Down Under Trackday NSX

Annoyingly, today / tomrrow was meant to be one of those "special moments" in the project as Speedtech have completed the wheel alignment and everything was ready to go finally, however disaster struck when I started the car up yesterday and noticed that it was running on 4 cylinders instead of the whole collection !

We thought it was possibly just fouled plugs from all the moving around the workshop after it's dyno tune, but alas it wasn't so simple......

Turned out there was no signal coming from the spark ignition pack for 2 of the coils ...... testing proved it was an issue with the ignitor pack which I thought was going to be a disaster and I'd have to wait to get one from overseas, however it turns out with some investigation that the part is shared with some early Honda Accord models so I managed to source 2 (one for spare) and sure enough now we have all 6 channels firing again.............

Great I hear you say......... well I thought that too, but unfortunately although all 6 are now firing, it seems that one of the coils isn't providing enough spark when under pressure in the cylinder. Testing of the coil saw a 40% difference in the resistance values of the coil which proves it's stuffed too ............ arse..................

So now I have to wait for some replacement coils to come from the USA so I can finally get to drive the thing !!!! Should have some by mid next week though so hopefully by next weekend I'll be posting some happier thoughts !!! :D
 
Well I don't have any video to post, but I will get some in the next few days, but I can proudly say that today I had my first "real" drive of the NSX and it's simply awesome !!!

Even though we've done no setup work on things like suspension settings (other than a wheel alignment) and tyre pressures, swaybar settings etc etc it handled sooooo well and even a few little tail wagging moments were well communicated and easily handled.......

The way it goes doesn't match with the number the dyno produced........ I was asked if my Civic was a 5 and my old GTR was a 10 what was the NSX........ I would say an easy 7 maybe an 8..... Even with fresh unbedded brakes it was an awesome drive and sounded pretty awesome at 7800rpm ......

Chris from Speedtech had a good drive around as well and was impressed and the ride quality from the Motons on rough surfaces was pretty good (I've been in worse road cars)......

As I said, I will get some video when we get a chance in the next few days (over weekend most likely) to get it out again, but work restraints at the moment mean I won't get time in the next day or two...... but we're on the right path :) and it can only get better once we get it setup further.
 
f1racr said:
Well I don't have any video to post, but I will get some in the next few days, but I can proudly say that today I had my first "real" drive of the NSX and it's simply awesome !!!

Even though we've done no setup work on things like suspension settings (other than a wheel alignment) and tyre pressures, swaybar settings etc etc it handled sooooo well and even a few little tail wagging moments were well communicated and easily handled.......

The way it goes doesn't match with the number the dyno produced........ I was asked if my Civic was a 5 and my old GTR was a 10 what was the NSX........ I would say an easy 7 maybe an 8..... Even with fresh unbedded brakes it was an awesome drive and sounded pretty awesome at 7800rpm ......

Chris from Speedtech had a good drive around as well and was impressed and the ride quality from the Motons on rough surfaces was pretty good (I've been in worse road cars)......

As I said, I will get some video when we get a chance in the next few days (over weekend most likely) to get it out again, but work restraints at the moment mean I won't get time in the next day or two...... but we're on the right path :) and it can only get better once we get it setup further.
Click to expand...

Congrats! Glad you finally got to stretch it's legs a little! HOPE to do the same end of this month with mine.
 
So had a good weekend working on the car tidying up some loose ends and Zac and I have finally got around to measuring the underside of the car for the middle part of the flat underside, so all in all a good weekend..........

Thought I'd take some pics of the finished article as it will race.

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I guess next I will have to make some videos of it under it's own steam.... :D
 
I have to say the car looks great,almost too good to bang up:redface: At the same time it looks very racy and true to its purpose...nice job.
 
Thanks for the nice comments guys....... I'm super happy with how it came out.

There's still a few little bits to be done like the air intake which we haven't finished (will be run from the duct on the rear guard not having a filter sucking hot air from the engine bay) but apart from that we're pretty much ready to rock.

Just going to borrow a trailer or make our own and get booked into the local track for a shakedown day.
 
We haven't set a date for it's first real outing yet. Just thinking about making a trailer for it rather than borrowing one as it's super wide (1.96m) from tyre to tyre so won't fit on your average trailer !

Also, once it's lowered to it's ideal height it will be hard to get on and off a trailer so we need something to suit on that front too.......

