Todd's new S2000

[Toddxxx]

same battery as me

I also met one of the distributors for fullriver who said "If it ever shits itself or dies, let me know and I will replace it for free"
So he must be pretty confident in the product

Man that's so good!
I rang up to ensuite about odyssey warranty and he's like yeah you used it in a car so the warranty is void....
wut!?

So far the fullriver actually seems to kick the s2k over that little bit quicker compared to the odyssey. Could just be placebo though as I know it has that slightly better CCA haha

[plAythiNG]

does metal jacket on oddessey fiy fullriver?

[Toddxxx]

Fullriver came with its own metal jacket hence why I'm getting rid of the odyssey one haha
But yeah same size so should fit

[Toddxxx]

Spoon X brace post updated with trackday info

[Timmy_B]

I have had mine for 3 years and never had an issue.
But I do kill power when its in the garage.
I haven't started the Teg in 5 weeks and will kick it over tomorrow.
It should kick over with 0 issues (apart from old fuel)

[Toddxxx]

I have had mine for 3 years and never had an issue.
But I do kill power when its in the garage.
I haven't started the Teg in 5 weeks and will kick it over tomorrow.
It should kick over with 0 issues (apart from old fuel)

yeah i think from now on when i dont drive the car for a while, holidays and the such ill just disconnect negative terminal then hook it up to the ctek before i go to drive the next day

[plAythiNG]

why dont u just leave it all connected, and hook up the ctek.... its a proper trickle charger for a reason in that it will let it slightly discharge, and recharge continously...

[Toddxxx]

So i dont need to always have it hooked up to trickle charger/electricity. Electricity is expensive for us westies Alex

[Toddxxx]

30/05/16 YEZ RACING X TRAK LIFE WAKEFIELD TRACK DAY

I was excited to be back at Wakefield and had high hopes for this day. It was my first open pit lane track day in a long time. For those that are unfamiliar. Open pit lane days are usually private days with a small number of cars (usually a large bunch of friends) that doesn't have set sessions but allows you to get out on the track as much as you want during the day. They're perfect for beginners, offering the most track time possible but they're also good for testing, which is what I use them for. They don't have official natsoft timing but this also makes the day cheaper than usual which is another great bonus.

This particular day held by the guys at Yez Racing and Trak Life was for 30 cars with a lot of the people attending being friends or friends of friends. This kept the days vibe super chill with everyone hanging out. This is why I love these type of days. Friends racing together and hopping into each other's cars and having fun.

My goals for the day were to test out the effect the Spoon X brace had on the car, play around with tyre pressures, get Adam Casmiri to drive the car and tell me his impressions and to drop further into the 1:09 bracket.
Going into the day I hadn't touched the car other then fitting the X brace and putting in the new battery. I wanted to push my driving and get my desired times there rather than putting more mods on the car.

The morning was freezing and the track opened a little later than usual due to the amount of fog still sitting around. Literally from the pit wall you couldn't see past the back straight so racing was going to be dangerous but eventually the track opened and the first few cars headed out.

I decided to head out and just get the feel of the car and make sure everything felt good. It was still very cloudy and there was no heat in the track yet so no PBs were going to be set just yet.
I wasn't pushing or trying to go relatively fast this early on so I just kept doing lap after lap. Surprisingly on my 11th lap I got my fastest time which was a 1:10.6. I was happy with this so I came back in. Checking over the car afterwards my tyre pressures were up at 35PSI hot so I dropped them down to 34PSI.
Also to note. After 11 laps my max oil temp was only 108 degrees. No need for an oil cooler just yet with cold winter temps.

