Cool Go Pro setup, look forward to seeing the footage 
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Yeah i read about the discussions on AUS S2K so decided to go the cheap way haha.Originally posted by Toddxxx View PostGood choice with the rotors. I've done 3 Wakefield and 2 smsp track days on my $100 rda blanks front and rear and no issues yet
I've also heard of people cracking $500 dba t3 rotors after one day so the more inexpensive option is quite appealing.
To help with gearbox and diff fluid changes. I bought a $20 oil syringe/pump off eBay and it's great! 500ml capacity to two fills and the job is done. Super easy
My mag blue rims look grey/black cause I never clean them and they're cover in brake dust haha
It's going to suck once I get them coated silver
Might look into that syringe/pump; it would definitely make things easier.Comment
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August 2015 – Defi ZD Advance Clubsport, Bell Revolver helmet, Seeker Shift Knob
It was time to get a monitoring setup for the car to ensure oil and water temps don’t overheat. It was a choice between individual gauges or an all in one gauge like the Greddy Touch unit I had in my DC5.
After looking at Todd’s build, I decided on the Defi ZD Advance. His setup of the gauge looks so clean and just fits in seamlessly in the S2000! I found one on eBay for $750 delivered from Japan but later found that the seller price matched. I showed them the price on RHD Japan where they had it for ~$640 + post and they gave me an even better price than that! RHD has conversion fees to Yen but with this seller and I was able to pay via PayPal in AUD. With such a good buying experience, I have since bought heaps of parts from him.
The company is called Japex Trading and they are able to source a large number of parts. They are located in Japan which makes it easy for them to get parts and items for customers. I would highly recommend them for parts from Japan as the prices are generally better than local, ebay etc. Nathan Orchard is the guy I always deal with and wouldn’t hesitate to buy from them again. Simply send them an email for a price quote for a part, and they’ll send back the price of the item and an EMS postage quote.
For the most part, I copied Todd’s Defi setup. I traded a few PMs with him which helped a lot making the install fairly straight forward so thanks Todd!
My setup consists of the Defi ZD Advance + control unit, Greddy Sandwich Plate and Greddy 32mm water temp sensor. The oil temp/pressure wires are fed through the driver’s side firewall and the water temp wire goes through the passenger’s side firewall. I rarely use the control unit other than for initially setting everything up so I decided to put that in the cargo net with the control unit.
To wire it up, you can splice into the CD player for power. The speed wire can be found in the soft top module (white) and the tacho wire can be found in the back of the ECU (blue). There are great guides on S2ki that help identifying the wires.
To mount the Defi in my car, my dad created a T shaped bracket from a piece of metal offcut that is held down with double sided sticky tape. To secure the Defi gauge on the bracket, I wrapped plumbers tape around the section of the bracket where the gauge slides on. I bent the bracket and tried to make it the same angle as the cluster itself. At my height and driving position, I can see the Defi gauge and the tachometer including all RPM ranges (0-9k). For daily driving, I just run speed, clock, water temp, and odometer and trip meter. The shift light and warning beeps are also great features of the unit.
My first track day was coming up and I wanted to buy a helmet rather than hiring one each time I go out. I wanted something that looked good and really liked the flip face design and ended up buying a Bell Revolver Evo helmet from Helmet Warehouse. Buying online, it was fairly risky as it might not fit and they had a no returns policy. I did some research and decided that a medium was the right size for me. When I got it, it was a good tight fit. Putting on glasses was a bit of a challenge at first, but I eventually made it work and can see!
I also bought a Seeker 6 Speed Shift Knob from Japex Trading. It’s a ball shape and is weighs 400g. The added weight is great for shifting but it took some time getting used to the ball shape compared after only even driving manual with an oval shaped shift knob.
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Glad I could help with the defi set up man. Looks really good!
What trackday are you going to?Comment
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I went to the Trackschool Wakefield day in September and just went to the November one today.Originally posted by Toddxxx View PostComment
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Nice mods!
For the control unit, what I did was place some velcro on it. Then I put the opposite side of velcro plus offcuts on this metal thingy above the pedals
Its out of the way, and its easily accessible by reaching down and grabbing it, making changes and slapping it back on the velcro. Because the control unit weights like 80g, velcro works a treat. THe reason why I put extra pieces of velcro on the metal thingy meant i didnt have to secure back on the velcro with perfect acuracy.. i put just throw it under and grab any section of the metal plate as it all had velcro!
