Track car project - Season 2 - Page 6

vix · 19-04-2009, 17:37

18TH April

We had arranged to go on a rolling road day today so we could see what power the new engine delivered. Also it’s a good idea to see if anything else happens to the engine (ie hoses popping off, coolant leaks) when at full power.

On the way to the garage, we noticed a lot of knocking noises coming from the front, so once we got there, Phil took off the front wheels to investigate.

Turns out that when he had re-fit the original droplinks, he had fit them the wrong way round! Shows how much stress we have been under at the moment then!. So he quickly sorted them out and we managed to get an early run on the rolling road.

The guys set Humphrey up and did one test run to check the fuelling and to make sure the engine was ok. We knew he over-fuelled and hoped to get this sorted today. The first test run went well, and nothing untoward happened, except from lots of fuel being used!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhdYbmEiyt8

The whining noise is the supercharger, I’ll come to this in a mo.

The guys started arranging the first power run, however, about one second into the run, the revs dropped and the mechanic shouted that the throttle cable had come off. It turned out that the tiny screw holding the solderless nipple on to the end of the throttle cable had come out, but fortunately fell into a convenient place, so Phil refitted it and we tried again. Nope, it came off again and this time the nipple was nowhere to be seen. Ooer.

Off the rollers then, and one of the really helpful mechanics began his search for new nipples! Apparently there was a bag of them somewhere! We finally managed to bodge the throttle cable back on, but decided we would go last in case the problem happened again.

Whilst we were socialising, and looking at other cars, we realised that the other superchargers there weren’t making half the noise ours was. This is a tad concerning.

Soon everyone had had their runs and it was time to get Humphrey back on the rollers. Everything crossed, the guys got him up to speed, and managed to get a figure. I think Phil had rather they didn’t, as the figure was in the 140s, about what a standard supercharger engine should be putting out, so basically our big pulley was doing nothing! A few faffs were done in order to sort out the over fuelling, and checked the boost on the supercharger, (we still need to check these figures to see if there is an issue)

Phil decided that because of the really loud supercharger, and low power that there may be a fault with the supercharger itself, and planned to borrow one from our handy friend Matt, who has a supercharger engine sat in his garage. Thanks again Matt!

Final figures were 145.5 at the flywheel and 109.5 at the wheels.

Good things gained from the day were: sorting the overfuelling – we actually managed to drive home at the speed limit without needing to stop for fuel 3 times – and also finding out that the engine can run at full power without things going wrong. Sort of.

Plans are to swap the supercharger over and hope!

Ah well, I’m sure we’d be bored if things were simple eh?

Some other pics:

Nutcase · 19-04-2009, 17:50

Don't forget that rolling roads can't be relied on to give accurate numbers, their main use is to put the car on, get a base reading tweak, see what it does, tweak see what it does. It's always a good idea to take a good condition standard car along to a rolling road day as a benchmark.

What would you expect the larger pulley to do powerwise? What were the torque numbers like and what power/torque would the original engine be?

vix · 19-04-2009, 18:25

The good condition SC's were getting 165s which is more what Phil was aiming for.

kaiowas · 19-04-2009, 21:14

There were another couple of SCs there with similar mods, one made 165 with a cat, the other made 180 without a cat, ours is also sans cat and should be up around the 180 mark. There were also a couple of n/a car there which were making slightly above their stock figure so if anything the RR was reading a tiny bit high.

Power wise we were making about the same as I'd expect from a stock engine.

vix · 06-05-2009, 11:28

26th April 2009

Phil and I are members of the Lotus Motor Club, who run various events at the track and factory in Norfolk. The Motor Club were running an autotest today and we decided to go. Autotests are low speed competitive events, based around a track of cones. Each course is given to the drivers and they lose points for going the wrong way, hitting a cone or not doing things right, ie there are reversing sections and stops. The length of your car is also taken into account, so the shorter cars get penalised.

Phil took Humphrey and I took Sakura as I don’t get to do much motorsport in her, and the autotest is open to any car. The Motor Club also loaned out the Club car, a left hand drive Elise.

