madmatt racing clio 182 race car

[Madmatt racing]

Hi all

just thought i would share the progress of my race car .
i started building it this year and planned to do a few races with the intention of doing a full year in the 2015 750 motor club K Tec clio 182 championship.

so first of, i brought a 182 with a blown engine , stripped it , welded in foot plates for the roll cage and welded in some right angle for the drivers seat which lowered it at the same time.

whilst waiting for the primer to dry off i painted the 6 point roll cage , i added a harness bar and ditched the single door bar for a double door bar that could be removed.

after painting the cage and inside the car, here are the results

next thing to tackle was the engine.

 

[Tony Hunter]

Have you thought about racing in Tricolore Trophy with the track attack club.
Quite a few of us racing there, and good fun.

 

[Madmatt racing]

the engine has a complete rebuild which consisted of

new piston rings, main and big end bearings, new oil bore squirters, block honed, new dephaser pulley,all seals replaced,cam belt kit , head bolts and head gasket, a fresh coat of paint and then installed

all installed

engine oil cooler was also installed

then i found a seat going cheap locally so i snapped that up, which my cat made it his bed.

 

[Madmatt racing]

Have you thought about racing in Tricolore Trophy with the track attack club.
Quite a few of us racing there, and good fun.

Hi Tony,

i would race every weekend if possible , so you never know.
the racing is so close with these cars and with the Ktec series becoming a championship next year ill be having a go at that.

 

[Madmatt racing]

car was then fitted with Ktec coil overs,ecu and team Dynamics 15 inch wheels with dunlop tyres and race numbers

 

[Mini182]

Looks like a nice project you have started, I'll keep an eye on it.

As Tony says take a look at the tricolore series we race in. Really friendly bunch of people and would always welcome another clio.

 

[Madmatt racing]

so my first race was at snetterton, as i said before i was just using this year to get all the bugs out of the system and make sure it was ready for 2015. and i had plenty of problem and didn't get it all right until the last race of the season

Snetterton- qualified mid pack which i wasn't best pleased about, Race 1 i got a good start only to hit a kerb going onto the back straight punchering the front tyre and ending my race, Race 2 , managed to finish but was confused about the lack of straight line speed especially as the engine had just been rebuilt.

Rockingham- never been here before but once again qualified mid field , got a great start but by the 2nd corner the car started to loss power and had to pull it into the pits only for Shawn from Ktec to find that the coolant sensor has come adrift , popped that back on and then went out , but the time i had lost was too much so just spent some time in the car getting use to it.
Race 2 , good start and had a good few battles but still confused as to why the car was slow in a straight line, it handled ok but when all the cars are the same any little problem shows.

So after having 2 races and the car quite clearly not being right i decided to take the car to NTR in slough where they put it on the rolling road and to my surprise found that it only had 150bhp. opps

so i thought that the first thing to sort out would be the exhaust, so i ordered a new scorpion exhaust with no middle box and i would get rid of the standard cat and put a 100 cell motorsport cat in. Well after Scorpion screwed up my order i ended up fabricating the front half of the exhaust and just used the back box.

 

[harry289]

Nice to see you doing a build thread on here. Do you enjoy the Clio more than the Saxo you raced? I'm sure you'll do well next season if your results in Stock Hatch are anything to go by!

 

[Madmatt racing]

Nice to see you doing a build thread on here. Do you enjoy the Clio more than the Saxo you raced? I'm sure you'll do well next season if your results in Stock Hatch are anything to go by!

at the moment i enjoy the power of the clio compared to the saxo, but the saxo could out handle nearly everything and was a great little car, hopefully it will be only a matter of time before the clio starts to get there.

 

[Madmatt racing]

Cadwell Park- spending a lot of time on corner weighting the car and tracking, thanks to Preston Garages of Harefield for the use of tracking Guages and NTR for the lend of corner weights
As this was one of my favourite circuits i was expecting a good result, i managed to qualify 3rd for race 1 which wasn't bad, managed to get a great start from 3rd and managed to get to 2nd, was chasing the leader as he had got a bit of a lead, managed to get to the back of the leader and was flat out into the first corner , started to turn in for the second corner and the back end of the car decide that i wasn't quick enough and tried to overtake me, ended going over the grass (narrowly missing the marshall post) and rejoined the track around 5th or 6th, got to the next corner and the same thing happened, the car tried to swap ends again, then the car started to fill up with smoke and i ended up back in the pits, turned out that the power steering pipe had split and gone all over the rear tyres hence the big moment at the second corner. unfortunately that was my day over with as i couldn't repair the pipe and didn't get hold of a spare. but it was encouraging as the car was getting there and was up the right end of the field.

