Any Atom owners in Cape Town?????

[John H]

[quote="benyeats"]
[quote="John H"]
[quote="benyeats"]
[quote="John H"]
[quote="benyeats"]
There is one chap in Cape Town with one who I got in touch with before I went last year but did not hear back from him nearer the time.

My mate will take you out on track in his Elise if you like

Ben
[/quote]
that would be dead cool..............PM me his details and I'll give him a shout.
Wonder if I can hire a car to track over there.
I shall investigate.
cheers
[/quote]

Hiring interesting cars is not too expensive, not sure you are allowed to track them but how would they know ?  Will PM you his details in a moment.  Trackdays are about £20 in SA and you get some interesting machinery along.

Ben
[/quote]
I've got a 1.2 Nissan Spaz Chariot for the time I am there, but sh1t motors are good fun on trackdays......as I have proved in my Civic a few times this year
[/quote]

Most of the locals drive Mk1 golfs, made locally and updated with a fuel injected engine, still somewhat slower than the Megane Cup I borrowed and speeding tickets are only £30
[/quote]
Wicked..........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hedge]

Last time I was there (honeymoon, 8 years ago, gulp), we had a Mk 1 Golf (Rabbit). It was great fun. Roads are good out there, empty, too (relative).

Always hankered over a Mk 1 GTi - the Pirelli version. In Lhasa green.

Just one of, oooh, at least 20 cars I'd like in the garage.

Cheers, Hedge

[John H]

[quote="Hedge"]
Last time I was there (honeymoon, 8 years ago, gulp), we had a Mk 1 Golf (Rabbit). It was great fun. Roads are good out there, empty, too (relative).

Always hankered over a Mk 1 GTi - the Pirelli version. In Lhasa green.

Just one of, oooh, at least 20 cars I'd like in the garage.

Cheers, Hedge
[/quote]
"hankered"??????????????????????????????????????
Typo??????????????????????

[Alec]

Don't you need one of these when you go there?

[John H]

[quote="Alec"]
Don't you need one of these when you go there?


[/quote]
Not unless I go to Joburg I hope.
I could take the Atom though as it spits flames out the back.

[John H]

[quote="Bruce Fielding"]
Dawie Joubert owns an Atom, but in Jo'berg I think.

He was going to be the SA distributor but I don't think that ever happened.
[/quote]
he's actually in Paarl, near Cpe Town and I am hoping to meet up with him next week...........they are bonkers for mods over here like the septics!

[Colin H]

Hi All

So I'm one of the 3 Atom owners in Cape Town.... and Dawie is the local Atom representative and arranged my Atom as well as the others that are in SA.

We don't really like modifying our cars, it's just that they are not fast enough (engine or handling wise) to be competitive in the Regional Sports & GT class we race in. To be honest, I was really disappointed with my Atom when I got it - way less power and much heavier than Ariel say. Not to mention that they send a 225 tyre on 16" 7J rim, only about half the rubber is on the road because the tyre is too wide for the rim! Not to mention I ordered 2 sets, so I now have 2 sets to trash and need to buy new rims. 

We have some stiff competition and don't want to be shown up by quicker cars, especially a few quick 7 derivatives. That includes my own 7 with a Rotary B1300 that I am still quicker on the track with that my Atom 

That said, my car now has a Turbo and we are installing a Motec M400 ECU with all the mods (incl. traction and launch control) tomorrow and I hope to be blisteringly fast in the next race. Unfortunately we picked up an electrical problem with my Hondata ECU (with a UniQ piggy-backed onto it to map for the Turbo), so I had to upgrade. Dawie did the same conversion to an engine for his CF Exige and it pushes 275KW (close to 400bhp) on the Dyno (we only got 196KW from my stock engine).

Well, that's a start. Have lots of question to ask about tyres, steering etc, but all in good time.....

glad i found the forum through John.

cheers
colin

[bolus]

Welcome Colin,  I for one would love to hear about all the mods you have done.  Us chaps over in the USA love modifying our cars.  I have built up my engine, turbo'd, meth injection, heat dispersant coated intercooler, new uprights, paddle shifter, exhaust, etc, etc.

You may pick up some ideas from Calscot who has rotrex supercharged his honda up to 500hp.  he is running formula atlantic slicks with new uprights as well. 

[CalScot]

Nice to hear from you Colin.
Is John P still kicking around out there with his Atom? He did some pretty heavy duty mods to his last year. We spoke quite a bit at the time discussing what we both were doing to the car but I have not heard from him in a while.

