Duke Racing Celica GT-Four Time Attack Racecar

  • Thread starter Punknoodle
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So my shakedown at Queensland Raceway went well. I signed on for both the morning and afternoon sessions, but the format for both is the same - 3 sessions on the Sprint layout and 3 sessions on the Clubman layout. It had rained over night so initially the track was wet and very slippery and in the first session we were all just sliding around. I used it as an opportunity to get some heat in to the brakes and get them bedded in.

The track improved a little by the next session and I went out and lapped at around the same pace as my previous PB - 1:03.42. In the next session, I managed to better my PB considerably - down to a 1:01.7.

We stopped for a while so they could change the track layout and I took the opportunity to bleed the brakes. In a couple of instances the brake pedal felt a bit soft but upon bleeding, the lines didn't have any air in them.

Next up was Clubman. My previous best laptime on this layout was a 1:07.42 and in my first session I managed a 1:04.6. In the next session I bettered it again, down to a 1:03.4.

I was about to go out again for the final session of the morning, but my water pump controller was dead. I found that the fuse feeding it had popped, so I missed that session while I got a ride with my friend to the service station down the road to pick up some spare fuses. I replaced the fuse and the car was good to go again.

By this time, I was feeling pretty good but I had underestimated just how thirsty the car is and one 20L can of E85 wasn't enough to being with me to the track. With the fuel station that sells E85 quite a while away, I decided to do one final session and call it a day. By now it was back to the sprint layout and I went faster again with a 1:01.2.

All in all, a successful day. The car didn't skip a beat and was making great power, the grip from the tires was awesome and the new cage and safety gear had me feeling really comfortable in the car. I did find an issue with the brakes though. The bias is towards the rear - it has an effect of making the car squirmy under heavy braking and also means that the rears cop a beating and get much hotter than the fronts and I think I'm going to have to go with adjustable bias control in the future. It's not a deal breaker as it's manageable and overall the cars braking was awesome and predictable and didn't fade - but it will definitely be worth being able to adjust bias in the future.

Another slight change I'm going to make is bring the rear toe in slightly to try and settle down the rear on corner entry, and soften up the dampers on the front to try and control understeer through the corner.

A big positive though is that the temperatures of the coolant, oil and intake air all trended on par with how they should as well, proving the cooling systems, ducting and venting etc are working as per design. I'm quite happy about that as it was one of the main reasons for all the development and gives me a lot of confidence in future reliability.

Anyway, here's some photos from the day and a video of my PB run on the Clubman layout (PB lap is second lap on video). Unfortunately I wasn't recording for my Sprint run in the afternoon. Excuse the angle if the video - the GoPro mount tilted when I ran up on some rumble strip as the car is so stiff now!











 
Glad it went well. I think setting up the car to your liking will be part of the fun. Do any of the differentials lock (partly) under deceleration?
 
PASM
Glad it went well. I think setting up the car to your liking will be part of the fun. Do any of the differentials lock (partly) under deceleration?
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No, the factory diffs are pretty mild - open on the front, viscous on the centre and torsen on the rear. I'm going to order a Cusco 1.5 way for the rear soon though as the current diff is getting a little whiney. There are options for the front and centre, too. You can buy a new shaft for in the transaxle which converts the centre viscous coupling to be for the front, then you lock the centre, effectively meaning you have a permanent 50 50 split front and rear and a limited slip both front and rear. It's a fairly aggressive setup but from what I've read handles well. Might look in to it next time I have the gearbox out.
 
It's been a little while since I posted so there have been a few more developments. First, you may recall I found the car was quite heavy on rear bias. I ended up going back to the company I bought my brake kit from, and they supplied me with a new set of Wilwood calipers, with a slightly larger piston size than the last set. Initial impressions on the road seemed positive, and when I got them to the track it felt amazing - the brakes and balance felt much better! I had already ordered a different set of rear pads to try and improve the bias before this, which are more of a dedicated track pad (Winmax W5) but I am in no hurry to install these so I think I'll leave them as spares.

I also wanted the car to sound more aggressive at the track. Because of the large rear muffler, I found that while the car sounded really nice and smooth, it was quiet as a mouse compared to the other racecars and that just would not do. So, I bought some stainless pipe, a bend and a couple of V-Bands and fabbed up a new rear section which deletes the muffler.

Down the straight, it sounds like this:

Glorious!

