♦ ♦ ChargeR's DC5R Blog ♦ ♦

[ChargeR]

^^ lol maccas car

nice update guy!

Ha that guy wouldn't say that to my face . Thanks Felix.

just thinking?
think these rims would look real good on my car

Yeah they would Mario, is it time for you to change it up a bit? Everything looks good on white .

i wanna pick ur brains at track tom. I wanna know how u get ur rims looking so nice :P I might change up the white/gold combo... maybe black/gold? or just full takata green

They don't look too nice anymore . I think your white/gold combo works well.

I was actually thinking of that color for my car at one point.

Should look good!

Thanks Robi, probably would have looked better on your car honestly. I was too bored with the white/black though.

[ChargeR]

EXE at Winton - 21st of November 2010

So I am lagging behind a little on updating my blag and I have no real excuse. The weekend before last I attended a track day at Winton run by the ever reliable EXE crew. The day was a great success, so efficient that even with some long stoppages for oil clean up there was still heaps of track time on offer with most getting 4-5 good sessions in. Great work by the EXE guys. Congrats to all the other people that turned out and hit some great times. This day would be the first chance I would get to test my new "small" tyre configuration with 245s at the front and a new pair of 225s at the rear. The rest of the car remained unchanged, even the tune was untouched since Superlap. Mostly because I am lazy, not because it was a particularly complete tune. I had a shiny new front right wheel bearing and hub though, so that must add some speed.

The warm morning comes and the line at the gates to Winton stretches practically to the horizon, so keen are the participants. After swapping over from my street rubber to the Hoosiers and adding some more oil to the car for luck I was basically ready. I set my cold pressures at 34F 35R with the goal of bleeding off pressure during the day to retain them at around 38 psi. In the future I would like to trial lower pressures as I think that the narrower tyres might respond better given that less pressure should be required to maintain the tyres profile under load.

First session out I aimed to take it easy and warm up, it having been too long since I had been on the track. After a couple of laps this resolution was long forgotten though and I started to explore the limits of the grip. I found a marked increase in response, particularly at turn in. Overall levels of grip seemed relatively unchanged but I doubt that I would be able to detect a small difference in lateral or longitudinal grip gained or lost by the change in tyre size. I need some sort of datalogging. In any case the session proceeded without issue and I was happy to dip into the 1.40s fairly comfortably.

I had to tighten up my wheel nuts before the second session with the thick fresh paint in the lug seating area melting and flaking off resulting in some scarily loose wheel nuts. The nice yellow finish didn't hold up too well to track duress either so the wheels will be back at a later date with track finish mark 2. I wanted to hit the second session hard because I never manage to go quick in the afternoon so this session was it. Some traffic later in the session but I had reached a time I was happy with, although I didn't know it at the time. I was extremely pleased when I made my way to the lap timing display screen and saw a 38!! pop up. A very high 38 and still not enough to match MugenBox but if I persist one day I will get there I'm sure.

The remaining sessions were nothing noteworthy. A lot of loose driving in the third along with 4th gear continuing to give me grief. In the fourth session I had a bit of a moment heading into old turn one. Hard on the brakes I hear a loud metallic pop and the brake pedal suddenly falls by a worrying amount and there isn't much stopping power there. Later inspection in the pits reveals that the majority of the pad material on the inner front right had separated from the backing plate. I had checked the pads earlier and decided that they still had one hard session in them, but oddly my pad wear pattern seems to have shifted somewhat. Previously the outer pad would always wear the most and a quick visual inspection of this pad would give you a good idea of how much pad was left. This time however the inner pad was 2mm at least more worn than the outer, which may be a result of the titanium shims that I had fitted retaining more heat in the pad and rotor. Something to monitor in any case.

I called it a day and fitted my spare pads and packed up ready to head home happy with the days progress and with some ideas on how to move forward. The handling of the car was great but other issues have reared their head. The main issues I saw for the day were as follows:

Alignment: My car has a wandering steering centre only when on track. I drive to the track straight ahead and after only a session or two the wheel is heavily turned to the right. I used to blame my camber bolts, but I am no longer using them so they can't have been the culprit in this instance. One of the camber plates showed signs of a small amount of slippage but not enough to make the very large change in steering wheel position. I have a set of hard plastic Mugen steering rack bushes to fit along with the PCi LCA bushes which will eliminate those two points of compliance. If the issue still persists I think it may be one of the following:

Tie rods - though these are quite new with both the inners and outers only having 30,000kms or less on them.

Steering rack - there could be some internal problem in the rack but I doubt it.

Subframe - It is possible the entire subframe is shifting slightly under load, hence messing up the alignment. When I remove the LCAs to install the PCi sphericals I will also remove the subframe, clean the mounting surfaces and mark its position when I reinstall it.

Brakes: Whilst the pedal was pretty firm all day, better than it has been in the past, I think I may finally be stepping outside of the usable range of the Project Mu LM500s with noticeable hard pedal pad fade. It is time to step up to a proper race pad and keep the LM500s for the street.

