Battery mounted, midle seat row shoulder harness bar ready and wheels sent to be straightened

We made some progress on the car. We also noticed a new problem. One of our drivers thinks he can't reach the pedals with the current driving position. I guess we will have to get seat rails for the drivers seat so it can be adjusted...

The battery is mounted. The final position isn't the best with placement of weight in mind, but serviceability is good. The battery mounts will have to be showed at each scrutineering of the car, so it has to be easily viewed.

The mount for the middle seat row shoulder harness.

The wheels were sent to be straightened out by a tire company. We also got one set of centres painted black. When we got the straightness inspected on all wheels, we noticed by pure luck that one of the wheels was of an odd width. At this point we had of course assembled all wheels and taken them to storage. So we had to remeasure each wheel. There were four widths instead of the assumed three. The inner rings were 155mm, 185mm, 195mm and 205mm wide. There was only one wheel with the 185mm inner ring width.

The Race Taxi's first drive

We drove the car out from the garage, so it wasn't that much. We are still missing the brakes and the car needs a lot of finishing work. Not it can be moved by driving in and out from the garage, so it's a big relief.



You have to have two people driving if you don't adjust the idle high. One presses the throttle in the engine compartment and the other "drives"

Today we got the clutch working, which was a quite big job because we moved the work cylinder. The mounting point for the battery is also almost complete.

Update since a long time, the race taxi got wheels...

A friend told me that a sales site has 18 pieces of 15" center lock wheels for a reasonable price, so I was going to buy them for our locosts. I found the adverticement and called the seller right away. I didn't have the time to read the ad, and found out that they were 16" that isn't legal in the locost racing series in Finland. After thinking about it for a moment we decided to buy them anyways. If nothing else, we could put them on the race taxi...

The wheels are made by PLS in France and I was told they have been in a Mercedes Benz touring car. The weight is 9 kilos each. The wheels are three piece with a magnesium center.

When I got the wheels to the garage I quickly realized the problem of space required to store 18 wheels.. :-)

Most of the wheels are pretty badly damaged, so they will have to be straightened out. I think we can get a couple straight sets for the car. First we have to check the centers for straightness and cracks, and then check the outer halves too.

The wheels will be mounted in the same fashion as the 911 street car. The bolt pattern will be changed with an adapter.

A new guy got involved in the project, Erno. Erno has already brought energy and enthusiasm to the project which has rub off on to me and Mika. Most of race taxi's events this summer's will be attended by Erno.

The brake calipers arrived

The project moved forward by the find of brake calipers. The calipers are from a Chrysler 300C and they are street legal in Finland, quite lightweight and you can get aggressive brake pads. The problem with the T4 calipers was that the brake pads available were pretty much stock.

Even though there isn't much work left, we don't have the time at the moment to build the car. We're supposed to begin in January.

Race Taxi startup

After some trouble, the Race Taxi is alive.

The Subaru Impreza WRX 2 litre turbocharged engine with a half meter long exhaust sounded just as good as we thought it would. And yes, it was loud.

The engine sputtered slightly. Probably because we didn't have the exhaust gaskets so the ECU tried to correct the mixture with wrong information coming from the lambda. But the engine is installed and works. There's still loads of bits and pieces to do, but after this it doesn't feel that bad.

Link to the Youtube video: Race Taxi Startup