Next June, British hillclimber Damien Bradley plans to take his monstrous 800bhp Subaru Legacy to the Rocky Mountains for a bid on the incredible Pikes Peak hillclimb. Autosport’s Paul Lawrence found out more.
As hillclimbs go, Pikes Peak is the daddy of them all. It climbs 9300 feet in 12.42 miles and packs in a whopping 156 corners. It’s length is the equivalent of 22 back-to-back climbs of Shelsley Walsh and has been an all-asphalt surface since 2011.
Pikes Peak is the highest summit on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in North America, rising to 14,115 feet or more than 4300 meters. It is located in the Pike National Forest, just west of Colorado Springs.
That’s the scale of the challenge facing Bradley, who has become one of the very quickest closed-cockpit car contenders in British hillclimbing. Taking records at Shelsley Walsh and Prescott is one thing, but Bradley knows that he faces a huge challenge in taking his Legacy to the biggest hill of all.
Though its under-pinning was in a low mileage standard road car, Bradley’s Legacy has been developed beyond all recognition in recent seasons and now delivers over 800bhp to four driven wheels.
Bradley bought the Legacy more than 15 years ago for £500 and it was a bit tired at the time. It was owned by a little old lady and she was doing her shopping in it. The two-wheel drive Legacy GL was normally aspirated with about 87bhp on tap. It is now virtually unrecognisable after some serious development.
“It's the ultimate dream and what I've set my sights on to achieve with the Legacy,” said Bradley, who is being supported in his entry by technical partner Alcon Brakes. Director Jonathan Edwards has a raft of experience of the Mountain, the outright record holder being one of their clients, the Volkswagen IDR. “A friend of mine Chris Berrisford, who drives an Impreza in hillclimbs, went out to Pikes Peak this year to see what it was all about.
“He said it felt like a sprint at Curborough in some respects, but in other respects it's this incredibly huge international event with some superstars and very famous drivers and the altitude is pretty crazy.
“The practice arrangements are very unusual. You travel up at about 0200hrs and do one section at a time and as a rookie you must complete all three sections. Then you get one crack at the full hill on Sunday. So it's going to be quite a challenge. Altitude seems to be one of the biggest issues. So I've recruited the help of Andrew Graham at Allisport, who drove a modified Land Rover in the Dakar Classic.”
Graham is creating a coolant system and an intercooler pack to deal with the thin air at the high altitude of the upper reaches of the mountain.
“It's quite different at the top of Pikes Peak to the top of Shelsley Walsh in terms of what the car is going to have to do!” A company called Relentless Performance is working with calibration expert Paul Blamire in developing a new wiring loom for the Legacy and encompassing barometric sensors to tell the ECU what's going on as part of a package of changes to try and make sure the engine copes with the thin air at high altitude. A bespoke Xona Rotor turbocharger from AET Turbos is in design as the item currently fitted isn’t ideal at 14,000 feet!
“I don't want to jump the gun about getting an entry, but I'm hopeful that we will be selected and I've already been speaking to the technical team for the event,” says Bradley, who hopes to have as many as 20 people going out to support him on the hill.
Bradley is keen to promote UK hillclimbing at the same time and he's also been in conversation with Subaru UK about what he can do for them in terms of the car’s heritage.
“I think to be in a place where you are even considered, or you're in a place to even attempt to go to Pikes Peak, is something I need to grab with both hands because who knows when that opportunity might present itself again?”
Written by Paul Lawrence and published in partnership with Autosport
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