AW11 – The Prodigal Son Returns

Posted on 2022-10-012022-10-09 by Half Done Things

Thanks to some mates, the AW11 has been dragged from storage where it was half buried in red soil and brought 1200+km home.

In the daylight we unloaded it and put it into the garage.
Oh boy, it’s rough…

There is a lot of work to do to tidy it up, including some rust repairs, a few basic body mods (fill in the boot wing holes, LED light conversion, etc) and some repairs of prior builds like the vented bonnet (Might be time for a fiber version). It will take a long time, but I’m excited that it’s finally home.

Track Day – Queensland Raceway – 22/08/2014

Posted on 2014-08-222021-08-08 by Half Done Things

So we had a total of 5 MR2’s on this damp day, not a bad turn out really considering it’s a Friday and the weather was meek.

First session out, the SlushDub decided after just half a lap, the intercooler hose should no longer be apart of the intake path.

Thanks to BEN77 for the spare hose clamp!

The best place for a P Plater to be getting to know their car and their limits.

Red ones go faster!

Ben found out what happens when you come into a corner too fast in the wet…. Lucky it wasn’t Mt Nebo…

Graham also found his way off the track, but didn’t bring half the field home…

Eric back in after a session of chasing Excels…

Goodbye head gasket!

The main reason why the SlushDub did so many circles…

Downshift Track Battle – 21/04/2013

Posted on 2013-04-222021-08-08 by Half Done Things

This event turned out to be a pretty good event for the first ever Downshift track day, big thumbs up to these guys for organising an event that was not only good for the competitors, but the spectators. The Holden Driver Training facility is a really well setup facility and the Norwell Park Circuit itself is a great designed track with a good mix of high speed corners, switch overs and hair pins.

Well all the preparation work for the TrackDub went well for this event, bar a small wiring problem that reared it’s ugly head 10mins out of town, but it was fixed quick enough.

All ready to go!

Times.
The TrackDub is car D18 on the time sheets.

My best lap of the day was a 1:07.7 during the 3rd session, went to my head in the last few sessions as I tried furiously to beat it, only to end up with over shooting braking points, missing apexes, over steering corner exits and a high speed off track experience on the final corner.

Have a few things to sort out on the TrackDub that are holding it/my potential back.
– Brakes, think I need to do a full system flush again as I think I have air in the lines somewhere, it was causing some insane squirrel braking that proved interesting. Other then that, the Hilux 1″ master cylinder made the brakes pedal feel awesomely better.

– Oil temp / pressure, need to get myself a digital temp and pressure gauges rigged up on the car, I’m getting some pretty crap oil pressure readings and I need to find out if it’s oil related (too thin), heat related (thinning the oil out) or mechanical related (oil pump is rooted).

– Race seat, Recaro seat out of the SlushDub just doesn’t cut it, time to blow some cash on a Sparco Sprint V fixed back seat and throw my harnesses back in. I’m pretty sore today from bracing all day yesterday.

– Tires, I’ve got the R888’s but I really don’t think I’m getting the full potential out of them and I need to learn more about setting them up correctly in regards to pressures. I never get the tires over 60’c (75’c is suppose to be a nice spot for R888’s IIRC), but they definitely felt like they were baking a few times when I was pushing hard. I’m tempted to just buy some Federal 595RS-R’s and do some back to back laps to see how well on the street tires. If my times are similar, I can save some cash by using the street tires and focus on learning to drive better instead of leveraging on a better quality tire.

– Suspension, I’ve got a rear tie rod that has some slop in it, so I need to replace it and I need to finish off my camber plates to allow some better adjustment of camber to allow quick adjustments during a track day. I need to look at my sway bars as well, I think the rear one might have to come off

Till next time!

A couple of weeks later, I received my photo pack from sirck.com.au of the DownShift Track Battle.
Good photos, just none of the good action, except my off at turn 7!

The Pearly Whites

Posted on 2013-04-192021-08-08 by Half Done Things

For a long while now, I’ve found the tarnished, faded and brake dust baked color of my rims has just been a little boring.

So I decided to the the Nappisan out and make my rims white!

Actually, I got the oven cleaner out… They went from this:
and this

to this

I think oven cleaner worked well because of all these bad things it says not to do with it. Like spray on aluminium…

I think I ignored 7-8 warnings >.>

A quick trip to SuperTheif Auto for 4 cans of paint and some masking tape, and I was on my way to sparkly whites!

Nek minut!

One of them is really ****, I start spraying on the edge of dark, and the humidity went up, so the paint took about 4x longer to dry, I added my coats 15 mins apart (oblivious to the paint not drying) and I ended up with a bunch of runs on one of the rims. So I dug out the winter heater and turned my bathroom into a make shift oven to help the coats set and cure.

Will do the remaining two wheels tomorrow night and it should be looking all sexy for the DownShift Track Battle!

