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andyowl
Sr. Member
Posts: 456
New exhaust "straight through" - good sound!
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« Reply #136 on: June 16, 2010, 01:10:34 am » |
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Just a bit off-topic but maybe I should explain why we come to have two motorhomes!
My wife, known as Charlie, had a long spell in hospital in 2005. So serious was her condition, when she came out they estimated that she had only a 50% chance of surviving for 6 months. We decided that, as "this is not a rehersal", we had better enjoy what time she had left and we bought an old Winnebago "RV" so that we could take as many short holidays as her health would allow at the same time as having enough space to take her beloved cats (at the time we had six - moggies and pedigree alike). Good care and her own determination blesssed her with being one of the other 50% who do survive and as many of you know she is still very much with us. She has not regained her health as much as she or we would have wished but she enjoys her motorhome holidays whether they be a one day trip to Prescott, a four day trip to Etretat or a 14 day oddesey to Cornwall to see our 2 sisters.
She often needs easy and quick access to "mod-cons" and a bed to rest upon when her old problems recurr so when we go out together our preferred method of transport is by motorhome, even for supermarket trips. At 9metres long and with the width of a truck Winnie is a bit big for your average shopping trip and the problems (and risks) of squeezing him into and out of our back garden considerable. So when it came to wanting regular day-out trips to MotorSport events coupled with the need to tow a 950kg Bagheera on a 500kg trailer plus a 100kg mobility scooter something bigger that a VW camper was required.
So we purchased a second motorhome based on a Peugeot Boxer van now known as "Sonny" (Son of Winnie and related to Sonny Liston, a Boxer). A mere 19ft long Sonny handles more like the panel van he based upon with very reasonable performance and fuel economy. Filling Winnie makes my wallet hurt! So we finish up as a very fortunate two motorhome family with two pensioners (plus 2x40+ year old "children" and their spouses and currently 5 grandchildren) and now only five cats but still able to take easy and relatively cheap holidays together. We can also compete and marshall at motorsport events and have been known to take one or other of the m/h to the Matra Club events!
If I caused offence by seeming to claim "one-up-man-ship" I sincerely apologise and without reservation. Nothing was further from the truth.
Footnote.. Dodgy earths affect not only GRP Matras but also very heavy duty American RVs! Winnie's starter motor is on the right side of the engine but connected to "earth" via the engine block earth strap on the lefthand chassis rail. The batteries are on the right side of the vehicle and their earths are connected to the righthand chassis rail. After replacing two suspect positive battery cables and still finding no improvement we started checking (again) all the earth points. Making a temporary earth cable directly from the starter mounting bolts to the battery negative posts there was instant starting just like there used to be! But where was the fault? All the earth connections looked OK and had been stripped and cleaned! We found it eventually - The chassis rails are not welded together as I had assumed but bolted! 16 years of exposure to everything the British weather can provide had caused invisible corrosion between the bolted chassis members and a high resistance earth path was the result. A 300A starter current creates quite a large voltdrop and that caused the starter to fail! A bit like a Bagheera really!
Best wishes,
Andy Owler
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andyowl
Sr. Member
Posts: 456
New exhaust "straight through" - good sound!
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« Reply #143 on: August 15, 2010, 09:41:33 am » |
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Victory at the Debden Sprint, July 11th, or how an OAP Rookie got his first trophy (This article was written originally with our local motor club "FDMC" in mind - the first on a Matra they have ever published - so please forgive me repeating things that this expert forum already knows!)
Hoping to score some points in the ACSMC Hamilton Sprint Challenge Baggy Joe (1977 Matra-Simca Bagheera) and I entered the “Borough 19 Motor Club” event at the Debden airfield circuit near Bishops Stortford in July. As members will be aware this car and driver have not been exactly covered in awards since we started competing in May 2009, in fact it would be true to say that we have been very consistently at the end of any class we have entered, whether it be AutoSolos, Sprints or Hill Climbs. “Fun is our objective and glory is not expected”, as I wrote when we embarked upon the restoration of the £200, 33 year old, car in December 2008. I was surprised when we finished 5th out of eight entrants in our own AutoSolo Challenge in 2009 and we would have been 4th if we had entered the last ‘Solo of the season! Turning up on the day does actually help you gain points!
