Todd's new S2000

[Toddxxx]

https://trackbuilt.wordpress.com/201...t-1-wakefield/

First trackday of 2018 done and dusted. Re71r went great!

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[Toddxxx]

Updates!

Got my Js Racing side skirts back from Jeremy and the guys at prowraps and graphics and got them on the car a few weekends back. They turned out awesome! I thought they may have given me some issues getting out of my driveway sitting so low but they're fine.
Shouldn't see any aero benefit but they look nice







Also met up with some old high school friends that I hadn't really seen in a few years. Apparently everyone has acquired nice cars recently. Went for a morning drive up old pac and just hung out/took some pics. Was nice to actually drive the car just for a cruise not just to/from a trackday on the highway. Might try and drive the car a little more this year.





If you're friends with me on Facebook you'll have seen a few weeks ago the car had started making a really bad ticking noise. I was very concerned at first as my first thought went to bottom end knock but after checking everything I couldn't find anything wrong. I knew the motor was healthy as the car had sat for months and was in tip top shape before that. Still I posted the problem up on fb (bad idea) and had people throwing everything at me. I tried to fix the issue by replacing the TCT but no luck. In the end it turned out to be such a simple fix it's laughable. When I did my new battery tray I had to remove a bracket that an emissions resistor/motor attached to. I just slipped the clip over the chassis rail to hold it in place. Turns out this just resonated the motors tick/noise through the car into the cabin. Quick two minute fix and the car is back to normal. No more stress and smsp has been booked for next Friday!



Along with the new TCT I ordered a new bumper rubber as the old one had cracked and split.




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[ChargeR]

Car is looking good! Knew it would be fine if you just sent it.

[Toddxxx]

Car is looking good! Knew it would be fine if you just sent it.

Thanks Tom. And yeah haha wise advice. After doing the trackday and the car staying the same I knew it wasn't motor related. Glad it was such a simple fix.

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[Toddxxx]

Update part 2

More weight reduction took place recently. I removed the rear bootlid arms, tension bars and lock set up. This totaled another 2.4kg taken out of the car. Obviously needing a bootlid I began looking at other options to lock it on the car. Eventually I used the evasive v3 s2000 as inspiration and copied their aerocatch/spring latch set up. This set up added 400g back into the car so a total of 2kg saved.
The aerocatch latches used on top lock the bootlid in place and having the key locks allow me to lock it when using the car in public. The spring latches then hold the boot down on the back edge and stop it from moving around. This now makes the bootlid and wing set up a 1 piece removalable set up.
Install was pretty straight forward. Cutting the bootlid wasn't as stressful as the bonnet for whatever reason. Just lots of measuring and marking first.

Eventually when my new centre mount wing arrives I'll be chassis mounting it and running the stands through the bootlid so this mod will come in very handy then.







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[eskimo_firefighter]

Car looks great Todd, the new wing is going to really top it off.

How is jacking up the car from the side now?

[Toddxxx]

Car looks great Todd, the new wing is going to really top it off.

How is jacking up the car from the side now?

Thanks Pete. Can't wait to get the wing and test it out. Want to chassis mount it but that will require a lot of work. Might just mount it normally first then go from there.

And jacking is a little harder. Can only go straight on now. No more angles so need to make sure I have plenty of room to move the jack arm

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[Toddxxx]

Hit up smsp last Friday for the practice sessions. First time back at smsp since July last year! Was pretty rusty and there was so much traffic on the day that I didn't really get many clean laps in. In the end though I went 2.5secs faster than my previous rs3 PB but there's so much left in it. I'll be disappointed if I don't get a 47 next month

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[Toddxxx]

https://trackbuilt.wordpress.com/201...r-test-2-smsp/

Blog post from smsp track day is up

Also got my wing restored by my friend Chris. Big difference before and after. Fixed a gel coat chip and got rid of the sun affected spots.

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[Toddxxx]

No post in a long time. I really need to get back on top of this blog a bit.

Okay after the first test at SMSP I went back to Wakefield again for another track day. This one was held by velocity car club and it was a well run day. Good conditions but got very hot in the middle of the day. Abused the tyres a bit too much during the day and cooked them a bit but was still able to put down three 1:07.9x laps and six 1:08.0x laps with a new PB of 1:07.9. I was very happy with the car/my driving being that consistent.