I waited a while before heading back out again as the sun had finally come out and was heating up the track.
Again I wasn't really trying to set a PB just yet but instead focused on practicing and fixing certain areas of the track, mainly T3 to T4 and the fishhook.
After seeing Sams (SamB87) comments on my past PB vid about pushing harder and keeping a straighter line between T3/4 i practiced this a bit this session. It seemed to work and my top speeds were up in this area of the track.
Other corners didnt feel as good to me and the car felt looser in the rear end and felt like it wanted to slide out more than usual. Colder track and higher tyre PSI are probably the reason for this. I usually have my RS3 PSI around the 30PSI mark hot but i keep reading people like 32-34PSI. Some have even said 36PSI i their preferred range. What do any of you guys reading like?
I did a total of 10 laps in this outing and dropped my lap time down to 1:10.2. I still wasn't pushing as hard as usual through the kink but was focusing on line changes in other sections so i definitely thought by the end of the day when i put this all together we'd have a new PB!
Not happy with the looser rear end i dropped the PSI down to 32PSI all round.

I spoke with Adam and arranged for him to take the car out for some laps to get some impressions of the car to help with fine tuning a few aspects and to get his thoughts on what it could benefit from. From his 5 or so laps he said the car was really fun to drive and he had a blast and that it felt really well set up. He said the suspension is great for what it is, power is good at the moment, the car is okay on turn in, rotates well and there's enough compliance there to get out quickly. I asked about the tyre pressures and he said they felt good at 32PSI and he would leave them there to keep that balance between feel and grip. He mentioned the front could use a bit more camber to help with turn in though (i already knew this as im maxed out at -2.3 degrees currently). Offset camber joints will go in in the near future.
He said the brakes are probably the biggest thing holding me back at the moment. I'm on HC+ and RDA blank rotors so i cant really expect anything else out of them. The plan was always to upgrade pads to a race pad after these HC+ run out anyway.
He mentioned that on a couple corners, mainly the sweeping fishhook he could feel the rear torsen LSD open a little bit and allow the inside wheel to free spin so all the power isn't being applied. Obviously a LSD will improve this so we spoke about options for that.
We came to the conclusion that going forward the first port of call is to
1. Change my brakes (this was the last track day i was going to be using the HC+ anyway).
2. I said i would like to add the suspension arms next to increase front camber and fix the bumpsteer in the rear and fine tune that rather than get more power to go faster. He agreed this would be a good idea
3. LSD or install my haltech and tune. I'll probably go with a LSD first as im having the issue of the torsen opening already and increasing power will just have more power trying to be put down exaggerating this problem
4. Whichever doesn't get done at step 3.
I think is is a really good set out plan going forward and with each step the car should get faster and easier to drive at the limits. I like testing one thing at a time so ill work through these steps at a slow pace probably but by the end hopefully the car will come out comprehensively faster than it is now. I also want to do the others mods first before throwing in the ecu and tuning for more power because that's the easy way out
After Adam drove the car I hopped in a friends stock AP2 s2000 to have a drive to give him my impressions of the car compared to mine. That was a fun experience and I feel like I gave him some good information to take away. He just enjoys the AP2 for what it is and has no plans for serious mods but it's still a fun and fast car to drive. I think we went around the 1:12 mark with both of us in the car.

After a bit of midday fun it was time for me to hop back into my car and really push that PB lap. Over the next two shorter 'sessions' I practiced bettering my lines through T3/4 and at the fishhook for a few laps then trying to put them together. I got faster dropping my time down to 1:10.0. I actually got 8 1:10.0-1:10.1 laps in these two sessions from about 15 or so laps so the car is still very consistent but it's also really frustrating not being able to push though to that 1:09 barrier constantly
I knew the time was there but I just had to push that little bit harder.

