Mx5, Chapter 2

[The American]

Yep! if I can get my hands on another PPF, I will be able to swap it before Noosa. Monday's the cut off for a full refund of the entry fee, so will see what I can hunt up on Monday.

There's still plenty that hasn't cracked, and this may explain a certain 'creak' that I've always wondered about but not been able to trace...

[Okibi]

Fingers crossed you can find one, perhaps someone who's gone the Honda or the V8 route has one laying around.

[The American]

Fingers crossed you can find one...

This is the brilliance of the forum. I had two offers by 2am, and a new PPF in my garage by 10am.

Just need to remove/refit now.

[Okibi]

Awesome!

[The American]

The broken PPF is out. It's identical to the replacement except for the earth strap placement. Will drill and tap a new hole and then reinstall.

[The American]

At the beginning of each event lately, my exhaust tip is sitting squarely in the middle of the factory cut out in the bumper, but by the end of it, the tip has migrated left towards the middle of the bumper by about 2.5cm, and a rattle develops in hard right hand right-hand corners. The exhaust has been moving on it's rubber hangers, and I've been wiggling it back into position, and then it is fine again until the end of the next event...

Anyway, I went looking for the location of the rattle - you can see the dark patch on the exhaust where it has been contacting where it passes through the rear subframe:



And while looking for that, I found the cracked PPF...



By Sunday morning, I had picked up a new second hand PPF from a friendly forumite, and during the evenings this week I removed and refitted the replacement PPF.

NA and NB PPFs appear to be dimensionally identical, but there do appear to be some differences in the mounting points for the wiring that runs the length of the PPF.



The replacement PPF had a few fewer holes to attach the clips from the wiring, and the earth strap was located somewhere else. Original NB2 PPF on the right. Replacement PPF of unknown model, showing the missing holes on the left:



A drill and tap later...




...and it was all ready to reinstal

[The American]

Hi All,

The Noosa Midyear Hillclimb is run and done and I came home with the car in one piece and with first place in the Modern Sports Cars 2000cc and over class. A 350z from Townsville put up quite a fight in some very wet conditions. Given a few more runs, I think he would have had better pace!

Also, no new PB - I was fractionally under 1 second off the pace of last year



There's photos and videos at https://www.facebook.com/ManDrivesCar/

There was also a solid reminder of why the Noosa Hill Climb is not to be trifled with:





I had a moment of my own that could have gotten messy:

[ManiacLachy]

Well done! And well controlled to stay out of the wall on that close call

[The American]

**Cross posted from the Leyburn Sprints thread**

Here's a summary of my weekend at the Leyburn Sprints with photos (can find more of them here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.545726152278175.1073741843.530411863809604&type=1&l=9f80916488

I took at day off work (**gasp**) to attend this event, which meant I could drive out, set up camp and get scrutineered, and still have some time to look around the town before dark.

By the time I arrived, there was already a large tent city/caravan park set up with competitors preparing their cars for the following day. This Honda -swapped mini was the first to catch my eye:


Followed by the growing assembly of vintage caravans:



A few other snaps from around the town:



A rendering of the winner of the original 1949 Australian Grand Prix that took place on a nearby airfield



I then turned my attention to the track, and went for a walk around it. The start line is right in front of the pub, which means that when staging for a run, you're reverse parked right at the entrance to the public bar:

The track itself is narrow bitumen, and makes its way through a series of 90 degree turns through the town before a sweeping left hand turn to the finish line: START, Right, Left, Right, Right,'the chute' Right, chicane, sweeping Left FINISH. Because the track is so narrow, there’s limited choice of ‘line’ if you plan to stay on the black stuff.
One of the details that stood out to me was the barriers – beautifully painted to match the scenery:



There were loads of interesting cars on site. This one was probably my favourite – a 1938 Offenhauser Sprint Car:

Day one was cold and began with some showers that kept things cool for the morning. On my first run, I struggled with a lack of grip, cold brake pads etc:

At the end of the day, three and a quarter runs for the whole field had been completed, and I think I finished the day in 2nd place behind this yellow Porsche GT3

Dinner and beer at the pub followed by bed.
Overnight, it felt much colder than it had the first night, and with no clouds to keep the heat in, and no wind, the temps dropped considerably. I’d slept in a tent in the pits, and there was a decent frost on the ground when I ventured out after dawn.
The roof of a Mini:

The Stratton’s Mx-5

An unconventional tent peg

The Mx-5’s windscreen

Day two warmed up to be very promising, and times quickly began to drop. Unfortunately, a few competitors also found the limits of the track in unfriendly circumstances.

This Commodore was dríven by my neighbour in the pits and he came unstuck after the finish line – sadly it did not look repairable to me

Stuart Reid’s Audi Quattro also copped a knock


Throughout the day, I found myself chasing the last time set by the driver of the yellow GT3, and going into the last run of the day, he still had a 1.8 second lead over my best time. It’s a large part of what makes this fun – chasing someone to see if I can just get in front. My last run of the day was my best and it was *just* enough for 1st in class and 19th outright:

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I think I say this after every event - I had a great time! (but this one was particularly good)

[The American]

By the end of the Pittsworth Sprints there was not much left of the A050's:

[speed]

I'm really enjoying this thread. The trials, tribulations and of course the pictures.
Even if just to spectate, I must get out to the track more

Sent from my GT-I9506 using Tapatalk

[IanR]

Great posting! Love the pics and event info's.

[The American]

Naw, you guys! That might be just enough encouragement to get a Pittsworth write up posted.

