Last update

I am told by the producers of this blog site that I have used up all the capacity for pictures, and that I would have to pay a monthly fee to get more. I tried using hotlinks to post pictures but that didn't work very well so this will be the last update on this blog. If you want to follow the build, I am also posting updates to several forums, and here are the links:

Winnipeg Sports Car Club

Sports Car Club of America forum

Grassroots Motorsports Forum

MG Experience Forum

Thanks for your support and interest in my build

New rear sheetmetal

I cut the back end off the donor MGB using a sawzall and grinder

Look, I made a truck out of an MGB

Once I cut out the fat and removed the trunk lid, the whole thing wasn't much heavier than if I used the fiberglass copy, so I decided to use it.

Fiberglass rear end

Paul from Red Bearing Auto Repair sold me the back half of an MGB ragtop that I could use on the Pink Panther. But before cutting it off, I decided to make a fiberglass mold of it

I started by taking non-stick aluminum foil and laying it out on the rear of the car

Once it was covered in foil, I laid out the woven fiberglass blanket. I made a mistake here, I should have cut it into smaller pieces, it would have been smoother.

I covered the fiberglass with resin and spread it out with a roller and brush

Once it had cured, I was able to just lift it off the car and the foil pealed off without much trouble. It's not very stiff, though, I would need to glass in some balsa pieces before using it.

Rear frame redone

Here is the rear frame with the fenders cut away. There is a lot of extra steel here that can be eliminated or simplified.

Once it was all cut away I figured out how the simplest way to attach the shocks and the Panhard bar.

There is a framework that the rear suspension bolts to and it's welded to a thick steel plate from the original MGB frame. I discovered that this plate is not actually very strong and the whole rear of the car is basically held together with only the tubes going from the roll hoop down to the frame. I will definitely correct this.

The new rear frame, narrowed and simplified.

Door bars and structure

When I cut the top bars out of the roll cage, the center of the car drooped, just look at what happened to the body line where the door and rear quarter panel meet.

I jacked the car up in the middle and welded in these door bars, solving the problem

Since I don't need the doors to open and close anymore, I was able to cut out the latches, hinges and door structure, leaving only the outer skin. It is quite surprising how much all that stuff weighed.

Cutting the roof off

After Nationals I realized that I need to put the car on a dramatic weight loss program and I have to take out 400 lbs to get down to the class minimum weight. I have plans on how to do this and it started with removing the roof.

Here is the Pink Panther as it was raced at Nationals, 2250 lbs with me in it

I removed the hatch and spoiler, which must have been around 75 lbs

And I don't need the fuel filler door or hose anymore

Once I had cut the top off, I enlisted help to lift it off

We figure the roof weighs 50-60 lbs

I lost a lot of structural strength when I cut out the top bars but I'll make that up with door bars. When I pile up everything that I removed, it weighs about 200 lbs. Of course some of that will go back in with the door bars and boot lid but I still have the door structure, hinges and latches to cut out.

2012 SCCA Solo Nationals

Briget and I drove the 14 hours to Lincoln, Nebraska for the 2012 SCCA Solo Nationals. We immediately signed up for 4 Test N Tune sessions which would give us 16 chances to get the set up right. I kept fairly detailed notes on everything so I had an idea of what was doing what. Here are pictures of my TNT notes.

 We got the car feeling pretty good but never completely rid the car of inside wheel spin. We also learned that the tires go off if they are hotter than 110 F when the run starts. On Tuesday competition began and Briget was the first to try the car on the big course. She came back reporting that the car felt pretty neutral and had no wheelspin. I ran later in the day and I also thought the car felt good but I did experience wheelspin and some hopping around the sweepers. I was very close to a trophy spot, which is quite amazing for a car with so little development and so few runs. I also kept notes on these runs and here they are

Quickest clean run from West course

After my runs I was very privileged to get set-up advice from Dan Wasdahl, KJ Christopher, Del Long and Peter Raymond. These guys have driven or built more Championship winning cars than I can count on my fingers and toes. They seemed to agree that I needed more negative camber up front and firmer damping out back. I went back to my paddock spot and added 1 degree of negative camber, reduced toe out to 3/16" and stiffened the rebound quite a bit. The next day Briget drove the car and came back reporting that it was fun and felt far better than before. She landed up 3rd in class.  I made no changes and went out for my runs late in the afternoon and was immediately impressed with how the car felt. The East course had a very different feel than the West course. There were places to get speed but there were some slow speed traps at the end of them. I would be able to get crazy speed through the transitions but would be going way too fast to make the tight turns at the end. In the end I landed up in 9th out of 18 cars but I still feel pretty good about it because the car is pretty good. I am making a list of changes that will make the car better.

