Denmark

[Mux213]

NoHachi,

Contacts dude A full sandblast and zink coating I don't have contacts for that, so that will be as expensive as the next guy

A paintjob is more a special price for me personally A good friend of mine works at an accident repair shop and he can use the equipment there in his spare time. So I end up paying for material costs and a small fee for his troubles.

As you say, the downside of just treating the rust effected parts of the car and for the rest just going down to the original primer and repainting is that you run the risk of hidden rust becoming a problem. Then again, painting only the outside of the car and not the underside or inside still gives us that problem. I am slightly worried about some rust at the door hinges, need to solve that eventually aswell

I do totally agree with you on the HP hunt. HP is only part of the equasion and with a car this light you really have to wonder how much HP is to much. Putting 500 horses in a 900kg car may get you accelerating from 0-100 in 2 seconds, but it will also make the car as undrivable as can be. Also one has to wonder when you race tune a car like that, it will probably idle at 2000 rpm and be totally worthless for normal street driving. Not to mention the wear on the car.
For drag racing these things are fun but when handling is an issue, balance is the key word. You have to balance everything out, HP v.s. Weight, Suspention setup v.s. comfort, downforce v.s. drag. Etc.etc.etc.

In fear of being flamed here, there is a fragment in Initial D that highlites this better then anything. At the end of Stage 1 Keisuke is talking to Ryousuke about his cars setup when he is going to battle Takumi. Ryousuko tells Keisuke he has changed his setup to 250hp. Keisuke is confused, why downtune the car back to 250bhp when it normally runs 350?!?! Ryousuke simply states that this allows him to keep a higher overal speed because he doesn't have to slow down after accelerating on the straights. (it is said that this is lost in the Toykopop translation because of fair that Americans would get boored with this stuff, the japanese version is much more technical and usually pretty accurate due to the help they got from proffesional racedrivers)

That said, another prime example I find within the Dutch drifting group. They all talk about how they want 100% LSD and weld their diffs. Welding your diff doesn't give you a 100% LSD, it gives you no diff. The wheels will turn equally when you hit power giving you max acceleration. But when steering there is no speed difference in the rear wheels and your car will want to go straight ahead making turning very hard indeed (drifters dont care,they want to loose traction at this point but basically all you can do well with this setup are powerdrifts).
An open diff offcourse is wonderfull in bends but in acceleration it gives max power to the wheel with the least amount of grip, when grip is broken that wheel will spin and the other wheel will not get any power killing acceleration.
LSD gives you best of both worlds and will attempt to give max power to the wheel with the most grip. One type of LSD does this more effectively then another though and all have their drawbacks.

Anyways, the point I am simply trying to make, focussing on one part of your car and making it the most powerfull does not work. More HP means less handling, so you need to better the handling of the car but at a certain point that will mean you can't use the HP you got. It's a balance. You can improve a certain part of your car up to the point where it starts to negatively influence another part of the car. Then you need to upgrade those parts, but they in turn may influence other parts, or work on eachother, there is just so far you can go with a certain concept.