Daan
-
Posts
4,949 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
46
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Blogs
Posts posted by Daan
-
-
1. No, the pipe positions is different.
2. Not from the feedback I read.
3. the pipework will be different
-
What's the entry fee of the event?
Daan
-
Bathtub had about a square meter of radiators with 4 large fans on the back of his car. But he has about 600 hp to kill in that auto box.
You couldn't give me an auto box for free, I hate the damn things with a passion, mainly for reliability reasons and you can't control wheel spin.
It might be interesting to mention that the winning car had the same engine and similar gearbox as us: a standard 300 tdi with an r380 box and LT230 transfer. The second car had a VW 1.9 diesel. So it is definitely not horsepower that wins.
People easily spend 5 k on doing a championship at mud monsters or Viking offroad, I just think doing an occasional international event is more challenging and entertaining. It is out of our comfort zone, which is the whole attraction of it. I just fancied something we had not done before.
Our mates Steve and Ken were great; we kept feeding them with beer and take them to the swimming pool in town.
Daan
-
No you just cook them. Bathtub did a transfer box on day one and a gearbox on day two. I reckon that makes his total amount of gearboxes he did to 5. I still run the same Ashcroft lt 77 +lt230 that I fitted in 2002....
What does brake is the tensioner bearing for the fanbelt (on a 300 tdi). I started with a new tensioner, which got very sloppy after 3 days, I fitted a new one, which is now ready for a new bearing again.
cam belt timing chest is another one which is suffering from the crank seal dying.
-
Not really, from where I am there is no difference in going to Croatia or to Poland. The price of Croatia includes food at 250 euros per person (£200 each), you could argue that is too much, but either way those 4 mouths need feeding, what ever you do. I quite like to do the main events were all the big guns go, just out of curiosity.
I wouldn't want to take an automatic car to ladoga to be fair. Automatic boxes were a favourite retirement cause in Croatia (and ladoga), along with burnt out winches and cooked engines.
Daan
-
I think the off-roading in Croatia is not necessarily ridiculous. There are no 2 mile swamps for example like you have in ladoga. But it is just the sheer amount of driving to do. Longest stage is 80 km. There were quite a few Russian teams, who needed to make a very long trip, with all those interesting events on their doorstep, so there is definitely something they have been attracted to to do Croatia.
Easier to get to? You actually do very little driving to Russia, as the ferry to Helsinki sorts all that out. Croatia door to door there is 1200 miles to drive. You don't have the problems of visas etc as Croatia is in the EU.
Easier on the wallet, no. I paid £1800 starting fee, but that includes food for a crew of 4. then you have a ferry, renting a trailer, bribing mates to tow it, all their fuel etc. Prep the car, flying tickets for me and mark, Beer, park my car at heathrow, keep the boss happy by agreeing to a new kitchen and bathroom. All in there is no change from £5k, which is more than I remember spending on Ladoga (kitchen and bathroom not included).
Croatia is a bit more of a gentlemen race: you stay on one campsite for the duration of the event, there is food and water readily available, there is a village with shops next door etc. they drag your car out of the woods if you need it, so you are never in danger of getting completely lost. When we broke our car, I just went on my mobile phone and searched topusko on google maps: it thought about it for a while and then said: turn left here...
I wouldn't take the freelander to Ladoga: without low range your clutch plates will be toast by day 2 I reckon.
Daan
-
From what you describe, you have blue/greens and blue/yellows at the front, which are 175lb/inch
and red whites at the back, 170lb/inch.
That must be very wobbly!
I'd say get a set of OME764 at the front (240lb/inch), or OME781 (290lb/inch)
at the rear, probably OME762, which are progressive 300-340lb/inch. The OME don't sag.
have a look at
rovers/red90.ca/springinfo
Daan
-
Sat in my yard is a half finished ,Bull nosed ,Bobtailed ,Traybacked Disco 200 that was intended to eventually compete at Ladoga but the owner lost interest and I got sick of doing the work myself ,keep meaning to dig out some piccies .Mind you the 36" Simex he bought look good on my 110 !
problem with a trayback is that this changes the silhouette of the car, which puts you in TR3, were all the protos play. That will make your life hell!