What was weird/awesome about this day was the fact that I actually did two identical laps at 1:07.91 but even weirder was that two of the sectors on each lap were also identical. Glitch in the matrix perhaps?

A few of the S2000 boys in the pits.

[Toddxxx]

As mentioned at the velocity Wakefield day it was hot and i cooked the tyres a bit. The left side tyres especially the front left copped a beating and had worn quite a bit more than the right side. That was the third track day in that set up so i took the tyres off and rotated them around to get even wear across all four.

I had also struggled with the brakes a bit for the first time in a few years. The brakes didn't feel as crisp and the car was struggling to stop here and there. It was really hot in the middle of the day so I put it down to the heat and continued on until the early afternoon.

In my post/pre track day check over I remembered the brakes and decided to just do a brake fluid change as I had spare fluid sitting in my tool trolley. The reservoir fluid was fine, as was the rears. When I got to the front brakes though the fluid that came out was brown/black. Totally cooked! My brake issues made sense now. The Motul rbf600 had been in the car for over a year and had done quite a few track days so it probably should've been replaced sooner.


This is what cooked brake fluid looks like.

I used the Ferodo super formula fluid I won at the citr bbq the previous year and everything was good to go. This stuff is rated the same as the Motul rbf600 so I figured it'd be good and thus far no issues with it.


This is what fresh brake fluid looks like.

At the same time I swapped in a new oem cabin filter. The old one was crusty and full of junk so a new clean one is a welcome sight.

[Timmy_B]

Great job on the new PB mate. cars is very fast

[Toddxxx]

Thanks timmy! Good seeing you again.

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[Toddxxx]

Quiet night at work so figured I'd try and finish getting this back up to date.

At the previous Wakefield day my diff issue was becoming painfully obvious and I knew it was hindering my lap times. I was bouncing ideas around on how to fix it
1. Get a proper LSD in the back
2. Play with sway bars
3. Play with spring rates
4. New coilovers with damper adjustability
5. Change alignment
Some of these options were cheap, some were expensive. The main issue was that my next smsp track day was only two weeks away so not a lot of time to order parts, have them arrive and then install them. I decided to apply the KISS method and test the easiest/cheapest things first. That was sway bars.

Reading the forums, a lot of autocrossers like to remove the rear sway bar to help keep grip on tight turns so I figured that was easy enough to test out for a couple sessions. The early model AP1 also comes with the stiffest oem sway bars so another common upgrade (downgrade?) is to swap in a softer AP2 rear bar. The time restraints again stopped me from buying a new one so I tried to organise borrowing someone's AP2 bar but I didn't organise it fast enough so that test would have to wait for another day.

The day of the smsp test came around and surprisingly it was a super quiet practice day which meant lots of sessions!
I did the morning sessions in standard oem trim and recorded a new PB by half a second. Not that surprising as the previous track day I encounted lots of traffic. The standard diff was up to its old tricks opening at T2 and T8 every single lap. I could really see how much time I was losing in one particular session. I'd pull away from a certain car through T1 and into T2 then because of the diff/babying it he'd be right back up on my bum through the turn but then I'd pull away again and build a gap until we came to T8 where the same thing would happen.

For the afternoon sessions I removed the rear sway bar completely and was actually very surprised with the results. Instantly I could see the difference through the two hairpins. The rear just gripped and there was no wheel spin. It was great! The rear also became very easy to control with the throttle. If the rear would step out it was very gradual and easy to control whereas it would usually snap back.
The times kept dropping and in my last session of the day I was able to record two low 1:47s with 1:47.2 being the quickest. The lap wasn't perfect so there's definitely a 46 to be had there.

The car did understeer a bit more and I could really feel the mid corner push but this was expected as I hadn't touched the alignment settings at all. That's easy enough to correct.

Unfortunately my go pro was playing up and didn't record properly all day so no footage of this day which is a shame. Just have to beat it next time out!





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[Toddxxx]

In preperation for H nats I got Jeremy at prowraps to wrap the oem bonnet again. As usual he did an awesome job and the car looks great being one colour again.



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