Why thank you............. I have had comments like that over the years.............. !! 
Oh you mean the car....... oh yeah, that too !!
Oh you mean the car....... oh yeah, that too !!
Down Under Trackday NSX
- Thread starter f1racr
- Start date
I can already feel the car sucking down onto that track!
BTW what is your approx. gross weight now?
BTW what is your approx. gross weight now?
Last time we corner weighted it, it was 1240KG with a tank of fuel.
That's a good question.......... I have no idea what will happen to gearbox temps, but we will keep an eye on the temps and adjust accordingly.
Well if 2 weeks ago was an awesome day then I'm struggling to find th words for how good today was..........
Steve from Frost Motorsport joined me and my "pro" driver friend Aaron Harris of Harris Race Radios to give the NSX a full test day.
The main plan was to have someone with proven skills to go over the car on the track and make sure it wasn't doing anything unexpected and then to make some changes and make sure the car was responding to those changes as expected. Then once we'd got that baseline, we would concentrate on getting the car to a point where Aaron felt it would be somewhere good for me to be able to lap consistently but also give as much feedback as possible also.
We started off with a good base setup that was mostly garnished from NSX Prime users and a couple of others and as hoped, it was a great place to start, but Aaron felt it didn't give enough feedback to really get the car working in the corners as he'd hoped so we changed some bump and rebound settings and ended up disconnecting the rear swaybar we had as we believed it was a bit too much even on the softest setting and then Aaron went out and straight away dropped 2 seconds off his previous time......... We will fit a smaller rear bar and reconnect for next time out as we think that will give us the ideal mix.
Here's my first attempt with my own camera so sorry for the outside exposure, as mentioned I'd never had the camera in the car before and didn't have time to adjust for the day, but now I know what needs doing I will get it a bit better for next time. Also the first time using the Trackvision software to overlay the dash info, but some of it isn't working, like RPM so I'll try and figure that out, but for now it will do I think !!
http://youtu.be/e-Mm_QnQBms
A massive thanks to Aaron and also Steve for taking the time off to help make a little boys dreams come true !!! LOL
Steve from Frost Motorsport joined me and my "pro" driver friend Aaron Harris of Harris Race Radios to give the NSX a full test day.
The main plan was to have someone with proven skills to go over the car on the track and make sure it wasn't doing anything unexpected and then to make some changes and make sure the car was responding to those changes as expected. Then once we'd got that baseline, we would concentrate on getting the car to a point where Aaron felt it would be somewhere good for me to be able to lap consistently but also give as much feedback as possible also.
We started off with a good base setup that was mostly garnished from NSX Prime users and a couple of others and as hoped, it was a great place to start, but Aaron felt it didn't give enough feedback to really get the car working in the corners as he'd hoped so we changed some bump and rebound settings and ended up disconnecting the rear swaybar we had as we believed it was a bit too much even on the softest setting and then Aaron went out and straight away dropped 2 seconds off his previous time......... We will fit a smaller rear bar and reconnect for next time out as we think that will give us the ideal mix.
Here's my first attempt with my own camera so sorry for the outside exposure, as mentioned I'd never had the camera in the car before and didn't have time to adjust for the day, but now I know what needs doing I will get it a bit better for next time. Also the first time using the Trackvision software to overlay the dash info, but some of it isn't working, like RPM so I'll try and figure that out, but for now it will do I think !!
http://youtu.be/e-Mm_QnQBms
A massive thanks to Aaron and also Steve for taking the time off to help make a little boys dreams come true !!! LOL
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Just got some pictures through from the recent test at Manfeild taken by Ian Thornton of Positive Images http://www.positive-images.co.nz/ so a massive thanks to him 
they're just excellent shots fraser. light from grey weather makes it look even better.
I'd be framing a couple for posterity if it were mine !
appears well balanced, nice stance in the corners
(hmmmm, maybe I need to get serious about tracking mine
I'd be framing a couple for posterity if it were mine !
appears well balanced, nice stance in the corners
(hmmmm, maybe I need to get serious about tracking mine
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It was a very overcast day all day and was pretty much constantly drizzling but never raining which was great as we thought it might end our day as we didn't have any wets and to be honest even if we did, we were trying to work on dry setups anyhow.
Sideskirts aren't adjustable as they're designed now, they are used to lock the undertray in place as well......
We call the black parts on the outside of the side skirts the skirt caps as they're not really the sideskirts, but a cap that we put on to help lean towards the style of the JGTC cars.
You can see a pic here before we finished the skirt caps....
Sideskirts aren't adjustable as they're designed now, they are used to lock the undertray in place as well......
