of Haeberlin Composites (both
of Auckland), what started as
a DIY ‘renovate and rebuild’
project, very quickly became a
very professional racecar remanufacture
project. Also key is
the mechanical and fabrication
expertise of Grady Homewood
of Hitech Motorsport Ltd in Drury
(just south of Auckland). If these
individuals weren't available
locally, this project would never
"THE BASIC IDEA
WAS TO GET A
MORE POWERFUL
ENGINE AND
CORRESPONDING
DRIVETRAIN,
LIGHTEN THE BODY
AND IMPROVE THE
AERODYNAMICS"
have got off the ground.
The plan until half way through
the rebuild was for the car to be
a 2L inline 4 cylinder, with the
wheel and tyre configuration as
per the original. After extensive
discussions with Juno, the car
specification became a V6 with
wider wheels and tyres that were
NZ compliant, but which could be
easily converted to FIA Group CN.
To this end he bought
a Juno 2L Mugen
Honda powered car
2014. This had about
250bhp, but that
wasn’t really powerful enough. So
John set about ‘improving’ the car.
When he came across the CFD
expertise of David Higgins of
Kinetic SIM and the composites
expertise of Gregor Haeberlin
The basic idea was to get a more
powerful engine and corresponding
drivetrain, lighten the body
and improve the aerodynamics.
By a process of elimination this
lead to a Ford Duratec 3L V6
capable of producing around
500 brake horsepower, a Drexler
Gearbox and a carbon fibre
rebuild of the entire car – except
the cockpit which is staying more
or less the same.
www.engineeringnews.co.nz 19
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