PROFFESSIONAL ENGINE, CHASSIS & GEARBOX CONTROL ELECTRONICS FOR AUTOMOTIVE & MOTORSPORT

AVR Performance has become a dealer for the Life Racing range of aftermarket engine management, chassis & gearbox control electronics for motorsport and performance automotive applications.

The introduction of Life Racing products into New Zealand now means professional standard engine management and electronics is in reach. See our Life Racing products page for further information.

  DAYTONA PROTOTYPE

 An interesting race car AVR Performance has been involved with recently is Glenn Smiths Crawford DP03 Porsche twin turbo Daytona Prototype.

 A Daytona Prototype is a type of sports prototype racing car developed specifically for the Grand American Road Racing Association's Rolex Sports Car Series as their top class of car. They are named after the main Rolex Sports Car Series event, the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

  There is a Kiwi connection with Crawford Racecars in that company founder Max Crawford is a expat New Zealander. In the early 1970’s he built and raced cars in the OSCA series before heading on to the States.

The cars that run in the Rolex Sports car series must run a non turbo production based engine (BMW, Ford, Toyota/Lexus, Porsche V8’s along with Porsche flat 6 cylinders & Honda V6’s are used). As Glen’s car no longer runs in that series it has been fitted with a Porsche 996 based 3.6L flat 6 with twin turbos which provides plenty of giddy-up at moderate boost.

The engine is mid mounted to an Xtrac paddle shifted 6-speed sequential transaxle. Lots of down force, huge Brembo brakes, optimum weight distribution and a lot of rubber all combine to make this a very formidable package.

 The car was built with just about every box that Motec has made including M880 ECU, ACL logger, VIM's (versatile input modules), telemetry, CDI, Dash display and E816 input/output expander.

 The twin turbo conversion was done in the States, however it was not track tested before Glenn purchased the car so there was still a lot of teething problems & sorting to be done initially. Glenn has enlisted Maurice Ebbett of Ebbett Motorsport in Palmerston North to engineer the car. AVR Performance has been involved with getting the Motec boxes to talk to each other and setting up the electronic systems along with dyno tuning.

Glenn has been running the car at Manfeild in their winter series and is coming to grips with it's potential picking up the Manfeild tin top/GT outright lap record along the way.

 This is in preparation for the up coming GTRNZ GT1 race series coming up this summer. If you are any where near a race track this summer this series is a must see. Glenn will be joined by the likes of Carl Hansen (TVR Tuscon), Cameron Jones (RX666 Camaro triple rotor turbo) and Nick Chester (V8 supercar on steroids). So if you want to see the fastest things with roofs in New Zealand these cars are them.

   The link below is to an interview with Andy Scriven the British born designer of the Crawford DP03.

 http://archive.dailysportscar.com/subscribers/interviews/andyscriven.htm

ECU install & tuning in Palmerston North

AVR Performance was in Palmerston North recently to do some work on the FD3 RX7 race cars of Malcolm Brown & Alan Montgomery. A Motec M400 was installed to Malcolm’s FD and then dyno tuned. All four wheel speeds were brought into the Motec to allow the use of full traction control along with many other sensors including fuel pressure & oil pressure to allow safety cuts. The 13B REW is fitted with a GT35 turbo, stock inlet manifold, & a V-mount intercooler setup. Running 98 pump fuel it made 435hp at the wheels at 18psi. For the track Malcolm elected to set the boost for 15psi to help look after the stock gearbox.

 Last time on the dyno Alan Montgomery’s 13B PP turbo had problems with the small boost solenoid not allowing full boost to be reached so this time a higher flow solenoid was fitted & boost tuned to allow the target boost to be reached.

 Both Alan & Malcolm ran their cars at the Manfeild race meeting with good results. Having previously only competed in track sprints this was Malcolm’s first taste of circuit racing running in the NZGT field. He had a pleasing weekend finishing a creditable second in one of the reverse grid races and shaving over a second of his personal best lap time around Manfeild. Alan also had a good weekend, prior to the meeting he had converted the cooling system to a V-mount setup. Previously the car had been over heating during the races resulting in the Motec ecu pulling boost out, lowering the rpm limit & killing all of the fun to be had. The new V-mount setup yielded the results he was after and he was able to complete the 10 lap races with cooling capacity to spare. Now with a decent crack at things he was able to take a full second off his pace (on old tyres that he has had since he built the car) and is now able to concentrate on developing the handling of the car.