That video was taken at a midweek sprints event. They only use one layout for sprint events (Clubman) and I ended up setting a new PB, in the video below:

It was a bit hotter on that day and I found that while my coolant and intake air temps were pretty good, my oil temps crept up to 116 degrees C which triggered my engine protection at one stage. Otherwise, the car felt really good and I was getting in to a really good groove in the car.
To try and fix the temps, I decided to relocate my oil cooler (again). While I think the size is definitely big enough, I was worried that having it directly in front of the radiator with no ducting, the air would go for the path of least resistance and flow sideways past the cooler.

The cooler is now behind the intercooler, and I've boxed it in so that the boxing catches the air and it must flow through the cooler. Hopefully this makes a noticeable difference to oil temps.


The next thing I'm working on is a front splitter. I made some mounts that were welded to my factory tow points (in such a way that I'll still be able to use them for strapping the car down to a trailer when the splitter is off) and drew up some plates in CAD with a series of holes and had these laser cut. This allows the bracket to be moved up and down, adjusting the height of the splitter. The front hole on the bracket welded to the chassis is also slotted to allow for angle adjustment.


I made an MDF template and bolted it on, installed the support rods and gave it a test for strength.


The splitter extends 97mm (regulation for my class is 100mm so added a 3mm safety buffer) and goes all the way back to just in front of the wheels. It is going to be made out of 6mm Dibond (aluminium composite panel)


The black air dam is actually conveyor belt material. It's just sitting there in that shot, I'll be getting some aluminium angle, cut and fold it to follow the shape of the bumper, and then I'll bond this to the air dam and rivet this to the splitter.

I made this bracket, which also bolts to one of the existing tow points:


It's to allow me to bolt a tow strap securely and have it hanging out the bumper. This is important because with the splitter installed, I can't get to the factory tow points. If I were to end up the in the gravel, the guys towing it would be forced to just wrap around whatever they could find and cause damage.



That's it for now - my next event is King of QR which runs on all 4 layouts of Queensland Raceway, on Sept 29.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment - would love some conversation in here for a change!
 
Great mods again. I don't think that the air would flow past the oil cooler too badly without the shroud. It's mostly the inflowing air temperature that influences the heat transfer. When it was behind the radiator, the inflowing air had already significantly been heated up by the radiator.

Nice driving also. It looks like a pointy, agile car. You are having to correct quite a bit. I think this could be an advantage with the 4WD, because the throttle should stabilize things massively. It looks a bit too much entering the hairpin, where the oversteer makes you hesitant to turn and go wide a bit. Or is this the faster line through there?
 
PASM
Great mods again. I don't think that the air would flow past the oil cooler too badly without the shroud. It's mostly the inflowing air temperature that influences the heat transfer. When it was behind the radiator, the inflowing air had already significantly been heated up by the radiator.

Nice driving also. It looks like a pointy, agile car. You are having to correct quite a bit. I think this could be an advantage with the 4WD, because the throttle should stabilize things massively. It looks a bit too much entering the hairpin, where the oversteer makes you hesitant to turn and go wide a bit. Or is this the faster line through there?
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It wasn't behind the radiator before, it was mounted directly in front of it. Hopefully I get some good data at the next event.

As with the handling, yeah it has fairly strong corner entry oversteer currently, as you can see especially in the second lap where I'm having to chase the thing through turn one and two. I'm going to adjust the rear sway bar back to the medium setting as I think it's probably a little stiff right now.

That line through the hairpin though I've found to be what works for me - I generally like to "v" the corner, so, drive in deeper, turn sharply, and straighten out the exit as much as possible to get a better run out of the corner, which is important as it runs on to a long straight. Seems to work better than an early turn in and hugging of the apex.
 
So, I thought I'd make a post detailing what I've done to the car and where I've raced it over the last couple of months.

I'm pretty happy with how the splitter turned out. It gives the car a much more aggressive look for one thing (rule #1 of racecars - must look mad) but it does seem to have improved front grip through turn 1 especially at QR. More on that later.


I also made a new heat shield to try and control intake temps.

I then removed one headlight and installed this little duct in there, which directs air to blow on the air filter.

Other than that, the car remained mostly unchanged from my last time out - a bit of a setup tweak to the rear, fresh gearbox and engine oil, bleeding of the clutch and the installation of a permanent supply to my gopro to ensure the battery doesn't go flat rounded out the changes.