 

[Tony Hunter]

Glad to see they listened in the end, told them that 16 wheels were too expensive to put rubber on.

Be interesting to see what these smaller fuel tanks are like.

 

[JackJack]

Looks smart.

 

[sonny172cup]

Great write up, I recognise your car, looked to be going well on track anyway...sorry to hear of the niggles you had, but that's expected I guess in a first season with a new car.

Are you running the 25ltr fuel tank? I hear you guys was being plagued with fuel starvation? something that i'v not personally experienced in the 172 (do they have different fuel pick up points?).

Feel free to join the Tricolore Trophy, its good fun, maybe run it in production class, just swap over suspension, front top mounts and the controlled ECU and your good to go.

 

[Madmatt racing]

well , i do have the smaller 25 litre tank, haven't had any problems with fuel pick up, the only thing is the fuel gauge isn't consistent .
before the next race i decided to check the timing as this was the only thing i hadn't checked since it had been timed up by a garage, i borrowed timing tools from the local garage and quickly realised that their tools were bent so i went out and got my own, well after a miserable few races lacking in power it turned out that the timing was out,
at a good guess the garage that timed it up must of had a bent tool. the only way i can see that you bend the tool would be if you don't lock the pulleys up when changing the de phaser pulley.
Donington Park- well what can i say, a brief moment of luck only for bad luck to strike again.
went out in qualifying on a wet track and qualified 10th for both races, didn't feel comfortable with the car especially in the we as 3 to 4 laps in the throttle turned into a on / off switch. so i either had 0% throttle or 100%. after putting it on the computer it looked to be a problem with the throttle body, changed the pedal, no difference. changed the throttle body again no difference. After wiggling some wires around it turned out to be the big white connector in the fuse box, a lot of the connectors had oxidised and after taking it all apart and cleaning it up it finally all worked including other things that never worked before like temp gauge,rev counter and the starter motor now turned over all the time,
Race 1 - it was very wet and ended up cutting the grass at a few corners, ended up 8th overall .

Race 2 - started 10th on the grid, got a great start and was up to 6th place by the old hairpin, over the next few laps i made my way up the order to 3rd , then passed 2nd place at red gate and then made my way after the leader, the car was great and i easily caught the leader, managed to catch the leader and pass him coming out of red gate only for me to get to the old hairpin and the car felt like the rear tyre was going flat. i had to reduce my pace as the car felt very unstable and was going to go around and hope i was on the last lap so i could at least get a top 5 result, as i got to the last corner the rear wheel bearing totally failed sending the rear wheel under the car flipping it onto it side .

Absolutely gutted , all can be seen on this site www.clio182series.co.uk
just watch the doninton race and you will see what happened

enjoy, Matt

 

[sonny172cup]

Any pics of the 25 ltr tank? *that would put you out of the TT production regs anyway.

How are you and the others getting on with the Spax control suspension? I was running Spax for half of this season and have mixed views.

 

[Mini182]

Briefly looking at the regs for the 750 series do you have to use the dunlops come rain or shine? No wet option?

 

[Madmatt racing]

Don't have any picture of the tank but will see if I can get any, the suspension isn't to my liking yet, might just take a while to get use to it,
Dunlops only regardless of the weather

 

[Tony Hunter]

Pray it doesn't rain then.

 

[Mini182]

Yeah they really are not very good in the rain.

Seems a little short sighted not to have a wet option, or a tyre that can cope better with wet and dry conditions.

 

[TarkMalbot]

I am too looking into racing my Clio next year. Totally standard road car at the moment so a lot of work to do. I am reading up on the regs from different classes to decide what I want. Already have ITB's and Gen 90 ECU in the pipeline so that puts me out of the production class and a Carbon bonnet on its way. I have raced bikes all the way from Novice to the World Championships but now I am fancying a shot at cars as you don't seem to fall off them as much! Looking forward to reading more in 2015 on your project and hopefully get some ideas of what I need to do to mine.

 

[Apg100]

Good thread Matt. I've done a similar thing with the 2014 season, used it to get used to racing and getting the car right. I did it in the Tricolore series, who, as mentioned on here are a great bunch of friendly and helpful people.

It would be good to see more Clios out with us in 2015, so if you haven't already spent your money with the 750 series, then it would be worth a look. @TarkMalbot the same goes for you, it would be a perfect series to join, especially if your just starting.

And have a good Christmas

 

[Madmatt racing]

Along time since I updated all about the car, changed the colour as every other race car was coming out in black. So

 

[Madmatt racing]

How the car sits going into the last round of the championship.