Austarion

Off to do the Mountain Motorsports "Great Tarmac Rally" this weekend.

Starts Saturday with a run across the Reefton Spur east of Warburton (awesome piece of road), then a small (very tight) stage heading towards Marysville. Then off to Eildon for 6 stages on the Eildon-Jamieson Rd (long & testing 26km stages); out & back on the same piece of road Saturday afternoon & Sunday morning.

Just a nice 1.5 day event which will be a good test run with the new 4.625 diff ratio & lead up to Targa High Country in November.

Should be fun if the rain stays away, I'll try and get some video up next week.
:beer

Sounds great, you'll have a blast. You got Dean in as co-pilot?

Was your old ratio a 3.5?

Good luck Jeff and don't throw it off the road.The 4.6 should get you up to speed and out of corners fast
26 K's is a long stage :roll: I can remember a 90mile stage and no recce or pace notes when I was 1/2 my present age :) :(
Waaaay back then the navigator had to plot the course on army maps.

Frank, yeah Dean's in the silly seat & 3.5 originally.

Really looking forward to some punch off the line & out of the corners.

Rad, 90k's is insane especially without any recce or notes; cars were a lot slower way back then so it would've been pretty easy LOL rofl

JJH wrote:Frank, yeah Dean's in the silly seat & 3.5 originally.

Really looking forward to some punch off the line & out of the corners.

Rad, 90k's is insane especially without any recce or notes; cars were a lot slower way back then so it would've been pretty easy LOL rofl

Jeff it was 90 MILES and we still did 100mph+ back then it took a little longer to get there. :)

Good luck Jeff. I'm looking forward to hearing your comments re the new diff gears, as thats the ratio I'm about to fit to my rally car. (Mine's a dirt track rally car, so no fear of me challenging you lol.)

panda wrote:Good luck Jeff. I'm looking forward to hearing your comments re the new diff gears, as thats the ratio I'm about to fit to my rally car. (Mine's a dirt track rally car, so no fear of me challenging you lol.)

Add me to that feed back/ report on the 4.6 as I've got one in my rally car. Not yet tuned, so not had the pleasure yet. It made the world of difference in my old LB lancer. Going back from 4.6 to the factory 3.9 was like chaining the car to a power pole :glare:
The 4.6 died. That's the only reason it was changed in the LB!
I hope it works well in the STARION :drool:

Well the 4.6 has completely transformed the car, from an open road cruiser to an excitingly responsive she-devil
Really like how much easier it is to get off the line, and very punchy out of corners; corners were coming up much quicker than before
Will take a little getting used to after having the 3.5 for so long, and it requires a very different kind of driving style that I can't quite put into words just yet.
Reading of the pace notes will also need to be tweaked to take into account the quicker progression through the stage.
I also know that the brakes took a much bigger pounding than I can recall, top speed was a little lower but we got there much quicker.
Anyway, first 2 stages were quite treacherous with wet roads, rain & clearing snow; had a few eye opening moments which you'll see on the videos.
Rest of the stages were dry which gave us a better opportunity to get a feel for the car.
Videos are going up on YouTube, first one is here, it's actually the 2nd stage on day 1:
FYI, I've setup a post in Show & Go that will have all of the videos from the weekend.
:beer

JJH wrote:Well the 4.6 has completely transformed the car, from an open road cruiser to an excitingly responsive she-devil
Really like how much easier it is to get off the line, and very punchy out of corners; corners were coming up much quicker than before

Ah, now thats given much more confidence that I have fitted the right ratio to mine. Thanks Jeff for the feedback.