Welcome, from sunny Australia!

My Fraser Clubman

Here's the car in early December 2004. It's ready to be checked out by the engineer, so it can go ahead to Queensland Transport for registration. We had to build the ugly roll-over hoop with the headrests as that's what the engineer wanted. It'll get changed back to the factory Fraser unit later. The air cleaner is also temporary, to be replaced by a more elegant unit at a later time.

The engine bay is  also very nearly finished. On the left you can see some of the piping for the dry sump oiling system can be seen, the main one being the pipefrom the scavenge tank to the breather tank. There's still a pipe to be run from the breather tank to the airbox, for emissions. There's also the water header tank, and the small overflow tank for that as well, sitting between the two larger tanks. On the right you can see the airbox, which the bonnet/engine cover forms the upper skin of, hence the rubber seal around it. The little blck spike at the rear is the inlet air temperature  sensor.

	Strange as it may seem, one of the first times I was able to drive the car was at a race meeting. In late November 2004 I ran the car at Queensland Raceway in a race called a 'regularity trial'. It's not like a normal race as such, in that you qualify much as you normally would but then after looking at your lap times you advise the race controllers of your expected lap times. They can be fast, slow, or anything in between. Most people tend towards the fast side of things, of course. :) The car wasn't very nice to drive, as it had a fair bit of under-steer and way too much rear brake. But much to my surprise, I qualified on pole position and I did my fastest lap on only the fourth lap! Very satisfying, after all that effort. Also can be seen is the factory Toyota Altezza exhaust manifold in place of the Fraser-made one. This was done - temporarily - to make the job of building a road-legal exhaust easier. It'll be replaced by the Fraser one in early 2005.
	So while we weren't allowed to race each other as such, pretty much everyone in the event was going very quickly. :) The first race didn't go so well - I led for a couple of laps, but a red 911 Carrerra Porsche got past me. I tried to out-brake him into a tight corner but with the excessive rear-brake bias and the fact that I couldn't heal & toe on the pedals I spun the car and ended up about fourth or fifth over the line. So we took the car home that night to make some changes.
	With more rear brake dialed in, the pedals shifted around enough so I could work them better, the anti-roll bar on the front loosened off to reduce the understeer, and the tyre pressures lowered a little, the car was much better to drive and I ended up lapping a good three seconds or so a lap faster than the second fastest car, the Porsche. At the end of the next two races, my little Fraser was nearly the length of the straight ahead of the Porsche! :)

Here's a couple of pics of the car in the first race, courtesy of Nick from www.turbosupras.com On the left you can see the ugly & restrictive exhaust the car has to have to get registration. But isn't the car nice & shiny? :) On the right you can see me passing the Porsche, with two wheels on the dirt as there wasn't quite enough room for both of us there. A few seconds later, I spun the car after making a very shaky stop trying to out-brake the Porsche.

Back to the first Fraser page
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On to the fourth Fraser page
On to the fifth Fraser page
Check out the Fraser home page 
Some more pics of Frasers on my Other Cars page

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