Since the end of the 2009 season we have fitted a “period” Shorrock Supercharger and it makes a dramatic difference to the performance! Power is up nearly 30%. The Bagheera was given very enthusiastic reviews when they were first announced by Matra in 1973 but everyone agreed that the car’s mid-engined layout could handle more power. In response Matra did install a 1442cc engine with dual twin choke Webers in the Series 2 models instead of the previous 1293cc. A still larger engine was available in the form of the 1592cc as fitted in the Talbot Horizon but that was kept for the Bagheera’s successor, the 1981 Murena, after over 44,000 Bagheeras had been built. Only when we took the head off to fit the “de-compression plate” did we find out that Baggy Joe already had the 1.6Litre engine! I thought he was going well! We have owned a 1.4L S2 Bagheera from new in 1978 and are very familiar with its (lack of serious) performance, brilliant although the car is in every other respect.
The snag with supercharging is that the MSA (Motor Sport Association) regs regard any engine fitted with “forced induction” as having a 40% boost in capacity and FDMC and other MSA clubs rightly follow that practice. On top of our 1.6L engine therefore adding 40% gives us a notional capacity of “over 2,000cc”. My entry form to Borough 19 declared both the larger engine and the blower and they then put us into the “Modified, over 2000cc” Class. Difficult to argue with really and we settled with being “in with the big boys”. Hey! This is only for FUN!
On the day we turned up after the 90 minute trip around the M25/M11 ready to do our best. This was only our second 2010 Sprint (the previous one being the FDMC Rushmoor event in the Spring where we came virtually last as usual) and we wanted to put into practice the many things we had learned since the blower was fitted and the 50mm/2” SU carburettor tuned. The Rolling Road session was very helpful but sadly there is no available tuning session to get an extra 30% performance out of the driver!
We are still playing with pressures for the Yokohama A048 “List 1b” sticky tyres but 2.3bar (33psi) seems to be getting close to optimum. Understeer has been reduced to the point of neutrality but getting the new power down on the road is harder. It needs a dollop of courage and skill for the driver and that has not yet been developed. With Baggy being a three seater he is quite wide and I found the Rushmoor roads quite narrow albeit without Armco, unlike the Hill Climb we did at the Bugatti Owner’s Club Prescott Hill in May. Hanging the tail out does not seem to be a good idea when you have very little idea of how it will handle at the limit. Baggy Joe swapped ends so fast at the Borden ‘Solo that I barely remember anything except that the view out of the windscreen was going left to right rather than straight on!
The Debden route included a 180º roundabout and on the last run I decided that I might as well go for it and hit the throttle after the first 90º trusting to the wide run-off area to handle any unexpected excursions. To my amazement the car adopted an opposite lock lurid drift and rocketed out onto the straight! That was good – I must try that again! And I did through the slalom section after the last proper corner! Wow! That WAS FUN!
Helping with the clearing up and checking my time on that last run I thanked the organisers for a really great event and hoped I would see them again next time. “You’re not going are you?” she asked. “Well, yes, we have a long way to go on a Sunday evening”. But we have something for you! You won your Class and we have a trophy for you”. Amazed wasn’t the word! I had assumed, as we were the only entrant in the “Modified, over 2000cc” Class, that we would barely “get a mention”. But true enough, at the prize giving, we won a trophy! I was ridiculously pleased. Entirely out of proportion to being First (and Last) in Class.
Moral: Being a “one off” in Class has merit! Nobody to come second to, no invidious comparisons and maybe a trophy as a memento of the day! I could get to like this!
Keep on developing!
Andy Owler
Picture: - Our first Trophy
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