Throughout this series of posts we are following an avid enthusiast and Suspension Secrets reader, Bobby Gould, as he builds his first ever time attack car using nothing but his own two hands and online resources to create a competitive race car. A lot of thought and effort has been put into some very custom suspension work which we will begin to focus on in future posts but the incredible part about it is that Bobby has designed this suspension using the information found online, most of which using Suspension Secrets, making it all the more exciting for us to follow.
So Who Is Bobby Gould?
Bobby is a 32 year old welder fabricator from Watford, Hertfordshire in the UK with a passion for cars. From a young age he has been around cars and attended race events to fuel his passion which has only grown throughout his life leading to building his own race car.
A self-taught enthusiast, Bobby has relied on experience and online resources to build his knowledge base up to a point where he is able to begin using his skills as a welder/fabricator to create some very nice custom suspension work amongst other parts on his time attack car.
“My knowledge base is always improving, having never done any courses on cars I have taught myself everything I know thus far.”
All the work being carried out on this build is being done either in his one car garage or at work in the fabrication shop. This really is a home built car heading out to compete with big build teams in a very serious championship, Time Attack.
What’s The Car?
Many of you might remember this car from one of the most iconic car film franchises, Fast and Furious….the Mitsubishi Eclipse. To be specific it is a 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse GST with a 4G63T engine and an automatic transmission. Don’t let the auto gearbox put you off though as there are great plans to turn this car into a real track weapon.
Why Choose Time Attack?
Bobby chose to compete within Time Attack due to the nature of the cars and the freedom of the regulations meaning that a lot of custom work and design freedom can be applied to the car to transform it into his perfect vision and allowing him to apply all his hard earned knowledge into the design to see how the car will perform.
The Eclipse will be competing in the Club 2WD class within Time Attack racing against the likes of a Seat Leon TCR car, Renault Clio’s, BMW M3’s and Ford Focus’s. The plan is to build the car and go for the win and we think this build has the chance to do it.
What’s Next?
There is some work to do to get the gearbox working properly and get the car stripped out. But more importantly there is a lot of very custom suspension work to come over the next few posts so stay tuned to find out what Bobby has been fabricating to turn this Eclipse into a track weapon.