Eli Evans' ARC G2 2WD Jazz K20

[EG30]

Saw this up close at Parc Ferme at the WA round of Australian Rally Championship. It's in Busselton in WA some 220km from Perth, a coastal town. I was competing at an event which used the same superspecial stage which is a 2.16km street circuit line with concrete barriers. We competed on Sat all day and the ARC cars competed from 6pm onwards so from twilight till nightime.

Read so much about this JAS built K20 powered monster Jazz with big flares in motorsport mags. So glad to see it in person, it was hardly slower than the top 4wd turbo cars and faster than many. The crowd love the sound it makes as well.

Only had my phone with me at the time when car arrived, hence I didnt re-size so you guys can see the detail bits better.

[felixR]

Surely you have more photos! Interior shots?

[EG30]

Surely you have more photos! Interior shots?

I wish I did.

They are in that car park in under strict Parc Ferme conditions and only officials and competitors are allowed inside the area.

If they opened the doors wide open and I had my telephoto lens then yeah.

And once they left Parc Ferme they were already staging for the grid, and straight back to Parc Ferme post stage run.

There was a full write up of this car in a past issue of Auto Action or Motorsport News some weeks back, with plenty of interior shots.

http://www.jasmotorsport.com/en/News...?Id=193&Aut=91

http://rally.com.au/index.php?option...ews&Itemid=213

[apparition]

That Honda Jazz with the K20A is so cool! Did we have any luck in getting Clubitr.com.au stickers placed on the 2 Mugen tuned Jazzes?

Found a post on Honda-tech as posted by the one of the co-driver of the Jazz:
http://honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=3044856

[dnapol]

My co-photographer and I tried to get a sticker on when forum battle was on here in Melbourne but we thought we'd have no luck asking. But when the cars were on display we were thinking about sneaking up and pounding one on. But then we figured they'd see clubitr and be like wtf and then they'd complain so didnt want any trouble :P hahaah

[Master_Scythe]

Left hand drive?

So technically its a FIT; or has it been converted?

[ChargeR]

Left hand drive?

So technically its a FIT; or has it been converted?

The name varies from market to market, it isn't universally Fit for LHD and Jazz for RHD. In Italy where JAS motorsport built these cars it is known as the Jazz .

[GDW]

Hi All,

I'm Eli Evans' co-driver. Felix invited me to register on ClubITR. It's great to see you guys are interested in our Jazz G2 rally car. Feel free to hit me up with any questions.

Cheers,

Glen

[felixR]

Welcome Glen. Glad to have you on board!

OK I'll start off with the most general question, how's the Jazz??? (in terms of power & handling)

[Perry]

WElcome Glen interested in what intake is it running custom?

[GDW]

Welcome Glen. Glad to have you on board!

OK I'll start off with the most general question, how's the Jazz??? (in terms of power & handling)

We're all really happy with the G2 Jazz. The engine and gearbox are the same spec as what we ran in the Type-R Civic last year, so the big changes are in the chassis. The G2 regulations allow you to widen the track by 70 mm per side, increase the height of the rear suspension tower mounting points, as well as custom make sub-frames to let you fit your substitute engine. This means that the Jazz compared to the Civic is shorter in the wheel base, wider in the track, and has more suspension travel, as well as being about 120 kg lighter.

The G2 Jazz has an ideal "footprint" on the road for rallying in that it turns in well but doesn't try to bite you and spin all of the time. The lighter weight means that it stops, accelerates and turns better than the heavier Civic too.

So I guess the Jazz has lots of little improvements everywhere that add up to big leap forward compared to the Civic.

WElcome Glen interested in what intake is it running custom?

The G2 regs are designed to let a manufacturer enter a 2wd drive car that might not be ideally suited for motorsport into rallying. The suspension changes I outlined before are part of this, but the other major area is the engine substitution rule. Basically you can take a naturally aspirated engine from the family (even if it is out of production) of up to 2 litres capacity and slot it into your chassis. The mechanicals of the engine are pretty free so you can fit quad throttle bodies if you wish. There's also a rev limit of 8500 rpm.

The rule makers (and representatives of some other manufacturers) were really worried about the K20A engine as they felt that with all of the mechanical freedoms and VTEC that it would have an "unfair" advantage over everything else. So the rules state that if you want to run variable valve timing then the engine needs to be FIA Group R homologated, and then you have to stick to the homologation specifications. The K20a is homologated, so we run the exact same engine spec as the Type-R Civic.

So in answer to Perry's question, the intake is the standard K20A plenum chamber. It has a custom carbon fibre airbox though. Interestingly, we could run quad throttles, but it would mean that we would have to disable the VTEC. Honda Australia felt that VTEC was an important part of their branding, and they are justifiably proud of the technology so the decision was made to run with the VTEC. You would make more peak HP with the quad throttles, but I think the VTEC gives a superior range of power that is more suited to rallying.

Mind you, we are very lucky that we have an engine lease deal with Mugen. Nezu-san from Mugen was responsible for building the Honda F1 engines, and he builds all of our engines. He attends every event we do to monitor and fine tune the engines.

[felixR]

Impressive

Love this shot too.

[Berty]

Man, so awesome!

[45SET]

Great to have you on the board Glen!

I notice you are based in Brisbane. Feel free to come along to one of our Brisbane meets if you want, would be great to have you come along! Also feel free to bring the Jazz if you can... I'm sure it won't stick out, and JAS motorsport/Honda/Mugen won't nice it missing from the workshop for the night...

[GDW]

Great to have you on the board Glen!

I notice you are based in Brisbane. Feel free to come along to one of our Brisbane meets if you want, would be great to have you come along! Also feel free to bring the Jazz if you can... I'm sure it won't stick out, and JAS motorsport/Honda/Mugen won't nice it missing from the workshop for the night...

The team doesn't trust me behind the wheel of the Jazz! I don't mind coming along and talking to you guys if you want. My road car is a 1970 Camaro, so I'm not sure if that would exclude me from a meeting though!

Both cars will be up in Qld at the end of May for the next round of the ARC. The rally is based out of Caloundra but most of the competition takes place up around Imbil (just south west of Gympie). Let me know if you need more details.