Sure, this wicked Mazda has yet to get the runs on the board, however it's almost a dead cert that it won't be long before the only part of the car that the opposition will see are its hindquarters... Yep, this is one mean mutha which will have the capacity to blow the monster horsepower Chevy-powered opposition into the weeds. See, it boasts a 35 per cent better power-to-weight ratio than the best Aussie V8 Supercar, and indeed in that regard it runs almost line ball with a Formula Holden open wheeler! Furthermore, liberal rules in the Sports Sedan category allow aerodynamic packages delivering incredible downforce and the use of huge rubber and brakes -
the list of advantages goes on almost endlessly. Perhaps the only downer is that sequential gearshift mechanisms aren't allowed...
Typically, winning combinations normally come with cubic dollars, which I have to say is as far from the case as you can get for Glenn Reid and Chris Muscat of Centreline Suspension in the northern Melbourne suburb of Thomastown. Sure, their's is a successful two person business, however you don't need be an Einstein to understand how difficult it would be funding the construction of what the team hopes will become Australia's fastest ever Sports Sedan.
The boys definitely have the cred needed to pull it off; now it's simply a case of getting the power to the ground consistently and with reliability.
Home Base
Glenn Reid is one of only a handful of Australian suspension experts capable of penning the design of a ballistic missile like the Mazda. Of course, others may have a good grasp of the basics, however few have the overall knowledge and expertise to create anything more than a set of adjustable struts and ancillaries. We're not casting aspersions here; rather, we're stating facts.
So, if we take a suspension guru, mix in a gun driver with a talent for car setup, throw in an ace fabricator and a top-line engine builder, you'd think it was a recipe for success. Yep, Chris Muscat is a well-established driver who as a child won numerous kart races. In fact, he pursued a karting career for the best part of 13 years, before hanging up the helmet for seven years.
Having moved into his own business, tied the knot and established a bunch of ankle biters, Chris restarted his racing career. Only this time he moved behind the wheel of something more substantial - like a car! He entered Club Car racing in 1988 at the wheel of a bridge-ported Mazda RX-3 and went on to win the Mazda Club Car Championship and Quin Series in the same year. Over the next three years he won numerous events and titles including State Club Car Champion, Yokohama Club Car Champion and Rookie of the Year.
The little Mazda was sold and Chris worked with Kent Youlden and Ford setting up and maintaining various Group E Production Falcons. The team was hugely successful, taking back-to-back Production Car championships. Next, Chris teamed up with the Youlden brothers and together they took 5th Outright in a Bathurst 12 Hour race. Subsequently, Chris has put all of his efforts into the business, building the new car and keeping his finger in with work as a high performance driving instructor.
A New Concept
It was in 1995 that Glenn and Chris decided the time was right to build a vehicle to promote their business and prove to the world that they know what they're on about. It had to be exciting and capable of mixing it with the best, look great and be technologically advanced.
"As there are so many different classes and categories of racing in this country, and knowing it would cost a lot of money and time to build a car, we needed a category where if it took us five years to build a car, it wouldn't already be out of date once it was ready to debut," Chris enthused.
The Sports Sedan category appeared to offer stability, significant potential, and an opportunity to create something unique. "One silly problem we faced early on was how we were advised that the then-new shape Mazda RX-7 Series 6 wasn't allowed due to cost, so we couldn't build one. A couple of years later it was allowed, which is a little annoying because we wanted a contemporary appearance."
Unperturbed, Glenn (the brains behind the project) set about designing a vehicle that would best showcase his and the company's significant suspension capabilities. Initially, the engine was to be a twin rotor 13B, however the boys felt that to keep up with the big boys and the 650-700 horsepower Chev engines, they had to go with a torquier, more powerful 20B triple rotor. "It became very political for a while there with the rule makers suggesting that a triple rotor wasn't a viable option. It took a lot of negotiation, however we ended up getting what we wanted."
Pen To Paper
Generally speaking, race car builders seem to work from the inside out, designing the suspension and chassis, before moving to the hubs, brakes and wheels. Glenn took a very different route in opting to design virtually the entire car around an unusually large 18-inch wheel and tyre package! As Glenn's expertise lay in suspension, his design input revolved around supplying wheel and tyre sizes, hub specifications, suspension layout and geometry, wheelbase and track and the required weight distribution. Then it was up to Rob Blanche to employ his 25 years of motorsport experience to construct one of the smartest cars in town. With a targeted weight of 800kg, Rob took to producing a complex electrolyse nickel-dipped chromoly spaceframe donned with all the bracketry necessary to accommodate the engine as a stressed member.
As with most Sports Sedans, a modular construction approach has been employed whereby virtually every part of the vehicle can be removed from the vehicle easily and quickly. Indeed, only the basic shell/turret is semi-permanent - every body and interior panel is retained by Dzus fasteners. In other words, it only takes a few minutes to strip this awesome Mazda of virtually the entire skin. It sure makes for quality access!
