Guran's NA6 "Little Reddy"

[tbro]

I just checked the MX5 Mania website and they quote $165 for front Hawk HP Plus pads. I think that buys only one pair though. I paid $165 for two pairs of front Ultimates at Autobarn, so the Hawk pads would cost twice that. It'll be interesting to see how the Ultimates cope with semi-slicks, especially with more track time at Eastern Creek. If they start to feel the extra load, then I'll give the Hawk pads a try.

Hey mate,
Have a look see at the QFM pads, a lot easier on rotors and stops brilliantly. I find their a pad that work reasonably well stone cold and just keep getting better the harder you use them, which is essential at Lakeside

Have you told Mumma Bear how much you've spent yet!!!!! If so, your a gamer man than me!!

Have FUN.

Terry

[Guran]

Hey mate,
Have a look see at the QFM pads, a lot easier on rotors and stops brilliantly. I find their a pad that work reasonably well stone cold and just keep getting better the harder you use them, which is essential at Lakeside

Thanks for the tip Terry. I'll check them out. Which QFM pads do you use? Any recommendations for suppliers?

Have you told Mumma Bear how much you've spent yet!!!!! If so, your a gamer man than me!!

Strewth I'm not THAT crazy! Can't hide from the BIG purchases though and my fallback position is "I could sell those things anytime and get most of the money back". Hopefully I'll never need to test the theory.

[Lukus]

Hey Bryan,

I noticed you don't have a garage allocation.

I believe when you hire a garage it includes 2 car spots so if you want, you can take one of them. It's garage #28

[Guran]

Thanks for the offer Luke. Actually Stewart Temesvary has booked four garages to share amongst the MX-5 Club members, myself included. I'll look you up if those garages fill up early! There are 16 MX-5s entered!

[Lukus]

Thanks for the offer Luke. Actually Stewart Temesvary has booked four garages to share amongst the MX-5 Club members, myself included. I'll look you up if those garages fill up early! There are 16 MX-5s entered!

I know, alot of the buggers are in 2A!

Will be a tough contest yet again!!!

[Hellmun]

I'll see your total expense and raise you -----Total so Far = $14,769.90 + $24,500 = $39269.90 as of 31/1/2008 (Not counting alignments, trackdays, licenses etc)

That's up the page on my mx5 spreadsheet

[Lukus]

Hey Mark,

That's quite a figure for 2 years!

Btw, feel free to make use of the vacant garage should you not be using one of the MX5 club garages. You're more than welcome too it, assuming Bryan doesn't need it!

[Guran]

Ouch! I know when to admit defeat Mark. At the rate I'm going, it'll be a few more years before I get near your tally, and that's counting all the trackday fees. The next Supersprint on 7th March can't come soon enough. I'm itching to get back to Eastern Creek.

[Charlie Brown]

I'll see your total expense and raise you -----Total so Far = $14,769.90 + $24,500 = $39269.90 as of 31/1/2008 (Not counting alignments, trackdays, licenses etc)

That's up the page on my mx5 spreadsheet

No wonder I'm having trouble catching you, I'm not spending enough. What happened between 31/1/2008 and now?

I also got a shock when I checked my list from March 2007 till now. It added up to $6,500 for everything that went onto/into the car for track purposes. ie tyres (5 sets), rims, shocks (2 sets), sways, pads (5 sets), rotors, header, CAI, oil ,etc., no entry fees. I thought maybe half that.

[CoffeeBoss]

Thanks Joe. My inspiration is Coffeeboss ... so prepare for a wordy and personal journey!

Haha! I'm flattered, and a little ashamed I haven't read this thread until now. Have very much enjoyed the journey so far though.

I suspect we may have crossed paths in the past, I used to do drives with some of the Mini2 crew, including Snapper on occasion.

the clubMINI NSW committee seemed to be threatened by the MINI forum communities and this caused (and continues to cause) plenty of ridiculous friction. The MX-5 community is a very pleasant change!

I have much the same observations to make! The Renault community has a similar disparity between the club proper and the forums. It seems silly, but it seems some people perceive there's a gap that can't be crossed?!

We still haven't gone on that drive yet! Put it on the ToDo list

[Guran]

Haha! I'm flattered, and a little ashamed I haven't read this thread until now. Have very much enjoyed the journey so far though.

Thanks. It's good to hear you're enjoying it.

I suspect we may have crossed paths in the past, I used to do drives with some of the Mini2 crew, including Snapper on occasion.

Jeez Snapper's a bit of a slut isn't he? He gets around!

We still haven't gone on that drive yet! Put it on the ToDo list

I'm trying, I'm trying! My calendar's been a bit hectic recently. But if you're up for a morning drive and coffee, any of the next three Saturdays are fine with me.

[Guran]

The passenger window on Little Reddy finally decided to stop working completely, and after copping a whinge from Fiona about how hot it was to drive with the windows up all the time, I was allotted some time to fix it. Bought a set of new cables from MX-5 Mania ($180) last Saturday and yesterday started the job. Everything went by the book ... except ...

The Phillips head screws on the regulator motor were held in with locktite, and I stripped the head on one of them. Solved that by cutting a slot in the head and removed it with a flat-head screwdriver.



The capstans on the cables were slightly too long to fit in the anchor. Solved that by filing them down to size.





You can never have too much grease right?


Here's the assembly all back together and ready to be re-fitted into the door.


