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philbey

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Saw this monster at a Hillclimb today. It's a 3K powered monster, 160 thou oversize pistons, bigport head, twin webers and about 142 horsepower at the flywheel.

 

I'm quite interested in these things, I like the idea of an open wheeler with a trusty K engine in a tough looking little open wheeler. It's restricted to 1300cc capacity for Historic racing.

 

I was wondering if anyone know's much more about them, other than wiki-facts? History of the race, what sort of other engines and chassis they ran against, how many built, what they're worth and what I could one for haha?

 

gallery_2873_254_178586.jpg

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Hm if your talking about Formula 3 my mechanic actually had one in his garage for about 15 years. Helped him put if all back together and tidy up the engine a little. I think it was a Nissan Pulsar motor and they ran it in the late 1980's. Pretty sure he ended up selling for around $12,000 and it needed a few things to get it all good again.

 

Also know of a few others, one who has his own team I am pretty sure. Got to check him out at Clipsal 500 recently. Has his own workshop where he can custom make pretty much anything and his own carriage truck for 2 of them at a time. Pretty cool :yes:

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Saw this monster at a Hillclimb today. It's a 3K powered monster, 160 thou oversize pistons, bigport head, twin webers and about 142 horsepower at the flywheel.

 

I'm quite interested in these things, I like the idea of an open wheeler with a trusty K engine in a tough looking little open wheeler. It's restricted to 1300cc capacity for Historic racing.

 

I was wondering if anyone know's much more about them, other than wiki-facts? History of the race, what sort of other engines and chassis they ran against, how many built, what they're worth and what I could one for haha?

 

gallery_2873_254_178586.jpg

 

 

Mate, way back in the early 70`s when I had a ke10 with webers, I used to get it tuned by a company named GP Cars in Brisbane. They were right into a corolla powered open wheeler using a K motor, but i have no clue what class it raced in. At Lakeside Raceway, if there weren`t enough competitors in a class, they would combine classes and run staggered starts.

GP Cars still operates today but no doubt the ownership may have chaged over the years. You`ll find them on the net and maybe they might help out with a few answers.

Good luck.

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Yeh this guy takes his in historic classes as well.

 

I've heard about them before, I reckon it'd be wicked fun just for screaming about in. Even just running a worked 5K in hillclimbs and circuit days, without worrying about the historic class.

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Cool car.

 

If you weren't into the historic class though you would be far better off ditching a K series and going to a Suzuki G13b, like they have in Sports 1300 racing. Similar weight, wider powerband, much lower price for a given HP output, way lower stressed and around 2.5 to 5 times the lifespan between rebuilds.

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Cool car.

 

If you weren't into the historic class though you would be far better off ditching a K series and going to a Suzuki G13b, like they have in Sports 1300 racing. Similar weight, wider powerband, much lower price for a given HP output, way lower stressed and around 2.5 to 5 times the lifespan between rebuilds.

Bill Sherwood (aka Billzilla) has a G13-powered one (runs a K50 gearbox too :hmm:), so he's probably got some experience with the 3K-powered versions as well (at least panel-to-panel experience, if you know what I mean :yes:)

Edited by Hiro Protagonist
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I think I know the Bill Sherwood one you're talking about. Not the same class car though is it?

 

This thing runs a transaxle rather than a straight gearbox, I'm interested in what that's out of, I didn't pay enough attention to it.

 

I figured if you got one decked out for Historics, you could build a 7K motor up for it and you could run the 7K in hillclimbs and sprints, and have the 3K ready for the odd historic race.

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I think I know the Bill Sherwood one you're talking about. Not the same class car though is it?

 

This thing runs a transaxle rather than a straight gearbox, I'm interested in what that's out of, I didn't pay enough attention to it.

 

I figured if you got one decked out for Historics, you could build a 7K motor up for it and you could run the 7K in hillclimbs and sprints, and have the 3K ready for the odd historic race.

 

From his website (which is probably out of date, but still....)

 

At the moment it a test car for a proposed new type of engine, the current cars being restricted to single cam two valve 1300cc types. I have a Suzuki Swift GTi 1300cc 16 valve twin cam in it with only minimal modifications to let it make about 135 hp with a rev limit of 8,000 rpm. The old style engines are usually Toyota Corolla 3K 1200cc engines with 4 mm oversize pistons to take them out to 1294cc, and many other mods to get the same amount of power from them. Another common engine is the Datsun 1200GX A12, which has similar mods

 

and a photo

 

RCAR.jpg

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With the Elfin logo's on the blue one, I assume that it was a car Garrie Cooper built when Elfin was right into open wheeler racers.

 

There is a company called Elfin Heritage Centre here in Melbourne that looks after all sorts of machinery like that one. They have some information about the cars on their website

 

www.elfinheritage.com.au

 

This looks like that car

 

http://www.elfinheritage.com.au/792_pop.html

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