We call the black parts on the outside of the side skirts the skirt caps as they're not really the sideskirts, but a cap that we put on to help lean towards the style of the JGTC cars.
You can see a pic here before we finished the skirt caps....
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So we had a great day at our test day today and I took over a second off my best time so far with some very useful tips from my friend Aaron who's races and does driver training for other racers and car makers who want to upskill their customers so Zac and I were perfect customers !!
I think Zac picked up 3 seconds on his best time as he's never really spent much time on the track at all and so to gain over 3 seconds and get within a couple of seconds or less of my time was awesome progress !!!
Only headache was that on the way back home the wheel bearing on one of our 4 wheels on the trailer failed and luckily we stopped just before it came off completely !!!! The only real way to get it home safely was to take the weight off it (the car) and so I drove my car home and it was a blast even if it was a little bit dodgy !!! .........
We figured it was actually better than trying to have a trailer stranded on the side of a main road ! But all in all another bloody good day.
I think Zac picked up 3 seconds on his best time as he's never really spent much time on the track at all and so to gain over 3 seconds and get within a couple of seconds or less of my time was awesome progress !!!
Only headache was that on the way back home the wheel bearing on one of our 4 wheels on the trailer failed and luckily we stopped just before it came off completely !!!! The only real way to get it home safely was to take the weight off it (the car) and so I drove my car home and it was a blast even if it was a little bit dodgy !!! .........
We figured it was actually better than trying to have a trailer stranded on the side of a main road ! But all in all another bloody good day.
I just absolutely love this car. Great work man. I would not change a thing.
Thanks fellas......... we tried to make sure we put stickers on for everyone who had helped with the build, whether that was cheaper parts or just tech knowledge......
I'd have been totally lost without Ross from STMPO, Shad from Driving Ambition and NSX Prime and all of it's users including Titanium Dave and Billy Johnson.
I'd have been totally lost without Ross from STMPO, Shad from Driving Ambition and NSX Prime and all of it's users including Titanium Dave and Billy Johnson.
It's a pity Shad doesn't answer the mails I send him....
He's a really busy guy and I know he's out of town quite often. I have issues getting hold of him also, but he's a very nice guy and has huge amounts of knowledge so it's worth the effort to get hold of him...........
I usually end up calling and from New Zealand it's not the cheapest, but as I said, great knowledge and it's cheap relative to what he can tell you........
I usually end up calling and from New Zealand it's not the cheapest, but as I said, great knowledge and it's cheap relative to what he can tell you........
OK so no exciting pictures or video progress I'm afraid, but Zac and I did have an executive meeting of the board members of the team............ or more realistically, as we like to call it a cup of tea and a chinwag at the workshop as I was just about ready to push the go button on the twin turbo upgrade, but as always Zac brought me back to earth a little and we realised that in keeping with our original plan and goals, we would be much better served by removing all the extra weight that we built into the car here and there as we went.
For instance we just wanted to get the car looking right and fitting right and functioning on the track and we didn't care how thick or heavy the panels were....... the rear bumper we guesstimate weighs in about 25KG with all the extra weight in the hashed together rear bumper spats (lower parts of the rear bumper behind the tyres)...... and the beam and brackets that hold inside the bumper together.
We're going to make a 1 peice part for the rear and believe it's not going to be hard to reduce at least 15KG from that part alone. We think we can do the same to the front bumper and lose a good chunk there, and the bonnet and the front and rear guards are well over weight. All in all we believe it's not going to be hard to lose well over 50KG from the current weight...... possibly more, but even conservatively speaking we believe thats achievable.
We have adjustments that we'd like to make to the parts anyhow, so really it's not that much harder to make a mould of them once we've made our improvements and then make some lightweight parts. Zac rightly pointed out that we're better of reducing overall weight for many reasons than just throwing horsepower at it, even though that's the easy way.........
I'm going to be stupidly busy with work committments over the next month or so, but hopefully we will be able to get some time in between to gets started........ we've already fixed our loppsided front bumper (you can see it in some of the previous track shots) right side as you look from the front is higher than the left side......... was like that when we bought it, but we didn't have time to fix it when we noticed it.... we were already too far along the build........ so just just put it on the list of things to fix......... so Zac's already fixed that and we're going to delete the indicators below the lights and make them an accent instead with an integrated cunard of sorts..... headlights have the real indicators in them anyhow......
That's it for now......... hopefully we will be back with a new light weight version of the car next year.......
For instance we just wanted to get the car looking right and fitting right and functioning on the track and we didn't care how thick or heavy the panels were....... the rear bumper we guesstimate weighs in about 25KG with all the extra weight in the hashed together rear bumper spats (lower parts of the rear bumper behind the tyres)...... and the beam and brackets that hold inside the bumper together.
