Duke Racing Celica GT-Four Time Attack Racecar

[Punknoodle]

Thanks for that, however I'm more focusing on the aesthetics rather than function - the car doesn't have a flat floor etc and the fuel tank being in the way means I can't create a proper tunnel for the air to have a properly functioning diffuser.

Would be fun to make this a proper time attack car, one day maybe Install a fuel cell and do some proper aero

 

[GDII]

New bumper looks great. Nice touch with the green tow strap. How accessible is the factory front tow hook? I guess the strap is more for the track if you need towed.

 

[Punknoodle]

The front tow hooks are in a bitch of a spot, they are behind the lower side vents, but tucked up so if you strap from under the car it will pull up on the bumper, plus if you get stuck in sand they will have to dig to get to them, that's why I like to have straps front and rear

 

[ITCC_Andrew]

Thanks for that, however I'm more focusing on the aesthetics rather than function - the car doesn't have a flat floor etc and the fuel tank being in the way means I can't create a proper tunnel for the air to have a properly functioning diffuser.

Would be fun to make this a proper time attack car, one day maybe Install a fuel cell and do some proper aero

Haha, yeah. I guess I need to remind myself that not everyone is only concerned with go-fast. I've got so many plans for my own car once I'm done college... The rear diffuser is a possibility. It's relatively inexpensive and easy, and would help a lot. I've got serious turbulence...

 

[Punknoodle]

Haha, yeah. I guess I need to remind myself that not everyone is only concerned with go-fast. I've got so many plans for my own car once I'm done college... The rear diffuser is a possibility. It's relatively inexpensive and easy, and would help a lot. I've got serious turbulence...

Don't get me wrong, I like go fast too, but in this instance it's not really a possibility the way the fuel tank sits. Just want the look for now.

 

[ITCC_Andrew]

I'm not complaining or anything, don't worry. As I said, my car needs it more, since it's a wagon. It basically leaves an extra-large hole in the air, which quickly becomes turbulence because it's air rushing to fill a previously void space. It's just scientific necessity

 

[Punknoodle]

I had a very quick and amateur play with Paint.NET and this is the result:

I don't like the way the fins look, but it's just a general idea.

 

[Aquarelle]

Saw you migrated to the MCM forums - TRAITOR

 

[Punknoodle]

Haha SPY!

 

[ITCC_Andrew]

That would still have a positive effect on airflow, too. Do it! Looks good.

 

[Murcie_LP640]

Saw you migrated to the MCM forums - TRAITOR

We have fudge brownies on the dark side.

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

New front bumper turned out great. Looks like they matched the paint perfectly too.

 

[Punknoodle]

So, my little vibration mounts arrived so I finished up my charge cooler pump bracket. The only place it would fit was under the reinforcing bar bolt, so it looks a little crazy. Here it is off the car:

The top of it mounts under the nut, like this:

Then I just build it up, with the factory black mount bolting up to the lowest plate. The pump sits in that cradle and there is clamp that holds it down. The black part used to be threaded, but in order for me to bolt it from the bottom I needed to drill out the threads, make large holes through the curved part to stick the bolts through, and tap the stainless plate.

So I have now plumbed it up and flushed it and filled it with fluid (same mix as I put in the radiator, see below). I used black hose this time, much easier to work with and stealthy.

Also fitted new silicone coolant hoses and performed a flush on my cooling system. I used 33% premix, but diluted it further with demineralised water.

Water is a better conductor than coolant, the coolant is only there for anti freeze and corrosion protection, but it reduces the effectiveness of the cooling system. I don't have a risk of my coolant freezing living here in QLD so I figured a slight amount of coolant added to demineralised water would be enough for corrosion resistance. I'll keep an eye on it though to make sure. I was running a 50% mix before so it should make a difference.

Bought a new Toyota oil filter and some more oil so I just have to do an oil change. Decided to hold off on installing the new sensors - I don't need them right now and I'm thinking I'll keep them fresh in their packets for when I end up doing a nice newer gen engine and make my own loom for it.

 

[coop500]

New bumper looks great! I've got a friend rebuilding the engine on one of these just now He's considering twin charging

 

[Punknoodle]

Cheers mate.

To be honest I think twin charging is a waste of time, the engineering involved to get a supercharger bolted up is quite intense, for little gains. A well sized turbo will deliver a healthy dose of power while being responsive.

 

[Punknoodle]

Today I had the first chance I've really had to take the car out on a hot day at highway speeds to test out if my cooling has improved with the work I've done. According to the temp gauge, the difference was quite a bit - I knew where the needle used to sit and it was considerably lower today.

So I got home and plugged my laptop in to datalog the ECU and went for a small drive, giving it some brief WOT at low speeds to see if the temperature would increase. Here is a screenshot of what the Haltech ECU Manager looks like:

As you can see in the screenshot below, the temperature of the coolant (in red) and the intake air (white) react according to vehicle speed, as expected. (The air temp was high initially as the car had been sitting for a while before I did this run)

This is very good, as before neither of the temps reacted as much with the increased airflow. I also noticed that my idle stayed bang on, where before as the car got hotter the idle would start to fluctuate. Initial testing suggests that my temps are more stable, holding still at around 87 degrees C, where as highway and city driving before used to see the temps slowly increase to the high 90s, and above 100 at the track.