King of QR
I loaded the car up on the trailer and headed off to QR. This was an event I was looking forward to for some time - it runs on all 4 layouts of QR, with the first being National (the full circuit) then Sprint, Clubman and finally Sportman. I did the first session of National and hit engine protection fairly quickly. I took the car back in to the pits, and realized I forgot my laptop so couldn't connect to my ECU. Figured though that it was intake temps - the pipe was really hot and I found that my little heat shield was actually doing the opposite - the gap around the pipe was letting in hot air from the rad and had nowhere to go! I got out the good old gaffer tape and sealed it all up, then went out again for my next session.

Well, that ended up much the same. I found a guy in the pits with a laptop and asked if I could quickly borrow it to connect, which I did. I found that the intake temps were actually pretty good, it was, in fact, my oil temps again (damn!). So I upped the engine protection value and went out again. The third session went ok, I at least put a semi decent lap (I only managed 2 full speed laps across all my sessions on that layout). They switched over to the next layout, I went out again and, nope. Driving out of the pits, red battery light was on. Car was spluttering and missing like crazy.. I pulled it back in and after doing some quick testing I found that the alternator was dead. Just like that, day was done and back on the trailer she went.


I at least got some cool photos...

So, with that event a complete disaster, I set about trying to solve the issues again. During the event, I tested the heat at the sandwich plate assembly and found that the hose connections and block were reaching temperatures of over 200 degrees Celsius, caused by the radiant heat from the dump pipe. So, I decided having all that oil close to my dump pipe must be contributing to the high oil temps. I then moved the sandwhich plate assembly down to the sump.

Next, I had to replace the alternator. I sourced a new one and then set about making some ducting for it, to try and stop all that heat from killing it.


I'd given the battery a good charge since bring it home and the battery is still in top shape. Fired the car up and the voltages look much healthier.

Time for another event to see if it all worked...

Lakeside Skid Control Trackday
Car went back on the trailer again and I headed off for Lakeside. It's a short, incredibly fast track, known for having severe consequences if you get it wrong. I was nervous.

What can I say, this circuit is an absolute blast! I LOVE it. I started off in the first session posting a 1:06 laptime, and by my last session I was down to a 1:01.8 as I pushed it harder.

The car was much better. Yes, I hit engine protection in my first session as I'd lowered my oil temp threshold, expecting a miracle. Alas, it got to 116 degrees again and off she went. So, I did what any racecar driver would do and told the ecu to ignore it. I set the upper limit to 125 degrees and decided to just send it. The engine oil temp settled itself and flatlined at around 119 - 122 degrees in the following sessions. After speaking with other people at the track who experience higher oil temps on their cars (also with coolers), I think I'm just going to have to accept that it's not too bad and it is what it is.

The other temps were ok though. Coolant stayed put at around 85 degrees, air temp low 50s (turbo is at the upper edge of it's efficiency, so it makes warm air). Oh, and no issues with the alternator, either. The car made good power all day, brakes felt on point, tires had plenty of grip and the car in general felt like a little weapon. THIS is how it should be.

Here is a full session from the day, and below this is a video of my best lap of the day. As you can see there is still some good time to be made just with seat time and tidying up some of my lines.



What's next? I have another track day next month at another new circuit to me - Morgan Park.

I'm still planning to do a full season of Qld Time Attack next year. Oh, and I bought a new turbo - it's a Precision 5858. A little big, but I've bought it second hand with manifold, dump and external gate for a good price. Considering the car generally lives above 4k RPM anyway and I'm running E85, I don't think the lag will be too bad, and the turbo should net me somewhere in the 350whp range, which should help a little at circuits like QR which is a power track.
 
Glad to see it's finally running sweet! Funny how the alternator ruined a track day for you, the first track day I went to with my old work, the S3 track car made 3 laps before the alternator died. Was a short session indeed! :lol:
 
385hp, that's mental! Is this still street legal over there on the other side of the pond? I mean, 385hp, very light car, 4WD...must be quite a sleeper actually!
 
Bram Turismo
385hp, that's mental! Is this still street legal over there on the other side of the pond? I mean, 385hp, very light car, 4WD...must be quite a sleeper actually!
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I've deregistered the car now so I trailer it to and from, because I've done a few things to it now which deem it not street legal. It was registered up to about a month ago though. The splitter is too low for the street and the bonnet and stickers would have had it pulled over and defected in no time.