I waited till I went out once more and left it to about 2.30PM before I went back out as by this stage it had started to cool off a bit but the track had had sun for a good few hours now and would be nice and warm.
After my last two sessions I dropped the PSI once more down to 31PSI all round in hopes of maybe having that extra big of grip to help get into the 1:09s haha
I went out on track and did my warm up laps and what not and started going for it. Immediately I caught up to a 33 GTSt stuck behind some traffic and we were finally able to get through it on the back straight. Instantly he pulled away from me down the straight but under braking through the kink I was able to cut the gap down. Again going up towards the hill he would pull away again but all the way from T3 to the fishhook the s2k shone and I would get back right on his tail before he'd pull away on the back straight and then the front straight again. We actually kept this up for about 5 or 6 laps before we both oversteered and slid onto the front straight together and I was able to pass him and continue for another two more laps.
This battle was honestly the most fun I've had on track. We were both pushing and evenly timed and were able to pass other cars without too much interruption. Coming back into the pits we saw each other and had smiles and a thumbs up and it wasn't until then I checked my lap timer and I had actually pulled off two 1:09 laps!
1:09.8 and 1:09.6
I was ecstatic! Finally some good 1:09 times!
I hadn't heard it while driving but coming back to the garage I heard my go pro beep so I thought the battery must be going flat so I went to turn it off and the go pro was displaying SD ERR on the screen and It hadn't recorded my final session!
Gutted! Not only was the PB lap gone but the awesome battle wasn't captured
I later tried to plug the go pro in to the comp and transfer the Adam footage to look at his driver lines and such and those files had corrupted also. So not one video from the day! Can't let that ruin what was in other ways an awesome day though. So no video for this time but a pad change and I'll head back out to get even lower into the 1:09s!

PROS:
- PB!!!
- Such a fun day!
- Lots of info going forward with the car thanks to Adam
- Time for a brake upgrade after 1.5years/10 track days

CONS:
- Nothing really. Was a super awesome day!


Few photos from the day with my friend Phils S2k

[Toddxxx]

An update of a different kind for me. No new parts this time but I'm definitely loving the look of the car now.

I've just moved out of home so the updates haven't been happening and the car has once again been neglected after my last track day. I have Honda nationals down at winton raceway on July 31st so there's still a while until my next track day and I was itching to work on the car.

Since I picked up the car in December 2013 I have never actually cleaned the 'properly'. I'm quite lazy when it comes to cleaning with a quick house and wipe down usually the most I do. The car did look okay but you could definitely see it had been neglected a little. I decided to give the car a detail to freshen it up a bit.

Ive never detailed before (I barely wash the car haha) and really had no idea on what to do so I asked some friends on what to buy and what to do etc.
I made a quick trip down to SCA and collected a few things and got to work.

On Friday I stripped down the car and removed most things to get a flat surface to work with. I gave the car a good and thorough wash with meguiars washing solution and let it dry.



Next I got out the meguiars clay bar kit and gave the whole car a good scrub. I was surprised at just how much the clay bar picked up off the car that appeared to be 'clean'.

This is just half a bonnet haha
Almost three years of trackdays :P



After the clay bar I gave the car another wash and used a chamois to dry and then gave it a quick clean with the detail spray.
At this stage I could see a big difference to when I started and was quite happy. I probably would've left it here but a friend offered to come over on Saturday and help polish the car and get it to that next level.

Come Saturday morning and my friend rocked up with his equipment and we got to cutting and polishing the car. He taught me a few things and I had a couple goes hand polishing a few parts while he worked the car over with the machine. We were done fairly quickly and the car turned out amazing.

The paint is super smooth and a lot of the little marks and scratches I noticed are now gone. The paint is really shiny and reflective and definitely looks 100x better than it did previously.

Some pics of the car after we were done.

[chaumeh]

Looking good Todd!

Indicators and wing mirrors removed as well. Hardcore

[felixR]

Looking real good!

Which polish did you use?

[Toddxxx]

Looking good Todd!

Indicators and wing mirrors removed as well. Hardcore

Thanks!
Windscreen sprayers and antenna were removed as well

Looking real good!

Which polish did you use?

Thanks boss man!
We used a brand called gelson. My mate has a bunch of stuff from VG auto. Apparently it's fancy stuff haha

[Toddxxx]

Will do a proper write up later but a bit of a sneak peak

[chaumeh]

Wow. Love it Todd!

Wrap and new plates look awesome