I forgot to mention, that at the same time I replaced the airvalve which is located on the intake plenum on the NA6 motor. Reason being that i was getting a weird deposit on the underside of it, suggesting a leak. So with a second hand bit costing $30, I thought I shouldn't risk it, and replaced it. Not too difficult to do; just 4 small bolts holding it in place and the 2 hoses (one from the block, one from the thermostat housing). Here is what the old one looked like:
Also, as a bit of a wrap up from eastern creek twilight I got a 2:02.84, which I am very proud of now. I got Neil (I think), one of the instructors to sit in with me for a session, which was a huge help. He really opened my mind a bit; I was pumelling the brakes for turn 4, and he was saying that I should just touch the brakes and let the momentum of the car carry me through. Tried this, and the difference was amazing. Soon after I found I could go through turn 5 with only a little bit of lift. Stupid me only realised that I could apply this to turn 6 and 7 going up corporate hill, where I am really hitting the brake. Mostly because I would need as much momentum as possible to carry me up the hill. I think I could also apply this to turn 11. I am now quite eager to get back out there and give it a go. I really think that a sub 2min lap is very possible, and it will be my aim for next time.
Also, and I am quite embarassed about this, and I think the only way to confront my embarassment is a bit of group therapy. In the 2nd to last session, towards the end of the session, I was coming up corporate hill just about to overtake the Ford ute which I had been gaining on quickly for that whole lap, when I went to shift from 2nd to 3rd. Unfortunately I grabbed 1st instead, the engine went farking nuts, and I jumped on the clutch and tried to pull it out of gear, which took some solid effort; from memory it was a bit jammed. But yeh, I thought I was toast, as the needle kind of went off the scale..... By some kind of divine intervention I put it back into 4th coming down to the hairpin and the revs picked up with no grinding or clunking sounds from anything. I completed that lap cautiously, and then went back at it. All seems to be fine. Although, now I get a lot of juddering when I try to take off from a standing start with anything less than about 4k rpm, but that was happening before, it's just a bit worse now. Lucky I have a clutch waiting to go in
Holy crap! Your engine must have been doing around 11,000rpm when you shifted into 1st. You're really lucky it doesn't seem to have blown anything.
BTW, very impressive times at the club trackday! And nice effort on the twilight drive at Eastern Creek. It's a difficult track to be quick on, and I can only imagine how much trickier it'd be in the dark.
Standard 2006 NC - YouTube WP 1:11.89 | SMP-S 1:05.90 GP 1:54.93 N 1:18.09 L 2:22.49 | PW 1:02.52 PI 2:00.55 | W-S 1:12.44 W-L 1:43.36 | SR 1:33.25
So yes, circuit club had their day today. Was a really really good day. It started off a bit damp, with 2 wet/damp passenger sessions, and a wet timed session, then it just dried right up. The day was also not booked out, so heaps of track time. I got to get Geoff (the driver trainer) to come along with me, and he gave me a couple of helpful pointers. But I still managed to do my tyres in (I think?)
The first session was abit hairy, as I forgot that I had inflated the tyres for driving back from eastern creek, so when I read 26psi cold, i was like, yeh they will go to 28. Got back in and they were 30. That was a hairy session; car was all over the place. Probably not helped by a cold track (15*C ambient). The next few sessions were wet, and even the WRX's and EVOs were struggling, so I just took it nice and easy, and even then it was a bit almost-almost-almost-almost-nahhhh a couple of times. I wanted to try a few different entries into turn 2; I wanted to try and get off the brakes earlier and see if I could just power through the corner, and then I was trying it in different gears, so that took up the next session or so. I then got Geoff, who was quite good (big guy though, which doesn't help in little car). He was saying pretty much what I was thinking, that I should be going through turn 2 in 3rd, rather than 2nd gear. he also suggested that for fish-hook, and last turn. Neither of those worked, as I just didn't have the power, but the turn 2 thing worked really well. Next time session I gave it a go, and BAM 1:15.91 (when taking turn 2 in 3rd, and fish-hook and last turn in 2nd). Also got a few low 16s in that session. I really just want to work on consistency now. I really want to be able to do a whole session of 15/16sec laps.
Also, what is with my tyres; the outside wall is all bumpy. I thought this might be due to low pressures, but I've been running 28psi, which from a quick look around the forum, seems to be about what a lot of people are running on r-specs??? I came to that temperature after using my infrared thermometer to measure the temperatures across the tread, and found the most even temperatures with this pressure. It is also most notable on the left side, with it barely appearing on the right side... The pictures below are a bit rubbish for showing it, but basically at the point where the channel has its 'T' bit, it is high, like a bubble. But between these, where there is normally a water channel, it has worn down.
