ARDC NightShift – 18/03/2021

I was hoping the weather was going to get better, oh boy was I wrong.
It rained for the week leading up to the event and the whole day and night of it.

Setting up the pits with a friend and his Nissan NX.

Checking the fluids and preparing for the first session.

My broken camera on my phone doesn’t emphasize how wet the place is.

As apart of the event we all were given a free pizza, so I kept mine here…

I had the RaceBox datalogger setup, however ran into issues with it.

 

Running the AR-1 tires was a massive mistake, but it was a great way to learn to drive in such conditions.

My first session… This sums it up.

I had followed the NX for the warm up lap and was pretty confident that I was faster, so I decided to get pass him on the straight. Problem was while over taking I lost track of how far down the straight we were, how fast I was going, got distracted by the car trying to change lanes when I grabbed 5th gear. Then it was a bit balancing act of trying to knock of a bunch of speed with out throwing the car into a spin down… Well that worked hahaha.

After recovering, we made it around to last corner before the red lights came on and the session was cancelled. Two other cars had come off and needed retrived and a Porsche had broken down in pit lane entry.

The rest of the night went fine, a bunch of sketchy moments but some good sessions none the less. I put a few slices of the drama here.

NightShift Track Day Prep

Booked in for a track day with a few friends at SMSP, so I decided to finish off the new water to air intercooler setup using the Liberty RS factory core.

This required tearing the whole front end off the car. Yay.

When I did the first version of the water to air, I had just a couple of basic tools and no work shop, so a lot of this was done with a cheap materials from Bunnings. These heat exchanger up rights were made from 25×3 aluminium bare and mounted with tek screws 🙁

The front end of the car has been involved in an impact at some point an various bits are out of shape. To tidy some of this up, I fix part of the lower radiator damage and rolled the seam over with a hammer.

This provided a little more clearance for some of the changes I would be making while improving the condition.

Sadly, someone had bastardised part of the front bumper up right to fit a filthy front mount intercooler… Now the torn steel is rusting, another job to fix.

The place where the coolant pump will be mounted

The last setup had 3/4″ hoses running through the inner guards as I had no tools to do the install properly. This time however,  it will be done through running some hard pipes that will enter the engine bay from beside the battery tray.

I made the pipes out of copper tube and off the shelf bends that were just soldered together.

This worked out super easy to make and install

To keep the hard lines aligned, I CNC’d a couple of B clamps.

With the pipes run, I needed to mount the pump, so with the router working, I tasked it with the job of making a billet pump mount.

Pump fitted into the mount

And then mounted onto the chassis.

Something else I decided was that I needed a second set of rims for the car so I was not always driving on race tires. COVID has driven up the prices of the secondhand market and everyone wants a million bucks for their 20 year old flogged hektic JDM wheels, so I purchased my first set of new wheels, ever.

A nice set of Enkei RPF1 wheels in 17X8 +45.
The come packaged so pretty!

Oh so shiny.

Things going back together

The bumper has been out of shape a fair bit due to the holes being worn, so I added some washers to help clamp the bumper into the proper alignments.

I gifted myself with one last present, a brand new set of Nankang AR-1 semi slicks.

The weather has been shit all week, here is a prayer that it clears up before the track night…

Track Day – Queensland Raceway – 22/08/2014

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.

https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/1.jpg

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!
https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/2.jpg

The best place for a P Plater to be getting to know their car and their limits.
https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/3.jpg

Red ones go faster!
https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/4.jpg

Ben found out what happens when you come into a corner too fast in the wet…. Lucky it wasn’t Mt Nebo…
https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/5.jpg
https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/6.jpg

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…
https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/8.jpg

Goodbye head gasket!
https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/9.jpg

 

The main reason why the SlushDub did so many circles…

https://www.midrear.net/images/trackday/20140822/10.jpg

Downshift Track Battle – 21/04/2013

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!