Ran the car at the (turn) Track this weekend...

[gawdzilla]

I usually don't post anything about my car here, but yesterday was the first time I took the single setup out to anything other than street tuning and normal driving with the occassional spirited driving. It's an S14 w/ RB26 (single) @ ~ 18 psi.

Here's the story...

Friday my friend and I got the car running much better with timing adjustments and fuel changes. My cousin calls me on Sat night saying his turbo blew on his STI, so I decide on a whim to go to the Redline time attack event at Summit Point. I let him drive the car (since he paid entrance fee, etc. already while blowing his car on the first practice day), just to feel the car out and see where it was at.

Going in I knew the car wasn't going to be great, given all it has is Tein flexes, a few ES bushings here and there, alignment thats not quite right, and wheels/tires (RT-615 275R 255F). It's got R33 gts-t brakes all around, but stock pads and rotors + old fluid.

I suspected the car would have cooling problems. No ducting, ebay 12" pusher fans, no oil cooler other than stock.

So Sun early morning I pack some tools, and take the car to the track. We park next to JIC magic's trailer, and its laughable how much budget and how serious they are compared to me and my friends' ghettoness. We did an oil change in the morning after tech, while they were doing optical alignments and swapping diffs I did borrow some zip ties from them later in the day which was funny.

So on the practice runs, I tell my cousin to take it easy on the car. He knows it's never been out for any competition, nor has he ever driven an FR on the track. I tell him to keep the revs under 7k, and watch the water/oil temps. The car ends up doing okay, and from what he tells me, the behavior is decent. Coming hot into turns at steady state it oversteers a bit, but it does grip really well. Said it can hang corners prolly better than his STI. Coming out of turns (the track was a bit slow I guess... 40-45 mph slow turns), the gearing of the 25 trans hurt me a bit. It was right at high revs for 2nd gear, but out of boost for 3rd gear. About 3k rpm. Getting on it in 2nd was too much for the tires, and getting on it in 3rd was too laggy. We got owned by a scion Xa (Yes, Xa).

The car sounded killer with a straight dart izumi style exhaust (no resonators or anything), plus open wastegate. Really almost like a bike. On the straights it really shined and you could hear it scream whenever it was stepped on. Got a good bit of compliments on the car, despite it being a last minute replacement.

Now comes the real problem... HEAT (probably applies to ALL of our motors). I knew it was going to be an issue, so we really limited the laps and the amount of flogging on the car. Basically, the car and brakes would get too hot before the tires got up to temp. The heat was enough to burn the hood insulation (top mount turbo), as well as melt my wastegate source line + some useless wires on the side by the strut tower. The melted wastegate line led to a boost spike which blew an intercooler hose off. No harm really, just pulled off the track.

The ridiculous under hood temps also melted my air filter and my turbo did suck in a bit of liquidated air filter rubber. Nothing ridiculous, turbo is fine. Trashed the hood insulation and ran a couple more laps and the hood paint started discoloring

My goal was to get the car out there and see what needed working. Now I know, and theres definitely things to improve on. Coating the header and decking the flanges (gasket blew i think), coating the downpipe. Adding an oil cooler. Adding ducting for the radiator. Adding a heat shield for the turbine. Probably adding some timing to keep the turbo/manifold from glowing. New plugs, we were propane torching them after each session to keep them from fouling. Probably going to give Iridium 9's a shot.

Overall my friends and I had a great time. I'm glad the car drove there and back in one piece, and wasn't a trailer queen. "Good" lap times for street class ended up being ~1:45 range. My cousin ran 1:42 in his STI. We started out running 2:00 flat. Got the time to 1:55 in practice, then on the hot laps he hit a 1:58 with a spinout into the dirt. On the final lap, about 4 turns before the finish and the last long straight we blew the IC hose and got a 1:56 after limping it to the finish.

Pic of the car parked someone i dunno took (jacked), me standing in front of it (just my pant leg, hah)

some short vids on the track...not too great qualityhttp://youtube.com/watch?v=kbkODyj_hLYhttp://youtube.com/watch?v=SmIuz9z6x8U
Modified by gawdzilla at 7:26 AM 10/12/2007

[Yellow4g63]

congrats on making it out lol. Nice to see RB S cars on a road race course. Did you get any in car vidz?

[l0nestar]

Glad you got it out! Glad you also got to learn some things and report back!

I'm already planning for high temps in my car (ducting + heat shielding + oil cooler).

[OpeLok]

I would have fought the person that put an SR on your windshield

[gawdzilla]

wish i had a camera mount for the car... my friend took a quick vid of it crossing the finish line, i'll see if i can get it.

oh, one more thing...

my cousin did mention something about ridiculous front end plow and being unable to turn from the super heavy motor sitting SO FAR up front and destroying the weight balance, so now i'm gonna junk the car. or not.
Modified by gawdzilla at 4:11 PM 10/1/2007

[rbosacco]

hey man, its richie, we met up at summit on sunday. being that you are kinda local you should try to make it to some of our local drift practices there. driftnirvana.com has all the info. sweet car man it was awesome seeing another rb out there.

[OpeLok]

my cousin did mention something about ridiculous front end plow and being unable to turn from the super heavy motor sitting SO FAR up front and destroying the weight balance, so now i'm gonna junk the car. or not.

Modified by gawdzilla at 4:11 PM 10/1/2007

yeah you should scrap the project right now... RB's are stupid to put into any car other than the all might skyline GTRnurspeccIIXIV

[Yellow4g63]

A vented carbonkiber hood might be a good idea to keep under hood temps down. I'm getting one for mine since my car didn't come with a hood!!!!!!.

[Shocker]

sounds like a fun weekend, and yes they get hot as ****. Hot enough for me to melt my coolant line behind my block for my turbo in only 30 minutes of run time....... But extremely fun never the less. The wraping and high heat paint sound like a good idea.

[BoostFab]

sweet car; not too bad result with the basic suspension. you have got to vent the hood, perhaps cutting out and integrating some front and rear vents on the hood to take out the heat. melting plastic under the hood is way too much to keep going like that.

[gawdzilla]

nice meeting you too richie, should've brought your car out.

i'm not too big on drifting, but i might come check it out if i can get some of these issues fixed.

I thought about venting the hood, but I'll be giving the techline turbo x coating a shot on all my exhaust parts first. that should help keep the temps down significantly.

[gawdzilla]

my friend put vids up.. i've added them to the original post

[raremotive]

To help your front plowing, just bring the engine toward the back. Now that you got everything hooked up and running it should be easy to move the engine backward.

I personally would of fabbed up the firewall so I can get the engine further back.

And yeah, I would do what tein did to their s15:




Modified by Rare_f8 at 8:05 PM 10/12/2007

[s13rb28]

thats a great idea until you have to work on it. looks hot, solves weight issues.