Could it be wearing on the outer edge due to the roll and speed on turn 2? I went in a bit hot once and gave the outer edge of my left side tyres a nice chamfer on the shoulders.
That there is a flat spot from locking up and not getting off the brakes, did that to my R888. You get a nice vibration. One you have even a small flat spot, that is the spot that the brakes tend to lock up at subsequently, hence creating a monster flat spot.
NA6 B6T Barbagallo Raceway : Long Track 67.394, Short Track 56.755
Like Sig said that particular tyre now has a flat spot. You will see those wrinkles come up when the tyres get overheated and I've seen much worse. With the large temperature difference you'll get a lot of expansion and then contraction after you come in and it cools down. Pressure wise I've found 32psi HOT on 15" rims tends has given me the best wear and grip. I usually run 25-26 psi cold to reach that. Basic rule is 10 degree temperature change in celcius is 1psi pressure change. My race rubber usually starts off at the ambient temp which is usually 20-30 and then goes upto 70-90 depending on the weather conditions. Usually after each session I need to even out the tyres as the ones that work harder like the passenger side at Wakefield and Driver side at Eastern creek have greater temperature changes. In damp conditions I always run my hot pressures, nothing worse than the centre of the tyre not being able to part the water. I've experimented with trying lower pressures in an effort to get temperature but found I couldn't make it work, the brakes could not overcome a damp extremely cold track.
Wow... 28 PSI on R888's. I like to run higher pressures in Semi's. I used to run 36-40 PSI hot when I used to track the DC2R with 205/50/15. I found it was alot faster with higher pressures, but also it does come down to personal preference. According to Toyo optimum pressure for R888's is 32-34 PSI hot.
Dweelze, how did you do that!?!? I tried the [youtube][/youtube] with the video number, but it didn't work?
SIG, defineitly not a flat spot, as they are evently spaces around the entire edge of the tyre
Wow, okay, so looks like I was a little off with my pressure selection. How embarassing. I was basing it on having an even 60*C spread across the width of the tyre. But then that doesn't go on to explain why it is mostly on the passenger side rather than the driver side, being that they were same pressures all around? I guess it's lucky then that this was towards the end of the tyres life, and not at the beginning..... Wow, I feel a bit silly now Thanks for the advice.
So it has been a while since I have posted in this thread, so just a little update.
First, I have finished my first uni degree (a bachelor of science), so, in theory, i should be smarter. We'll see how that pans out.
After I finished I decided to tackle rebuilding my brakes, as it is something i've wanted to do for a while now. I started with the fronts (easy compared to the rears). My spare fronts were actually very clean internally despite being horribly rusty on the outside with split boots and that. The ones on the car not so much. The rears were horrible due to the stupid little c-clip at the bottom which keeps the handbrake adjuster screw in (anyone who has pulle done apart knows about this little devil). Anyway, it was a bit of fun. When I went to put swap them over to the car I remembered what people were saying about having to swap left to right when using na6 vs na8 calipers on na8 brackets; you have to reverse left with right. I didn't want the bleed valve to be on the bottom of the caliper (kind of defeats the purpose of bleeding), so I decided to remove the front calipers off the car and rebuild them while off. The pistons in these calipers were covered in a thick black paste, which I think at one point must have been brake fluid. There was also a small mark on the bore of the cylinder, but it was below the piston seal, and wasn't leaking before, so I just left it. I didn't bother repainting these because they weren't rusty, and they would just get dirty anyway. So I rebuilt them, and reinstalled them with 949 racing braided lines all round as well (I wanted to get braided rear lines to try and get a harder pedal feel when braking hard, but it was cheaper to buy the full set). Putting the brakes back together I took the opportunity to change the brake pads at the front which had worn quite significantly with a vertical angle, so there was plenty of meat at the bottom of the pad, but at the top of the pad there was next to none. I put heaps of grease on the slider pins to ensure this doesn't happen any time soon. I am using QFM A1RM at the present. I also flushed the brake fluid and refilled with RBF600.
The setup
Spare front caliper piston, clean vs dirty
Caliper on car piston
Clean bore on spare calipers
Small mark in bore of caliper on car
It was about this time that I decided to install the ecliptech shiftlight which I brought off of a forum member earlier in the year. I love wiring so much (hint: this is a lie) so I decided to do this all myself again. I stupidly decided to remove the cluster cover when it was very cold, and snapped 3 of the locating pins off (fun times). I then almost had a fit trying to remove the "just flip up" cover for the harness side of the wiring going into the cluster to wire in the tacho signal. In wiring in the power I discovered something very interesting. At some point my car was modified to some level, and not in the stock condition that I received it in, as there are a whole lot of aftermarket connectors under the dash. I used a splitter (which was already on there) for the power and ground. I then ran the wires between the steering cover and the cluster. Sorry, there are no pictures of any of this, but you can see the results in the video a bit lower down this post.
