Sniff sniff

Sniffing more cans of paint today, finished off the rear wheel arches. Nice and black now...

Next is underbody clean up.

Also picked up a bottle of Castrol SAF-XA for transfer case and rear diff. In theory 1L bottle should be enough for both but will see, the shop only had 1 in stock.

I also have some MT90 lying around given to me by a friend. There's enough of it for 2 gearbox flushes.

The gearbox currently has Castrol Syntrax in it, which is GL5 and the MT90 is GL4 and I may have an E8 gearbox.

So I will need to do some more research before dropping any fluid.

Sunday therapy

Quiet Sunday, home alone, wifey 10,000km away... what else but work on the car a bit more.

My therapy

Task for today was to clean up the mess under the wheel arches. The white paint under there was not in the best of conditions and what's left of the plastic guard was horrible to look at.

So, I hit it with matt black paint and took off the plastic guard remnants. If I can source replacement guards it'll be good, if not I'm not too worried running without them for now. Only managed to do the fronts today but seeing the wheel arch cleanup nicely was very rewarding and therapeutic...almost..haha

Before

After

Cooler makeover

Worked on straightening the oil cooler fins. Targa must be real hard on front facing coolers, these coolers were smashed up pretty bad and offroad excursion don't help either. Again I did my best to straighten the fins where possible and gave it a once over with matt black paint.

Can't do much about the bent bits, will have to do for now.

Also relocated the horn to the side.

After

Before

Before

After

Todo list

Todo before next trackday:

1. Gearbox oil - 3L Castrol Syntrax ($30 x3)
2. Transfer Case oil - Castrol SAF-XA ($30 x0.5)
3. Diff oil Castrol SAF-XA ($30 x0.5)
4. Buy oil filler pump ($25)
5. Engine oil -  Castrol 10-60w ($70)
6. Fix bent oil cooler bracket
7. Try to fix oil cooler fins
8. Fix bent bumper brackets
9. Remove intercooler spray setup on bumper
10. Set rebound on rear struts
11. Replace front control arm inner front + rear bushing ($50 + $90), waiting for delivery)
12. Replace Brembo nipples ($??)
13. Brake fluid flush ($60)
14. Spanner check
15. Wash car

Coolant change

Next on the fluid change list was the coolant. Too easy... out goes the yellow/brown/green stuff.... and in goes the glowing green stuff...

The bottle says it'll last 4year / 250,000km... I'll change it out after 5 events and see what condition they are in, will be interesting to see anyway...

Out

In

Intercooler debug

Next on the todo list was fixing up the sad looking intercooler. It has been through hell, but not bad enough to be replaced just yet. So I removed all the remnants of 200 different bug species and one by one re-straightened all the fins as best as I could, relatively a simple task but tedious. After the debuging and straightening I gave it a good wash with my Karcher.

The oil cooler however will need more work, or replacing. Update on that later...

Before

After

Scoping things out #2

Here's what I have and know about the suspension so far.

The front Coilovers are DMS 50mm, very well respected and expensive item. Looks like it has seen some action as expected, GTP and Targa.

The rears are Proflex's.

Front springs are 500 lbs (8.9kg/mm)
Rear springs are 450 lbs (8.0kg/mm)

I have been given spare springs with higher rates for track use:
Fronts: 700 lbs (12.5 kg/mm)
Rear: 950 lbs (16.96 kg/mm) - probably because of the stock swaybar
Just not sure if re-valving is needed to used these.




Front DMS 50mm

Rear Proflex



Front spring 500lbs (8.9kg/mm)

Rear spring 450lbs (8.0kg/mm)



Spare front 700lbs (12.5kg/mm)



Spare rear 950lbs (16.95kg/mm)



Front Control Arm Ball Joint Boot

Split boot before replacement

Started to look at the suspension for bushing wear and #1 on the immediate replacement list became the front right control ball joint boot. It had split and the grease was everywhere but where it should be, inside the boot.

$8 Part

Replacing it was a relatively simple task.  Picked up a similar looking boot set with same hole sizes from Veale in Welshpool for $8

Packed it up with some high temp grease and installed it in no time.

Next to replace are Front Control Arm Inner Rear Bushings. The left side looks too have collapsed. I have ordered a Whiteline replacement.

Boot replaced with fresh grease

Scoping things out #1

So after the shakedown at NoLimits Sprint I've compiled below list

- Suspension creaks and clunks on weight shifts, minor but bushing replacement was on the cards anyway.

- There seems to be excessive whining noise, initially thought the diff pinion/ring gear whine, then the wheel bearings. But I'm told the Ralliart diffs and wheel bearing were done 500km ago and are good as new.  I've check for play in the wheels and there were none. Got a comment on the forums saying old R-comps will make that noise, and it seems more likely the cause at the moment.

- Rear end hops on exit from the left hander up the hill. This corner loads the rear right on exit before the crest. My suspension experience from bike racing tells me I need to dial up the rebound in the rear. Not sure how it would apply to cars but will try it anyway.

- Looking at the video, I'm reving the 4th gear high into the redline unnecessarily sometimes hitting the limiter. Will need to short shift into 5th on the front straight and before the basin so I don't get too busy with the stick and brake at the brake markers.

- Need ("Like to Have") quick release for the steering wheel. Since I'm a short guy steering and the fixed bucket seat are placed very close to each other.  This makes it very difficult to get in and out of the car in a hurry (Safety issue?) especially with the cage work covering the half the door opening as well.

- My tyre pressures didn't get up to optimal on the night and I was too lazy to pump it up. I started with 25psi cold for both front and rear and it didn't even reach 30psi on the night (probably the cause of the tyre noise). It got upto around 28-29psi, should really be 31-32psi for the Dunlops I was on. I should really have recorded the ambient temp vs tyre temp/pressure..... next time.

- The forged engine did use a bit of oil, I need to watch the oil level and make sure it's warmed up good and proper before each run and cooled down afterwards.

- GoPro sucks in low light, only footages from Canon G11 were usable.

- Need to be gentle with the brakes when the tyres are cold. No ABS meant lockups, especially the rear.

-  Somehow, my rightfoot got really fatigued and had cramps towards the end of the night. The unsual foot angle during heel & toe might have triggered this over the old bike injury I reckon.

Scoping things out

Next few coming posts will pretty much be on scoping things out on the Evo 5. After an oil and filter change, I took it to No Limits sprint night (20/11/2011) at Barbagallo Raceway for it's 1st shakedown run. Things went pretty well considering I was still running 2 year old r-comps left over from Targa West.

Suprisingly, PB's were set for both long and short track that night. My driving was pretty sloppy as all my attention was spent on learning to drive a manual and getting use to the brakes & suspension setup.

Videos from the night:

 

Got the bug, here we go again...

Here's how it all began....

Wife in the X

Bought an Evo 10 February this year for casual trackday use, did the minimal tyres, brakes & suspension preparation and hit the track every month. 

8 Month later here's where I ended up...
It's an Ex GTP + Targa runner bought from a WA owner.

Evo

My new office chair

No Smoking

 My own race car.... finally... :)