985cc Turbocharged Nova Sprint Car

[_Jake]

That's awesome mate thanks very much for doing that. it gives me an idea of how it is possible to adapt one. Although your turbo doesn't have a standard 4 bolt fitting?

Looks similar to some subaru fitment turbos ive seen, wouldnt be hard to make up an adaptor with say a t2/t3 4 bolt flange though

[novarally]

A little more progress on the garage. The roof is now finished, including barge boards at front and rear;





The end is in sight, I will be ordering the concrete for the floor next week when I get paid, and then the Nova has its official home. Can't wait.

[novarally]

Today I have been playing about with the brakes. Regular readers will remember that I engineered a one-off rear brake solution, using a KAD kit for a Classic Mini;



This works brilliantly, and looks lovely, but I've felt it was still overweight for my aims of ultimate lightness, and if the rules allowed it I would get rid of the rear brakes completely.

However, there is a requirement to have functional rear brakes, so I have to comply. I've therefore decided to sell the KAD/Nova hybrid set-up, and do something different.

When I weighed the KAD rear calipers, I was surprised how heavy they are;



The plan now is to use the alloy rear hub kit from Berrisford (Autograss specialists), and a very tiny disc and caliper, absolutely as small as I can get away with;

http://www.berrisford.co.uk/product_...ui5h9amue3pkn4

[Jonlem]

That is suprisingly heavy. I can't find the pictures of the UPG setup but they were quite simply using a solid bar as an axle like the grass track boys use with bike calipers and discs. The front just used machined flanges and bike calipers and discs again.

I'm not sure how good the setup was, it's not like brakes were particularly important for drag racing, apart from the weight saved.

[novarally]

Of course the front brakes cannot escape similar attentions, and this is the current set-up;







Solid, cross-drilled discs from an OMS single seater, with alloy bells, and 'Gold Spot' calipers from a Yamaha R1 motorcycle. Likewise, they work very well indeed, but again I felt there was room for reducing weight, and maybe increasing performance as well.

So I have really pushed the boat out, and bought a full set of ISR calipers, together with lightweight rotors (discs), floating on alloy bells. These are absolute works of art!









The front rotors are 280mm,and the rears are 235mm. Front calipers are 6-pot, and the rears are 4-pot.

As discussed above, I need almost no rear brakes, so I won't be using the rear ones, which I will sell on to recoup some of my money.

[novarally]

In terms of weight, the 'old' front discs were comparatively pretty heavy;



The new 280mm disc is a lot lighter;



And it's the same story for the calipers;

[novarally]

Basically a saving of nearly 1kg off the unsprung weight on the front end, coupled with what should be a big improvement in braking (280mm diameter in place of 240mm), and 6 piston calipers instead of 4.

And fingers crossed I should be able to get a large part of my money back when I sell all the old bits.

And they should be pretty easy to fit as well, the calipers use the same 108mm centres for mounting, so I just need to make new brackets to space the caliper a bit further out, and obviously adjust to suit the offset of the new bell. And the bell needs to be re-drilled for the Nova wheel stud PCD.

Talking of saving weight, I am currently talking to my best mate's Brother In Law, who is a superb CNC machinist. I'm hoping to persuade him to do the caliper brackets, but more importantly to machine me a set of front hubs (uprights) out of a billet of aluminium.

This would be a major coup, if it comes off!

[zeifer33]

Simply amazing!i like so much the new front end.

[novarally]

Simply amazing!i like so much the new front end.

Thank-you. I'm very pleased with the way the new front end has come out.

Target figures are 230bhp and 500kg.

[novarally]

That is suprisingly heavy. I can't find the pictures of the UPG setup but they were quite simply using a solid bar as an axle like the grass track boys use with bike calipers and discs. The front just used machined flanges and bike calipers and discs again.

I'm not sure how good the setup was, it's not like brakes were particularly important for drag racing, apart from the weight saved.

Hi James.

If you can turn up any photos of the brakes (and axle) on the UPG car I would be really interested.

I was talking to Boris about buying the car from them, but their asking price is way over what I value it at.

I did ask them for more details on the brakes, and also the gearbox, but they haven't replied.

If the price was realistic I was planning to keep the carbon flip front, tailgate and doors, and sell the rest of it on ASAP.