Well after driving around a bit in my pickup truck and then the old mustang to bleed out what I felt in the 1st day of testing
the C5 - Mallet 435 ( Rebel) racer.
I climbed back into the Rebel today and this time to drive it first as a daily driver and then back to abusing the G-pedal.
The traffic was a bitch so it was a good test to see if in heavy stop in go traffic if the car would drain me as to lots of stop, go,
lots of 1st 2nd shifting,
C5 -
1. Seating placement is not as good as the C4s. With the window all the way down, in a C4 I could rest my elbow out the
window, resting it on the window opening. Not so in the C5, with the lower seat placement, my arm had to pitch upwards and
was not comfortable. The same goes for the arm rest in the door. Too much electronic switches where the fingers go and the rest
itself is hard.
2. Not sure yet but is seems to either suck too much gas or the stupid analog gas gauge is not correct, for the digital display of
HUD seems to show more gas remaining then the analog says. When I started these tests yesterday, I filled the tank, now with just
around 90 miles driven, it shows less then 3/4s of a tank.
3. The digital display that allows you to monitor one function at a time (located at bottom of the dash) cannot be clearly seen
when wearing sunglasses and it also causes you to have to look down to see it. For ORRing, if you were watching the average
speed or elapsed distance, this may be a lousy issue.
4. For whatever reason the alarm system is screwed up and the onboard computers do not say why alarm system is not working.
5. I jacked the car up to takes photos of "tubbing" I placed the jacks on the frame rails to find that hydro formed frame soft as
hell, for both jacks left dents in the frame.
6. We all know what the half shafts look like in a C3 and C4 and I was surprised to see on this C5 half shafts the size of a 3/4
rod.
Dang if we could twist shafts in a C4 what kinda power can these things support ?
7. Oil temp issues are nuts, I can care less if the oil can handle 300 degrees, running all the time at at least 220 degrees is not how I
would keep an engine running long term. A oil cooler should have been a must in the base design, hell the rebel has the Z-51
suspension and with that there is a cooler for the power steering, so why the hell not for the engine ?
8. I tend at stop lights to keep the clutch in rather then putting it into neutral, clutch effort did not wear me down at all.
9. I found 1 condition when HUD display was not clearly being seen. At a stop light with a truck in front of me that had a real
shiny rear bumper, it reflected in such a way that the HUD display was dim appearing.
Mallet 435 -
1. The engine maintains a smooth run at any speed, in heavy traffic or high pedaling the engine. Have not heard or felt either
pinging, or rough running, even when I ran in 5th gear at 60 MPH.
2. The 373 rear end gear seems to be a better match for this Mallet 435, when I ran the same gear in my ZR-1, 6th gear sucked at
60 MPH.
3. The Mallet is clearly a good daily driver, the car was wimpy when it had to be in heavy traffic, but would pull out of that as
soon as I gave it a command with G-pedal, it woke right up, no lag.
4. Noises I hear at slow speeds is gone once you get over 50 MPH. The Mallet mufflers do not sound as good as the Walker
DynoMax's did in the ZR-1 but sound better at higher speeds.
5. Once the freeway traffic thinned out, I changed faces and so did the rebel. The car could be doing 65 MPH, at will I could
make a hint of going fast and the Mallet engine took off like a bat out of hell and I mean big time. I could hit the hammer or
downshift and haul, the engine was in step the whole time. 65 MPH to 120 MPH in a heartbeat, so much so that traffic around me
took notice for sure. Even a biker tried to keep pace and found that when this engine spools, the RPMs spew out like it was just
taking a quick breath of air.
I had one wise ass who rode my ass for some time when I was being a good boy, I spotted a hole between two cars in left lane
about 5 blocks up, this turkey behind me thought he must have been the god of the freeway. I gauged the moving traffic and when
at the right moment, I dump from 6th gear to 3rd, kill the G-pedal, the tires spin and I am in that hole while this dumb shit that was
behind me is trapped in the lane to the right. As I looked in the rear view mirror, I could see this dudes face, He doubted what he
saw, but had to swallow it whole.
Today was rice burner day, you know the ones with the big fat tailpipes with the stupid rear wings, well the rebel eat them all and
I know they will not play tag with the rebel any more.
I placed some phone calls today and if the Team ZR-1 means much, I might have a closed door chassis dyno tomorrow ( sunday
) for the operator at this race shop cannot believe what I am telling him about the rebel and is willing to go to work on a Sunday to
see if it's fish stories or not. BTW, this is a Ford Mustang race shop ( Mustang Ranch ) and for them to come in on a Sunday
says they are worried there is some trouble for them on the streets and the local tracks...
If they chicken out, I'll do the Dyno next Saturday and let's see what the real numbers are.
Monday I leave for Sacramento, back to my customer and since the weather is good, the rebel is going and I'll do some good
testing covering 400 miles on a freeway and being it's a holiday, good chance I-80 will have be empty out in the boonies.
J.R
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Team ZR-1
Teamzr1.com