The class you run in in SA seems pretty "open". What are the general rules that apply to what you can run and what type of "competition" do you run against?

FWIW I have the Rotrex SC installed on my car. I have the Hondata K-Pro ECU. The motor is fully built out with a whole bunch of mods and designed for 10,000rpm.  I have individual O2 plugs on each header pipe and the car is tuned induvidually on each cylinder. (there was almost 10% difference in fuel trim across all 4 cylinders and tuning each one yields about 20HP in total) I had it last dyno'd at 480WHP on race gas. I am running it at around 400WHP and keeping the the redline at 8800rpm because it is better matched to the overall handling and it is easier on breaking stuff. At 400, you can out accelerate anything that is not a full blown aero race car and the traction is on the edge all the way to about 100MPH, so anymore power is not that useful unless you are using it to pull higher speeds above 130 where it hits the "aero wall" and acceleration slows quite a bit. It will still "eventually" pull 6th gear at redline though which is 165 on a data logger. If I need more power I can easily get it in 2 minutes by swapping the ECU tune but I think the handling of the car offers more gains than any more power.

I have done more stuff to my car than I can remember. Suffice to say, I am starting to get really fast times at my local tracks out of the car. Normally I PM most of the technical details regarding the mods I have done as I do not want to be laughed at by those that think I am screwing up a perfectly good road and track day car. A sentiment I understand but which has kept all sorts of stuff off the forum. I am quite excited at the idea of Atom owners out there doing serious performance modifications as I am finding it expensive to make all the mistakes by myself

Pictures and details of what you are doing would be awesome!

[Colin H]

your performance sounds amazing, I could never get to your level of performance with my current setup, but look forward to the extra power I have. I think we also have lots to learn we have been making a lot of (exp) mistakes ourselves.... Dawie just tried a high compression 2.4l block with individual throttle bodies that was built in the UK. the performance was disappointing and the engine didn't last one race. it would seem at this early stage that turbo charging might be the better way to go.

although you can get a lot more out of the supercharger than standard, it just seemed that the heat built up is going to be a problem in the end and it would be difficult to impossible to do endurance race......

we race in a very open class, basically it is for Sports and GT cars, street legal or full race cars. the fastest car on the track at the moment is a GT2R, sequential gearbog, bigger turbos (and plenty more engine mods), every carbon fibre bodu part you can imagine, Dymag carbon fibre wheels, ceramic brakes and the list goes on. We then have a huge V8 Mustang which a tube body (similar to Nascar I believe) -  that doesn't really qualify as a sports car, but somehow he got in....
those 2 are followed by Dawie in his atom, a Mallok and a very fast 7 with a rotary (similar to my 7). then closely behind is the group I race in with my 7 (my Atom has not run this year because of upgrades and electrical fault). We comprise of Tiga & Lola T210â??s. The next group are Porsche GT3 RS, Porsche 917 , CAV GT40 replicas and lots more 7, lola's etc.... At the last race we had 35 cars on the grid, a great mixture of sports cars.

this is a clip i uploaded from the 2 cameras on my 7 in the last race.

on some races we have some Touring cars with us (they don't have anywhere else to race at the moment, so join us) â?? you will see the BMW that is behing me is a Group A touring car. my car was a few seconds off the pace in this race because my tyres are old (I had hoped to race my Atom, so hadn't ordered a new set of Dunlops) - my best is a 1:19 and in this race we were 1:21's....

I will take some pics pf my car when it is going, it's been a long frustrating process doing the upgrade. 1st the guy melted holes in my pistons on the dyno the day before the race (running it to lean when he moved where the Vtec came in). that gave me the opportunity to go for forged lower compression pistons, but still sad to open an engine with 1300km on the clock. then the next race was missed because of this electrical problem. hence the Motec where the engine can be tuned using the data logger after driving and easier to find problems.

hopefully i will be on the track this Saturday in my Atom for practice, getting use to all the extra horses 

[CalScot]

[quote="Colin H"]
your performance sounds amazing, I could never get to your level of performance with my current setup, but look forward to the extra power I have. I think we also have lots to learn we have been making a lot of (exp) mistakes ourselves.... Dawie just tried a high compression 2.4l block with individual throttle bodies that was built in the UK. the performance was disappointing and the engine didn't last one race. it would seem at this early stage that turbo charging might be the better way to go.

although you can get a lot more out of the supercharger than standard, it just seemed that the heat built up is going to be a problem in the end and it would be difficult to impossible to do endurance race......

