Racing is 110% effort for 90% discouragement and 10% elation. I hope your new engine does them job.
I would love to hear about your new pinion shaft and ring gear! Who? What? Where? How much? !!!
You are right JB. I'm really into this project since the beginning of 2020 and it has cost me around 30k € since then. The planned upgrades for 2024 will add another 10k on top of that. The results so far: Many disappointments, less than 10 hours of net driving time on track, one great weekend and one class win. It roughly translates into the 90:10 ratio, which you mentioned.
Regarding the gearbox upgrade, I found out about a company in Bremen, Germany, called Tandler Racing Drives. It's a gear wheel factory, which expanded their business to manufacturing of special gears and gearboxes for historic (racing) cars in small numbers or even one-offs. That's a smart move, as historic car guys often have a lot of money and are willing to throw it at people, who can deliver what they request.
Right now, I'm waiting for a quotation. The ballpark figure is around 4500 € without tax. I had to send them parts of my gearbox, so that they can take measurements from the samples. Then, they will convert that information into new parts. The ratio, I'm aiming for, is 8:33, instead of my old 9:34. That will reduce my top speed by 20 km/h and should bring a big leap forward in acceleration terms.
The other upgrade, I'm planning in the moment is about aerodynamics. The engine and gearbox stuff will consume most of my spare money with ease. Thus, my only available resource left is time. And in the aero area should be some room for improvement, which only requires a few things from the local hardware store, a fair amount of research and some manual labour.
My racing series allows a front spoiler for every car and rear aerodynamic divices only, if homologated. Thus, at the rear is nothing for me to gain, as the Europa has no homologated aero equipment. But at the front, I want to add a splitter, in order to reduce lift and maybe get some more load in the front wheels, especially under braking. The splitter should look like a mix of the two Europas, which are shown below. The aero will not be as sophisticated as the grey & yellow Europa. I'm not allowed to use side skirts and a snorkel like this car has. But hopefully, my solution will look a bit nicer than the splitter on the black Europa. I used to have the TC front spoiler on my car, but after it was removed by accident, I didn't notice any difference, thus now I want to go a step further with the front end aero.
