The Patrol started out as a new car from the local Nissan dealer in 1992. It was one of 3 cars that were built that year for ARB’s assault on the Australian Safari. A couple of years later it won the Safari, a few years later it won an Australian Off Road Racing Championship for Class 8 in the process winning its Class in the Finke Desert Rally.
Yokohama
MOTOR SPORTS
For years they have proven that they can cope with hard driving and harsh terrain with minimum punctures. |
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Geolandar RacingGeolandar Racing is about taking a normal vehicle and tearing across crazy terrain in the shortest possible time. We run in the Victorian and Mallee Shield Rounds of the Off Road Racing Series. Off Road Racing takes on many forms, there are Winch Challenges, Navigational Rally and Off Road Racing. Off Road Racing is similar to the Australian Safari, however rather than navigating stages we race on a single looped track. These tracks can be from 5km (Short Course) to 100 km per lap (Long course). Most races are around 400km. We run a 1992 GQ Patrol, our class is Production 4WD. The basis of this class is to have a vehicle that represents a Production 4WD. Owners are allowed to strengthen the chassis and add new shock absorbers and modify the engine with new cam, pistons and deck the block and run an aftermarket ECU. The Tire size is free but we choose to run 31x10.5R 15 as was standard when the car was new. 
I tracked the car to Mildura where I persuaded the owner to sell it to me. By this time it had 57,000 original race kilometres on it. 
This sort of action punished the car.
Check out the front inner guard. Cracked through the reinforcement, these little puppies take a pounding. The new beast wearing its new livery is an awesome bit of gear. In testing we have got 200kmh out of it. The whole package is starting to come together. We have had the suspension re-valved bringing us closer to where we need to be… The engine took a bit of dialling in as the original choice of cam was too big, so we could not spin the engine fast enough to take advantage of the duration. The bottom line was the smaller cam gave us 100nm more torque and another 25kw at the rear wheels. Nice!!!! Since then we have fully rebuilt the whole car including:
The season so far has been a quiet one with the first race being a Club event. More of a shakedown for us, we found that we ran out of brakes, split a brake line, had some tuning issue with the ignition timing over 4,500 revs (pinging) and a few other things. Not too bad based on a total rebuild of the car. The best change we have made is to switch to Yokohama Geolandar M/T. We have run Dunlop’s, Coopers and Bridgestone’s. 
The bottom line is that the Coopers caused the Patrol pull to one side and are not as good in terms of braking and lateral grip as the Geolandar Mud Terrain. The Dunlop’s are good for tyre barriers, the belts ripped and they really struggled for traction anywhere and rolled off the rims if we ran less than 45 psi. In our first race in the mud we could get some serious traction. And as the track dried up I was amazed at how much grip we were getting. Just brilliant!!!! Our second race was cancelled because of rain. We are now hanging out for Race 3. I hope you will follow us with our blogs at www.yokohama.com.au The Opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and not Yokohama Tyre Australia… Yokohama is a global producer and distributor of premium tires since 1917. We offer a complete line of tires, including high-performance, light truck, passenger car, commercial truck and bus, as well as off-the-road mining and construction applications. For more information on our extensive product line, visit http://www.yokohama.com.au/ourtyres/ |