I obviously still need to test it at the race track, which I intend on doing on the 26th of next month. Its not a time attack round, just a Circuit and Coffee event, but at least I'll be able to hold WOT down the straights for a decent amount of time, and log the temps. A time attack round costs a few hundred so I'd rather make sure my temps don't creep up just doing that before I spend up large for a full event again.

 

[Paulie]

Is that the 26th April? I can provide some unhealthy competition if you like, bring my Ute out to get stomped on. Good to hear you're seeing positive results with the cooling.

 

[Punknoodle]

Yeah, 26th of April. For sure mate you should come along in the ute, I want to see it! Would be fun to line them up for a bit of a GTP race

 

[Paulie]

Yeah, 26th of April. For sure mate you should come along in the ute, I want to see it! Would be fun to line them up for a bit of a GTP race

Sweet, it's a date, err, race, RACE! There's a couple guys I work with I want to race too, including a guy with a Subaru Liberty 3.0R I'd love to get out there. Something tells me this will be a much better Circuit & Coffee than the last one (which was still hella fun).

 

[Punknoodle]

Ended up meeting Paulie down at QR this morning, last night I washed the car and made up a quick mount to hold a GoPro:

It didn't work too well, the footage is quite shaky, I'm going to have to remake the mount with a new piece of angle with longer and stiffer sides.

I also had my friend's rims on the car for the day, here is what they look like:

Dark rims on a dark car look pretty sinister. I like it, but not these rims and not this colour. Still would like a set of semi gloss black Enkei RPF1s.. Opinions on the look? I think it looks more racecar than my SSRs, but I still love my rims.

Here is a small section of the cars waiting to get on track:

Anyway, the main aim for me today was basically to thrash the car as much as I could, legally, all while doing a datalog of the ECU, so I could monitor coolant and intake air temps. One of these mornings is a lot cheaper than a time attack meeting, so I wanted to see if it would overheat before I forked out for a full time attack meeting. I couldn't do actual laps, too much traffic and its not allowed, so it was just WOT down the straights, racing other cars.

Here is a picture of my datalog, I have brought up the relevant channels with speed shown as well. As you can see, I came in and left the car idling in the pits for a little bit without doing a cool down lap and my temps shot up, but as soon as I went out again they dropped. Lesson learnt - always do a cool down lap or 2..

I'm very happy with these results, very stable temps, which shows that the work I performed worked perfectly.

I'll post up a vid of my GoPro footage as soon as I get around to doing a quick edit. I raced a few people, won a few, lost a lot (my humble little Celica fell well short of the average horsepower of the cars attending!) but it's all good fun! I'm just stoked the car performed faultlessly, especially when there were some fairly high performance expensive street cars there that suffered engine dramas and had to get towed off the track.

 

[Aquarelle]

I find your current rims offset the rest of your car nicely, carrying over the black trim works well and in my opinion that colour appears much more unique than a plain gloss black.

That mid section looks awfully high though.. are there any nice side skirt options?

I say as my ride height could challenge some 4x4s...

 

[Ibonibo]

On the Gopro mount :

It's from a DJi Phantom drone (mounting plate), cost a few bucks and will stabilze your video enough

Car looks good with the rims 👍

 

[Punknoodle]

I find your current rims offset the rest of your car nicely, carrying over the black trim works well and in my opinion that colour appears much more unique than a plain gloss black.

That mid section looks awfully high though.. are there any nice side skirt options?
I say as my ride height could challenge some 4x4s...

I think it was a bad angle, doesn't look that high normally.. I don't like the look if skirts on these anyway, prefer the standard look:

 

[Paulie]

I think some black rims would look pretty good on your car, especially for track days, but your current rims do stand out a little more on the street. Enkei RPF1's would look pretty good.

 

[Punknoodle]

It's been a while since I've posted in here! Things have been really quiet, I've hardly driven the car, was planning on driving it down to WTAC in Sydney in Oct but we are taking a mates car instead as there are 3 of us and a descent back seat is a must.

I've also been planning on another track day but work keeps getting in the way. I really need to give it a good run, I feel bad having it just sitting there. I have been given a great opportunity for my career as site supervisor for a large process electrical installation at a cheese factory in Tasmania for up to the next 6 months so I won't be here very often so I'll have to try and plan my time off to fall on track day dates.



I think I have an alternator issue, it isn't sitting at a very high voltage when running and the battery isn't getting a good charge, so I'll be taking that off and sending it to the auto sparky near me, if he can source a single wire regulator for it I'll be stoked as it means I can tidy up the loom over that side of the engine.

Anyway, when I do get to the track I have a nice new Go Pro Hero 3+ Black edition to take some good footage and post it here. I made a mount to sit it in the front bumper:




And this mount for over the shoulder footage - made it using the factory coat hanger screw locations and out of thick angle so it doesn't wobble like Version. 1 lol:

 

[Ibonibo]

Bumper view 👍 Awesome

 

[Punknoodle]

Because it's right in front of the engine, it picks up great sound of the turbo from there, unfortunately it also picks up the radiator fan rather loudly as well, but it's ok.

 

[Ibonibo]

Yeah a cam outside, you always gonna get noise. I put a second sound recorder in the back and later sync both tracks.

 

[Paulie]

You the (handy)man! A shame you'll be spending so long away, but good to hear about the career payout.👍

 

[20832]

That is one beautiful Celica!