It's been a while since I last posted here.. lots of little jobs being finished over the past few weeks, so not much to report on until now.
I'll start with a bit of a catch-up.. there were a few things to finish off from the summer as well as some improvements to be made: the car now has an external battery connection, an intercom, a whole load of small cosmetic tweaks, but probably the biggest deal is the ride height and the front splitter.
The ride height has been an issue since the car first started going together, and cutting a long story short it's because the struts weren't made properly. They were designed for a 6in spring and helper spring, but because the damping adjuster has been put right where the spring seat should have been they'll barely take a 6in spring with zero room for adjustment, so the front ride height was around 30mm too high! I have no confidence that the struts would be made properly a second time around, so have gone down the road of deleting the ride height adjustment from the front top mounts and going to a fixed top mount that's 30mm shorter overall. The result is the car now sits perfectly level, with only a minor sacrifice of not being able to set corner weights independently of suspension travel.
These are the new top mounts:
And here's how the car looks now:
The second thing worth showing off about is the splitter - this is a quick & dirty prototype but it still really looks the part and compliments the massive spoiler well!
So that was the last few weeks.. then on Saturday it went off to Rockingham for its first track day!
That started off pretty badly, as we couldn't get the car started at all. It wouldn't spark, but to make matters worse I didn't have my ECU comms lead so couldn't find out why. I remembered we had problems during mapping with the CPS missing teeth when the engine was stone cold, so figured it must be that playing up again.. eventually I pulled the engine harness out the car and went through it with my multi-meter to check all the connections were OK. While doing that I noticed the pins in the CPS plug were of a different design to those in the other JPT plugs (such as injectors) and were slightly less springy, so chopped the plug off and replaced them with the other kind. Put the loom back in the car and it fired straight up! So it turns out the other clips were just soft enough to distort the signal from the CPS, or something like that.
While I was getting on with the starting issue, the other guys got busy with the zip-ties attaching the front splitter:
With the car finally running we spent the afternoon driving it pretty much non-stop. I honestly can't describe how much I'd been crapping myself about this moment.. after having spent a whole year building it and the owner going about 3 x his original budget, the car HAD to be worth it.
The only major complaint was that the throttle pedal was far too stiff, which made controlling the throttle mid-corner extremely difficult, but otherwise the car had tonnes of grip and was comfortably faster than their Fun Cup car which also came along for the day. I sat in the passenger seat for several stints getting feedback.. I have to say, the car is deceptively quick! You sit so low down and there's so little drama that it really doesn't seem to be going all that fast, but you catch up to people so rapidly that it's like everyone else is out on a trip to Tesco.
At about 3pm I had a go.. nobody wanted to hop in "because I don't have a race license", but that was fine with me tbh! :grin:
I spent the first 2 laps crapping my pants but after a while started to realise how nice the car was to drive and how capable it is when you start to push it around. The stiff throttle made smooth power application really difficult, but any resulting tail-happiness was so easy to control that it really was no drama at all. After about 6 laps I started to get the tunnel-vision of really getting in the zone, and started to hunt people down.. I enjoyed that for another lap or two then decided to come in before I got carried away.
The car is unlike anything I've driven before. Without sounding like a wanker, I've been pedalling my little FWD hatchbacks around tracks for years and am often one of the quicker cars there, but this is just a different league. I spent 10 mins in the car, if that, but driving it quickly is so bloody easy that I'm pretty sure anyone would be rapid.
What's more is that other than the corner weights, this has had absolutely zero setup. No spring tuning, no damper adjustments, no tyre pressure changes (actually I don't think we even bothered to check them hot) and no steering adjustments. With some minor tweaks (and a throttle cable that isn't a POS) it's going to be a weapon.
I'll stop blabbing and wrap up.. sadly my GoPro won't display any new media, so I can't get any of the videos off it! I only have the handful of pics I managed to grab around sorting the car out and being out in it.
