Mx5, Chapter 2

[The American]

I can help you out with your bucket list

Definitely keen Mark!

[ManiacLachy]

Come to the Dodgy Day! It's always a good time, even if you have nothing to wrench on.

[The American]

Come to the Dodgy Day!

It's pencilled in! Hopefully I can make it to this one

[The American]

I ran at the Noosa Hillclimb Summer Challenge, hoping for a sub-65s time to better my 2015 effort.

If nothing else I was consistent and of the 6 timed runs, I think all of them were 65's (one is recorded as a 66 due to a cone and 1 second penalty I collected near the finish).

There were many, many incidents requiring a pause to clear the track, which was the main reason for only 6 runs, and the 6th was only fitted in because lots of competitors sat it out. With one or two more attempts I think I would have gone under 65.

The class:
Skelta G-Force

Elphin Streamliner

Aston Martin V8 Vantage


There was also an Alpha Romeo 4c
And my MX5.

The Alpha and the Aston were off the pace, and the Elphin crashed out on its first timed run, which left the Skelta, which won with a 61s run.

I finished second in the class with a 65.19 and 29th outright in a field of 160 entries.

There were a number of other Mx5 entries including the Barnes family from Rockhampton, another NB, and NC and an NA.

Some excerpts from the crash reel:






At the end of the event it was announced that 2017 would be the 20th running of the event and the organisers plan to extend the track to 1.6km to meet international standards.

If you're interested in videos clips from the event, follow the link in my signature to my facebook page and have a look around (and of course 'like' it to see things as they get posted up).

[bigdog]

Top stuff! Noosa hill climb seems to claim a lot better f damaged cars though

Something I learned the hard way - it's Alfa, not Alpha

I used to edit the NSW Alfa club magazine, and an auto correct error Alpha snuck through to publication. More letters to the editor than my postie could handle! It stands for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, and was the original name of the brand - A.L.F.A. from 1910. Nicola Romeo joined the company in 1915, and the name was changed to Alfa Romeo in 1920.


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[The American]

Whoops! (I can't edit it now though)

[bruce]

Poor little ELFIN. You'd have to send it back to them to fix it, as I don't think anyone would know how to repair it.

[The American]

Poor little ELFIN. You'd have to send it back to them to fix it, as I don't think anyone would know how to repair it.

called out for two mis-spellings in a row

[bigdog]

only embarrassing in mixed company, we're all friends here.


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[The American]

The goal for the year was to attend a number of regional sprint events in Qld and NSW. This was what I ended up getting to this year and the result at each:

1) Gatton Sprints, 4-6 March - 1st in class, and sports cars outright
2) Wondai Sprints, 11-12 June - 2nd class and 5th outright
3) Noosa Hillclimb Mid Year - 1st in class
4) Leyburn Sprints, 20-21 August - 1st in class
5) Pittsworth Sprints, 2-4 September - 1st in class
6) Millmerran Dirt Sprints - attended a come n try day
7) Noosa Hillclimb Summer Challenge - 2nd in class

I'm now thinking about next year's long list and there's a stack of events that look interesting including a number of rounds of the NSW Hillclimb Championship. There are two rounds at Mt Panorama, Bathurst in March over the course of a weekend, followed by events in Kempsey, Grafton, Tamworth and Newcastle. Bathurst is the furthest away at 995(ish) km, and the rest are within an easy days drive.

It's 5 months until the first event I have pencilled in and I've got a few bits and pieces to fit to the car in the mean time. I've got a full set of 949racing engine mounts in the post, and a set of Energy Suspension diff bushings courtesy of MINX which together should help with my shifting and some of the wheel hop during launches. I have a spare 3.63 T2 sitting here to fit as well, but I am thinking about whether the budget will stretch to pulling my current 3.63 T2 and getting it rebuilt with a clutch pack centre. I also have all my oil cooler and filter relocation bits sitting here ready to go on. There's also the extended lower ball joints yet to be fitted.

Plenty to keep me busy until March!

[The American]

The postman came today :-)



...and thanks to MINX I now have these, which together with the above should make for some more precise shifting, and may limit flex and destruction of my PPF:

[Okibi]

Very cool! I need to do the same.

[The American]

Keen to hear how they go.
I assume they were cheaper than the ao50's?

I ran on these tyres as planned at the Noosa 'Summer Challenge' event. It was hot and dry both days, which should have been good for grip levels, and perhaps a little down for making power.

The Bridgestones were soft compound RE03S (not to be confused with the RE03 road tyre), and were reputedly a contender for the A050 soft.

Thanks to crash after crash across both days, I only had 6 runs over the course of the event, and so had less time than past events to build up to a good time. With that said, after the sighting lap, every other run was in the 65's (my previous best time was a 65.10). With more time, I think I could have gone a little quicker, and the sector splits indicated a theoretical 64 taking the best sectors from each run.