Only the shell/turret is original steel - there're fibreglass front and rear clips supplied by Dick Ward of Go Gear Racing Services and a super low stance designed to meet Glenn's design parameters. The tough stance is further improved with a fabricated, adjustable VS V8 Supercar style carbon fibre rear wing, Kevlar front undertray with carbon fibre side winglets, plus fibreglass doors, polycarbonate windows and Wattle Glasurit Mercedes Benz silver paint applied by Shane at Research Body Repairs.
Forward Motion
Earlier we told you about the vehicle's superior power-to-weight ratio. Well, see if you can work this one out for yourselves. The Mazda tips the scales at an overweight 850kg with an engine delivering an incredibly flat torque curve and a reliable 490 horsepower. A V8 Supercar engine produces a no bullshit 550 horsepower (not the 600 as purported) while contending with a minimum weight of 1350kg...
I affectionately refer to the Centreline Mazda's engine as a 'six gallon drum', not a 'four gallon drum' as is the case with the twin rotor. Yep, it's your garden-variety Cosmo 20B triple rotor, but without the twin turbochargers. Thing is, it makes a helluva a lot more power, too. The current incarnation is the design of Ezio Sanelli of Rotary Power in Castle Hill, Sydney and it consists of a new eccentric shaft, heavily lightened (Swiss cheese) non-turbo Series 5 rotors, nitrided stationary gears, standard oil pump and bearings.
The 9.5:1 compression engine spins nicely on high grade fuels, the product being delivered into the chambers through three 55mm MoTeC throttle bodies and factory race 'D' port peripheral ported housings. There's an elaborate Group A Touring car style sump, six-coil ignition (controlled by a MoTeC ECU), six diagonally-opposed Bosch motorsport injectors and a custom fabricated exhaust system of 28mm stainless steel primaries leading to a single three inch pipe and 900mm long fabricated muffler.
Power delivery is incredibly smooth and flat - especially once the revs reach a point where many other engines are ready to nose over. Yep, max output of 488 ponies hits the mark at 9200 rpm while max torque of 289 ft-lbs cuts in at 6000, however it remains at almost this figure all the way to 9000, where it drops off to an incredible 280 ft-lbs!
Careful Placement
The engine, as would seem logical, is mid-mounted. It's secured with front and rear plates and backed with a one-off KG Engineering six-speed transmission. It's an amazing trans actually, strong enough to handle the engine delivery, yet badly hampered by a poor shifting mechanism (more on this later). The trans - chromoly with integral ring gear Harrop flywheel and twin 8ΒΌ-inch McLeod clutch plates - is contained within a Kevlar scattershield and backed with a fabricated 200mm long, 75mm thick-tube Hardie Spicer tailshaft.
The so-called engine bay is awash with frame rails but in there is a custom English double-pass radiator in the traditional position - a unit offering a similar capacity to a much larger V8 Supercar version. Additional cooling is thanks to a thermatic fan which only comes into play (via MoTeC operation) if the vehicle remains stationary for long periods, such as when it's waiting on the grid for a start.
The only other parts of significance mounted in the engine bay space are two VDO Motorsport pumps delivering oil through coolers to the diff and gearbox. The coolers were fitted only after the vehicle was completed, as during testing it was found that the totally enclosed undercarriage resulted in the diff and trans heating up badly. A Mocal 2 x 32 row engine oil cooler is included, along with an oil catch can. For the record, the team run Penrite synthetic oils in every area of the vehicle.
Highlights of the rear include a fabricated 55-litre alloy fuel tank (with bladder) contained inside a secondary tank for safety reasons. Furthermore, the internal tank contains an internal surge tank. The fuel system is quite involved in that an external Bosch lift pump delivers to the surge tank, a second line delivers to a main Bosch Motorsport pump while a third similar sized Aeroquip braided line is used for the return.
Bump And Rebound
If specifications are your bag, then you may be interested to know the boys chose to go with a lightened Mazda 929 diff housing filling it with any one of a range of factory LSD centres (ratios include 3.7, 3.9, 4.1, 4.4, 4.6, 4.8 and 5.1). Steering is, perhaps as expected, partly fabricated and partly off-the-shelf. It consists of a fabricated collapsible chromoly column and heavily modified Suzuki Mighty Boy rack.
Accompanying the Rob Blanche-fabricated vernier-adjustable double-wishbone front and rear suspension (to Glenn's design and specification) are three-way adjustable Penske Indycar shock absorbers and Centreline Silver Series springs. Adjustability is a significant feature in that ride height, roll centre - in fact all geometries - can be radically altered, including a capacity to adjust front and rear camber from 0-6 degrees negative, and the caster from negative four to positive four degrees. Chromoly 'blade' style adjustable hollow tube sway bars complete the suspension.
