Briefly in english

It all started on summer 2008 when I imported this Nissan Stagea 260RS to Finland (being the second of its kind in the country), with help of finnish company named Mamasan. For me it was a multi-purpose vehicle for three years: besides being my daily-driver thorough the year it was also driven on racing circuits and drag strips, occasionally towed friends' cars on a trailer and so on. Basically everything a man can do with a car.

 

In the beginning of 2011 I tried to sell the car for quite a while. Until now I've always (for 14 years so far) had one single car to serve all purposes so I guess it goes without saying that I know a thing or two about compromises when it comes to maintaining even a bit of comfort and added performance in the same chassis. That's why I had a vision of selling the Stagea and buying two cars, one daily-driver and one for the track.

 

After trying to sell it for half a year the master idea came to life: I will make a track-capable car out of what I have and so this project started. At the same time a friend of mine was selling his Toyota Granvia so there it was, my new daily-driver.

The first thing to gain performance on accelerating and cornering is to reduce weight of the car. It's clear that being almost 5 meters long the Stagea isn't one of the lightest cars. Documents say the curb weight is 1720kgs and before starting we went to a scale: 1780kgs. Without driver. Understanding the fact that most of the racing cars weigh not much more than 1000kg, I knew that there will be a long journey ahead.

So let's get all easily removable weight out of the car. At this point there's no need to do anything remarkable to the engine side, it has 412hp at the moment and the power isn't always the key point in circuit racing which is my main aim and interest. I removed almost all the interior, noise insulation, roof rails, towbar etc. and measured the weight of most parts. It came a bit of a surprise that with these "easy" ways of weight reduction I got off 260kgs so far. I know that the car still weighs around 1500kgs but it's a start.

After all driving for the season is done (I suppose after following weekend) there's going to be a long winter to move forward with mods and weight reduction. Roll cage is one of the first things to do and I have the tubes ready for building. Working with the car goes with a pace given by pay check frequency so everything's not going to happen overnight.

I'm going to update this blog mostly in finnish but from time to time try to tell something in english too. 

Here's a video clip of first test session with current setup. Located at Botniaring raceway in september 2011. Tires are Toyo R888's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO27fNvPAo8

If you have any comments or ideas, please feel free to post a comment below. :)