To be fair, it's not really light. Our 86 is larger but lighter, probably due to lighter materials, plus the Celica's 4wd adds a fair bit of weight.


Here you can see the size difference.

But yeah, with that power it should get up and go pretty well :)
 
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So, I had a reasonably good day out at Morgan Park last month - the car had a couple of issues which I sorted, but it still put a bit of a dampener on things. On the plus side, the circuit is absolutely mega, I loved it and can't wait to go back there. I also got a few great photos from a photographer, which I'll post at the bottom of this post.

One of the issues I had on the day was the banjo bolt for the wastegate actuator came out. This caused the car to overboost, which the ECU controlled by cutting fuel, but it's definitely not a good thing. The idle also went quite lean and WOT is a little leaner than before. I decided that I'd just bite the bullet and proceed with the fitment of the Precision turbo. While I'm at it, I'm going over everything making sure it's ok, injectors have come out and are getting cleaned and tested, new fuel filter going on etc.

I disassembled the external wastegate then took the wastegate housing, manifold, dump pipe and wastegate pipe to Competition Coatings to get black ceramic coated, as they were plain stainless before. I need to try to control under bonnet temperatures as much as possible.

I've also sorted out all the plumbing I need for oil lines, wastegate lines etc. I'm going to use Speedflow braided teflon with AN fittings for the lot, from turbo to boost solenoid to wastegate. I don't want there to be a problem with a wastegate line again, so I think it's worth it. I'm also making my own oil return flange for the sump with a AN-10 weld on fitting to keep everything nice and tidy.

I've removed the old turbo and done some tidying in the bay. It's nice to be able to lose the big coolant hard line, the big oil line and drain for the turbo, the large turbo bracket and the big heavy cast manifold etc. I've also remounted the boost solenoid closer to the turbo. Once the new turbo goes in, everything is V-Band and the new lines are all flexible braid so it should look a lot tider.

So yes, shouldn't be too long now till the turbo is in and I can match up the exhaust and intercooler plumbing.

Finally, shots of Morgan Park as promised:
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
Skid Control Track Day by Nick Winsor, on Flickr
 
New turbo is installed and everything in the engine bay is complete, ready for tuning.

Changes are:
- Custom V Band manifold
- Turbosmart Hyper45 External Wastegate
- Precision 5858CEA Ball Bearing Turbo
- Custom dump
- New SPAL radiator fan
- Mishimoto non thermostat oil sandwich plate
- Speedflow braided teflon lines for wastegate plumbing and oil feed/drain

Looking forward to getting it tuned and seeing how it drives on track!







Also bought a little side project - I created a seperate thread for it. Entering the 24H of Lemons this year :gtpflag:
 
Well two events down for the year so I thought I'd do another update here. Tuning went well - I was quite surprised with the boost response. I was expecting to take a little bit of a hit in terms of response due to the larger size of the PTE5858, but due to the appropriate sizing of the exhaust housing, great manifold design, no restrictions in the exhaust, modern ball bearing turbo design and great tuning, the response is pretty much exactly the same as the old CT20B turbo. It makes 550Nm of torque and it holds strong. Peak power on low boost is around 200awkw, and on high boost is around 235awkw. I could have pushed harder as there was more room in the fueling, but I wanted to try and keep as reliable as possible. The engine could also take more timing now as the turbo is running more efficient than the old unit, so that helps with spool.


Lining up at pit exit for Round 1 of QLD Time Attack QR Series

I've had two events so far, one at Queensland Raceway and one at Lakeside. Car has performed fairly well so far, temps are good. I thought I had an engine knocking issue but it just turned out to be a broken bracket on the exhaust which was making a noise. I've since found an issue where high boost wasn't actually high boost, it was actually marginally higher than low boost. It was a simple issue with the trim input wiring - it needed a pull up resistor - so high boost was actually still setting about 50% boost trim. This is now fixed, so looking forward to getting back out and trying high boost.


Big smile in behind my helmet, trust me!

I ended up 2nd in class at QR, 0.5s off doing a "Holy Grail" laptime (which earns you a cool sticker to put on the car because it's a great achievement) on low boost. Keen to see how it goes on high boost. It was a pretty hot day too, grip was fairly low. At Lakeside I was a little off the pace - I managed to better the laptime I set there last year, but grip was very low and the car just didn't feel hooked up. Still, it was a good day, Lakeside is such a good track, every lap is a thrill.