AW11 20V Electrigremlins – part 2

Posted on 2013-04-132021-08-08 by Half Done Things

I’ve procrastinated too much the past few weeks and the DownShift Track Battle is only next weekend, I guess I should get the car going >.>

The loom is now 80% done, just have to run some new power wires for the COPs loom, test it all back in the car, then put it in some loom sleeve and wrap it back up in tape.. I’ve managed to remove a bunch of connectors that are not needed, replaced all the melted earth wires, tidied up the wiring and fix a couple of dodgy things, like the fuel pump running off the ignition, now it runs off a fused relay that is controlled by the ECU :D.

Here’s to hoping the problems are now fixed, if not, I might have to go repossess my Paseo for a last minute track car…

AW11 20V Electrigremlins – part 1

Posted on 2013-03-222021-08-08 by Half Done Things

Well when the AW11 have to come home on the back of the tilt tray after the MR2 cruise, I found that it had some wiring issues, specifically around the grounds on the head.

Ah, nothing like fixing some dodgy work done by previous people. Finally got into pulling the 20V loom out today after a really lazy easter… I found a bunch of cut wires just floating in the loom and a bunch of melted grounds and power wires. I’ve started pulling extra unused circuits out of the loom and removed a couple of connectors I no longer use (AFM, O2 etc etc).

Some melted and corroded ground wires.

Random wires that had just been cut and left floating in the loom

The stripped down loom

A bunch of wires that I’ll remove from the loom shortly, once I double check they are not important.

A pile of rubbish I have already removed from the loom.

AW11 Master Cylinder Upgrade – Hilux 1″

Posted on 2013-03-092021-08-08 by Half Done Things

When the ST185 twin pot and SW20 22V brakes went on, it left the car with a rather soft, lackluster pedal feel due to the now undersized master cylinder.
I rectified this by purchasing a 1″ Hilux master cylinder.

Installing the Hilux master cylinder was a breeze, about 15-20mins work tops.

It just needs a small tweak to the brake lines due to the lines connecting to the master horizontally, while the stock one is more 45 degrees in from the top. (shown below)

There is now more space between the tank on the master cylinder and my strut brace, so it’s actually easier to get a bottle of fluid in there to top it up.

SlideWize – 23/02/2013

Posted on 2013-02-252021-08-08 by Half Done Things

Another great slidewize event, plenty of fun in the skid sessions and some good competition in the timed events. Had a lot of fun with hand brake initiated drifts and rev limiter smashing peg leg exits.
I struggled a lot with front end understeer, which is attributed to sub-par front tires and probably and excessive amount of front camber on my current track alignment. Going to run my R888’s next time, adjust my camber back to some more street sensible and probably drop a 50kg bag of sand into the frunk to give the front end of the car some weight for traction!

Bunch of photos I snap during the day.

Sunday was followed up with the QLD MR2 Cruise through the Samford Valley and then up Mt Mee for some thrilling scenic driving. Dom and myself detoured from the pack and hit up the Campbells Pocket Rally Stage before joining the rest of the group at Kilcoy for lunch. I separated from the cruise to head home while everyone else did the western loop back to Brisbane, however 40km from home, the TrackDub developed a really bad electrical problem. At first it was like the ignition was breaking down, and throttling caused the motor to die, while a couple of the dash gauges fluttered around all over the shop in a retarded fashion. I could start the motor, get it to run for 5-10 seconds before it would struggle to idle or conk out. $200 later, it was tow tracked home, where I couldn’t get the motor to fire up. So I drove it up the drive way using the starter motor, and then a little after that, I couldn’t even get the motor to crank over, I just get nothing when the key is turned. However, with the epic amounts of rain that is currently falling and no space in the garage, it looks like it will be a week or two before I can start tracking down what the hell is going on.

My initial thoughts are, the regulator in the alternator has **** itself and was unleashing 20+ volt spikes into the ECU, which would make it shut down, I could also explain my gauges going nuts and my inverter throwing under/over voltage warning beeps everywhere. Other ideas are that there are is some damaged wiring loom that is shorting and has melted, causing some unknown damage to other things. This break down comes at a semi-convient time, simply because in the next few weeks the motor will be dropped so I can install the new 6 speed gearbox and LSD, so I can take this opportunity to do both jobs at once.

The MR2 Challenge – Day 6 – Hot, Cold, Whatever…. We drive!

Posted on 2013-01-172022-10-09 by Half Done Things

Once again, our trip involved 40+’c heat and thunderstorms that brought traffic to a crawl….
But after 10+ hrs, we made it home!

SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPP……

The MR2 Challenge – Day 5 – Set Sail, For Queensland!

Posted on 2013-01-162022-10-09 by Half Done Things

So it was time to head home… Sadly… We’d met some great people, made a bunch of new friends and had an awesome time on the track, but now we must head home.
We loaded up the cars.

Blessed the AW11 at the Wakefield Shrine (front gates), and began the trip home.

Into Goulburn…. For Breakfast, a massage (2 days of laps annihilated my shoulder 🙁 ) and some shopping

And found me a new race helmet

Went and had the R888’s removed from the AW11 and the KU31’s refitted

Then we left Goulburn behind *sniff* and headed to Windsor and Parramatta to catch up with some Toymods members for a Beer O’Clock. I also happened to pick this up from one of the AW11 Anons…

Yep… An AW11 tow bar…