Daihatsu Charade Detomaso

[silverra23]

Thought I should post a thread on the replacement for my original club racer.... its another rehash of other forum posts so bear with me if it seems odd in how it goes up!

 

Back in about August last year I acquired a very cool Charade Detomaso from a guy in Sydney. It was eventually destined to be a weekend club car - used in sprints, hillclimbs and hopefully one day events like the Targa Tour. (this bit may well be dreaming!)

 

It's in reasonable condition, though its had a prang in the side in the last month just before he sold it. It has all the original Detom parts on it - the seats, steering wheel, dash top, grille, body kit, wheels and most importantly that great little engine and close ratio gearbox.

 

Bits and pieces on the car need a good tidy up, so the plan is to do some of the following:

 

Body tidy up - repair dings, repaint roof, bonnet and rear wing.

Replace rear bumper that is dinged and torn.

Interior tidy up - repair worn seat and cigarette hole

Remove all the shoddy audio wiring

Improve the suspension and brakes

Remove the "fully sik" muffler that makes it drone horribly

Replace the faded plastic headlights with Aussie spec glass ones

Recover the steering wheel that is worn

Fit harnesses and eventually fixed back seats

Roll cage in the future some time

 

Go racing!

 

Its replacing the KE35 which has been a lot of fun, but I wanted something that was still road registered, as the need for a trailer each time I did something was killing me:

 

 

Here is a pic from the previous owner's ebay ad. I drove it home to Melbourne from Sydney yesterday, so haven't had a chance to take any myself.

 

[silverra23]

At this stage I hadn't managed to sell the Corolla yet, so not much development on the Charade as yet... however ...

 

My first acquisitions for it arrived - some 15" wheels fitted with brand new Falken semi-slicks. $650 for the lot on ebay which makes me happy! They looked silver in the photos on ebay not the platinum colour they turned out to be, so I think they will get repainted at some point, but I actually kinda like them - shame they clash with the silver on the front bar.

 

Here are some photos of them fitted

 

 

 

 

Its sitting up like a 4WD which is odd given it appears to have king springs fitted all round - perhaps they were standard height ones?? Anyways I will have to address that when the Corolla sells.

 

I have a set of Koni's to put in it once they are rebuilt so that can all happen at the same time.

[silverra23]

In November I posted this...

 

We have more small progress...

 

A second hand rear bar from Japan arrived last week.. thanks to import monster for making that staggeringly easy. Just need to find a left hand skirt now on yahoo japan!

 

Took it to the local exhaust shop today and ended up getting a new muffler, cat and flex pipe installed. Everything was r**ted.

 

There is a wire dangling down near the cat - I am guessing this might be from a cat over temp sensor or something that was there originally from standard.

 

In other news I noticed the previous owner has a dash up for sale with 248,000km on it... me thinks I know which car that came from based on the state its in!! Oh well... its still a good little jigger :(

[silverra23]

Fast forward to June...

 

Well its been a while since I had anything worth mentioning!

 

The little DeTom went and visited the panel beaters and the rear quarter was repaired, and the peeling roof was repainted at the same time. Looks great now.. though one side has decals and the other doesn't! Need to peel the right hand side ones off, though that is proving rather difficult.

 

Competed at a very wet and cold Rob Roy Hillclimb on the weekend in it. Still waiting to see final results but I think the Charade might have made the top 15 and beat all manner of much faster cars... the wet certainly played to its strengths. My best was a 31.79, which was 4th in class I think.

 

Its now in the hands of Meridian Motorsport getting a harness bar and fixed seat fitted. Next outing will be a Fun Day at Winton in early July.

 

 

 

Hopefully before I run it at the Phillip Island 6 Hour relay I will have replaced the front pads with something more motorsport oriented and got the Koni's rebuilt. $$ is proving a challenge on that front at the moment though... but fingers crossed it all comes together.

[silverra23]

Some in-car from the hillclimb weekend. Microphone is no good in this camera.. can't hear much at all other than it rattling when the front wheels start spinning in the wet and it tramps its way up the hill.

 

 

[silverra23]

This was last week..

 

Well I gave her another right old flogging at a Fun Day at Winton on Saturday. The Fun Days are pretty much a "come and try your hand on the track" for $30, so its pretty crazy... at one stage they had 66 cars on the track apparently.

 

Camera played up so I only got one shot of her in the pits

 

 

Plus this one of the harness bar that Meridian Motorsport made up

 

 

You can also see one of my Cobra seats fitted. Its just too narrow and I ended up with cramps and aches from the drive up there, the day out on the track, and then the drive home again. I am thinking that for the Phillip Island 6 hour I might have to return to the factory Recaro... and at the same time I sell the two Cobra's fixed seats I bought cheap with a view to funding the purchase of a new sparco or something that fits my hips better.

 

Anyways here is some footage from one of my sessions.

 

 

[TheNOBBLER[RL]]

Hmm... All this time I had it in my head that thus would be a red car... Being a deTomato and all...

 

Looks the goods Adam!

[silverra23]

The mighty Charade ran at the Phillip Island 6 Hour relay on the weekend... went bloody well. 3 seconds faster than I ever was in the Corolla ;)

 

We came 31st out of the 50 teams entered. Here is some video from the weekend

 

Practice 1 -

 

Practice 2 -

 

Relay Stint 1 -

 

Relay Stint 2 -

 

And some photos can be found here

 

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/adamlaws197...sland6Hour2010#

[silverra23]

Whooo hoooo ... the De Tomato Handbag must be a full fledged race car now... it appears in a photo on page 30 of Auto Action today :D

[ke70dave]

can't wait to check out those vids at home, hvaent seen a genuine detamosa one before. thats a turbo yeah? 3clr?

 

can't remember any details, my mate used to be right into these, they are great fun, i bet they are even better on the track.

[silverra23]

I think there were a few DeTomaso varieties over the years.

 

Mine is the last of them, it is a 3 door but not turbo.. 1.6L single cam, 16 valve engine. Sort of similar to the applause but better head and cam apparently. Close ratio gearbox helps no end also.

[ke70dave]

ah very cool.

 

we put 1.6L applause engine into a normal charade that looked like that one, that went hard enough, let alone the extra head/cam combo of the tomato.

[silverra23]

 

There it is in all its glory ... hounding a Mini... or maybe having a Mini blow past a warp factor 9 :jamie:

 

In other news I installed a set of King's finest Low springs in it on the weekend. Would have been an easy task if not for the fact some nong before me had installed the shocks in such a manner that all the rear brake hardware had to come off to get the bottom bolt out of the rear strut...

 

It was rather dark when I was done, so photos another day!

[colonel]

Great little car, I've driven one of these and they go really well.

I used to have a G202 with a 3cyl till I cracked a piston. So in went the applause engine.

 

Not quite as quick as the De-Tomaso but still a whole lotta fun

 

Edit:

Do ya want some NOS charade side skirts? Free to good home. PM me

Edited August 27, 2010 by colonel

[silverra23]

Might Charade has another run this weekend.. this time at the Winton 6 hour.

 

It now is running Project Mu front pads as the QFM pads seemed to give me a less than impressive pedal feel.

 

Its also running Tate's spare battery since he borrowed the mighty machine to use as a wedding car.... yes yes... I also thought WTF?! :)

Edited October 20, 2010 by silverra23