Video of quickest run on East course

Side cam video of quickest run with data overlay

Last events before the big show

The last two local events before Nationals were this weekend and it was also the first time I got to drive the car with the new 12.5" wide (vs the old 10.7" wide) front tires and the new adjustable and stiffer front sway bar. Saturday started out amazing with the car displaying a turn-in so precise, I thought I was driving a kart, not a car with giant front tires. This seemed to come at the expense of rear grip, however, with the back of the car being pretty lively. I stiffened the front sway bar and this cured the over steer but turn-in wasn't so amazing anymore. I had the quickest raw time but tipped over a cone. Here are some videos from Saturday:
Saturday quickest clean run
Saturday rear facing camera
Saturday rear suspension camera

Sunday started with lots of optimism, I was hoping to get Fastest Time of Day but it didn't happen. I switched back to the softer front bar setting and tried to tame the rear by lowering the roll center one inch. The car felt fine on my first run but when I came into the finish, I hit the brakes too hard, locking up the rears and spinning into a wall of cones. Sunday spin from side camera Sunday full run with spin-in car camera
After that I was nervous about going too fast into the 3 hard braking zones and would land up lifting early, costing tones of time. Sunday quickest run

Adjustable front sway bar

I have new, wider front tires for Nationals and to avoid the chance of oversteer, I needed to change the front sway bar. I had a non-adjustable one on there before and I wanted an adjustable one but buying a custom made bar was out of my budget right now. I had some Porsche 911 torsion bars kicking around and it occurred to me that I could maybe use one as a sway bar. The beauty of using the 911 torsion bar is that there are a wide variety of sizes available and any one of them will slide right in if I need to change the stiffness.

There is very little real estate around my front suspension to mount a sway bar so instead of going under it, I went over it. Finding a mounting location for the drop links proved difficult. I landed up using a longer bolt for the pushrod mount and sliding the drop link over it.

I attached the sway bar mount to the rad/fender mount and significantly stiffened it by adding the x-brace you see right behind the fan

I took the 911 bar ends and drilled them for a set screw then welded a 1/2" thick bar to them, with holes for mounting the drop links

I painted the arms pink so they would be easily spotted

Air cleaner

I decided to simplify the intake system by eliminating the ram air system and all it's piping and go with just an air cleaner attached to the mass airflow sensor. Here is a pic of the new set up. After the picture was taken, I added a sheet of aluminum behind the tire to protect the air cleaner from debris.

Tweaks

In Lincoln we snapped a mount on the axle so I added some gussets between the housing and the lower suspension mount

Here is one of the rear shocks, mounted horizontally and at a 90 degree angle to the pushrod. In this position the suspension has a falling rate which means for the first 10mm of wheel movement, the shock moves 10mm, for the next 10mm of wheel movement the shock moves only 8mm. This is not good for handling. I could never figure out how to change it to a rising rate but today it came to me: just change the angle of the shock.

Here it is in it's new position and it now increases in stiffness as it goes through it's travel.

Here is the piece I welded in to move the shock. The old hole is the small one at the top and the new one is at the bottom

Also, when I added the sway bar I had to move the top suspension link down and this gave me 88% anti-squat, which is not ideal for handling. In order to move the link up and get 50% anti-squat, I had to reposition the sway bar which I did by adding the 4" extensions you see on the right side of the pic.

I also found this slick aluminum hinge at Speedway Motors, so now I don't have to use a stick to keep the hatch open.

First big event-Lincoln Tour

We loaded up the Pink Panther and traveled from Winnipeg, Canada to Lincoln, Nebraska for the Pro Solo and Solo Tour event known as Spring Nationals. Because of a strong headwind and lack of towing power, we were down to 45 mph with the heat cranked and windows opened to keep our Suburban tow vehicle alive until we got to Lincoln.
    We tested the car last Sunday and everything was fine except after 3 minutes of continuous hard running through a simulated autocross course, the clutch stopped fully releasing. I assumed that I would just have to bleed the clutch and add a heat shield to the hoses and all would be well. When we unloaded in Lincoln, the problem persisted and made practice launches for the ProSolo very difficult because as soon as I took my foot off the brake, the car would roll through the start lights. In order to adjust the hydraulic release bearing, the transmission would have to come out.

The shifter, drive shaft, seat, tunnel and crossmember all had to come out in order to remove the transmission

And finally I could get to the release bearing and adjust it out a little.

 I got it all back together in time for ProSolo practice launches but couldn't do much because we could stage the car correctly but as soon as we took our foot off the brake, the car would roll forward, causing a red light.  It occured to me that maybe I could adjust the pedal travel to correct this and amazingly, it worked-except it means that removing the transmission was a waste of time. I went back to do some practice launches and after a couple of 4000 rpm clutch dumps, I snapped a rear suspension mount. Those 14" rear slicks really hook up! Briget and I fanned out in the paddock area asking everyone if they had a welder, none were on site. Many calls to local welding shops also turned up nobody that could come to the site and weld my car. I was forced to drive to Tractor Supply and buy a welder, grinder, helmet and steel for reinforcing the bracket. The irony is that after I purchased the welder, four other competitors borrowed it to get their race cars back on track. If I had charged $200 each, I would have broken even!

