I was sent an anonymous email from a hotmail account saying there are two vehicles in circulation displaying this chassis number - One is Mr (S), the other is in the UK and when at a show in 2004 and I saw the other car that has #153 marked on it, you can see more of the car under B2 OOT.
In June 2004 I was in email conversation with the owner of #010 and they said that #153 was still owned by (SS) in Germany. The original FORD produced chassis 153 was destined to be chassis 210 but after returning remained as chassis 153 and in April 2005 I was sent a great article which put this car in Australia (you can see this under publications)
In August 2005 I was sent a couple of images by Grant Woolnough of the car running in Rally Tasmania early 2005 and in September 2005 I finally made contact by email with (RS) so that's another owner found and no doubt some more images to follow -
In August 2014 (RS) sent me some more information about the car.
(RS) has done a lot of really up to date development there, things that due to Grp B being cancelled never got done in the day.I thought you might like to catch up with the history of #153 while it has been in my keep.
As you may already know I am the second owner of the car which I purchased from a Doctor in Frankfurt back in about 2002/2003. When I purchased the car I received the original purchase invoices etc that were issued from Ford when the Dr purchased the car new.
After I bought it I moved the car to Northhampton where I kept it for about a year and drove it occasionally when I visited UK. During that period I had it converted from LHD to RHD as I was intending to bring it back to Australia which subsequently I did.
For the first couple of years I used #153 in a number of tarmac rallies. There were two main weaknesses with the car. Firstly the Cylinder head and secondly the old Bosch engine management system. The cylinder head was repaired /replaced a number of times but the end result was the always the same particularly with prolonged use on some of the longer stages. After scouring the world the only cylinder heads on the market at the time were used /repaired/re-welded items that were even weaker than when they were new. At one stage during this period I brought out Julian Godfrey from UK to replace the engine management system with a Pectel unit which made the calibration of the engine parameters much easier. Through Julian I also acquired a number of spares including gearbox, brand new chassis tub that had never been assembled plus suspension parts. I also acquired a brand new Evo engine still in its crate. This new engine was subsequently used albeit with the same weakness in the cylinder head eventually coming to the fore.
For several years #153 sat in the back of my car collection shed while I went off and raced a bunch of other cars I owned that included a Lola T70, ’65 Ford GT 40 Porsche 962 and a Mercedes Sauber C9 in the Group C Le Mans series in Europe. During that period X tec Engineering, Walsall, UK did all my race car prep and support along with engine rebuilds. When I discussed the issue with Paul Knapton of Xtec re the cylinder head problem we decided to send the engine across to Paul for a complete rebuild and send the heads off to Judd engineering Design and research to see whether there was a solution.
They came back with a solution which was a program to redesign the cylinder head albeit it would look exactly the same externally The focus was the internal water jacket to redesign the coolant flow and the metal thicknesses around the valves. The quote which you can imagine was not insubstantial involved a redesign, fabricating new castings and manufacturing several prototypes that would then be tested (in a fully assembled engine dyno test) and eventually destroyed by cutting them apart to examine the internals. The end result was we produced fifteen new cylinder heads of which I have used two for new engine rebuilds and have twelve left that can be sold to anyone that needs a fully developed and reliable Evo engine that can run up to just under 800 hp. I have the dyno sheets from Xtec Engineering of the engine now in the car . While the engine was developed and tested we installed the very latest Motec engine management system which is state of the art.
During the last three years the car itself has undergone a full nut and bolt rebuild / resto from the chassis up and is better than new. ( and a lot quicker). Apart from the modifications above which are basically hidden the car looks totally standard like it was delivered from Ford. I also had the car returned to its original LHD specification.
Over the last fifteen years that I have had the RS200 bug and subsequently owning and driving one at its limit I am amazed about a lot of the fantasy I read about surrounding the car. And yes I agree they are an iconic car but they do have their weaknesses as does every car no matter how iconic. The problem as I see it with the Evos is that the last few cars delivered that were never used in competition (ie developed) and may well have sat around for the last twenty five years will most likely if ever put to the test fail miserably for the owners. Of course the ones that have rally history may well need rebuilding as well if they are to be driven in the manner they were meant to be driven.
In November 2017 (RS) told me he had sold #153 to (TQ) and I believe it remains in Australia.
If you find out anything else about this car please drop me an email and I'll update the cars entry !
justin.smith@rs200.org
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