MaxPower

A three way duel: Maxpower’s weekend of Motorsport

Truenotch — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 11:50:41 +0000

The weekend of February 25/26 was a busy one for the ranks of Maxpower – with various members competing in three events throughout the north island.

Although we were all in different parts of the country, it’s cool to know that we were simultaneously enjoying the thrills of thrashing.

There were a few of us at a race meeting at Manfeild – two of us racing MX5’s to kick off a new race series, while the infamous AYB AW11 was competing in a hillclimb in Rotorua and Toddy-smash (!!) was running his Escort in Hamilton.

As we all know, MX5’s are girls cars and are largely owned by hairdressers… But we’ve decided that all of that nonsense goes out the window when it comes to racing – with the exception of flamboyant nicknames such as “Liberacé”, “Monchichi”, “Fabio” and “Zohan”. The MX5’s ran with the Mazda Pro7’s and the SS2000 cars and went well for “standard” cars! Keeping up with the tail end of the Pro7’s and one MX5 winning an SS2000 race! Sunday proved to be a lot harder than saturday after a long night camped out at the track – the race drivers possibly went overboard on the “refueling” that night.

… Meanwhile, in Rotorua…

And in Hamilton:

Simon’s AW11: Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Truenotch — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:02:29 +0000

Here’s the second in the series of MaxPower car features. This time we’re looking at Simon’s AW11 – a car that had its fair share of hard knocks and time off the road. It lived hard and died young earlier this year.

Originally bought as a $600, 300,000km beater, that AW11 was supposed to have a couple of quick-fixes before getting a WOF. A year and a half later it re-appeared as a completely rust free car with a fresh panel and paint, flashy gold wheels and a bigport 4AGE with mild cams… But that was just the beginning…

You might have noticed that in the post-paint part of its life, the AW11 received a bit of face-modification – caused by the force of a tree. The car ended up with a broken nose and dents down the side… And Simon wasn’t even driving the car at the time! Needless to say, he and the culprit soon set to work at “bringing the bitch back to life”, and after a couple of weekends with an angle grinder and a mig welder, it was as good as new – albeit a little worse in the looks department.

Along with the nosejob came a new lease of life for the ol’ AW – being thrashed within an inch of its life at numerous trackdays, gravel bash events, autocrosses, touge missions and general shenanigans until earlier this year. A mixture of chassis damage, mechanical woes and a general state of disrepair meant that it was time to lay the soldier to rest.

Although it lived the life of a cheap whore [read: started life pretty, went through a few knocks, partied hard and was eventually a victim of its own lifestyle], this AW11 has left many fond memories for the MaxPower crew.

RIP AW11 – you will live on in spirit / in the form of car parts.

……………

Daybreaker Rally 2011 – In the thick of it

Truenotch — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 10:06:05 +0000

This year’s Daybreaker was a bit different to those in years gone by. The new shorter format and late start time means it isn’t so much of a “daybreaker” any more -but the change is welcomed by our crew who aren’t 100% keen on early mornings.

The region had been pelted by rain in the days before the rally, but it cleared up and left a well packed, fast surface for the boys to make a mess with!

Greg Browne’s corolla is always good to watch and he was giving it a fair thrashing this year! The poor old 5-door ended up with some seriously rippled panels by the end of the day.
We found ourselves in a bit of a pickle this year with no suitable gravel car! The AE101 race car wouldn’t be ideal with sub-100mm ground clearance and rock-hard suspension. Luckily Simon came to the rescue and lent us his Diesel corolla wagon for ultimate economy and dieseling gravel doorts.

So I got to work taking a few snaps. They aren’t quite as dramatic as last year’s ones, but you get the idea .

This RX3 was immaculate! And completely in period to give you and idea of what rallying used to be like.

Tony McConarchy was back out in the Hayabusa powered KP starlet (now boasting a few extra mods). He managed to finish first 2wd and 6th overall. This car rules and is a credit to Tony’s engineering abilities.

So yet another successful daybreaker has been and gone, we’re all looking forward to the next one!

Sainsbury Road, Pirongia, 2011

TotemoAW11 — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:08:19 +0000

40 cars showed up to compete at the Sainsbury road hill climb this year, including the three of us from Hamilton with race-able cars. The sun was shining for a change so it was grouse to finally drive this twisty little number to the max.

Dave came away with 3rd in class B (1600cc) in the FXGT… huge effort considering he was more than a little hungover from a wedding the day before! I was 0.73sec behind in the AW11, 4th place. Todd hauled ass and ran consistent 58sec passes, landing 5th place in C class.
Fiat Club Waikato run these events very efficiently, with registration and scrutineering on the Saturday to allow for an earlier start on Sunday. Then practice and three runs back to back in two groups, with no lunch break, meant people could hit the Pirongia pub by 2-3pm. Nice.

Some nice shots were taken by shutterspeed

Our videos:

Dave’s bumper cam for run 2

Click “continue reading” for more videos.

The Escort

The AW11