First dry run - G30-660 86
Our very first test in patchy conditions was a great way to get a feel for the speed of the car and a great first shakedown of the turbo kit. You can read about it more here and while it was a great shakedown of the turbo kit and tune it didn’t really give us a feel for the chassis, suspension and brakes.
Last weekend we trekked back down to a Trackschool Trackday at Wakefield Park with the team from Prestige Tyre & Auto for our first full dry run in the car. The car was fast but an issue reared it’s head quite early. I was really struggling for drive out of corners. I soldiered on making tweaks to the dampening between sessions after a phone call with Tyler from PVS which helped get the car to a 1:08 but it was still a bit of a mongrel to drive, quite the handful.
The issue I was feeling was that the unloaded wheel was spinning up incredibly easily. The easy “fix” and the 2 things people recommended most were a new clutch type diff and faster tyres. I knew the problem ran deeper than that though. I know the 07RS is plenty capable to dip into thew 1:07’s with and I was leaving 2 black lines coming out of turn 2 so the factory torsen diff was still working… sometimes.
After hours of watching in-car video, looking at photos of the car on track and on the phone to a couple of awesome friends who have setup plenty of fast cars on this chassis (Tyler Mecklem, John Healey and Tim Brook) we got to the bottom of most of my drive issues. Tyler suggested I measure my ride heights as the car looked like it may have been pitching. Low and behold the front left corner was 14mm lower than the right and overall the front end was too low. Tyler suggested a stiffer spring, a 9kg eibach spring was the only option readily available on the day I needed it and I reset the heights to a magic number Tim Brook suggested from his very successful run in the 86 Series. I was also lucky enough to pick up an MCA Traction Mod from Brendon Ford who has since sold his turbo 86 for an FK8 type R so in that went too.
Whilst I had the shocks out of the car I realised I was probably due for new pads too so I picked up a set of Ferodo DSUNO’s from V-Sport. Prestige Tyre & Auto were awesome enough to squeeze me in to get the car on the aligner on Friday afternoon for the second week running. The spec is unchanged however I wanted to get it on the hoist to make sure everything was still in the window after lifting the car halfway to the moon.
After emptying the catch can we were set to jet. Straight out of the gate the changes were noticeable. The road was incredibly slippery and the car still wanted to light up the rear wheels but instead of a fury of one-tyre-fire it was locking both rears like an LSD should. The first session ended with a 1:08.3, not a PB but an awesome result nonetheless given how slippery and cold the road was. We were off to a cracking start.
Session 2 was a passenger session where I took Mrs Racefix (who was driving our Clio) and her father out in the passenger seat. In the madness of jumping from one car straight to another I forgot to put fuel in the car. Lap 3 unsurprisingly saw fuel-surge at the fishhook at ¾ of a tank. Thankfully PVS has designed a fuel surge solution that is currently in testing.
Session 3 was the quickest of the day where I started to really feel comfortable with the newfound speed in the car. I was able to really use the power and drive the car out of corners just like I could when it was NA. This session was where the 07RS started standing out as a limiting factor, not only under power but also under brakes. The DSUNO is slightly too aggressive for the tyre and the ABS really didn’t like so I wasn't able to maximise the braking power available. The video below shows what should have been the fastest lap of the day followed by the actual fastest lap of the day. The first lap looks like a very high 1:06 on the data before the fuel surge through fishhook, crossing the line at a 1:07.9, the following lap should have been quicker again but as you can see the run down the hill is a dogs breakfast!
The last 2 sessions were abit of a throwaway. I over drove the car a little but still banked some more 1:07’s and 1:08’s all while being a little bit silly with a passenger in the car. This car is such a ball to drive on, and sometimes beyond the limit!
Overall it was an awesome day not only because we banked another 50-60 laps in the car finding out what is/isn’t needed to make one of these things reliable with boost on track but it was also unreal to be able to share the track with my partner Emma for hopefully the first of many trackdays. A huge thanks to Trackschool for putting on events for people of all levels!
The changes worked flawlessly and i’m so grateful to have so many intelligent people reaching out with support and suggestions who genuinely want to help. The traction mod didn't do quite as much as I had expected but I think it’s a mod that will expose itself more on a faster tyre when I can actually use the squat a little more. It’s hard to gauge what made the biggest impact of the changes and I changed more things than I would have liked but given it will likely be my last test day before Aus Time Attack I wanted to have a crack!