Update from Darren Duffield on his rotary hillclimb racing car RPV01.
I purchased the RPV01 (Rotary Powered Vehicle) from Warwick & Suzy Hutchinson at the beginning of 2008. This was the first open-wheeled race car that I have ever driven. Since then it has proven to be extremely reliable and very competitive. I have run the car in hillclimbs and street sprints as well as a few circuits like Lakeside & Queensland Raceway.
So far I have won outright at the Rockhampton Street Sprints, 1st outright at 2009 Leyburn Sprints.
Early in 2010 I decided to increase the boost and change the fuel to E85 Ethonol this was the same setup that Warwick is running in his RPV02.
To do this it required the engine to be setup and re-tuned by Ben at Rotary Motorsport, the outcome of this was more power. This proved very successful but also led to the VW gearbox shearing the input shaft and badly damaging the crown-wheel. This was expected due to the increase in the power output, so I had to decide either try to repair the over stressed VW gearbox or look at other gearbox options.
Having seen how well Warwick’s new car was going with the Renault UN5 gearbox we decided late 2010 to follow suit.
The RPV01 was originally designed around the VW gearbox it was not as simple as dropping a different gearbox into it. For that reason I very keen to do the gearbox conversion.
Currently the car is on chassis jig in a Brendale workshop awaiting work to begin. To help I have purchased an adaptor plate, to allow fitment of the Renault UN5 gearbox to a VW bell-housing and a dummy Renault gearbox has also been sourced, to allow for a mock drive line to be assembled.
The plan is to improve the rear suspension angles while we fit the new gearbox as well and also add more down-force to the car by fitting a larger under tray and extra wing elements.
I will continue to update everyone as the work progresses and hopefully in approx 4 months we will be able to report on a successful shake-down run at either Lakeside or Morgan Park.
Regards Darren Duffield.