Braking is immense - certainly when considering the weight of the vehicle. It starts at the pointy end with 325 x 38mm Harrop rotors with Alcon four-spot rotors and Hawk carbon metallic pads, while at the rear there's similar 300 x 32mm rotors and smaller Alcon four-spots, and the vehicle is equipped with three AP touring car master cylinders. Wheels are 18 x 10 and 18 x 11 inch alloys manufactured by Dragway Engineering to Centreline's design. Problem is, sticky tyres to suit aren't easy to find, but more on this later.
Cramped For Style
A quick optical at the Mazda's interior and it's easy to see this is a take-no-prisoners car. The highly practical package of 10 section 16-gauge floor sheet metal flooring can be removed in seconds to reveal the entire mechanical package.
Chris sits on the right in a Cobra Kevlar seat and Willans six-point harness. He steers with a quick-release Sportline steering wheel equipped with custom remote buttons to access a MoTeC dash/data logger, plus there's a gear change light. Safety was a high priority during the build, meaning a fire bomb system and window net are included and a large foot well designed to retard any hit on Chris's legs is in place. A fully-adjustable pedal box is mounted above and there's a brake balance bar. On the passenger side is a MoTeC M8 ECU and timing beacon, while on the exterior of the rear firewall is a combination diff, transmission and fuel catch can.
Let's Lay Some Rubber
Four and a half years in the making, massive sacrifices and the desire to only include the best parts money can buy, the Centreline Mazda finally hit the race track in January 2000.
"We took it to Calder Raceway for a 'systems check'. Other than having a few teething problems, we left with a grin from ear to ear. We knew the car had awesome potential - it was simply a case of ensuring reliability," Glenn enthused. "Due to the flat undertray and no cooling air for the transmission and diff, we were forced to add oil coolers, the trans itself was notchy and difficult to operate and the tyres were way too hard for a car of its weight. But I have to tell you, it felt mighty fast."
At the car's first competitive outing at Sandown Raceway, Chris qualified second, only to have the gear lever break with three laps to go. Leaving it in top gear (6th) and slipping the clutch out of corners, he still managed a 4th place! In the following two heats Chris managed two second places, but was badly frustrated by the transmission. It turns out that the configuration of the shifting mechanism isn't conducive to slick changes or a natural action.
The next meeting was worse in that after producing the fastest 'qualifier', it was found that the Dorian timing transmitter had failed, leaving the team without a qualifying time. So it was a case of starting from 25th - the back of the grid. However, it took Chris only three laps to move into 2nd, before running into electrical problems resulting in a DNF. In the second heat, once again from the rear of the grid, Chris made his way up to 9th on the second lap when the throttle stuck. As the third race was about to start, there was a torrential downpour, and due to the difficultly of getting 18-inch rims to suit the car (thanks to monetary constraints) and with no time to fit wets, Chris simply cruised around to finish the race.
Come the third outing (Philip Island) and Chris was starting to feel a little more confident, like to the tune of Pole Position by 1.5 seconds over the second qualifier! However, in the first heat, the car spat a diff, literally breaking the housing in two. Along the way Chris had produced a 1:39 lap time, some 14 seconds faster than his old Mazda RX-3 Club Car. "I have to tell you, it's a very scary car, it's so fast. Seriously, I believe it has a lot more in it, it's merely a case of me getting the confidence, setting up the car, fixing the gearchange problems and finding a tyre company prepared to import the right tyres for the car. It's just that there are no other cars in the country that are this light and which have 18-inch rims!"
As it stands, Chris is of the belief that the Mazda should be capable of knocking off around another nine second from its Philip Island Pole Position time. A time that should have it right up the front at any national championship event.
Sounds Good, But What About....
There's more. Chris and Glenn recently purchased a near-new Mazda factory LeMans 13G triple rotor engine. "The LeMans engine make a lot more torque and whereas it doesn't deliver quite as much horsepower, the torque should ensure the car pulls harder out of corners. The engine is with Rotary Power and is being rebuilt with 2mm apex seals and a few 'sprint' modifications."
With a superior power to weight ratio, much improved aerodynamics, and wider rubber, and assuming Chris is up to the ask of this awesomely quick vehicle, this RX7 should become the quickest Sports Sedan in the country. It certainly looks and sounds the part. Now it's simply a matter of making it happen.
Go for it guys!
While the following sponsors have contributed to the upkeep of the Centreline Mazda, in reality it's but the tip of the iceberg. So, if you're keen to get your name on a killer car, give the boys a call on 03 9469 2914.
Sponsors:
Centreline Suspension, Robot Technologies, Rotary Power Australia, Penrite Oils, Elastromould, Research Body Repairs and HIS Aeroquip.
|