This was my intention as I wanted to let the side pouch pocket thingy be used if need be! Especially since the S2K has so little room to stash things. Although that went out the window since my greddy piggyback ECU is housed there lol!Comment
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That's a pretty good idea, might look into relocating my control unit.Originally posted by plAythiNG View PostComment
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August 2015 – Wheels and Tyres Research
My first track day was booked for the 12th Sept and I needed to get new tyres. The OZ racing wheels had Bridgestone S001 on the front and Yokohama EP400 on the rear and these weren’t going to cut it for the track so I was on the lookout for new tyres.
Getting new tyres meant that they would probably last me ~2+ years and I wanted to get my value for money out of them. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to run the OZ wheels for that time so I did some thinking and decided to look for new wheels. If I couldn’t find any, I would just put the new tyres on my OZ wheels and run them.
I looked at getting wheels through Jesse Streeter, Yahoo auctions, ebay, gumtree, facebook etc. for a set of wheels to suit my car. I used photoshop and put some wheels on to see how they might look. I photoshopped a bunch of wheels like Advan RS, RPF1, Regamaster, BBS LM, RE30, TE37, CE28 etc. Here are a few pics:
I looked on the S2Ki forums to get an idea of what size and offsets would be for good for what I was after. The S2Ki wheel fitment thread was good since you can search sizes and offsets and sure enough someone has run that spec in the past and you can see/read what fitment is like and what fender mods you might need to do to make it fit.
Since you can’t go wrong with volk, I finally narrowed it down to either CE28 or TE37. The CE28s on the S2000 is such a common setup but I hadn’t seen many yellow S2000s in Australia with Bronze CE28s. I was after 17” as there are more tyre options in this size and 17” tyres are cheaper than 18”. A brand new set of 17” Bronze CE28 from Japan was going to cost ~$3200 posted but that was out of my budget after buying tyres on top of that.
The front guards were already rolled on my car so that was good. The front right had cracks on the edge that had been touched up and the front left was done fairly well. The only exiting fender modification in the rear was the rear bumper trim near the tab. The rears weren’t rolled and didn’t have the bumper relocation tab done.Comment
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Weird that it was trimmed but nothing else!
If u are gonna get some wheels with fitment in mind make sure you get the tears rolled with rear bumper trimmed and bumper tab relocated further back!
Otherwise I have 6ULR wheels if u are interested.
17x9+63
17x10+72
No guard mods needed and u can run 255/40/17 all around too!Comment
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Yeah pretty weird. The OZ racing rear wheels are 18x8.5 +47 so that might have been the reason for the bumper trim or maybe a different set of wheels were run on the car previously that needed it done.Originally posted by plAythiNG View Post
I was trying to find CE28s that were "S2K spec" so that i wouldn't have to do any additional guard work but in the end found a set and rolled the rears to be on the safe side.Comment
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September 2015 – Volk CE28, RS3, wheel alignment, rolled rear guards, centre cap, CE28 sticker
I came across a clean set of 18” CE28 on Gumtree and even better, they were local. The previous owner had run them on an Accord Euro CL9 but with these offsets, I imagine it would have looked fairly weak on the car. They replaced them with Buddyclub P1s and posted these up for sale. The wheels were in excellent condition, I’d easily rate them as 9/10. There are a couple of small marks across all wheels but are barely noticeable and one of the wheels was missing part of the Volk Racing sticker. I bought a replacement sticker kit from Japex Trading and fixed that up. They came with old Bridgestone RE001 tyres in 225/235 so I sold those when I changed the tyres.
The fronts were going to fit fine without any further fender modifications. According to the will they fit calculator I used online, the new front wheels would have 8.3mm less poke than my OZ racing wheels. With this front wheel spec, it looks like I should be able to fit spoon calipers with 10mm spacers if I choose to go down that path.
I was worried about fitment of the rear wheels so I got my rear guards rolled by a mate locally. My options were roll them or take the risk of having the new wheels scrub the fender liner and make more damage, easy choice. There aren’t many places in Canberra that do guard rolling and the ones that do, I haven’t heard great things about them. They turned out alright, much better than the fronts. Reading up on S2Ki, most owners with this offset in the rear had to roll their guards to avoid any scrubbing. I’m running a ~2 finger gap all round so I might’ve gotten away with it.