I found the courses easy to memorise, but struggled with the reversing! I’m such a girl! Didn’t do too bad though and really enjoyed it. Think I came about 11th overall, and was the quickest female. Phil was around 6th in the end, and Humphrey had a good day, despite throwing off a spark plug cover early in the day.

Unfortunately, no cameras are allowed on the Lotus site, so I have no pictures from the day

3rd May 2009

Round 2 – come oooooonnn!!!

So this is the day of round 2 of the Toyota Sprint Series at Barkston Heath in Lincolnshire. Barkston is a purpose built sprint track, on an airfield. It favours the agile cars and drivers as it is a tight, twisty track. Last year, Phil loved this track, getting runner up in class, and I hated it, getting slower all day and being last overall by a considerable amount of seconds. Add this to the fact that we aren’t sure how the car is running (despite having a new supercharger on and sounding better) we were a little apprehensive, but I was also determined not to let Barkston get the better of me, and determined not to finish last.

We had driven up the night before and stayed locally with two other MR2 Mk1 competitors, Mike Ellis and Matt Hopkins. We got our hospital visit out of the way early, as Matt fell over on the Saturday night and had to go and get his head superglued back on!

The weather had been great on Saturday when we drove up, so Phil and I just packed shorts and T shirts. When we woke up on Sunday, the roads were wet and it was dark and windy. Brr! As soon as we got to the circuit we put on our nice warm race suits.

We unpacked and took the car to be scrutineered. All was fine, except we are still getting very high results on the noise tests and I think an impromptu new exhaust is on the cards.

Soon it was time for the first practice run and I went out as a passenger with Phil driving. The course was exactly the same as last year, great as I had been watching some YouTube vids of the track too, and I knew it with my eyes shut. Just had to get the technique right now!

When Phil got back from his first practice run, he said Humphrey was running perfectly, and felt really planted on the corners due to the new ARBs we had. I think this gave me the confidence in him, and also for the first time, I realised how much my driving had improved. I felt that I was attacking corners correctly and felt a lot more confident. I was a bit disappointed with my 73 second time, although this turned out to be my slowest time of the day, I improved by 7 seconds to have a final time of 66, which was both competitive and a massive improvement on last years quickest time of 76.

Phil said he should have gone home after his first lap, getting a 58.67 and only improving on this on his last lap, getting 58.63! However this time was right up there with the more powerful cars and really showed me what I should be doing with the car!

When our 8 timed runs were up (that’s right, no car issues this time!), we had plenty of time to spare, so the organisers allowed us to go on the track for untimed fun, including passengers. Phil took me out in Humph, and I realised where I had been going wrong. To put it simply, everywhere. When I had my tuition last year I was taught ‘break early and light’, however for a twisty track like this, we were needing to break late and hard, in order to throw the car round corners. Point noted for next time!

We decided to pack up, which is always fun. As my leg is bad at the moment, we only brought the one car, so here’s some more examples of what you can get in an MR2:

After a bit of fun, the results were in, and we all gathered round for the prize giving. The Starlet we had battled with in class D last year was on top form, I think he finished 6th overall, and was obviously that class winner. Our results came in, and runner up was one of the Starlets, and the winner………… Phil! Nice to see some more silverware!

So.. plans now.

We are on the lookout for a new exhaust to keep the scrutineers happy.
We hope to get the front end ready by next round, we have fibreglass wings to go on, and a new slam panel. The front end is really swiss cheese and looks manky, so I think this is going to be a project.
We hope to get Humph on the rolling road again with the new Supercharger in, to see if we have got any more power. (Do we really need it though!) If this is the case, we then need to source a new Supercharger as Matt will want his back at some point!

Full results can be found here:

http://twistysprint.com/sprint/image...09%20final.pdf

Zirax · 06-05-2009, 20:40

Good writeup, much better than what I could produce

Personally I couldn't get into the circuit on the day as you'll notice from my times. I clicked a bit on my last run and knocked off 3.1secs which is an age in one run! I most certainly had more. Not sure why really, could have been the knock as I was worried about it opening up again.

Either way, see you at the one after next.

vix · 06-05-2009, 22:12

Hey Matt, you might be lucky and get to do all the rounds, they've just cancelled Waterbeach.