GT4 vs GT-Four in the same shot, I love this shot!

Coming up in a little over a week is the Japanese Nationals Time Attack event, out at QR. Super keen to get out there with full boost, but also looking forward to playing with my new toy... I couldn't help myself and bought myself a Motec C125 Race Logger. This unit does full on board data logging, GPS, G-Force sensors, colour display etc.


View from my on board camera of the new dash


A sample of the data collected by the dash, in Motec i2 Data Analysis software


I added my own personal touch for the welcome screen :D

Below are some more pictures from the year. As always, for more detail, on board videos etc, check out my facebook page "Duke's Racecar Engineering" or my instagram :@:thedukeofwinsor




 
Paulie
This is a very different car than when I went for a ride many years ago.
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Lol yeah, that was a long time ago! Japnats in this coming weekend man if you wanted to come and have a look. Unfortunately I haven't gotten around to installing the anchor points on the passenger side for the spare harness yet so can't take anyone for rides at the moment. How have you been mate?
 
Unfortunately Japanese Nationals didn't go to plan today. First turn of the flying first lap of the first session and I stuffed it up. Went in way too hot for the cold tires, lost it and put it deep in to the gravel trap.





Felt like a real rookie sitting in the gravel waiting to get towed out. I'd been looking forward to this event for a while and for it to finish so early was heartbreaking.

I ended up peeling 2 tires off the beads while going sideways in the gravel, very lucky it didn't roll. Got towed out, got all 4 tired unmounted and remounted, but one was damaged so I was unable to continue. I emptied all of the gravel out of the car and loaded it back on to the trailer. Once I got it home, I cleaned it and put it up on stands to assess the damage.

It still runs and drives straight, I don't think I've done any mechanical damage but I'm yet to go crawling under the car. Cosmetically though, the left side of the car has a lot of scuffing at low level from the gravel. The wheels all look really scratched up and I cracked my wing mirror glass from the stones pelting it. The good thing is though that the splitter held on nice and strong even filled up with all that gravel. It shows that I've built it strong enough.

I also need to replace all 4 tires. I was thinking that this event was going to be the last event for this set as at the last event they felt average. Looking at them now, they feel pretty hard. Apparently these AR1s are fairly limited for heat cycles and I think they've had it. Goes a long way to explaining why the grip was so poor, especially because they were cold. It was still totally my fault - I shouldn't have gone in so hot until I'd experimented with the grip of the car.



It's not quite the data I was hoping to get from the weekend, however it was quite interesting to look at my spin. It shows an approach of 190kph, on the brakes, then rolled in to the turn at around 160kph. I got sideways at around 150kph, tried to catch it by loading on some opposite lock and giving it some throttle as you can see from the data. At this point I was at around 1.2 lateral Gs. The rear kept on coming around though, and at this point I was out of lock without switching my hands on the wheel. I've never done this before but I did it out of desperation. The car gripped but by then the wheels were pointing the wrong way and it flicked me the wrong way. I spun, went in to the gravel backwards at around 125kph and around 2 lateral Gs. I then spun a further 180 degrees and stopped about 2m from the concrete barrier.

Looking back, I maybe should have held the wheel in my normal grip and held the lock I had. I'm confident I was coming off anyway, it was coming around too quick and there was no grip, but it may have had a better outcome. In saying that, it could have bit the gravel even more sideways than it did and rolled, so who knows. It's easy to look back in critique your reaction after the fact, but in the car, feeling what you are and having a very short amount of time to react, it's a little different.

At the end of the day, it's lesson learnt and a good result that I didn't roll or hit the fence. Looking forward to getting back out there again once I replace the tires and give the car a good check over.

Anyway, here's the in car footage. At least the new Motec C125 dash looks on point!
 
Shame about coming off, but at least you and the car are (mostly) okay! Props on the front splitter too being strong enough to hold all that gravel.
 
Damn, stacks are a part of motorsport but never fun, glad you're OK.

