TANU: Ring Knutstorp – ROUND 1 | May 11th and 12th
After pulling of somewhat of a miracle the team lead by Mikael W managed to have the car finished and engine started for the first time after returning from the dyno at 20:00 on Thursday evening, this came after working more or less 24/7 for 3 months to catch up to the first round.
So on friday 05:00 the team headed towards Knutstorp to take on round 1 of the 2018 TANU championship.
Knowing that the car was more or less completely new there was for sure gonna be issues during Friday free practice, amazingly during the first heat cruising around for 3 laps everything seemed to be working flawlessly, all systems were running ok and the car seemed to behave as supposed. After going over everything the team headed out for free practice nr 2, on just the second lap upping up the phase the power steering went down, the coming 4 heats where just about trying to figure out why the power steering did not work. After the Friday practice and only running 10 laps at cruising speed the power steering issue was still not solved.
Entering Saturday and race day all hoses, pump reservoir had been exchanged, rerouted and the pump reservoir had a bigger return valve welded on. However this still did not fix the issue and the warmup was aborted after just 1 lap. Coming in to Q1 help arrived after JapTuning and Stefan Påhlsson had brought a backup power steering pump, pump reservoir and hoses. Although replacing all this parts the power steering was still not working so Q1 was aborted with no real time set. Coming in to Q2 the team started to realize there where probably no issues with the power steering system itself, the issues was more due to the steering forces on the rack being to high this year causing the belt to slip on the pump demanding to much pressure. So as a last attempt to at least make it better a new “to short” belt was forced on causing higher tension on the belt then intended by the belt-tensioner.
However going out in Q2 it was soon obvious this wasn’t working either. So knowing there was nothing else to do for the final it was just to accept the situation and deal with it best possible. After only runing 15-20 laps at cruising speed and without a working power steering it was just about trying to get a time set. Although not having driven the car on attack and having to roll through the quick section and overall struggling to turn the car a 59:0 time was set taking the overall win and being less then 0.5 sec slower then current Time Attack track record, showed som real potential in the car. Now the team has 3,5 weeks to fix some small issues and most importantly fix the power steering issues before round 2 at Kinnekulle. I would like to take the opportunity to thank some people involved in this build making it possible to do what we are doing.
Mikael Wiborg – The mastermind (and most likely Swedens no 1 chassis manufacturer) behind putting this incredibly vehicle together, putting almost every free second for the last 8 months into building this beast from scratch. Not only is it incredibly light and strong and fast but if you have the chance to take a look at the car in real life. Make sure to pay attention to all the small details and amazing solutions to shave of a few grams here and there.
Stefan at KBM Racing Engines – Amazing work in making the engine mapping during the winter and the support for the 2018 season.
Patrik at Street Performance – Our first sponsor on board this project supplying us with great parts from D2 and AEM.
Scott at Konig Wheels USA – For providing us with some amazingly light and strong racing wheels.
Pelle at Würth Svenska AB – Tools, bolts, machines, glue, paint whatever you might need in the garage there is nothing Wurth can´t solve.
Stefan at JapTuning – Although not been a partner of Wiborg Engineering Stefan always helps out when in need of spares or just having questions regarding the Japanese tuner engines.
Not to forget is, Martin, Jimmy, Lucas, David, Adam, Marcus, Helge and Peter helping out in the garage.
See you at Kinnekulle in 3.5 weeks.
Frederik is running Konig Hypergrams in 18×9.5 et 25mm all around in Matte Grey. The Konig Hypergram is Flow Formed.
