Six years after the start of the RS-2600 restoration project, I have finally driven it!
This past weekend, I went up to Larry's house in Rochester to test out the machine. The weather was questionable, but better than it has been these past several weekends, and the car was ready for some more testing. (previous weekend we had a snapped fuel pump belt!) Among the "bugs" to be worked out are the wheels. We're having lug nut issues, so for the weekend, we ran on Larry's autocross wheels and tires. (ugly, but sticky!)
I take some credit for diagnosing a vacuum leak. I noticed that it idled much worse when the brakes were on. Since the power brakes and the idle are controlled by engine vacuum, we guessed that the leak may be in or near the power brake booster.
You can say many things about this car, but you can't call it boring!
The first thing you notice is that it's loud. I don't know how much of the sound was designed into the RS-2600, and how much of it is due to the way we reconstructed it. When we rebuilt the engine, we selected a rather aggressive cam, since the stock cam was not available. Word is that the original was fairly aggressive too. Also, the exhaust system is hardly stock. The end result is an exhaust note that sounds (under accelleration) like a chain saw on steroids.
The next thing I noticed was the mirrors. The aftermarket "bullet" mirrors (from Walpers in the UK, so maybe some of our British friends can tell us more about these...) were on the car when we got it, so we decided to keep them. While they do lend a certain "boy racer" style to the car, (we've seen similar mirrors on old Can-Am cars and Indy cars from that era) unfortunately, they're almost useless. You can barely see anything out of them.
On the road, it was a bit rough. Part of it was the vacuum leak, but I think that it was also partly a lack of time on the engine. It's still in the "break-in" period. On the Sunday run, it seemed a bit smoother than on the Saturday run, so I hope that it will get smoother still as the rings and piston walls get to know each other better. The engine was clearly unhappy at 1500 RPM on Ridge Road (major shopping street in the area) but was much happier at highway speeds on the Lake Ontario Speedway.... I mean "PARKWAY". (oops!) I didn't quite take it up to autobahn speeds (we're observing a 4000 RPM "redline" during breakin) but I did have it up over 100.... km/h. It's very easy to do. The engine comes "on cam" at about 3500 RPM, which doesn't leave much room for fun before our observed redline. Still, it accellerates very quickly, and I didn't have the gas pedal anywhere near all the way down.
One thing was extremely cool: I was driving down the street, and other drivers rolled down their windows to ask what it was! I told them that it was the only RS-2600 they'd probably ever see.
Unfortunately, our test drives rattled the new exhaust system loose, so Larry had his local mechanic tighten it down on Monday after I left. Larry says it's a bit quieter now, and the vacuum leak may be clamped down as well.
There are a fair number of squeaks and rattles to be tended to, and some other minor matters as well. During the RS's four years in the shop since it was painted, it acquired some scratches, and some minor body damage, but the body shop has promised to fix this for us. The RS won't be quite perfect for the Capri Swarm in September, but we're planning on taking it. It should be interesting.