Josh wanted more feedback regarding his Non Inverted MCA Reds he built so as I'm still not cleared to drive Josh is going to drive in the very last round of TA @ Qld Raceway doing the Sprint circuit.
Josh made a few adjustments & mainly stiffened the rear, while balancing the front, to reduce some more under steer.
Looking at the logs, Josh wasn't pushing too hard on the straight but still managed a 59.2 so happy with how the car performed. We only got a couple of runs unfortunately due to a storm and the car is still seeing some hot temps. So with a huge storm coming we called it a day.
Here's a few pics of the day
So the last round of the Qld street sprints has been run on the sprint track at QR.
I know i needed to get the car out there and wanted to get some times on the sprint track but unfortunately i had a minor operation which didnt allow me to drive.
So i handed to keys over to Rob Ernst. This gave him the opportunity to get direct feedback from the suspension so we could give it a tweak to get out a little understeer i had at Lakeside.
So i gave Rob one instruction, get it into the 59's! & not only did he do that he smashed it with a best of 59.28.
Unfortunately due to the heat we saw 105°C on the logs, we could only do a few runs but it was enough to get us to a very low 59. So i'm very happy with that.
Looking back over the logs, Rob & i drive very similar with similar corner speed, Rob was 2-4k's faster with the MCA Reds, so I'm hoping to go even faster next time im out. 58's are in the bag if the conditions are right .
Had some cooling issues in the last 2 track days where
we've seen temps of 100 & 105°C. This was with new coolant, water wetter
and new water pump.
So I decided to replace the thermostat with genuine OEM
80°C. When I removed the old thermostat I tested it in a pot of boiling water
& it didn't start opening until 85.6 & was fully open @ 95.4°C. I also
tested the new thermostat as these 'can' be faulty even when new but it started
opening @ 83.1 & fully open @ 90.1°C so this is a major improvement over
the old one.
I looked into the hype on using a lower temp thermostat
& basically what I found is that there is no point as the more important
number is when the thermostat is fully open & not when it starts to open. A
good read I found is here http://www.tuneruniversity.com/…/low-temp-thermostats-what…/
Nothing real scientific in it but an informative read
none the less.
While the thermostat was out I did a full flush of the
block, heater and radiator with the Wynns products. 3 bottles just to be
sure
Then I turned my attention to the radiator cap. I tested
this also with one of those pump up things which reads the pressure of the cap
& it wouldn't pressurise over 1.1 bar (the cap is rated @ 1.1, so this is
fine) but what it did do is leak all the pressure. So time for a replacement.
So based on those findings & seeing I will be doing a
lot of track work I've ordered a 1.3 bar cap & just a cheap $15 one off eBay.
I refilled the system with distilled water, filling &
flushing the block with it while the thermostat was out & have topped it up
with water wetter.
I've been running data logs while driving around with the
old cap, until the new one arrives, & I’m only seeing temps of 83 - 85°C.
So it's spot on atm and will be logging all my track sessions with the new cap
& report the logs here
Another great day at Lakeside Raceway today. I was determined to get out on track as soon as i could to test the new MCA Reds that Josh Coote built for me and Rob Ernst installed.
We dialled in -3.5° in the front and -1.5° in the rear which suits the car really well.
Josh's suspension is so compliant i could almost say it's not stiff enough but with 11kg front springs and 12kg rears they definitely are.
Here's the sessions. I didn't record the first session but it wasn't that great as i was still bedding in the new brake pads and getting used to the car.