Zirax · 06-05-2009, 22:28

Cracking, if they can move it off that Lemans weekend then there is a damn good chance that we'll make it.

Zirax · 07-05-2009, 12:35

Just fired in what I think is a very good option. North Wield on the MSA circuit. No noise limit and not a bad circuit either.

vix · 17-05-2009, 12:31

16th May 2009

Those front wings were looking rustier and rustier, and we were having to use more and more gaffer tape at each round. The rules are that your cars have to look presentable, it is a professional race series and they don’t want primer’ed rust buckets driving about. Fair enough.

Here are the wings sans gaffer tape, yuk!

We had some fibreglass wings that were bought last year, but so far hadn’t had time to put them on, due to the Supercharger constantly playing up. Phil decided that as the weather was good, he was going to spend the day restoring the front end. He had already been preparing the wings throughout the week, so they were red and shiny, and ready to go:

We also had a new bumper bar and front splitter to go on, so really a good front end rebuild was on the cards.

MR2 geeks may have noticed in previous pics that Humphrey had no front splitter, so he is going to look slightly different after the rebuild. The bumper bar was complete swiss cheese, as is the case with most of them.

The front end basically bolts on and off, so theoretically there isn’t much to getting everything off. Bolts of course can be seized and rusty but to be honest, we are used to this by now! Because we knew we were replacing everything, Phil wasn’t too bothered about how it came apart, so it came apart rather easily.

In order to get to the wings, the side skirts need to come off, as they overlap on to the front wing. An important note for anyone looking to buy a Mk1, this is a great place for lots of wet leaves to live, rot and consequently make your car rust. This is the lovely pile we got just from one sideskirt.

Soon our car had no nose! How did he smell? Oily

The only thing that would be going back on was the front bumper skin. The rest is scrap.

Cue bolting (and I’ve been told tiewraps have been used to great effectiveness too!) the new bits back on.

I think you’ll agree a great improvement:

19-04-2009, 17:37	#51
vix Penelope Pitstop Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,426	18TH April We had arranged to go on a rolling road day today so we could see what power the new engine delivered. Also it’s a good idea to see if anything else happens to the engine (ie hoses popping off, coolant leaks) when at full power. On the way to the garage, we noticed a lot of knocking noises coming from the front, so once we got there, Phil took off the front wheels to investigate. Turns out that when he had re-fit the original droplinks, he had fit them the wrong way round! Shows how much stress we have been under at the moment then!. So he quickly sorted them out and we managed to get an early run on the rolling road. The guys set Humphrey up and did one test run to check the fuelling and to make sure the engine was ok. We knew he over-fuelled and hoped to get this sorted today. The first test run went well, and nothing untoward happened, except from lots of fuel being used! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhdYbmEiyt8 The whining noise is the supercharger, I’ll come to this in a mo. The guys started arranging the first power run, however, about one second into the run, the revs dropped and the mechanic shouted that the throttle cable had come off. It turned out that the tiny screw holding the solderless nipple on to the end of the throttle cable had come out, but fortunately fell into a convenient place, so Phil refitted it and we tried again. Nope, it came off again and this time the nipple was nowhere to be seen. Ooer. Off the rollers then, and one of the really helpful mechanics began his search for new nipples! Apparently there was a bag of them somewhere! We finally managed to bodge the throttle cable back on, but decided we would go last in case the problem happened again. Whilst we were socialising, and looking at other cars, we realised that the other superchargers there weren’t making half the noise ours was. This is a tad concerning. Soon everyone had had their runs and it was time to get Humphrey back on the rollers. Everything crossed, the guys got him up to speed, and managed to get a figure. I think Phil had rather they didn’t, as the figure was in the 140s, about what a standard supercharger engine should be putting out, so basically our big pulley was doing nothing! A few faffs were done in order to sort out the over fuelling, and checked the boost on the supercharger, (we still need to check these figures to see if there is an issue) Phil decided that because of the really loud supercharger, and low power that there may be a fault with the supercharger itself, and planned to borrow one from our handy friend Matt, who has a supercharger engine sat in his garage. Thanks again Matt! Final figures were 145.5 at the flywheel and 109.5 at the wheels. Good things gained from the day were: sorting the overfuelling – we actually managed to drive home at the speed limit without needing to stop for fuel 3 times – and also finding out that the engine can run at full power without things going wrong. Sort of. Plans are to swap the supercharger over and hope! Ah well, I’m sure we’d be bored if things were simple eh? Some other pics: __________________

