LORD OF THE LASERS
CARL ROBERTSON IS BACK AT IT AGAIN
Having a car that can perform well in more than one discipline with any sort of success is a tall order. It’s inevitable that there are always going to be some compromises that need to be made that get in the way of performance perfection or even personal safety. It’s something that Carl Robertson found out firsthand in 2016, following a dominating run with his TX3 — known as JRCOZY — a car that has won 30 trophies at 4&R events alone, taken out the C2 drag class at the Nationals two years running, and claimed the front-wheel-drive street tyre record at 10.79@135mph, while also contending Super Lap. It was when it came to circuit racing that Carl decided it was time to build (or buy) something more suited to grip racing, a decision that led him to purchasing one of his teenage hero cars. Yes, it was also a Laser, only this time it was 4WD and purpose-built for Targa. When we last checked in with Carl for a double cover shoot in early Feb 2018 ( NZPC issue 256), JRCOZY was meant to be heading toward street car retirement, while WRCOZY, its 4WD brother, was destined for Leadfoot and later Targa duties.
Fast forward to 2020, and JR is a long way from retirement. It never quite made it to the greener pastures of Sunday drives to the beach, the chip shop, or even just casual strops through the hills. In truth, the cold realities of retirement came knocking, and it sat in the corner gathering dust. That was until Carl decided to return it to the strip after a five year hiatus. First up, he enlisted Bruce Manon to screw together a modern VVT Mazda BPT 1800 engine; this time around with bumped compression, ready for ethanol-based fuel. The valvetrain is also something special. It includes a set of custom cams from the team at Kelford that required the stock cams to have meat added before the radical regrind could take place.
With a new Borg Warner SXE 57mm turbo hanging off the custom manifold and huffing 30psi, the combination turned 420kW out of the front wheels, which is a 50kW increase over the old engine. Carl is yet to see this level of boost on the strip, with only 20psi used while the team sorts the boost control. However, with only seven runs under their belt, it’s showing good promise, as they are right back at the trap speeds it ran five years ago and hope to crack into the 140mph range once they feed more boost in.
One of the biggest changes is moving to a proper drag slick wrapped around a set of 13x10-inch Weld Wheels on the front and 15x3.5-inch out back. These were picked up secondhand in the
the combination turned 420kW out of the front wheels, which is a 50kW increase over the old engine
USA and the car was built around them. Carl tells us, “As soon as we bolted them on, it was clear we needed another twoinch wider guards. Luckily, we had the moulds from the rally car, so we were able to make a set of carbon guards.” Carl is yet to run the slicks, though, instead opting to get the car dialed on the DOT-style tyres he ran previously before making the switch.
Perhaps the biggest change to the car is in fact not a physical change but a legal one. Carl was able to broker an agreement with IHRA so that anyone with a MSNZ legal cage would now be able to run down to a 10.0 and on drag slicks. This is a huge win for the MSNZ guys and something Carl worked tirelessly to achieve. The goal with the car now is to contest the King of the Street Championship at the Night Speed Drag Wars, which is a tough championship to win, but with consistent low 10s in his sights, not one that is out of reach.
While all this was going on, his 4WD variant was also undergoing drastic changes following an altercation with a hay bail at Leadfoot in 2019. Carl was busy working towards repairing the car and upgrading the dated engine package to the same as the one in JRCOZY. With the goal of running in Targa, he began speaking with Dustin from DNG, an seasoned race car engineer with plenty of Targa experience. “Everything I had written down which I planned on using, including using the spare VVT Mazda engine I had, was put to Dustin, who wiped it all off the list and suggested we just put a 4G63 into it. That way it’s reliable and not stressed, and you’ll be racing instead of building,” recalls Carl. He clearly took Dustin’s advice. In June, Carl purchased an Evo VI front cut and handed the build over for Dustin to take charge while he focused on completing JRCOZY.
With reliability the main focus, and not wanting to risk throwing a rod out of the stock block, a forged long block is currently on lease from DNG while they decide on the final engine build specs. The turbo is a factory Evo IX unit, while the gearbox is an Evo VI unit rebuilt by Carl. With the Haltech Elite 1500 dialed
Everything I had written down which I planned on using, including using the spare VVT Mazda engine I had, was put to Dustin, who wiped it all off the list and suggested we just put a 4G63 into it.
in at Jtune, the package made a reliable 245kW on 20psi and has transformed the car. Carl describes the change as night and day, or even better, as the difference between a two-stroke and four-stroke motorbike. On track at Leadfoot earlier this month, it demonstrated this in the times achieved. Carl was also able to shave another two seconds off his best, running a 54. Targa remains in his sights, and he will begin working towards it, crewing for one of Dustin’s cars at the Bambina before attacking the full Targa later this year, or worst case in 2021, depending on the budget.
For the remainder of 2020, it’s likely Carl will continue to be a very busy man — fingers crossed it’s mostly behind the wheel. It takes a special, or perhaps we should say crazy, man to attempt to build and campaign more than one project at a time. But our hats go off to the Lord of the Laser as he continues to pull it off with great success. Good luck in Targa, Carl. We’ll be rooting for you.
The months are sure whizzing by as our May / June deadline looms closer. With each passing day, progress on the EV rally car is ramping up as the chassis build nears its completion. The construction of the chassis involved 10 months of design work. After the initial concept was devised, we had to analyze every aspect with excruciating detail. Countless hours were spent simulating suspension concepts, taking into account a considerably different weight distribution, to refine each critical pickup point — once these are installed on the car, there is no going back.
Packaging every component inside the chassis proved to be an equally time-consuming and technical challenge. The biggest nightmare was the rechargeable energy storage system (RESS) — the battery along with its auxiliary systems. The dimensions of a RESS are more or less restricted to discrete rectangular blocks, or modules, so that reduces the packaging flexibility — whereas a fuel tank can be moulded to almost any shape. Add to this the fact that we need at least 10 times the volume of batteries to meet the same energy storage of E85, and even with the generous space of the Hyundai Kona, we had a challenge on our hands! Safe to say that, after multiple revisions, everything fits, albeit rather snugly.
With the suspension top mounts (to allow for the massive 255mm of suspension travel), suspension pickup points, subframe mounting points, RESS mounting frame — which is also the replacement for the floor — and most of the roll cage in place, we are nearly at the point of being able to bolt the major components to the car. However, it’s a matter of one step forward, two back, and so forth while we carefully go through every step.
Once the car is semi-assembled, it will be fully dismantled to confirm and validate all designs and fitments, and overall operation, before we begin to fine-tune it and add the finishing touches of paint and body work. In fact, paint will be one of the last things to be done to the car.
Once the major components are dummy fitted in the car, the fun bit comes: marrying everything together. Apart from the transmission, RESS, and inverters, everything is being designed and built in-house. That means every suspension component, mounting bracket, wiring harness, safety device, and so on. This is a massive job for our team
his is a massive job for our team of engineers, who have already designed more than 1000 individual parts
of engineers, who have already designed more than 1000 individual parts, from small spacers to suspension damper casings and roll cages. Designing and building a car from scratch with very limited off-the-shelf parts is certainly a challenging but exciting project, on which, although pressure is mounting, everyone is thriving.
Over the next month the car will start to look less like a bare shell and more like a car — especially once we take delivery of the new aero kit, which we have developed in conjunction with the University of Canterbury, which is currently manufacturing all the moulds.
T — minus 3 months!