Daan
-
Poor girl ,well I guess it was doing what it was built for ,don't know why I wanted to see pictures of the damage ,must be the stockcar racer in me ! Well done on finishing the event ,a feat in itself ,always fancied doing Ladoga ,hmmmmm..............
Well, Ladoga is perfectly possible if you have a reliable car, we did it in 2009 (not that reliable, but we finished in 6th position in TR2).
Daan
-
Great result Daan and write up too , thanks . Do you have a breather in the cambelt housing ?
cheers
Steveb
yes, and using the gwyn lewis connectors that grip on the OD of the breather pipe, rather than the ID which solves the clogging problem. I am pretty sure it is the crank seal that gives up the goast after about 5 days of gritty solution. This runs dry, without lubrication so it is not any easy task to solve.
-
Back home...
Many dents added, and those abs wings dont dent, but they break! A shame we lost the bumper end, as it is a lot of work to make that again. Also, on the last day we noticed a lot of muddy water in the cam belt chest; we ran without the plug on the last 20 k to make sure the cambelt was not submerged all the time. Paul bass said that his 300 tdi was doing exactly the same. I also had the problem before in Russia, so that needs sorting somehow.Daan -
I'd say, less than 35" is not going to be enough. We have 35" simex, running on 8 PSI throughout the event. The grip was ok, the height not. Many people ran the trepadors, but really that is not the right tyre for Croatia when wet, in my opinion.
we have used the pto winch a lot over there. winches and current supply were the main reason for failure, so that has to be top notch.
-
I don't think portals are a good idea for my 88" landy, it would give a 4" lift, which would make it a bit unstable. Portals is more for a special build, 100" buggy in my opinion.
With regards to class rules, there aren't any. There is a vague rule about adventure class being road legal, from a major manufacturer. But there was an Estonian team which fielded 3 buggys in adventure, all with portals, big wheels and big v8's. Unsurprisingly, they took 1, 2 and 3 in adventure. This gave a lot of grumbling from the competitiors, as they were clearly not in the right category. I think a distinction should be made between portals and no portals to decide what class you run, but at the moment, there is not such thing.
Daan
-
Ok, so here we go:
the event starts of with arrival in camp, scrutineering and stickering of the car.
After a flag off in the village of topusko you go and do the prologue. Basically, a group of four cars sprints off for them to arrive 200 m further to take a short lap round a hard course. It showed a big spread in performance and ability in offroading. We set off and arrived in 3rd to take the course, behind two fast cars but in front of the dutch 110. This was good, because we were expecting to loose time if we were behind the 110 because of its size. ! winch was enough for us, which put us in 15th position. A few cars, as usual broke, and 1 rolled before the event had even started properly.
day 2 started with a bang, as we put the car on its side about 3 km in. I tried to straddle a rut, than the rut turned very deep and the bank very high, so we were on our side. Peter and paul (in the 110) put us back on our wheels and 10 minutes later we were going again. The navigation was a bit thrown, because we lost our distances when we switched of the main switch. We got back into it, but it was late untill we reached the end of 50km stage. The organisation did not want us to do the last bit in the river in the dark, so we called it a day. We still got a classified time for our efforts.
day 3 was a similar effort, the distance traveled seems a lot for us, most people in trophy are running portals, and only need to winch half as much.
Then we had the trophy day; there was a tough course to get there, with a roll of a dutch car, which we had to get around. the trophy involves a team of four cars which have to do 2 courses. One heavy roll of the czech tomcat was spectacular, but a bit unneccessary. We had been teamed up with fritz becker in a g-wagen, and paul bass from challenger offroad, and the israel team. we didn't put a foot wrong I think and had a decent time. in the evening there was the night stage; we were a bit out of our depth with navigating in the dark, and a bit short of lights, so we called it a day early on.
day 4 was the circuit race: 3 laps of a 4 km course. The lack of portals was definately costing us and we timed last.