I ran the tyres at 28psi hot.

Compared to A050 mediums, they are definitely softer. They pick up and throw more stones even when cool, and they wore like grating cheese. I noticed launching was more difficult, with more slip before hook up during launches. I also felt as though I slid more in corners, but with breakaway that was more progressive/less snappy than the A050s.

Compared to the A050 mediums, I was not convinced they were better, just different.

In the end I was happy to be among those who didn't stack it, happy to have pulled out some very consistent times, disappointed that I hadn't gone under a 65, and not convinced either way on the Bridgestones.

The other factors that I think played a part:
- heat = down on HP
- pretty sure my torsen centre is toast, given the amount of single spinning
- the tyres themselves were new, but about 4 years old (more on that later)
- I could be braking harder and later and using more of the road (the desire to not crash front of mind). If all the factors, I think this one is where I'll find the 0.11 I need to go under 65 (except that this can't happen either - more on that too).

In the end, the tyre choice is a moot point. No more RE03S are being brought into qld by the Motorsport distributor, and the remaining set if they are still around in a year or so when I next go looking for tyres, will be another year or so older. A050's it will (probably) be.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that next year's Noosa Hillclimb will be a significant anniversary for the event and in keeping with the clubs on going efforts to improve the event, they plan to extend the track by 100m to 1.6km, which is apparently an international standard length for a Hillclimb. As a result, I'll need to set a new best time and won't ever be able to compare apples/apples to my current 65.10.

[The American]

One side effect of the RE03S purchase is that I bought a durometer. Not a $500 one from the US, but a $30 one from 'NSW' that arrived directly from China.

When I first bought semi-slicks 2 years ago, the Motorsport tyre dealer recommended I stay away from softs until I'd run at least one set of mediums, but that if I wanted to try something softer in the future, that he had a few sets of Bridgestones he could do a good deal on. 18 months later, I wanted A050 softs, and apparently there would be none in the country until after my last event for the year, and so the Bridgestones came up again.

I put the question out to the Qld Street Sprints Facebook group for feedback. One fellow piped up and suggested that they should be a good tyre, and ventured that they would be better than a comparable A050. No negative feedback was raised.

I went to look at them and immediately picked out the 2012 manufacture date. I pointed it out and the dealer assured me that semi slicks stored properly degrade very little over time. He told me that he'd special-ordered these tyres in 2012 without taking a deposit for a 'bunch of Hillclimbers' who arrived with a durometer to check them and who then refused to take them based on the durometer reading. He was very transparent about it. He went on to talk about durometer readings not being the measure of a tyre and not necessarily being a definitive measure of likely performance.

At that point I had three options.
1) take nothing and skip the end of year event at Noosa.
2) buy medium compound A050 which were in stock
3) take my chances with the 2012 Bridgestones

I took option 3!

I mentioned this decision as a reply on the same thread I had created on the Qld Street Sprints page. It turns out that the same fellow who'd suggested they'd be a good tyre was the one who'd refused to take them a few years earlier.

Using a durometer, he'd tested them at 61-62 when new, compared them to A050 softs in the low 50s and concluded that the a050 would be the better tyre. He seemed to think I'd been ripped off. But had I?

A few days after the Noosa event, my durometer arrived in the mail. After sourcing a battery I tested my collection of tyres as follows:

2012 - RE03S - 61.5 to 62
2012 - A050M - 59
2015 - A050M - 58

These readings were taken within minutes of each other with ambient temps about 25c.

For those dubious about the quality of my Chinese durometer, I've also recently tested a diff bushing and an engine mount bushing with stated duro ratings of 70, and my device consistently returns a reading of 69 point something.

While I haven't compared Mr Facebook's durometer to mine back to back, its notable that what he measured these tyres (these specific units amongst a batch of four sets) at in 2013 is pretty much identical to how they measure up now. If durometer readings mean anything, that's a good advert for storing your tyres well.

What's also interesting is that although both my older and newer A050's measure up softer than the RE03S (confirming Mr Facebook's measurement), in practice the RE03S are definitely much 'softer' than the A050M's (confirming Mr Motorsport dealer's comments).

What I haven't done is measure the RE03S and A050's when they are at working temps. That will have to wait until sometime next year. My relatively uneducated guess is that the compounds are simply different and achieve their maker's desired softness at different temps, and that softness will change as the tyre moves from cool to hot, but according to different curves (heat vs hardness).

Possibly, durometers measure hardness at a given temperature, but this is not a good proxy for tyre performance potential.

Ah, The Internet.

[Magpie]

Nothing like facts. Will be interesting to read the measurements when they are at operational temp.

However, the tyres do cool a bit, a few times I have glanced at the surface temp of the tyres, the rears have been above 80 deg c for very short periods. They do cool down quickly though.