A true tale of heroism...

[kbf71]

I dont know if anyone will remember me, as i havent been on here for a while. I have been racing a GTE in the 750MC Stock Hatch championship this season in this: http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs269.snc1/9633_582492510404_222304875_5145483_8103368_n.jpg

Well anyway, going into saturday's penultimate race at Snetterton I had a 30 point lead in the championship, and with only 25 points for a win i could have clinched it with a race to spare. I was leading when a car behind suffered a brake failure and i took evasive action into the tight chicane at the end of lap 2. I lost speed but dropped the car into 2nd gear in order to get moving properly again. Unfortuantly just as i was pulling 6500rpm and ready to shift to 3rd i got hit hard from behind. I was halfway through my gearchange as it happened and the jolt made me miss the shift, but i was already hard back on the throttle. The engine over-revved and died :(

With the next race only 24 hours away, and with no way of getting my engine running it seemed like all was lost. However I gathered a team of friends and fellow drivers together and we got my engine out in no time. However we had no engine to go in, and despite everyone's contacts we could not find one. So I called up the hero of this tale: Mr GAZSNOVA of png. Get this folks - this guy lent me an engine, loom, ECU and Snap-on tools (at 9pm saturday night). I only needed the car to run for 15mins of race time and he was sure it could do the job. We loaded the engine into the van and set off on the return leg of our 6hr round trip back to snetterton.

By 7am (having worked all night) we had a mix 'n' match engine using Gaz's bare engine and all of my ancillaries. I had no gasket sets so i couldnt take the engine apart, I just had to have faith in it. It seemed to run pretty well, even using the map in my MBE ecu which meant we didnt need to re-wire anything! In the race I was able to hang on in 3rd place which was meant i secured the title by 8 points.

Gaz, I can never thank you enough for this and I wanted to make sure everyone on here knows what you did for us this weekend :)

[muzzy]

Well done on the win and well done that man who helped you out. Great story.

[let_nova]

great write up. well done

[twistysnovagte]

Exellent,good story and big respect to gazsnova.

[dave.gsi]

i reckon you owe him a beer....or 10 :thumb:

[mowgli]

muchos respect to gaznova. and also to kbf71.... i really never thought the nova gte was a viable proposition in stock hatch, and it was dominated by peugeot/citroen cars, so well done....

please post a spec up... I think it would be food for thought for most of us.

[bmw156]

thats wicked dude,

i love stories like that

[wwmnw]

Excellent man, nice of him to lend you the engine and well done on winning the championship.

[Spudly]

Aye congrats on your win dude, and an epic show of generosity on the loan of the engine, what a guy:thumb:

[Pistol Pete]

Nice one. Its great when folk help out in an hour of need. Well done on winning the championship aswell.

[Sloth]

well done, and i forsee 10 blobs of green for mr gaz....

[kbf71]

Indeed he won it for me this weekend!

As for spec, the car isn't anything too out of the ordinary. Its only the fitting of the MBE which would make things expensive, but fortunatly I work at a garage that does that kind of thing... ;)

The car sits on koni adjustables all around, with 320lb front springs and 600lb rears. The tyres are the control tyre for the championship, Yoko A048 (in size 185/60/14 - which Nova's are required to use). The engine (having blown up in Jan this year) had been rebored .5mm which is the maximum the club allow for a rebore, using off the shelf pistons as forged pistons are not allowed.
Head is pretty much standard, just had a slight skim. Camshaft is standard profile as the club specifies a cam you have to use. Gearbox is standard F13CR, clutch and flywheel also standard.
Bodywork is standard (but battered and full of filler).
Exhaust is 40 quids worth of ebay rubbish lol! Gets the job done though.

The only thing that makes the car special is the ECU. I had a struggle with the organisers about me using it, but it boils down to this: the club makes no distinction between the GTE and GSI, so anything that appeared on any kind of standard Nova is fair game to use on your car. This meant that the E16SE could be fitted with all of the standard sensors, pulleys and airbox that were present on the C16SE. So I used the crank pulley and crank sensor off a C16, as well as the mounting plate for the coil pack (getting rid of the dizzy). However I did not use the Vauxhall coil - the regulations say that the "ignition system is free" so I used a standard Ford coil and leads from a scrap mk3 Fiesta! For some reason the vauxhall coil doesn't work with MBE...

Its difficult getting all of the C16 bits (and frustrating when you know how easy it is to fit non-standard parts...) but well worth the effort. The engine was very torque-y (and hopefully wont be too hard to fix as the head is fine and the pistons seem to have survived) but ran out of power at the top end. So it was good out of the corners but running out of steam by the end of the straights!

The only thing I can stress for anyone thinking opf using a Nova in stock hatch is that you have to use parts that are standard in a Nova, unless specified otherwise by the rules :)

[mowgli]

interesting. a good few years ago, tim marshall, a lad my brother knows took part in a 205gti. it had a 1.9 head, and about £3k of engine work & produced 135hp. he struggled to get into the top 10 at most circuits...
what finally did him was he had a master cylinder failure at mallory in testing, & hit the wall at the hairpin. then when he'd reshelled it, at mallory again, he was coming round in 3rd thru the esses & this bloke who'd fell off the track on the previous lap speared into him & totalled it again. he now does drifting.

[auzzy2000]

nice to hear there is some people out there that will help out in the hour of need.well done for the win.and top marks for the engine lender.he must have a well good feel good factor.lol

[gazsnova]

hiya guys, kbf71- ive just found the post. heheh yeah i do have i well good feel factor about this. im glad the engine did the job.