Next I connected the wire harness back to the car to test it. The mechanism went down no problem, but refused to go up. Grrrr! I tested the window motor by running some wires from the car battery directly to the motor terminals. It worked! OK so that means the switch itself was dodgy. Checked the resistance on various switch settings and sure enough, was getting 10-15 ohms with the passenger switch in the down position (should be zero ohms). I opened up the switch to find lots of oxidation on the contacts. Gave them a clean with fine sandpaper, reassembled the switch, and the resistance was much better (~4-5 ohms). Still need a new switch but at least it works now.



Reassembled the passenger window, tested it again and thankfully all was well.

The driver's side window assembly was next to come out. The only glitch this time was when a tab on the plastic guide/cable stop block snapped off while reassembling it. I need to track down a replacement, but for now I held it in place with a nut and bolt. Works OK, but the bolt sticks out a bit and prevents the window from descending the last 20mm.



It's all back together now and works a treat. Along the way, I also replaced the gearshift rubber gaiter ($80) which had perished. The gear changes now have a bit more resistance to them and feel a lot smoother.

Oh and I also installed a new driver's side mirror to replace the one that got squashed at Wakefield Park in October. I got it cheap from MX-5 Mania ($80) because it had a tiny scratch in the paint. See if you can spot it! Very happy with the result, except that the red outer ring mismatches the black ring on the original passenger side mirror. I like the slight fisheye on the mirror too.





After all this hard work, I had a quick drive over to Jamberoo. I'm loving the feel of the new front pads/rotors and brake fluid, plus the gear change is nicely refreshed. And of course, the windows go up and down like they should!

[Hellmun]

I'll see your total expense and raise you -----Total so Far = $14,769.90 + $24,500 = $39269.90 as of 31/1/2008 (Not counting alignments, trackdays, licenses etc)

That's up the page on my mx5 spreadsheet

No wonder I'm having trouble catching you, I'm not spending enough. What happened between 31/1/2008 and now?

I also got a shock when I checked my list from March 2007 till now. It added up to $6,500 for everything that went onto/into the car for track purposes. ie tyres (5 sets), rims, shocks (2 sets), sways, pads (5 sets), rotors, header, CAI, oil ,etc., no entry fees. I thought maybe half that.

Heh. Well my car was quite a bit cheaper than yours to begin with. A lot of it isn't purely performance related. We have guard rolling, brake pads, oil, tyres , turbo bits...etc. I think the only performance related expensive since that point was the carbon roof. I also have a few bits that won't go on the car until I do a race engine. All up though I've spent a tidy sum more in the last 2 years.... The trip from 1:14's to 1:10's was all driving/tuning though. I will get around to doing one of these threads one day instead of invading Bryan's

[Guran]

7th March 2010
NSW Supersprint Round 2 at Eastern Creek

I've dríven Eastern Creek once before in Little Reddy, back in July last year, and was looking forward to having another go. Only problem is that as the days counted down, the weather forecast was looking increasingly bad. At 11pm the night before, the forecast was an almost certainty of rain throughout the day. Armed with this advice, I decided to go with Adrenalins and the more weather-proof stock hardtop. Yes, very clever strategy!

Sunday arrived, and sure enough the rain never eventuated and everyone else was on semi-slicks. Bugger. Lesson learnt! There were 111 drivers and I only managed to get in four runs of three laps each. I was hoping for a fifth run but the day was cancelled early at ~4pm after a Clubman blew an engine and coated half the track in oil. So in those 12 laps, my best time was 2:09.175. I was disappointed with that since I'd previously done a couple of 2:06.0 laps.

Throughout the day I used one of my new "spy cameras" to capture video of my track time. I attached the "gum camera" to one of the vertical plastic spars in the front intake "mouth". It was only 35cm off the ground and the footage was fantastic! Post processing with VirtualDub allowed me to correct the distorted 720x480 image to a true 640x480.

Best lap of 2:09.175, following Glen Thomas in his stock NB8B.



I finished 4th in Type 1 and 4th in Class 1B. Sounds great, but there were only 4 entries in each. Ah well, at least I helped the MX-5 Club with 7 points towards the club championship. After two rounds, the MX-5 Club leads the championship on 208 points, and NSWRRC is second on 200 points.

Afterwards I analysed my PerformanceBox data to figure out why I was so far off the pace compared to my previous run in July when I clocked a best lap of 2:06.0 (twice). First look indicated that I still had similar top speed down the straight (170km/hr). But comparing my 2:06.0 laps with the 2:09.2 lap revealed that my minimum corner speed on several turns was the prime culprit:



You can see above that my corner speed on turns 5 and 7 were the main problems. I felt on the day that I was struggling with those two and at least the data is supporting that. Next I determined my highest minimum speed on each turn for the two dates and found that I was consistently slower through the corners. The next graph shows that I was well off the pace from turn 4 to turn 8.



Why? To start with, there's track temperature since I'm comparing February and July runs. Secondly, this time I was on brand new Adrenalins whereas they were five trackdays old back in July - they felt quite skatey. Thirdly, I had much less track time to get the feel of things: 12 laps in February versus 28 laps in July. And lastly, I can't help but wonder if there might have been something on the track surface between turns 3 and 9???

Better luck next time!

[CoffeeBoss]

Sunday arrived, and sure enough the rain never eventuated and everyone else was on semi-slicks.

Haha! The exact same thing happened to me when I went to Oran Park GP in January.

I love the way you analyse the data - it's great to see how telling it can be on how your car and your driving are actually performing on any given day.

Would you be able to provide a breakdown of exactly what you use to trap and collate all the data? Are you manually inputting everything into Excel to output your graphs?

(Which he carries on his iPhone to might add, everyone. Now that's dedication!)

Bryan, you're going to run my race team when I rich and can afford one, haha!