I will let you know once we've booked a day and will of course post some vids :D
 
how about a trailer designed to slide under the car just after you've elevated it with those fancy onboard jacks :smile:
 
We've got something cool planned for the trailer, but it would be impossible I think to get anything under the car when it's up on the jacks that could then take the load as the position of the jacks when it's up is awkward and more importantly if something goes bad and we can't get the car up on it's jacks I need to be able to get it home, but I like your way of thinking !!

I think you'll like what we've come up with and should work in all scenarios, so it's just a matter of getting myself together and getting it done, but work is pretty busy for me at the moment and as we all know, paying the mortgage comes first !
 
Looks so awesome... Wow... Clean job.
 
Hi OzSmart,

Love the Blue colour......... really pops in the photos...... bet it's even nicer in the flesh......

I haven't actually run mine in anger on the track yet, but the first "shakedown" run is on the 15th of Sep, just to check for mechanical and tuning issues, bed brakes in etc etc...... then hopefully it will get some real work on the 28th of September and another session on the 19th of October........ :D

Fingers crossed it all goes well on the 15th and I'll get some video :)
 
So I've been meaning to do an update for quite some time, but today seemed as good a time as most as the car got it's first run on the track and I'm happy to report that it lived up to and exceeded all my expectations..............

First of all I've got some pics of our new workshop tool that means we can do sooooo many more bits and peices ourselves which is great
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Next we've finally got around to all of the finishing touches and we've got the main flat bottom undertray done, but we needed an easy way to mount the tray so we've devised a simple little channel that is bolted to the underside of the car to drop in line with the side skirts. The flat bottom with push in from each side into the tray in the centre and lock in place with some simple fixing on the sideskirts themselves........... more pics to come once we're done, but you can see the start of the channels and then the large flat section for the centre where the tray will locate.

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Next thing I thought I'd take a few pics of was the new DC Sports headers Vs the factory headers......... interestingly, when Speedtech did a retune on the car it made exactly the same power down to the HP which we're all still scratching our head about ! But we will investigate that as we go on. We did change the intake system on the car a little from what it was when we first tuned the car with it's OEM manifolds, but I doubt that the new intake setup (which I need to photo too) cancelled out exactly any gains made by the new manifolds....... but it is weird....... we expected to make around the 20HP mark so to make nothing at all is odd and maybe suggests another limitation such as intake manifold or something else........we will get there in the end I'm sure.

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Now, unfortunately I don't have pics and video of the first outing yet, but it's coming (other people supplying to me) but rest assured it will be worth it as we did one inboard video and one outside the car video as well as pics ...........

It was awesome............ sounded great, looked great, ran perfectly for close to 1 hour of track time, bedded brakes in......... I lapped 4 consecutive laps within 1/10th of a second...... (easy laps, but still consistently easy) and only got stopped by a little electrical gremlin at the end of the day just as we rolled into the pits I lost all electrical power to the ECU and in turn to the engine........ We hunted at the track and seemed to get it going again, only for it to stop again shortly after, but STM will track it down and I'm sure it will be solved very soon.

Back at the track in 2 weeks for more testing with different springs, swaybays, tyres etc oh and a pro driver !!! So all in all should be even better............

Thanks to Zac, Steve, Dale, Bam and the team at STM for their efforts on the car and especially Chris for today.

Pics and vids to come soon !
 
fantastic news of your first track run fraser, but such a tease with the videos yet to come. can't wait !

when I fitted ''top speed'' headers to my NSX I got 15kW power boost straight up. they're similar setup to your DC's so something weird is definitely going on
 
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Hey Fraser,

I like your idea for the center aluminum "tunnel tray"....will it weld to the rails and the side "flats" bolt to it?

Maybe the side flats could be concave....or even have the profile of a truncated pyramid, so that you had two aero tunnels the depth of your rails running the entire length? Hell, why not install a snowmobile engine in the passenger seat, and use it to reverse-drive a blower into the "tunnel cavities", creating negative pressure in the tunnels?

Dang, couldn't resist adding a little engineering porn, haha!
 
Yeah that's right, I will take some more pics soon, but the flat tray is now welded to the rails so it's all one peice in the centre of the car, then we are going to add some spring fingers to the rails which will essentially pinch the tray as it slides on the top side of the flat tray. They will then be locked in place by fixing on the side skirts.

This way to get them off, we just put the airjacks up unclip from the side skirts and they will slide out from under the car. Then to put back on we just push them into the centre channel and lock into the skirts and we're done.......

We will have it finished soon so I can post pics. We did consider making some tunnels, but there's just not the space between the floor and where we want the undertray to be to make them anything but flat, but we did have the same thought !
 

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