19-04-2009, 18:25	#53
vix Penelope Pitstop Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,426	The good condition SC's were getting 165s which is more what Phil was aiming for. __________________

19-04-2009, 21:14	#54
kaiowas The Stig Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Fightertown USA Posts: 1,458	There were another couple of SCs there with similar mods, one made 165 with a cat, the other made 180 without a cat, ours is also sans cat and should be up around the 180 mark. There were also a couple of n/a car there which were making slightly above their stock figure so if anything the RR was reading a tiny bit high. Power wise we were making about the same as I'd expect from a stock engine. __________________ Anal Fish Porn

06-05-2009, 11:28	#55
vix Penelope Pitstop Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,426	26th April 2009 Phil and I are members of the Lotus Motor Club, who run various events at the track and factory in Norfolk. The Motor Club were running an autotest today and we decided to go. Autotests are low speed competitive events, based around a track of cones. Each course is given to the drivers and they lose points for going the wrong way, hitting a cone or not doing things right, ie there are reversing sections and stops. The length of your car is also taken into account, so the shorter cars get penalised. Phil took Humphrey and I took Sakura as I don’t get to do much motorsport in her, and the autotest is open to any car. The Motor Club also loaned out the Club car, a left hand drive Elise. I found the courses easy to memorise, but struggled with the reversing! I’m such a girl! Didn’t do too bad though and really enjoyed it. Think I came about 11th overall, and was the quickest female. Phil was around 6th in the end, and Humphrey had a good day, despite throwing off a spark plug cover early in the day. Unfortunately, no cameras are allowed on the Lotus site, so I have no pictures from the day 3rd May 2009 Round 2 – come oooooonnn!!! So this is the day of round 2 of the Toyota Sprint Series at Barkston Heath in Lincolnshire. Barkston is a purpose built sprint track, on an airfield. It favours the agile cars and drivers as it is a tight, twisty track. Last year, Phil loved this track, getting runner up in class, and I hated it, getting slower all day and being last overall by a considerable amount of seconds. Add this to the fact that we aren’t sure how the car is running (despite having a new supercharger on and sounding better) we were a little apprehensive, but I was also determined not to let Barkston get the better of me, and determined not to finish last. We had driven up the night before and stayed locally with two other MR2 Mk1 competitors, Mike Ellis and Matt Hopkins. We got our hospital visit out of the way early, as Matt fell over on the Saturday night and had to go and get his head superglued back on! The weather had been great on Saturday when we drove up, so Phil and I just packed shorts and T shirts. When we woke up on Sunday, the roads were wet and it was dark and windy. Brr! As soon as we got to the circuit we put on our nice warm race suits. We unpacked and took the car to be scrutineered. All was fine, except we are still getting very high results on the noise tests and I think an impromptu new exhaust is on the cards. Soon it was time for the first practice run and I went out as a passenger with Phil driving. The course was exactly the same as last year, great as I had been watching some YouTube vids of the track too, and I knew it with my eyes shut. Just had to get the technique right now! When Phil got back from his first practice run, he said Humphrey was running perfectly, and felt really planted on the corners due to the new ARBs we had. I think this gave me the confidence in him, and also for the first time, I realised how much my driving had improved. I felt that I was attacking corners correctly and felt a lot more confident. I was a bit disappointed with my 73 second time, although this turned out to be my slowest time of the day, I improved by 7 seconds to have a final time of 66, which was both competitive and a massive improvement on last years quickest time of 76. Phil said he should have gone home after his first lap, getting a 58.67 and only improving on this on his last lap, getting 58.63! However this time was right up there with the more powerful cars and really showed me what I should be doing with the car! When our 8 timed runs were up (that’s right, no car issues this time!), we had plenty of time to spare, so the organisers allowed us to go on the track for untimed fun, including passengers. Phil took me out in Humph, and I realised where I had been going wrong. To put it simply, everywhere. When I had my tuition last year I was taught ‘break early and light’, however for a twisty track like this, we were needing to break late and hard, in order to throw the car round corners. Point noted for next time! We decided to pack up, which is always fun. As my leg is bad at the moment, we only brought the one car, so here’s some more examples of what you can get in an MR2: After a bit of fun, the results were in, and we all gathered round for the prize giving. The Starlet we had battled with in class D last year was on top form, I think he finished 6th overall, and was obviously that class winner. Our results came in, and runner up was one of the Starlets, and the winner………… Phil! Nice to see some more silverware! So.. plans now. We are on the lookout for a new exhaust to keep the scrutineers happy. We hope to get the front end ready by next round, we have fibreglass wings to go on, and a new slam panel. The front end is really swiss cheese and looks manky, so I think this is going to be a project. We hope to get Humph on the rolling road again with the new Supercharger in, to see if we have got any more power. (Do we really need it though!) If this is the case, we then need to source a new Supercharger as Matt will want his back at some point! Full results can be found here: http://twistysprint.com/sprint/image...09%20final.pdf __________________

