehicle please let me know. Cheers Simon.

[jimbro1000]

I've managed to knock that down a little bit - but it is still THE most expensive car to run of any here. With just 26 miles on the clock (well it would have it it had a pedometer) things are getting a bit better. I only get to put about 16-18 miles on with each race/test/practice session (15 minutes each).

I'm testing it on Saturday and should get a good 100 miles out of it over the day - that will put things a bit more in perspective!

[simonelite501]

Where are you testing? I'd love to have a butchers.

[jimbro1000]

Sorry, didn't catch the reply in time. Testing was at Castle Combe. The car suprised a lot of people that day. I was sharing the track with the group B car club who own a number of very fast and powerful cars. Keeping up with them (or overtaking them) in a small and somewhat underpowered car like this really woke them up. The only car that really outclassed me (didn't get to run against the 6R4 or the RS200) was a race-prep caterham. There was one very purple cerbie going round that I couldn't quite catch (and eventually lost when I missed a few gears). Plate number was V8 NUT if anyone knows who it was...

The next outing is at Silverstone on Sat 14th (I thought it was the Sunday but apparently not). This will also be the last outing for the year.

[Leadfoot]

Sure V8 NUT is a Chim. Saw it at Silverstone on an easytrack day in July.

[jimbro1000]

You could well be right - I didn't get all that good a look at the car and I have already had my wrist slapped several times for making the same mistake...

[simonelite501]

Testing at Castle Coombe?! Bugger, that's only down the road, oh well catch you next time maybe, let me know will you?

[jimbro1000]

I guess I'm going to have to start running a subscrption mail service to let everyone know!

I doubt if there will be much more happening now as the near demise of my gearbox has put a real damper on things this year. I'm still hoping to get to Silverstone on the 14th but even that is a little tight for time.

There is no way I can get a replacement pair of tyres (I'm guessing it would be best to get a pair even if the current ones are only just "worn") from Hoosier in time...

If my sponsorship starts to come through I may attempt some of the winter series (only 3 races) but I would rather get the car properly prepared for next year (new turbo, proper gearbox rebuild, respray and some bodywork to add extra ducting to the engine bay). As always it comes down to money - and I never seem to have enough...

[shane]

I was wondering where you get engine parts, or whole engines, should you need them? Fiat's are few and far between here in Canada, but I don't think importing an Uno Turbo engine from the UK would bee too expensive.

[jimbro1000]

Its cheaper to get the hardware imported from Australia than it is to get it from the UK.

Seeing as I'm in the UK already things are rather easy!

Got some nice aluminium panels made up recently by a friendly and enthusiastic engineer. New wiper motor from a friend's scrapped Uno. Engine management system on it's way from a Punto GT (Weber Alpha variant so fully mappable) to replace the archaic Bosch system I'm currently using.

Apart from the costs it is all something of a no-brainer

[JonRB]

Saw a red Fiat X1/9 Dallara on a Transit-based flatbed on the motorway today. It was decaled as car 84 though, so may not have been jimbro1000's