Van Diemen RF87 Information
This section is designed to give you some information about the car being campagined by the PB Performance team, driven by Pat Buss and it’s potential performance.
The Chassis:
The Van Diemen RF87 that I will be racing during the 2007 season was originally built (as the name suggests) by Van Diemen Cars International in 1987. It was orginally painted in “Duckhams Oils” colours and ran in the 1987 British Formula Ford Championship as a works car. The car was run by the factory for Tim Sugden who that season was team mate to the champion, a certain Mr Eddie Irvine!
The Engine:
The engine in the RF87, as in all cars running to FF1600 regulations is a 1600cc Ford “Kent” Crossflow engine running to rules issued by the Ford Motor Campany. These rules basically stipulate that the engine should be standard but it allowed to be “blueprinted”, this means the engine has been built to the edge of all of it’s manufacturing tolerances.
The engine was built in 1986 specifically for Formula Ford racing by a company called “Scholar Race Engines”. It is the original engine built for this car.
The Gearbox:
The gearbox in the RF87 is a 4 speed dog engagement box built to Formula Ford regulations. The gearbox is a Hewland Mk9 and is the original gearbox built for the car in 1987.
This gearbox was built purely for racing purposes and is therefore not very forgiving, however is does allow easy maintenance and has been designed so that the gear ratios can be changed in a matter of minutes. This latter feature is very handy in the frantic world of racing where time is always at a permium and where precise car settings are extreemly important!
PB Performance car developments:
During the winter of 2006/2007 the car underwent a stripdown and rebuild by PB Performance. During this rebuild the car was treated to a number of developments desinged to improve upon the performance and ergonomics of the original Van Diemen design. During the 2007 season the car will be subject to further developments by PB Performance as we strive to move further up the grid. Details of these developments can be found in the “Car Developments” section of this website.
Performance:
To give you a rough idea of what a Formula Ford race car is capable of here are some performance stats:
Please note that these are only an indication of potential performance, acceleration and speed figures will vary depending on gearing and circuit.
0-60: 4.5 secs
0-100: 10 secs
Max Speed: 135mph
Castle Combe Lap Records:
Class A and outright:- 1.11.757 (92.81mph) set on 23/06/02 by Matthew Rivett in a Ray B97
Class C (my class):- 1.12.577 (91.76mph) set on 16/09/01 by Matthew Rivett in a Van Diemen RF89