Punknoodle
Lol yeah, that was a long time ago! Japnats in this coming weekend man if you wanted to come and have a look. Unfortunately I haven't gotten around to installing the anchor points on the passenger side for the spare harness yet so can't take anyone for rides at the moment. How have you been mate?
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Sorry, I don't log on too often and missed this :dunce: though I've been pretty busy lately and probably couldn't have made it anyway. Do you just have the race cars nowadays or a cheap street sports car for nice drives and running about as well? I'm definitely looking to go for another drive soon around mountains type stuff.
 
Paulie
Sorry, I don't log on too often and missed this :dunce: though I've been pretty busy lately and probably couldn't have made it anyway. Do you just have the race cars nowadays or a cheap street sports car for nice drives and running about as well? I'm definitely looking to go for another drive soon around mountains type stuff.
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No dramas mate, as it turns out you didn't miss much :lol:
I bought an 86 GTS for the wife to use as a daily that I take out every now and again but the GT-Four is now unregistered.
 
Punknoodle
No dramas mate, as it turns out you didn't miss much :lol:
I bought an 86 GTS for the wife to use as a daily that I take out every now and again but the GT-Four is now unregistered.
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I'll let you know when we're going for a drive then. Chances are everybody will be too busy to make it. It turns out I'm the only one with no life.:P
 
So after the last miserable event at QR that was Japanese Nats where I binned it, I wanted to make sure I came back strong for QR Time Attack Round 2 on Thursday, especially as I was going in placing 2nd in the points.



Since the last event I have a new set of Nankang AR1 tires and I've adjusted the alignment considerably. I've also trimmed 50mm off the front of the splitter. Mainly for the rules, to comply with Clubsprint Class rules at World Time Attack, but also trying to balance out the aero grip as with no rear wing the car was a little loose through turn 1 and 2.

Car was fast - unfortunatly I was having boost control issues so was unable to run full boost so was stuck in low boost. I really need to get this sorted so I'll be speaking with my tuner about getting him to the track with me for my next event. Regardless, the tires were working really well, I'm now doing proper pyrometer readings on the outside, middle and inside of the tires as well as pressure to make sure I'm getting the most of them.

Anyway, to recap, set a new PB on the Sprint layout with a 58.9 second lap. A sub 59 second lap here earns you a spot on the Holy Grail wall of fame so I finally did that and earned my Holy Grail sticker!



Here's the lap that did it:


As always, for more you can visit my page on Facebook: Duke's Racecar Engineering or follow me on Insta: @thedukeofwinsor
 
I made a cool little number plate for the back out of carbon fibre and stuck the Holy Grail sticker to it. I then went over it with clear paint to try and protect it. I think it came out pretty good.


With the Leyburn Sprints coming up, I thought I'd play with some Launch Control settings and give the car a bit of boost off the line. Here's a quick video



Just over a week until Time Attack, then the day after that we're off to Leyburn :)
 
Last week I had QR Time Attack on the Thursday and then the Historic Leyburn Sprints over the weekend. I went to the QR round of Time Attack just to accumulate points as I wasn't able to miss that event or I wouldn't qualify for series position. Because of the close proximity, I was a bit worried about something happening and not having enough time to fix it before Leyburn, so I told myself to go easy. In the end, I ignored myself and went on to better my PB on both Clubman and Sprint layouts :) The car was a jet all day and didn't miss a beat. At the end of the day I loaded it on the trailer, towed it home, washed it on the trailer and it was all ready to go for Leyburn.

Friday morning we ventured off on the drive. I'd never been to this event before and didn't really know what to expect. As we rolled into the town, there wen't that many signs that anything was on at all, it was really quiet, until we turned the corner and saw that this entire country town had been transformed. There were marquees everywhere, a huge infield of cars and grandstands set up. The cars that were there were jaw dropping, some really serious gear.



After unloading the car, I went off to get it scrutineered and checked in to get my race numbers. We then took a good walk around the course so I could get a close up of the surface condition, corners etc. After that we left the car in the pits and went to the other side of the bridge where the camping sites were. We set up out tent, cooked some dinner and went off to hang out with some other competitors around their camp fire.




Saturday rolled around but competition was fairly slow - I only got 3 runs across the day due to there being so many cars. First session went well, it was good to get on the track and feel it at pace. The transmission felt tough though and it was hard to get in to gear - happens when it's cold. We decided that we'd put it up on stands and run it idling in gear to get the gearbox fluid warming up. This helped, and run 2 it felt much better.




I knocked a couple of seconds off between each run and that night, sat at the campsite looking at my runs seeing where to improve. I had a good idea of where I was too slow so I was really keen to get back there the next day.