I was in a bit of a mood for modifying at this stage, so I got one of 5 hard top spoilers for my car and installed it. Thoughts?? I quite like it. At first I was a bit like But now I am more like IMG_9407 copy by modena photo, on Flickr
Flash foward about 2 months to last week, and I have just received my new whiteline adjustable front sway bar, having purchased a similar rear one earlier in the year from a fellow forum member. I made this purchase in an attempt to decrease my marvelous amounts of body roll, and to try and keep my inside wheel more in contact with the ground on tighter corners, as all it was doing was spinning, which means I wasn't accelerating, which means I was losing time. And I don't like losing time. I started at the rear, because the rear is sooo much easier. I also went for a set of 949 end links cause they looked nice, and I thought the adjustment might help me in this mission previously described.
Obligatory old vs new shot
Interesting new bush on old bar shot
Installed
The front one is a prick and a half to remove AND to install due to everything that is going on up the front there. I neglected to take a picture of it, but the bolt holding the end link to the control arm had rusted so much that there was almost no threads left on it!! This could be the source of one of my knocks...
New front bar, and my sexy leg
You know what this is..
This is something interesting I noticed; the front sway bar wasnt straight; it had a bend in it, so that when it was put on flat ground one side was sitting up. Too much power perhaps (one can hope!)
While I had the front of the car raised I decided to take care of the tie rod ends on the car, which were looking like they had seen better days
I ended up just replacing them, which is good, because I could not for the life of me remove the passenger side. I tried first with a hammer (copper one, so not to damage it), but all that did was mushroom the top. I then went and got a pickle fork, but that did nothing other than rip the boot apart and spill grease everywhere. I then tried a screw type ball joint remover which got it first time, scaring the bejeezus out of me with a massive CRACK as it gave way. While they were off I replaced the tie rod boots, one of which was cracked. I then attempted a garage wheel alignment by screwing the tie rods back on to the mark which I made when I took them off (if that makes sense?). But it was still off (line of sight off), so I had to get an alignment, but the legends down at Beaurepairs in Chatswood were really kind and just did it for $65 for me.
So I took it for a really quiet drive once everything was torqued up (re-torqued everything while I was under the car) just around the block and there were heaps more noises coming from the rear of the car. Not good. I emailed emilio at 949 and he says there is supposed to be no noises. So, I jack the car up, remove the rear ones, and find that I have installed the sway bar wrong way around (it has a left and right side, unbenownst to me), and so the top rose joints had been stressed at were not moving as freely as they should. Damn. So I flip the sway bar around and put them back on, will have to replace those top rose joints at some point.
Correct orientation of sway bar:
So I take it for another drive, and the previous noises are mostly fixed, but now I have a noise at the front passenger end link. Turns out there is excessive play in the top rose joints ( &^$%^$#&%^ ROSE JOINTS), but after speaking with numerous mechanics and people who tell me that they know stuff, this is normal; that rose joints wear out and make noises.
After this I took it for a celebratory drive up the old pacific highway with a friend in his B18 CRX (soo loud) and RX7.
Flash foward to the present. Just yesterday I went to the circuit club wakefield day for the first time in what felt like forever. It was perfect weather, with a cool ambient and warm sun with no clouds so a warm track temperature. The first session was a bit of a mess for me; after about 2 laps of sighting/getting used to the track after so longa absence, I managed to boil the brake fluid; the pedal went almost all the way to the floor, and the smell of brakes was pungent in the cabin. I took it easy and pulled back in to let things cool down. In later sessions I didn't have the same issue again, which is really strange. I was, however, a bit disappointed by the lack of performance in the A1RM pads in comparison to my RSFS pads after all the reviews I read; they just did not have the same stopping power. So now I am thinking about looking into brake ducting solutions to keep things cool (not an issue before, so not sure if I should go back to what I had before, or try something new). I also forgot to adjust my koni's for this first session, so they were on my road setting of full soft. After adjusting the suspension the difference was actually quite amazing; I could feel it just pulling out of the pits!!!
Anywho, it was a sold out day, and soo many newbies, so jostling for free track position was the goal of the day in order to get a good lap in. I decided to try something new for this day, and remove the hardtop, after reading Guran's comparison of hardtop vs soft-top lap times. Somewhere in the second timed session I managed to set a new PB of 1:14.559 which I was super stoked about!!!
So now what you want; I know you don't want to read anything, all you want is pretty pictures and lots of videos, so here is a video to keep you satisfied.
Last edited by mitch_f1 on Mon Sep 05, 2011 12:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
You're really lucky it doesn't seem to have blown anything.
But now I am more like 
