R E V I VA L O F T H E F I T T E S T
Classic Revival has been involved in motorsport for over 30 years and is no stranger to
racing famous Porsches, having won a couple of New Zealand Supercup Championships
in the 1990s with a former Spa 24 hour-winning 911 RSR.
More recently it has turned its hand to historic racing, winning the 2014 and 2018 Tasman
Revival Formula 5000 Championships — the premier historic series in New Zealand —
with a Lola T400 and a T332.
Its workshop also contains a Leyton House March F1 car from 1989, recently restored
and reunited with its original driver, Ivan Capelli, at the 2016 Adelaide Motorsport Festival.
A 1991 Leyton House is also about to enter full restoration after being left neglected in an
Italian collection for the last 20 years. When this car is finished it will be the only restored
Ilmor V10 powered Leyton House F1 car in the world. There's also a March 742 F2 car in
restoration, while several ground-effect Formula Atlantics are being prepared.
“A F T E R T H R E E D AY S O F S A N D I N G A N D S C R A P I N G ,
O V E R 1 0 K G O F PA I N T WA S R E M O V E D F R O M T H E
N O S E C O N E ”
working its way into the carbon fibre of the
floor. Much of the honeycomb in the floor had to
be carefully removed and replaced, before a
new skin was laid over the top.
The nosecone revealed 17 layers of paint and
undercoat. Brun cars at that time were constantly
changing liveries as they switched between
multiple championships, often changing colours
week on week. In the days before vinyl wrap, the
only option was to repaint on top of the old
livery to save time. It was decided to remove all
the paint and filler from previous repairs and do
the repaint job properly, rather than just re-coat.
After three days of sanding and scraping over
10kg of weight was removed from this one piece
of bodywork alone.
The car has both the short- and the long-tail rear
bodywork, but it will be raced in short-tail
configuration. "The only place where the long-tail
version really worked was at Le Mans on the
pre-chicane track prior to 1990, so there is really
no point in using it other than on demonstration
runs," says Higgins. "The long-tail does look
nice and it’s great for display and demonstration
purposes, but it serves no useful purpose on
modern race tracks."
R E V E R S E E N G I N E E R I N G
As some classic racecar parts are in very short
supply, having the ability to reverse engineer and
re-manufacture parts to the same or better quality
is absolutely vital with this sort of project. Classic
Revival has developed close working relationships
with several key technical partners, two of which
were instrumental in helping to revive 962-003BM.
The JWB Group is a high-tech engineering
company and, in conjunction with the NZ arm
of Haas Automation, it provided Classic Revival
with access to a fully-equipped advanced CNC
machine shop.
When the plastic side windows needed replacing,
rather than source new ones in Europe and risk
them not being the right shape or colour, JWB
was able to digitise the originals and machine a
mould to the exact shape, from which a pair of
new windows were formed. These included the
distinctive air scoops fixed to the windows to feed
fresh air into the cockpit.
F I N I S H I N G T O U C H E S
In period this racecar ran several different configurations
of canards on the nose at various tracks,
which again were specific to the Brun body. Only
one side of one type survived. Kinetic Simulation,
a company specialising in aerodynamic design,
computational fluid dynamics and finite element
analysis, was able to scan the surviving side in 3D
and model a pair of bucks. JWB machined these
from foam, from which moulds were made and a
new pair of carbon fibre canards produced.
Another missing part was the cover for the
four main fuel pumps, which are located in the
passenger side of the cockpit. This was pretty
important, as safety regulations require that these
be covered, so the cockpit was also 3D scanned
and a custom carbon fibre cover produced to fit
this intricate space.
A complex and lengthy process, involving organisations
on opposite sides of the globe, has
brought this iconic Porsche 962C from a staid
existence as a museum piece to being able to
compete again. It recently completed a successful
shakedown at Hampton Downs in Auckland
prior to being shipped back to Europe, where it
is scheduled to return to Le Mans for the 2018
Le Mans Classic, before heading to the USA for
the Rennsport Reunion at Laguna Seca, and the
Daytona Classic.
New water radiators were fabricated while the original oil coolers and intercoolers were restored to an as new condition
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