Guran's NA6 "Little Reddy"

[Twiggy]

Little Reddy Junior!

[sliq]

sign him up to the Ferrari F1 Academy

[Guran]

Woo-hoo! My first issue as editor of Club Torque (MX-5 Club of NSW quarterly magazine) is published and arriving in people's mailboxes today. We will be putting a PDF version on the club website sometime soon, but for the moment I'd prefer to allow club members the benefit of reading the FULL COLOUR printed magazine.

Believe it or not, I only just realised that neither Andrew McKay or (our) Alex Hailstone are members of the club, and yet they both feature on the cover! Here's a good reason for them to rectify their non-membership. In any case, the cars for Targa High Country were supplied by Chris Gough from MX5 Racing, who is a long serving member of the club.


ClubTorque_2011_01_cover by Guran5, on Flickr

[Regie]

a sweet upgrade on the magazine Bryan... much better!

[gobsmax]

Nice one Brian

[bensale]

Nice, the cover looks great!!! Let us know when the PDF is up, I'd love to check it out! Also not only is your cover girl not a member of the NSW club but the photo was taken in Victoria too...

I'm really enjoying your thread by the way, heaps of good reading, I always check out every update =) Thanks!

[KRM]

Bryan

Received the latest Club Torque in the mail today.

Very well done a very nice presentation and a good read.
You have taken off from Glens level and moved it forwarded.
Well done to all the people who contributed.

[Guran]

Thanks everyone. It's great to receive such glowing feedback and confirmation that I'm headed in the right direction with Club Torque. It's very early days for me and Adobe InDesign, and I expect the layout will only improve further from here on. Also, if anyone has need for a high quality printing job at a decent price, I highly recommend Print Media - they've been awesome to deal with.

[Dweezle]

BRAVO!!!

Love the new look and Layout.
looks like alot of work has gone into it.

Congrats Bryan.

[Guran]

Back in August, I wrote about how my PB lap at Wakefield Park (1:17.00 on Adrenalins) compared against the corner speeds recorded by Warren Luff in the annual Bang For Your Bucks test by MOTOR magazine. Was that just a peculiarity of Wakefield Park, given that I've done hundreds of laps there in Little Reddy? Hmmmm ...

February 2011 issue of MOTOR has the annual Performance Car Cup at Phillip Island, so this is an opportunity to compare against the corner speeds I achieved on my 2:08.28 PB lap on 12th December 2010. It's worth noting that this was only my second drive on the track, and the first time I only had a half dozen laps (all but three were in the wet).

Sure, everything there from the Golf R (1:55.3) to the Porsche 911 GT3 RS (1:42.2) blitzed my stock NA6 in terms of lap times. But that's to be expected given the huge advantage those cars have in power/weight, ranging from 127kW/t to 293kW/t (vs 89kW/t for my NA6), and top speed (on track) ranging from 216km/hr to 259km/hr (vs 181km/hr for my NA6).

The slow corners were a different story. My minimum speed at Honda (61.1km/hr) was quicker than everything that Warren Luff tested, and at MG (62.0km/hr) I was only beaten by the semi-slick-shod GT3 RS (63.4km/hr), and everything else was at least 2-3km/hr slower.

On the mid-range corners, my speeds were in the top half of the field:
Southern Loop (100.7km/hr) beaten by GT3 RS (106.0), LP550-2 (103.6), RS5 (103.3), and Boxster Spyder (101.3)
Siberia (84.3km/hr) beaten by GT3 RS (87.8 ), LP550-2 (87.4), Boxster Spyder (85.4), and Megane RS (85.3).

So in those slow and mid-range corners, my NA6 was consistently quicker than C63 AMG, Jag XJ, FPV GT-P, Focus RS, WRX STI, Golf R, and TT RS!!! 20-year-old LWS tech wins the day!

