Hey BDA, thanks for the appreciation. You are right that most areas for improvements are already tackled. But with regards to my financial resources, the potential is not always used to the greatest possible extent. For example the brakes: I have seen a Europa TC race car from GB, which has AP racing brakes all round. That's the real deal. But my spec is already a big imrpovement, that's for sure. Similar issue with the gearbox. I could have bought a set of shraight cut dog-shifted internals and clutch-type limited slip differential for my 395 from the French company Transconcept for around 15 k. But I went for the shorter diff with Quaife ATB differential with my existing gear set, which cost around half the price. There is no glass ceiling for spendings on a race car, I'm afraid.
My rear wheel hub carrier and stub axle assembly is a similar story. The best way would be to go full Lotus 47-spec with Formula 2 rear hub Aluminium carriers or at least do the Spyder conversion with double wishbones. But I went a different route. To explain that, I have to go back in time many years. Back in 2011, I lost the left rear wheel while driving on the road. The central stub axle nut went lose. While checking the wheel bearings, it got obvious that the cast Aluminium hub carrier was worn out. In order to get a safer solution with stronger bearings, we checked possibilities and found that the stub axle of BMW 2002 rear wheels have fitting dimentions. Thus, we took BMW 2002 rear hub carriers with stub axles and wheel flanges. The hub carrier was cut to just the tube, in which the bearings are mounted. Around that, we built a self-constructed hub carrier from steel, which is not as light as original, but much more rigid and stronger. That decision forced me to build my own rear brake conversion kit, as it has to fit a BMW 4x100 mm PCD for the wheels. That's why I used a Opel Kadett front brake for my rear disc brake conversion. Opel uses the same 4 stud PCD as BMW. Not exactly AP Racing, but still a big improvement. And I'm also very happy with the BMW wheel bearing and stub axle conversion.
The top speeds are calculated figures. From experience with a GPS speedo, I'd say that the real value is a bit below than that. I guess, that the rear tyres are maybe a bit smaller in diameter than its written in the catalogue.
I use two fuel pumps, because my tank has a riser pipe, instead of an outlet on the lowest point. Thus the first pump (Manufacturer Pierburg) is just there to suck from the tank and provide to the Facet pump, which is especially for carburetor use. Before the carbs, there is a Filter King pressure regulator, which keeps constant pressure of 0.28 bar. The wirst pump is mounted on the right hand side of the engine bay. This is in order to be quite close to the tank. The Facet pump is mounted to the cross member between the two rear shock absorbers. Before the first pump, there is a filter installed to keep little pieces of explosion protection foam (which I had to cut into small cubes to put them into the tank) out of the pumps and carbs. You can refer to the photo of the engine bay from my last post to see all that.
