isol-8 Celica Rallycross Car

The UK-wide lockdown of Spring 2020 taught us all new things about ourselves and our society, and presented us with many problems - the political, the economical, the societal. Chief among these problems was the question of how to go about racing when leaving one's own front door for all but the most essential reasons was punishable by very stern looks from the neighbours (and possibly, a fine from any policeman unfortunate enough to be given outdoor duty at a time when the very air we share was potentially deadly poisonous).

To solve this problem, I devised a short rallycross track around my back garden (post to follow on this subject some other time, when I can rope someone in to filming me drive the track). To solve a further problem - how to stay sane when trapped within the boundaries imposed by a piece of paper known as the Land Registry Deed - I dug out a bunch of old parts and started bolting them together.

One of the first things to come out of this effort was a reconditioned TA02 rally chassis. I have labelled it here as a Repsol Cosworth but the truth is I have no idea what it was originally. It came to me from another TC member underneath a Robbe Jeep body in the form of a soft-roader scale rig. Beautiful and scale as it was, I couldn't bare to run a Jeep body over an independently-sprung car so I split them apart and consigned both to the Projects bin for over a decade.

The chassis was stripped and rebuilt with fresh bearings and de-locked diffs. A ball diff in the rear provides a little extra traction in the soft stuff and some modern CVA shocks give smooth damping over the varied surface of a proper rallycross track. Suspension travel has been maximised by building the shocks with no internal spacers and ride height has been set using standard springs with additional collars.

Wheels are NIP Tamiya OZ replicas (they will probably get sprayed white soon), power is provided by a LiPo pack to a Super Stock RZ motor via the ubiquitous ETronix Probe WP ESC, steering is handled by a basic Acoms AS-15 servo, all of which is marshalled into operation by a FlySky receiver bound to a Turnigy GT-5 handset.

The re-released Tamiya body was painted to imitate the sort of rallycross car that might have been seen competing at any local club event over the past couple of decades. Older Japanese 4wd performance cars, available for peanuts and with bulletproof engines and transmissions, make great starting points for clubman race cars. With that in mind, the main sponsor of this particular car is the fictitious motor oil company, isol-8, and the tuning shop that converted it from tired old road car to multi-surface race weapon is, as always, SCRAPSpeed.

Graphics were designed and printed by me, mostly when I should have been busy working from home. (The New Normal basically means instead of browsing the web and wasting time in the office, I can now design graphics and print off decal sheets at home). Photos taken on my paint bench, which also kind of looks like a graffiti'd brownfield site. For some reason my (usually very good) camera has interpreted the Tamiya PS-2 Red as a kind of pastel shade, whereas in real life it's a brilliant red colour.