Gearbox: 4th gear is increasingly hard to get into at high RPM, I will investigate the cables and linkage but it feels like it is internal and it doesn't present an issue at normal RPM. I will just keep smashing it through until it won't go in anymore and then rebuild. I am changing back to Honda MTF also because shifting into 4th was much nicer previously but still very poor.

Comments and criticisms welcome. Times and some pictures are below, and sorry for the wall of text.

Session 1

1:53.5240
1:42.9910
1:40.0440
1:40.0190
1:50.4130
1:40.1570

Session 2

1:48.6330
1:40.2360
1:39.2830
1:38.9200
1:44.9650
1:49.1700
1:55.2150

Session 3

2:01.6260
1:53.4160
1:43.1390
1:42.5000
1:47.2980
1:40.7460

Session 4

1:39.9790
1:48.9970
1:49.8750
1:49.4520
1:41.0720

These couple are courtesy of Vyets. Check out his flickR HERE. Thanks fella.






And these are shot by kitbkk check out his flickR HERE.

[vyets]

<3 this thing

How did the paint hold up man loll did it get worse?

[Didz]

Hey man, nice post. I knew the tyre difference would not net you bad results! It was pretty funny when you said you thought it was a slow session and then you saw the 38! haha. Good work man.

Very strange about the weird steering. Wouldnt be anything to do with the castor adjustment?

[maracer]

Well done Tom,
Your car looked very the racing type
Some note worthy pics taken on the day

[SPL_K]

This guy... Still alive aye?! lol

Good stuff

[ChargeR]

Hey man, nice post. I knew the tyre difference would not net you bad results! It was pretty funny when you said you thought it was a slow session and then you saw the 38! haha. Good work man.

Very strange about the weird steering. Wouldnt be anything to do with the castor adjustment?

Haha I didn't think it was too slow a session, but I thought I was in the 39s . The alignment issue was there before the caster tops and has been plaguing me for years, I will get to the bottom of it though. Good work on your PB.

Well done Tom,
Your car looked very the racing type
Some note worthy pics taken on the day

Thanks Mario, well done on your time too!

This guy... Still alive aye?! lol

Good stuff

Yep still getting about in my K series powered Honda, unlike some ship jumpers. What's new fella?

<3 this thing

How did the paint hold up man loll did it get worse?

I <3 your S2000 too and was disappointed not to see it at Winton, when are you going to get back out there? Thanks again for gracing my crappy car with your awesome photography skills . Paint got much worse, I will probably leave it like this until the tyres are done and then get them blasted and painted professionally in two pack:



Here are a couple more photos of the car thanks to my brother and Dens from EXE, check out his gallery HERE.

[plAythiNG]

read this entire thread AGAIn for the third time!

Really appeciate the effort spent on refining the geometry of the suspension Tom! PM'd u about wheels.

[lukits01]

Paint got much worse, I will probably leave it like this until the tyres are done and then get them blasted and painted professionally in two pack:

what happened to the paint? The color contrast was awesome!
so that isn't just brake dust?

[ChargeR]

read this entire thread AGAIn for the third time!

Really appeciate the effort spent on refining the geometry of the suspension Tom! PM'd u about wheels.

Thanks Alex, sorry I haven't replied to your PM yet, I should get a chance tonight.

what happened to the paint? The color contrast was awesome!
so that isn't just brake dust?

A fair bit of it is just brake dust that has bonded itself pretty well to the paint, some of which would probably come off with a good scrub and clay bar. What the picture doesn't show is that the paint blistered all over the hub area and half way up the spokes . I think it might have been the primer used, they did look decent at the start of the day though .

[ChargeR]

Look at my Moogens

So as I mentioned earlier I acquired some Mugen steering rack bushes to try to make the steering in my car more direct, and just in case the rack was moving and causing my alignment wandering issue. I haven't had a look at the stock bushings yet and I have no idea how to install them but they are much harder than I imagine the stock ones are. The Mugen catalogue states a 3.5 hour install time, so if pro JDM mechanics can do it in that time it will probably take me 7. Pictures:







I wish I had a roll of Mugen packing tape.

[Norm]

the tape is soo smexy

[dr.k20z1]

take you 7! hahah so much dedication tomboy! haha

[3r1k]

Bushings will be super hard to do, maybe just send it to shop since you have to press out the old bushing (Super PITA)

[ChargeR]

the tape is soo smexy

Yeah the tape and box is more exciting than the contents .

take you 7! hahah so much dedication tomboy! haha

I only get paid minimum wage so 7 hours of my time isn't worth much.

Bushings will be super hard to do, maybe just send it to shop since you have to press out the old bushing (Super PITA)

I have a press and a hoist so I won't be taking it to a workshop no matter how long it takes . I have had a quick read of the workshop manual and taking out the rack doesn't seem too hard, getting it back in with the steering wheel still straight is probably harder .