Another track day - Round 5 Qld Street Sprints Queensland Raceway

Well what started as a disorganised morning by the team at QR turned out to be quite a good day. Well any day that i get to drive my EVO fast around a track is a good day really so can not complain.

Took some pics but they're all very average.

Click here for in car video

This is a great shot, queuing to go out with my Evo buddies

Am very happy with the car and how it performed. A best time around the Clubman circuit of 63.431 is great going for a stock EVO compared to some modified examples. 

You'll see from the in car that i really need to get some suspension in this car asap, so that's where i'll turn my attention & $. 

As much as I'd like more power, you can see from the yellow Evo in front with over 300kw at the wheels, i could get close to those times with this level of power and some great suspension & obviously more wheel time.

The yellow Evo did a best time of 2 seconds faster than me and i know 2 seconds can be made up with well sorted suspension and more seat time.

I'd also like to continue to make a few things lighter but these things will be put to the back of the budget for now, suspension is where i'll make the most gains. I'll even hold off on installing the new exhaust i have, well maybe.

Stay tuned...

Weight loss continued - Now 143kg!!!

So i thought it time to do some math on how much weight I've been able to remove with it's original focus of not losing any functionality for a daily driver.

Here's how it came out;

Crash beam                                                                                                                   10kg

IC spray bottle complete will 4 bolts, lines & pump. Filled to overflow                                  5.6

Air box, with filter & cold air feed                                                                                      1.7

Radiator fan, with steel shroud                                                                                         4.1

Door cards front & rear                                                                                                    8.1

Speaker’s front & rear & stereo/harness                                                                           3.6

Plastic trim from whole interior inc AC plastics                                                                  2.6

Steel plate from steering column & Nav tracking stuff                                                        2.1

Glove box                                                                                                                       1.2

Front and rear consul                                                                                                       2.5

Drivers seat                                                                                                                   17

Passenger seat                                                                                                              17

Rear seat                                                                                                                      11.6

Rear shelf sound proofing & middle seat belt/buckle                                                           1.5

Soundproofing floor & firewall, carpet & matts 5.5 + 2.2 + 7 + 3 =                                      17.7

Boot plastics, carpet, jack & spare                                                                                  22.9

Rota 9" wheels with semi's, same weight as stock Enkei's with 235/45R17                          0

OEM struts F 9.5ea + R 4.5ea                                                                                         28
Battery                                                                                                                           15
OE Cat & Catback                                                                                                         23.3
Weight loss                                                                                                                  195.5

Additions

Fender braces                                                                                                                 1.7
Perrin foam filter                                                                                                               .4

Fire extinguisher & bracket                                                                                              2.9

6 point harness                                                                                                               3.1

Zirgo 14" fan                                                                                                                   1.3
Sparco Pro 2000 with seat mounts                                                                                  14.8  

MCA Reds F 6ea + R 4ea                                                                                                                         20
Lithium battery inc tray & upgraded wiring                                                                                         2
Tomei Expreme Ti Cat back & 3" Cat                                                                                                     6
Total weight loss                                                                                                                                  143.3kg

So happy I've reached my initial target now i need to remove some more. I'll try for another 50kg without spending huge money on super expensive custom parts.

Things I'll be looking at are;
Battery                                                 - 15kg Done 6/3/15
Seat mounts                                        - 4kg
Pas air bag                                           - 4kg?
Drivers steering wheel                      - 2kg?
Insulation behind dash                      - 4kg?
Remove weight from inside dash    -2?
Replace front bar                              - 8?
Replace all struts for coilovers         -8kg Done 1/11/14
Replace alloys for forged alloys   -4kg p/corner
Aluminium driveshaft                         -7
So this gives me a total of  70kg so i think 50kg is achievable based on not knowing exactly what weight i'll be saving.

There will be some additions though like a half cage and some aero so i'll have to factor that in when the time comes.
Until then......

Gurney flap & some engine bay cooling

Time to add some extra aero. There's a bunch of things to do to get the most out of the EVO CT9 and one of the small but very effective ways to add some aero is by adding a Gurney Flap to the rear wing.

There's a lot of science out there since Dan Gurney put his name to it back in the 60's but if we strip back some science and go with the basic rule of thumb of between 1-5% of chord then i should be ok. So what this comes down to is measuring the wing across the face and you get 192mm. Then if you multiply that by 2.9% you'll get 5.5mm. So i'll start off by making one out of aluminium at 5.5mm in height and see how it goes on the track. No wind tunnel testing here!

For those who want to read some science then there's some great info in Zerihan and Zhang's thesis http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~mb4/xin_zhang/27.pdf

So after reading you'll know why I've chosen to start at 2.9%. So if there's any benefit i can measure it and then always make them bigger and try to measure those benefits also until 5% is reached as i don't think i will be going fast enough to ever go over 5% due to the drag it creates. 

The EVO needs a much better splitter and this is on the cards also, just trying to source the right materials at the right price and then i'll post it up.

Until then, enjoy some Gurney Flap DIY.

And then the thesis by Davis http://soar.wichita.edu/bitstream/handle/10057/3715/t10084_Davis.pdf?sequence=1

I've a lot to learn about aero, as do most people, but there are some results that are proven and some are not. A lot of the big name brands in Japan & US (ahem Voltex, APR) have these products available and have tested these to a degree and if you want to pay race car tax for these items by all means, but I'd rather study Cyber EVO and make the bits myself as they did in the early days.