For tyres I was pretty much set on Yokohama AD08R or Hankook RS3. The RS3 were ~$400 cheaper and I managed to pick up the last pair of 225/40/18 from Jax Tyres in Australia at the time as it was a ~3 month wait for the next batch. I decided to stick with a staggered setup of 225/255. Some of the comments on S2Ki suggested running 255 in the rear with this spec might scrub and a 245 would be safer. I didn’t run into any issues but if I did, I probably could’ve gotten away with more camber. Pretty happy with the fitment in the rear. The fronts are ok but 10mm spacers would fill out the gap nicely.
Volk CE28 Bronze
F: 18x7.5 +50
225/40/18
R: 18x8.5 +47
255/35/18
I got an alignment done at Capital Steering and suspension in Canberra. They are supposed to be one of the best in the Canberra area when it comes to suspension work. I decided to go with a variation of the UK alignment spec but with less toe in the rear to preserve tyre life being a daily driver. The old alignment was completely off as I had raised and lowered the car for registration and didn’t get it re-aligned until now.
I was planning on running Volk GT Centre caps on all four corners but they didn’t fit on the rears. I found that I would need to run a 3mm spacer to get enough clearance to click on the centre cap with this wheel spec. I didn’t even think of this when I bought them as I thought they would just fit!
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Nice specs! So lucky to find them locally.
With the centre caps. Probably best not to run them if tracking anyway. They're known to get super hot and build up pressure behind them and pop off. Most track guys don't run them or go through the hassle of taking them on/off before and after track daysComment
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Funny you mention that about centre caps. My first trackday in September i forgot to take off the 2 centre caps i had on the front and at the end of the day, there was only one...!Comment
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September 2015 – Wakefield Track Day
In September, I signed up for the Trackschool Wakefield day with my brother. Making it home without any major issues was the main goal and in terms of time, my aim for the day was 1:15s. This was my first time back at the track after 2.5 years in the DC5 and first time in a rear wheel drive on track.
Before heading to the track, I changed the oil to Castrol Edge 5W-40 and a new oil filter. These were on sale at supercheap auto for $35/5L so I stacked up on a few bottles while they were cheap.
There were ~14 cars at the day and they decided to run an open track format allowing drivers to go on and off at any time with a short break for lunch. Throughout the day, I probably ever saw a max of 6 cars on the track at the same time. The day is run using natsoft timing so it was good to check live timing after each session to get a feel for times and what the other cars are doing.
The weather was around ~20 degrees mostly sunny with some dark thunderstorm looking clouds at times. It was really windy and you could definitely feel it inside the car. There was a point after lunch where it looked like it was going to rain but luckily it didn’t!
My times in the morning were pretty slow. I wasn’t going full throttle as I was getting back into it and after a long time off the track, I was still adjusting. I set my cold tyre pressure at ~29PSI so that, I’d be sitting at ~34PSI hot across all 4 corners. The handling was great and with my wheel alignment, the car felt fairly neutral.
There was a passenger session just after lunch and I went out with my brother. He gave me a few tips on my racing lines which I would take on in the next timed session.
Overall, I ran about 40 laps throughout the day and the car held up fine mechanically. The oil and water temps didn’t get too high mainly because I was doing a couple of cool down laps every 3-4 hot laps.
In my last session of the day, I was getting a couple of 1:13s and on my last hot lap of the day managed to set a PB of 1:12.8. Pretty happy with that and after analysing my GoPro footage post track day, there are a number of areas that I can improve on including braking later and smoother downshifts so definitely some time to be found with more seat time.
Natsoft Timing (Session 4):
1:27.8880
1:13.5180
1:15.7380
1:13.5210
1:23.5560
1:27.3250
1:13.3990
1:12.7780
1:46.4100
The video for my best lap has choppy sound as I left the windows open that session but here’s a video of a ~1:14 lap to give you a preview of my GoPro setup:
Modifry GoPro mount
GoPro Hero 3 Black
Edutige ETM-001 Microphone
The Trackschool days are slightly more expensive than speed off the streets but you get a well organised day, natsoft timing and access to driving instructors if required. It was a good track day and I would happily do another Trackschool Wakefield day in the future.Comment
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