It was a feature of metro racing: a box of different height bump stops to suit different tracks. Then there was that guy that made a very successful little racer with no suspension (practically) he got banned. Modern formula cars have infinitesimal suspension movement and could be much lighter if they were allowed to do away with suspension.
Yes - it contains alcohol to prevent freezing and something else to make it impossible to drink. Otherwise you'd need to pay duty on it. ;-)
Ah - didn't realise the time scale.
The handling was downright dangerous - they could snap into oversteer without warning when carrying a full load of passengers. Not so readily with just the driver, though. I spun one on a bit of road I knew well - much to the 'delight' of my passengers - where my 'dry' Mini van would go through much faster on a worse surface than it happened on.
Yes - my niece has two, with one as her daily driver. The other kept for spares.
That's one of the reasons why I chose a Traveller as the basis for a car I built for my then wife. I dropped an MG 1100 lump into it, with twin SU's and the diff ratio of an "S".
It was potentially a 100 mph Mini, but with the original drum brakes. At speed, it was a case of looking for avoidance, rather than stopping...
I have a cold start related problem on my alternator
basically first thing in the morning, I find that if I accelerate hard, the headlamps become brighter briefly, If I then rapidly decelerate, then the headlamps dim briefly.
I have repeated this exercise with a voltmeter across the battery. With hard sudden rvving of the engine, the alternator briefly outputs 16V before settling to 14.5V. If I am racing the engine, if I take my foot off the accelerator suddenly, the voltage can drop to 11.5V momentarily.
Once I have driven a few miles and the alternator has warmed up, the overcharging/undercharing briefly stops.
This clearly points to an alternator problem, can I get away with changing the regulator/brush assembly or is there a more serious fault on the alternator?
A new regulator/brush assembly is around 20 quid whereas a new alternator is
Worse! They're typically press-fit and only _exactly_ the right diode will fit. These are often available through the auto-sparks trade, but not from RS. Usually the exchange item is the whole bridge though, not individual diodes. If it's the three small diodes feeding the regulator, then these are an easy fix but rarely fail anyway.
OTOH, they're only half-a-dozen high current diodes. If you want to, you can build your own bridge & bracket and bolt it anywhere convenient. Or pick any suitable rectifier from another alternator. If you've something like an old Lucas ACR (physically big diode stack and unreliable with it) a popular tweak was to swap something Bosch into there instead.
PS - If one was to build a kitcar / convert a dynamo, what's the best donor car for a simple reliable alternator these days?
Was it supposed to be so foul? I've heard that this was some sort of long-term bacterial action, and that adding a bit of cedar oil when filling them stopped it going "off".
I'd always though Conor was older too. Hydrolastic Minis were a short-lived aberration, but I certainly remember them.
Hmm, had I had to pay the £115 as first feared I might have considered that. I've even got some heavy stud mounted diodes in the workshop ..
Oooh, good question. The only kitcar I've ever built is this Ranger and it used the std MKII Scrote jobby. I'll ask my garage mate what he thinks might make a good / easy candidate when I pick up my re-sprayed CB250 rims .. ;-)
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