Material used is 1.5mm x 24mm x 24mm aluminium

So admittedly that was a quick job so i also added some aluminium insulation tape to all the pipes in the engine bay that i want to remove from heat soak. Yes i hear you saying that by wrapping these pipes i'll be keeping heat in also but the heat created by the turbo & manifold will be hotter than the air inside the pipes so I'm happy to give this a go. There's only small gains here if any, but a small gain is a gain. I believe for every 5 deg cooler you gain 1% in power.

New sponsors & awesome track day

I want to welcome on board two new sponsors. Troy Fuller from Iron Chef Imports and Scotty Chave from Auto Evolution Customs Panel and Paint.

Both guys are Evo nuts so it suits me well. Troy's business has been established in Japan for over 15 years, Troy and his business have a great reputation and they'll look after all your import needs. It's great to have you on board and i look forward to the future development with you in this car.

Troy is not only a great guy, he will take out any of the stress you might have about importing a car, or any parts for that matter, and is there every step of the way to answer all your questions. Remember these guys have been doing it for over 15 years, they have lots of answers but more importantly the honest ones that will save you money.

Scotty wields a spray gun like no other. Scotty has been in the game for many years and will be for many more to come. Scott will paint anything it will stick to and then some.

Scott took care of painting my wheels for me at nearly no notice so big thanks to Scotty and thanks for coming on board and offering your support.

As we know the colour Silver is... well Silver really. Hard to make either stand out for the right reasons or look tough. So i approached Troy and we came up with the idea of running Iron Chef Imports along the bottom in his green. Super bright!

So i just had to have Scott follow the theme with the wheels and they came up great, really suits the lines of the car and makes it stand out for the right reasons.

 Thanks to Track Tuned and LC photography for these pics  

Here's a few more of my favourites

And some more 

So how did the car go i hear you ask? Well awesome of course, it's an Evo! But seriously for those who're following this i didn't get a good time in with the stock tyres to compare. My tyre gauge was playing games and i let down 1 tyre too much, like 27psi compared to 35psi in the rest so when hot they should've been 40psi. 

The soft tyre was in the rear and it felt loose so i took it easy. My lap timer tells me a best time of 65.41 so was taking it real easy. The car felt a lot better than it did in the previous time i was out though, to get it down to the 64.8. If i was comfortable with the tyres I'm comfortable saying there was a second or more in it. A 64 or 63.9 would've been nice to record but as mentioned before the tyres (Nexens) are rubbish and there's no point pushing too hard when you're not comfortable.

So off with the rubbish tyres and on with the FZ201's. To say these are worlds apart is an understatement. Everyone that I've talked to that has run these semi's says to scrub them in before pushing on but that's extremely hard. I mean they came on after 1 lap, my warm up lap shows me 65.9 and I thought i was taking it easy the next lap and my lap timer shows me 63.2. Then a 62.8, 61.9 and then a 61.4! 

Holy super stick, these tyres rock! And i didn't think i was trying that hard.

The next time out shows me a best of 61.09. I have to crack into the 60's!!!

The next session shows me a bunch of low 61's. I'm trying too hard with this stock suspension. Felt a little bit of understeer also so tyre pressures make all the difference. In that session i had pressures down to 32 so next session I'll drop them to 30.

They tell us we're only going out for 3 laps so i have to make the most of it. The warm up lap I'm doing 61.5 then a 61.11 and on the last lap i crack into the 60's with a 60.97. Woohoo am stoked that a completely stock Evo can crack these times.

So look out when i get some suspension in it, has to be good for a 59!

Preparing for a track day & some exciting news

Over the past week I've been looking over the things that i wanted to have ready for the next track outing.

I knew i wanted to use the new cooler sprays and i also knew that i would be removing all the plastics in the car so having the switch swinging in the breeze was not going to do it. So relocating the switch to the bare space where the stereo used to live was the go.
The loom is only taped up so it's easy to get apart and run up to the stereo location.

 You'll see I've added a switch above this also. It's a switch to turn off the airbags while on the track. No need for them and if they did go off, that's a mess i can deal without.

While i had the stereo panel off i also removed the tracking/nav box that's stashed in behind there. Forgot to take photo's of this but when you remove the stereo you can see a little box in behind it with an aerial and a couple of other wires attached & mine had 2 purple relays attached to it. The wiring to it runs from the ignition and you have to trace it back to get rid of it all but it's only a patch loom so where you unplug it from you can just reattach the loom to the column (in 2 spots) and everything works as it should.

With the Aus delivered IX, Mitsubishi had some aftermarket company install this tracking box, loom and there's a speaker under the dash also. Part of the loom runs up to the top of the drivers 'A' piller to the switch thing and you can remove all that also.

Was just over 2kg in total, so another 2.1kg down from the front of the car.

 While i was having Rob do some wiring for me i had him install the new i-Shift i bought. These are a great shift light, totally programmable, multiple LEDS and have other features also. The voltage metre on start up is great.

I was thinking of other ways to keep things cool on a budget under the hood and i wanted to keep the p/s pot cooler. I had a thermo tec blanket there so i wrapped it in that stuff, should help a little. If any other heating problems come up it's very easy to install a small cooler.

I mentioned in the last post that the floor was getting super hot due to the exhaust being so close to the tunnel. When having a good look the cat is the culprit so not too many options there to keep the heat inside it so i wrapped the floor in the remainder Thermo tec blanket i had.

So on to the good news, I've had two other sponsors come on board and we're adding some of their colours to the car. It will look mint with what we've come up with. You have to stand out in a crowd with a Silver car and this should do it.

I wont let the cat out just yet as i want to do a full page introducing them and ad some action photos from this coming weekends racing.

Stay tuned