I used some flat bar to add strength to the bracket

They told me the welder came with a sample spool of wire, what I discovered when I got back to the site was that it was flux core, and I have never welded with flux core.

This picture is upside down but you can see the mess left behind by flux core wire. Under all that white crap is actually a beautiful weld. I got the car done but it was too late for running the test course or doing any more test launches, the next opportunity was the ProSolo the next day. Briget was scheduled to run first and was worried about breaking the car, I told her to go for it and not worry about it. Here are some videos for you to enjoy:

 Front suspension cam-ProSolo
Briget Pro Solo launch 1
Briget Pro Solo launch 2
Briget Pro Solo launch 3

Briget came back from her runs reporting that the car felt fine but was a little understeery. I attempted to correct this by stiffening the rear sway bar but during my runs I was spinning the inside rear tire a lot. Also, Briget got warnings for exceeding the sound regulations but curiously, I received no warnings. In an attempt to cure the wheelspin, I installed the front sway bar and softened the rear sway bar again. Briget went out for ProSolo session 2 and came back reporting that the car felt better but she couldn't get it to rotate properly.

Briget Pro Solo session 1
Mark Pro Solo session 1
Briget Pro Solo Splitter cam
 Briget Pro Solo session 2



For my second session I tried stiffening the front spring rate and going full soft on the rear sway bar and the car felt better to me as far as wheelspin goes but it could have also been that I was driving better. the Avons were not overheating despite the back to back runs but we were also only pulling 1.3 peak lateral G, which is significantly  less than what we should have. We started to notice a strange wear pattern on the outside shoulder of the front tires and pumped up the pressures for the next days runs. I also changed the angle of the exhaust tips from pointing out to pointing in in an attempt to pass the sound regulations.

Mark Pro Solo session 2a
Mark Pro Solo session 2b

For session 3 of ProSolo, Briget wanted the same settings she had from session 2 so I softened the front spring rate and stiffened the rear bar again. She set her most competitive times yet and the front tires looked a little more normal. I went out for my 3rd session but was late to grid and penalized two runs so I managed only one run on each course. The car still had wheelspin but wasn't hopping around as much in the back so some of the adjustments were working. Briget and I didn't do very well relative to our competition in the ProSolo but the car didn't miss a beat even with 22 hard launches and aggressive runs, which is a victory. However, the car was still hitting 103 dB on the sound meter and something drastic would have to be done.

Mark Pro Solo session 3

We went to Speedway Motors and purchased two long bullet mufflers and a side pipe kit. Then I got to use my new welder again and added the mufflers to the current ones I had on the car. This significantly reduced the noise level of the car. Now I could hear the gears in the transmission whining and the rubber chunks flying off the rear tires and hitting the wheel wells.

One of the modified side pipes with two bullet mufflers welded together, and adding 13 lbs.

 Briget was the first to run in Solo competition and had some trouble steering the car due to an arm injury sustained in a motorcycle crash. Her times were close to or quicker than her competition but cones jumped out in front of her on her best runs. Also, ambient temperature was now higher than during the Pro and when she came back from her runs, we needed to spray them with ice water. I went out for my runs later in the day when it was even hotter and tire temps were higher than I was comfortable with. I drove very badly and missed critical braking points, losing a lot of time in acceleration zones. I was second last in class by the end of the day, happy that the car was running but disappointed in the results.

Briget day 1 quicket run
Mark day 1 third run
Mark day 1 fender cam

   For day 2 of Solo competition, Briget started out in wet conditions and had her hands full keeping the car pointed in the right direction. This got better for 2nd and 3rd runs but she couldn't dig herself out of the hole she was in from day 1. I had an hour or two until I ran and during that time, several people came over to discuss the car. They all said that out on course, the car appears to go into a positive camber situation up front, causing rollover and tire smoke. I was so caught up with spring rates, panhard bars, high and low speed compression and tire pressures that I forgot about alignment. I was running very little toe-out and only -.5 degrees camber and wondered how quickly I could change these things because I was already parked in grid. I decided to go for it and loosened off the upper control arm bolts and added some spacers to increase camber, which also increased toe-out.

Briget day 2 bumper cam with data
Mark day 2 tire cam with data


     The car responded well to the changes and understeer was significantly reduced, but my driving was still shabby. For my next two runs I removed the spoiler and diffuser and tried to be smoother out on course. The car was actually a little oversteery in places, which was a good sign that the alignment helped. I still finished 2nd last in class and way off the leader but the car held together, felt great and is easy to drive. After a lot of discussion with people more knowledgeable than me, it was determined that I need a wider tire and wider track width up front on the car. I already have a set of wheels that will widen the track width by 3 inches and a set of Avons are on the way, bumping tire size from 10.7" to 12.3". In the meantime, I will continue to play with alignment, Panhard bar, tire pressures and shock settings.