(brake pads after day 3; they were new at the start!)
Day 5 was itneresting to say the least; about 20 km in we slid down a hill and crashed with our rh wheel onto a tree stump. this gave a massive dent in a wheel, but more worryingly, we broke the panhard rod of the chassis. we limped back into camp and trailered the car to topusko for the garage to have a go at fixing. They were magicians with a welder and a portapower to remove the dent in the wheel. They wanted £30 for it, which probably gets you a lightbulb in the uk! I did think our race was over , but we were still on. I had thought that it was mainly a case of finishing every stage, however, most teams were unable to start every stage, and that was were we collected points.
Day 6 was again a very tough stage, and at km 25, we got lost. We were not alone, there were 6 other cars who were unable to find there way. Later it seemed a new road was being created since the roadbook was made and that is what thrown us. Lack of experience with the roadbook?
The last day was 40 km to the foto finish. We had a great day, and made a good time. It occurred to me that we could have done very well in the adventure class, as we overtook 5 of those. as it was, we were classified 17th car out of 32 in the trophy class. In all, it rained almost the whole week, which made this one of the toughest croatia trophys in history. A remarkable experience, and many lessons learnt. It was great to be out there with the big guns.
Thanks to mark for codriving, and steve and ken as back up crew and the transport of the car.
Daan
-
The machine is a bit second hand. Now back to family live, try to settle back into normal live. Will do a write up later.
Daan
-
Ok, we're back! Quite an event it was too. It has been raining almost all week and that made it one of the toughest yet. We were ok with most of the offroading in our car, but it was the shere amount of distance to travel that caught us out. In hindsight, trophy was not really the class for us, because without portals, it was hard going. We finished 17th out of 30, and there were 22 cars classified. It is ok for us, we we did not have high expectations, but we wanted to finish. And finishing we did!
Daan
-
3
-
-
I always ran tubeless tyres with a tube. what's your reservation with that?
Daan
-
To be fair, chopping the front of the chassis will in theory be a breach of the rules, although the rules are really meant for people who cut a chassis in half and shorten it. That's not what you are doing here. i'd be inclined to forget about iva in this case, as it is such a small mod. If you are worried about it, just loose the dumb irons.
While i like lewis' solution, I found a full width bash plate essential while winching in deep mud. a large plate will lift the vehicle upwards with the angle, rather than beech it completely in the mud.
-
About taking time of work: this could work if there is a lot of things to get on with, but I always find I run out of bits to fit to the car. I once had to burn off 5 days of holidays, and I asked for 5 Fridays off in a row. This way, you can spend the 4 days to make sure all the bits are there, then the Friday you can fit everything to the car. Worked very well. Your boss likes it more to.
Daan
-
Chaps, I would like to thank every one who donated so far. We are now close to £450, which is fantastic. It would be great if we achieve our goal, but we are happy with any donation done.
Regards,
Daan
https://www.justgiving.com/Daan-Mark-Steve-Ken-croatiatrophy
-
+1. I bought suspension bushes recently. prices ranged from £2 each from britpart, to £20 pounds each from the dealer. I went with the dealer ones, due to experience with cheaper bushes, but it did hurt me to spend it. Whether I suggest to spend 2k on a turbo is debatable, but it is the better solution for sure.
Daan
-
Yes, they are. Has anyone on here actually ever broken or bent a wheel (alloy or steel)? I bent a modular when I rolled my car, but apart from that, it seems highly unlikely.
-
my banded steels are 13.5 kg. Anything alloy that is cast is generally heavier than steel and less strong. You may have a chance if you forge a wheel, but then they are big bucks. Bead locks always add a lot of weight.
-
I was going to wave the flag for banded steels, but ozzy already did it for me.
Retro rules, in my opinion, plus say what you like about those alloys, they just look wrong for going offroad.
These are just opinions, but I am going to end this post with factual information: steel wheels are lighter.
Daan
-
1
-
Abs wings
in Series Forum
Posted
I have them on my series wings (but they are defender ones). Funny thing is they dont dent, but they crack.