[The American]

The most recent outing for the White Mouse was only 2 weeks after the Leyburn Historic Sprints, and was just around the corner from Leyburn, in Pittsworth – The Pittsworth Sprints.
The Leyburn Sprints were well promoted on Social Media and attracted over 200 entrants. By contrast, you would not have known about the Pittsworth Sprints if you were watching social media airways.
Entries were by good old fashioned snail mail…

…and the confirmation of my entry along with entry passes came back the same way.
Pittsworth is town of around 5000 people about 40 minutes drive from Toowoomba on the Western Downs, and the sprints take place in the industrial estate on the edge of town over three days on the first weekend in September each year. I believe this year was the 20th year it has been run.
The Millmerran Auto Club (http://www.millmerranautoclub.com) runs the event each year, as well as their regular dirt sprint competitions during the year at the Reserve Raceway, Millmerran
My weekend got off to a bumpy start when I could not locate the keys to the wheel lock on my car trailer, and therefore could not leave for the 2 hour drive to the event. I had fitted the lock after I parked the car two weeks earlier, and had stashed the keys somewhere that I could not remember.
I spent a few hours of Friday morning up-ending the house looking for them, when I realised that the keys could actually be sitting on the ground somewhere at Leyburn. I concluded that they could actually be already long gone.
I decided that I would rather sacrifice the lock and leave rather than keep looking. I pulled out my angle grinder, set up the extension cord, put my safety glasses and ear protection on, pulled on my left welding glove and then my right – at that moment I was reminded of where I’d stashed the keys…

…inside my right-hand glove. **face palm**
I was then able to finish loading up and depart.
I arrived after midday to a rather large tent city (lots of green grass to camp on) and it was apparent that a very large field of competitors had already arrived (about a 160 entries I think).

I ended up camping next to a father and son who both had Mazda’s. Ken drives a red Rx7 and Angus a highly modified, NA with turbo rotary.



Unfortunately, Angus’ beast had developed a small niggle which meant he did not get a clean run all weekend – modified car life! Still, a pretty awesome bit of Mx-5 that he put together himself.
Ken and Angus helped me set up my camp in very wind conditions and let me tie my gazebo to their truck (which was a good thing when the storm hit).
The Friday night run sheet after scrutineering, was a ¼ mile big rigs demonstration…


…a drivers briefing…

and then night sighting runs of the Saturday layout of the sprint track.

During the first round of the night runs the Maloo Ute of one of the Sponsors (Top of the Range Builders) came unstuck and was significantly bent

Not long after this, the commentator let everyone know that a storm front was approaching, and any further track activity was abandoned. I spent a good while holding onto my gazebo and getting generally saturated before heading off solve some minor tent leaks and then to bed.

Saturday morning was damp and got off to a slow start due to some further squalls and generally damp conditions. This was what the pit access I’d planned to use looked like on Saturday morning:

The last corner was a bit of fun to watch for the first few runs of the day – this was the best clip I took:

On my second run for the day, I had a slippery moment that could have been an early end to the weekend…

At this point it’s worth describing how the competition at Pittsworth currently works (trialled last year and repeated this year).
Friday night isn’t competitive, and at the drivers briefing, drivers were asked to keep any sliding or ‘circle work’ to a minimum, but were invited to let off a little ‘steam’.
For Saturday the sprint circuit runs in an anti-clockwise direction, and on this Saturday there were 5 runs. For Sunday the direction is reversed and a chicane is moved to another part of the track. This means that there are two very different tracks to learn over the weekend – it is very much like two separate competitions and is run as such. There’s an award for the fastest in class for each day. Each driver’s best time from each day is then added together to give their overall time and award for the weekend. A further 5 runs were fitted in for all competitors.
I was number 149 and found that I was able to watch cars 1 through to about 80, before I needed to get ready to line up for my run. It’s a pretty good mix of watching the lines other drivers take and attempting your own. Times were up at the timing van immediately after each run so you could see how your class was progressing.
The class I was placed in for this event was “Sports Cars Turbo/Supercharged 1601cc-3000cc” and in addition my Mx5, was Angus’s rotary NA, an RX7, A Mitsubish Starion, two Silvia’s and an R32 Skyline.
Other than Angus’s NA, this Silvia was the only other car from my class that I appear to have grabbed a snap of…

As usual, there were loads of other interesting machines
Mark Crespan’s Cobra is always fun to watch/listen to

Phil Sutcliffe’s GTR Skyline which currently holds the track record and was first outright again this year:
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Mitchell Evan’s GT4 Celica was very quick (if not much to look at)


Perhaps my favourite was this wide-bodied Cortina creation





By the of Saturday, I had a .75 second margin in front of the next quickest in my class (Jake Wilkinson in his Silvia)
Saturday night was a burnout competition, which really is not my scene, so after a quick look I wandered into the town and had some Chinese. This is not a picture of my food, but as the township was neatly down wind of the burnout competition, this illustrates the flavour of my dinner: “Blue Rubber beef black bean”
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My other neighbours in the pits introduced themselves when they began setting up their very complex Big W spec 10 man tent. Named not because it sleeps 10 men, but because it requires at least 10 men to erect it. Over the course of the weekend, I learned that that the owner of the car (Paul) had campaigned with his son at Targa Tasmania (and had finished). A number of his mates had taken two weeks of their personal leave to crew for him and his son for the Rally. His ‘thank you’ was to crew for each one of his friends at one of the Queensland regional sprint events – they’d drive his car and he’d crew for them.
They came away with the ‘chocolates’ in their class for the weekend


Sunday was clear and eventually warm. It was run in the reverse direction. My tyres were not offering much grip and they felt like they were past their use-by date. You can see at some points in these next clips that even in third gear they were struggling. Time for new shoes.

My rear tyres were pretty much cactus at the start of the day and by the end of it they were shot. Shot Cactus.

In the end, I was able to find a few tenths over the Silvia and picked up the top spot for Sunday and the outright class win for the weekend.

[Okibi]

Great work and great write up