On the other hand, my pussy-footing through turn 1 was evidenced by my 148.4km/hr corner speed, which was well below the range set by Luffy (152.6-165.8km/hr, and 178.5km/hr in the GT3 RS). I did improve that a bit to 151.0km/hr on the last lap of the day, but there was still plenty to go. So clearly, more bravery is required for my next visit to the Island.


PI101212_12828 by Guran5, on Flickr

[bensale]

I've been wanting to do the same thing since reading that article! Thanks for that!!!

Like you I looked at the corner speeds and the only two corners we're really off the pace were turn 1 and turn 3. Interesting that based on my minimum rpm on my video and some Motor mag data from the Nov 89 issue which has the na6's speed in all gears at 7000rpm (not a precise science I know but should be close enough) I'm dropping to 158kph in turn one which puts me faster than the RS5, Jag and C63 AMG but still behind even the FPV GT-P so I think i need a little more bravery next time too! The numbers in turn 4 are cool, 5 kph quicker than a GT3RS and over 10kph quicker than the Lambo LP550-2!!! Annoyingly I can't see the tacho in any of the other corners so can't work many of the speeds out...

You doing something like this really explains why the turbo MX-5's are so quick! I would love to see your graph overlayed with the data from the GT3 and also something like an FPV.

[Guran]

Glad to hear you appreciated the comparison, Ben. Yes, it helps having that GPS data for this sort of thing. Have you considered picking up an old Nokia phone, GPS receiver and using Racechrono? Judging by his videos, I'd think Brendan should be able to get you started on that setup. Phil (manga_blue) is a whizz with Racechrono too.

re. calculating road speed from rpm

I think you meant the Oct 1989 issue of WHEELS. I'm not sure how they got those figures for top speed in each gear, because they are slower than what you get from a direct calculation. Here's the equation you need:

km/hr per 1000rpm = PI x 60 x (2 x W x P / 100 + D x 25.4) / (R x G x 1000)

where W is tyre width (mm), P is tyre profile (eg. 60 for 185/60R14), D is wheel diameter (inches), R is differential ratio, and G is gear ratio. With stock gear ratios, diff and 185/60R14 tyres, this works out at (WHEELS figure in parentheses):

1st 57km/hr (55km/hr)
2nd 94km/hr (90km/hr)
3rd 133km/hr (127km/hr)
4th 177km/hr (169km/hr)

I also see figures similar to what WHEELS reported, and that's with changing up a little beyond 7000rpm. Maybe the rev counter tends to over-read the rpm slightly, just like the speedo does? The rpm that gives the closest match to the speeds reported by WHEELS is 6700rpm (they claimed it was 7000rpm). I've not tried logging the rpm - maybe someone who has can comment?

[bensale]

I think I'll have to look into that, it seems like a very worthwhile analysis tool as saves trying to figure stuff out like this. I actually currently have a Nokia GPS phone but it's not working perfect at the minute and will soon be replaced by one of those apple things...

Thats interesting. I've attached a photo of what was printed in the November Motor Magazine, the figures are from a comparison test they did which included the MX-5. It's not the wheels issue you refer to as that is just about the only issue with an MX-5 in it I don't have from that era of wheels mags... Looking there speed at 7000rpm it seems to directly correlate to your speed at the 7200rpm cut out so I would say in this case motor seems to have it right.

My actual figures would be slightly higher as I'm running 195/60/14 tyres... There is potential that the tacho does read a bit slow, if that is the case the speed is probably offsets my lower tyre size It would be interesting to log rpm and compare.

[Guran]

Gah! I mis-read your previous post and assumed you were talking about the WHEELS review from 1989 . I just revisited my library and pulled out the Nov 1989 issue of Modern Motor to have a read. You're correct of course: both WHEELS and Modern Motor reported similar figures for max speed at 7000rpm. There's up to 2km/hr difference in their figures, but that could be due to calibration errors.

[CoffeeBoss]

Felt compelled to weigh in with some praise of my own for the new look (and feel!) of the club magazine.

It's a much needed boost in print quality and layout.

Kudos to your efforts Bryan!



Looking forward to the universal iPhone + iPad app.