we race in a very open class, basically it is for Sports and GT cars, street legal or full race cars. the fastest car on the track at the moment is a GT2R, sequential gearbog, bigger turbos (and plenty more engine mods), every carbon fibre bodu part you can imagine, Dymag carbon fibre wheels, ceramic brakes and the list goes on. We then have a huge V8 Mustang which a tube body (similar to Nascar I believe) -  that doesn't really qualify as a sports car, but somehow he got in....
those 2 are followed by Dawie in his atom, a Mallok and a very fast 7 with a rotary (similar to my 7). then closely behind is the group I race in with my 7 (my Atom has not run this year because of upgrades and electrical fault). We comprise of Tiga & Lola T210â??s. The next group are Porsche GT3 RS, Porsche 917 , CAV GT40 replicas and lots more 7, lola's etc.... At the last race we had 35 cars on the grid, a great mixture of sports cars.

this is a clip i uploaded from the 2 cameras on my 7 in the last race.

on some races we have some Touring cars with us (they don't have anywhere else to race at the moment, so join us) â?? you will see the BMW that is behing me is a Group A touring car. my car was a few seconds off the pace in this race because my tyres are old (I had hoped to race my Atom, so hadn't ordered a new set of Dunlops) - my best is a 1:19 and in this race we were 1:21's....

I will take some pics pf my car when it is going, it's been a long frustrating process doing the upgrade. 1st the guy melted holes in my pistons on the dyno the day before the race (running it to lean when he moved where the Vtec came in). that gave me the opportunity to go for forged lower compression pistons, but still sad to open an engine with 1300km on the clock. then the next race was missed because of this electrical problem. hence the Motec where the engine can be tuned using the data logger after driving and easier to find problems.

hopefully i will be on the track this Saturday in my Atom for practice, getting use to all the extra horses 


[/quote]

Sounds like your getting there!
The Motec is about the best ECU you can get. It' not cheap .
I stuck with Hondata because they are local to me and I got to know the owner, Doug McMillan who hepled tune my car when I first had the K-pro installed. So I have a lot of technical support if I need it.
It's a shame your "tuner" leaned out your motor. Time to get a new guy to help you I think as that's a no brainer mistake that anybody that knows anything should have avoided.
I can't imagine why a well built K24 motor would have failed so quick. It should be bullet proof! The guy who built my engine builds Honda race Motors for customers all over the world. Next time if you need a well built motor, you guys should try him out. I cannot say good enough things about him. I put over 5K miles on my engine with over 400WHP before it needed rebuilt. About half of those miles was on track or very heavy use. It only failed because of a ring failure which led to all sorts of other damage. It was rebuilt much the same as before but with a new design on the ring placement. I kept the compression at 11.5:1 and am running 15-17lbs of boost. That's where most of the power comes from. As you can imagine, the AF mix across the entire rev range is critical.

I am sure many of us are looking forward to some pictures showing your progress. Feel free to ask the forum for help on stuff. There are many very helpful guys on here that have done all sorts of stuff with the Atom so the body of knowledge is very good.

Good luck

[Driver]

I think it is great that there are people like Randy, Bolus, Darth, Peter and Colin out there pushing the envelope. And we have others like Norm and Dp coming along with new stuff as well... Colin, grow a thick skin as C&C (comment & critique) is very prevalent on public forums, it's rarely personal. What doesn't float one persons boat will be just fine with others. Ultimately we are all one family and you can always just ignore the hillbilly cousins. . Good luck on your mods and getting your Atom dialed in. 

I assume you know about AtomFest 2009 by now? 

[Colin H]

the atom fest looks awesome, must be an amazing experience to have that many Atom's together.
pity we don't have more Atoms' in SA....
would love to go, but be torturous to be there and not have my car to drive. i'm sure it would be a much cheaper way to learn what works than the trial we are going through.

[Driver]

Ask all the British that were there in 07 if it severely impacted their level of fun? Or if they had any regrets short of the lack of a car. Even without your car it's going to be a serious fun event and the people, putting names to faces, the nuances you don't get over the internet, are priceless. Maybe TMI will be around with some demo vehicles... I'm sure some of the less competitive owners and even 'pros' would give you some rides. But I'll leave that for them to say.

[Hedge]

[quote="Colin H"]
this is a clip i uploaded from the 2 cameras on my 7 in the last race.

[/quote]

Fantastic, great clip 
Keep em coming/ up the good work 
Cheers, Hedge