Sunday dawned, we had the car up on stands again to warm up the gearbox oil. When I went out for my first run, the gearbox felt great but the track surface was a bit slower, it was cold and the track was still a bit dewy. Regardless, the next run was awesome and by the time I finished the day, I'd managed to get a 50.8 which I was stoked with. That's 25th overall, out of 211 and the cars I was surrounded by in the timesheets were really impressive. In saying that, my fastest run had an average launch and a ****** turn 1 with really bad corner exit speed so I'm looking forward to getting back next year and dropping into the 40s.


Launch and Final Complex


Fastest Run

All in all, really happy with the event, it had a great atmosphere and the car went well. Unfortunately, not all competitors can say the same thing - the hay bales had a few victims over the weekend, with some cars sustaining some heavy damage - so the fact that I'm able to just give the car a quick service before heading to Lakeside on the 7th Sept is really good.
 
Wrap up since last update - there been some massive happenings...

My last event was King of QR. It's a great event because we run on all 4 layouts of QR, however I had a really frustrating day with the car.


On the brakes coming in to turn 3 at QR

I just could not get the car to shift into second gear on the downshift, and even getting out of gear was a struggle. The pedal felt terrible, so I bled it, but still no better. It was that horrible to drive that I ended up putting it back on the trailer and taking it home.

I had a good look at the hydraulic system for the clutch. The slave is nice and fresh however the master actually had a big notch taken out of the rear seal. This is why the clutch would not have been operating correctly. I fixed that with a rebuild kit and went to give the car a test run.

This is where things went south. I found a coolant leak in the water pump area of the engine. Quite bad. Now this car has never leaked so I knew there was something not right. I pulled the water pump off and replaced the o-ring, because it didn't look to flash. Reassembled. Problem still there. So I stripped again and sure enough - big crack in the cylinder block. The crack is in a fairly common place where early 3S engines crack. Damn. This engines a goner.


On the hunt for the leak...


Bonus Points if you can spot the crack :)

So, time to replace the engine. But, I'm not content with that. If I'm going to go to the effort of replacing the engine, then I'm going to take the opportunity to make some big changes while the engine is out. I'm stripping the entire wiring loom from the car, power steering, brake lines, clutch line, throttle cable and all the pedals and will be removed, too.

So I have an expensive but exciting project with the car now. To replace the wiring, I'm going to build my own complete harness for the car, utilizing a Motec PDM30 (Power Distribution Module). The engine is going to have a new plenum, side entry, which is going to accept a drive by wire throttle servo. Because of this, I also need to replace the aging Haltech PS1000 ECU with a Motec M130. The pedals are being replaced with a Tilton pedal box and I will be adding front and rear brake pressure sensors as well as all new lines to the front and rear brakes as well as the clutch. The throttle pedal will actuate a drive by wire throttle sensor instead of a cable.

The power steering system is coming out and the column is going to be replaced from the power assist system from a Toyota 86 - so no hydraulics. This will take a fair bit of fabrication. On that note, I'm also going to be converting the front uprights to Toyota Prius so will need to do a fair bit of fabrication around that. The alternator is going to be moved low and to the rear like with the MR2 to get it away from the hot manifold.


Engine bay stripped of all wiring forward of the firewall.

The fuel tank is staying however the hanger will be converted to AN fittings and there will be all new lines as well as a surge tank in the boot. Clubsprint rules don't allow me to go to a straight fuel cell unfortunately. I did cut an access hole and made a cover for it in order to gain easy access to the fuel pump hanger without needing to drop the tank.

The engine itself is going to be a high compression engine using a 5S block but with 3S crank, high compression pistons and rods, using the same turbo as I've already got. The head however is going to get some work and get bigger cams installed so it should make good power once done. To protect it I'm going to install an Accusump. The factory distributer triggers are also being ditched in favour of a custom crank and cam trigger setup with hall effect sensors.

Also going to replace the rear diff with a mechanical limited slip unit and in general go through everything and try and package the whole thing a lot better. I have a few things in mind but I'll stop dribbling on and just show you as they happen :)

The project, due to the amount of work and costs involved, will take some time however I am happy to take as much time as needed to do it properly, as I have the Bluebird and now an Endurance Kart to keep me busy behind the wheel at racetracks in the mean time.
 

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