We're going to make a 1 peice part for the rear and believe it's not going to be hard to reduce at least 15KG from that part alone. We think we can do the same to the front bumper and lose a good chunk there, and the bonnet and the front and rear guards are well over weight. All in all we believe it's not going to be hard to lose well over 50KG from the current weight...... possibly more, but even conservatively speaking we believe thats achievable.
We have adjustments that we'd like to make to the parts anyhow, so really it's not that much harder to make a mould of them once we've made our improvements and then make some lightweight parts. Zac rightly pointed out that we're better of reducing overall weight for many reasons than just throwing horsepower at it, even though that's the easy way.........
I'm going to be stupidly busy with work committments over the next month or so, but hopefully we will be able to get some time in between to gets started........ we've already fixed our loppsided front bumper (you can see it in some of the previous track shots) right side as you look from the front is higher than the left side......... was like that when we bought it, but we didn't have time to fix it when we noticed it.... we were already too far along the build........ so just just put it on the list of things to fix......... so Zac's already fixed that and we're going to delete the indicators below the lights and make them an accent instead with an integrated cunard of sorts..... headlights have the real indicators in them anyhow......
That's it for now......... hopefully we will be back with a new light weight version of the car next year.......
Hi all,
I know it's been a long while between updates, but work has been mental and will continue to be up till Xmas but I'd already booked into a couple of trackdays, one this weekend and one next so had a late night tonight getting the car back together.
Zac has worked miracles given his workload at the moment to get the old bumper modified so the lop sided lower lip and droopy indicator are all sorted, he's made a mould so we can make a new lighter part soon and then prepped and painted the old bumper so we had something to use for this weekend.........
As you'll see we've made some modifications and I really like the new look....... !
Looks a bit odd now without the decals, but since we're going to be making a new one soon ish I don't think I'll bother wasting a set of decals on this one..........
I know it's been a long while between updates, but work has been mental and will continue to be up till Xmas but I'd already booked into a couple of trackdays, one this weekend and one next so had a late night tonight getting the car back together.
Zac has worked miracles given his workload at the moment to get the old bumper modified so the lop sided lower lip and droopy indicator are all sorted, he's made a mould so we can make a new lighter part soon and then prepped and painted the old bumper so we had something to use for this weekend.........
As you'll see we've made some modifications and I really like the new look....... !
Looks a bit odd now without the decals, but since we're going to be making a new one soon ish I don't think I'll bother wasting a set of decals on this one..........
Looks better.
Thanks for the feedback........ haven't had a heap of comments from people yet as it's new but all so far have commented the same as yourselve so that's interesting as we we're sure till it was in final colour.....
So the latest day went really well and I took nearly 2 seconds off my best time round the track so I was super happy. Combination of more confidence and seat time and listening to people in the know about driving at that track and some was setup changes as we put a modified factory rear swaybar in place of the larger aftermarket one that was on there as it was too big we felt.
One of the other things we did was to take heat measurements from the brake rotors with a laser gun and those results were backed up with the AP Racing heat paint we put on the rotors.......
You will see in the pics that I painted all 3 onto the rotors. Green, Orange and Red / Pink. The green turns white when above 430 C , Orange turns yellow above 560 C and Red / Pink turns white over 610 C.
The fronts turned the green to white and started turning the orange to yellow just so we're not getting silly hot which is great so now we can choose a pad that will give me some more bite and pedal feel which I prefer over the Performance Friction PF01 pads we're running now......
One of the other things we did was to take heat measurements from the brake rotors with a laser gun and those results were backed up with the AP Racing heat paint we put on the rotors.......
You will see in the pics that I painted all 3 onto the rotors. Green, Orange and Red / Pink. The green turns white when above 430 C , Orange turns yellow above 560 C and Red / Pink turns white over 610 C.
The fronts turned the green to white and started turning the orange to yellow just so we're not getting silly hot which is great so now we can choose a pad that will give me some more bite and pedal feel which I prefer over the Performance Friction PF01 pads we're running now......
Some pics from a recent trackday........ lowered my personal best on the day by a fair margin and got within a few tenths of my pro driver mate so I was chuffed.......
images
Thanks for the motivation.
I really appreciate you sharing these high res/prof images. Awsome car. Your truly setting standards...Just got some pictures through from the recent test at Manfeild taken by Ian Thornton of Positive Images http://www.positive-images.co.nz/ so a massive thanks to him
Thanks for the motivation.
You're more than welcome.......... it certainly was a lot more work than I had bargained for but was worth the effort overall.