06-05-2009, 22:12	#57
vix Penelope Pitstop Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,426	Hey Matt, you might be lucky and get to do all the rounds, they've just cancelled Waterbeach. __________________

19-04-2009, 17:50	#52
Nutcase Moonshine Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Chelmsford, innit! Posts: 3,979	Don't forget that rolling roads can't be relied on to give accurate numbers, their main use is to put the car on, get a base reading tweak, see what it does, tweak see what it does. It's always a good idea to take a good condition standard car along to a rolling road day as a benchmark. What would you expect the larger pulley to do powerwise? What were the torque numbers like and what power/torque would the original engine be?

06-05-2009, 20:40	#56
Zirax Goes up to 11! Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,577	Good writeup, much better than what I could produce Personally I couldn't get into the circuit on the day as you'll notice from my times. I clicked a bit on my last run and knocked off 3.1secs which is an age in one run! I most certainly had more. Not sure why really, could have been the knock as I was worried about it opening up again. Either way, see you at the one after next.

06-05-2009, 22:28	#58
Zirax Goes up to 11! Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,577	Cracking, if they can move it off that Lemans weekend then there is a damn good chance that we'll make it.

07-05-2009, 12:35	#59
Zirax Goes up to 11! Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,577	Just fired in what I think is a very good option. North Wield on the MSA circuit. No noise limit and not a bad circuit either.

17-05-2009, 12:31	#60
vix Penelope Pitstop Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,426	16th May 2009 Those front wings were looking rustier and rustier, and we were having to use more and more gaffer tape at each round. The rules are that your cars have to look presentable, it is a professional race series and they don’t want primer’ed rust buckets driving about. Fair enough. Here are the wings sans gaffer tape, yuk! We had some fibreglass wings that were bought last year, but so far hadn’t had time to put them on, due to the Supercharger constantly playing up. Phil decided that as the weather was good, he was going to spend the day restoring the front end. He had already been preparing the wings throughout the week, so they were red and shiny, and ready to go: We also had a new bumper bar and front splitter to go on, so really a good front end rebuild was on the cards. MR2 geeks may have noticed in previous pics that Humphrey had no front splitter, so he is going to look slightly different after the rebuild. The bumper bar was complete swiss cheese, as is the case with most of them. The front end basically bolts on and off, so theoretically there isn’t much to getting everything off. Bolts of course can be seized and rusty but to be honest, we are used to this by now! Because we knew we were replacing everything, Phil wasn’t too bothered about how it came apart, so it came apart rather easily. In order to get to the wings, the side skirts need to come off, as they overlap on to the front wing. An important note for anyone looking to buy a Mk1, this is a great place for lots of wet leaves to live, rot and consequently make your car rust. This is the lovely pile we got just from one sideskirt. Soon our car had no nose! How did he smell? Oily The only thing that would be going back on was the front bumper skin. The rest is scrap. Cue bolting (and I’ve been told tiewraps have been used to great effectiveness too!) the new bits back on. I think you’ll agree a great improvement: __________________ Last edited by vix; 17-05-2009 at 13:05.