redpriest HPDE journal

[derbo]

Originally Posted by redpriest

Was great meeting old friends and making new - fsmtnbiker was sporting off the Zebulon aero which I am hugely lusting after and now finally got to see in person. I spent a small portion of Sunday picking his brain, so I've got some interesting build decisions coming up for 2021.

Some things I'm thinking of:

Strom Motorsport uprights
MCS 3-way remote coilovers to replace my JRZs
New springs to match MCS coilovers
Zebulon splitter/wing and additional aero
Replace CSF radiator and stock power steering cooler with do88
Supercharger of some sort
Replace steering rack
Replace control arms
Differential

Right now, my car's biggest problem is cooling. I can only do a few hot laps before the car just starts to complain and starts pulling my max RPMs back. I'm hoping that I can fix this cooling issue by swapping over to a full do88 setup. I'm really happy with what the DCT cooler has done for me, so I'm hoping this also helps.

My car is at 170k miles, so I feel like looking at some of the load bearing portions is probably a good idea, especially given 70 track days in the car and plenty of big oofs. All of my bushings and bearings seem to be holding up so this is a big plus.

My differential is still the stock diff and I am almost afraid of changing the fluid. I feel like if I do that, it will fall apart, lol.

I've heard a ton of positive things about the MCS coilovers over the JRZs, especially valving - also having more capability of rebuilding suspension here in the US is a huge plus. When I cracked the endlink connection to the damper housing, I had to wait 4 months over the summer for them to rebuild the suspension.

What's really sold me on the Zebulon aero is the fact that it's still streetable - there was 1-2 inches of upward travel left and the fact that the car was street driven and arrived intact was a huge plus. I will probably purchase a towing vehicle/trailer in the next 24 months, but if that decision gets delayed due to macroeconomics etc. I still need to be able to dive the car to the track.

It's always nice to pick Mayfield's brain lol

[fsmtnbiker]

Great meeting you this weekend! Chuck was a blast, I can't wait to get back out there.

The do88 stuff was a big help for my car like I mentioned, but I also can't overstate how important sealing up all the gaps around the coolers was. Just taking some foam tape and a bit of aluminum and filling in all the gaps around my original heat exchangers got me several more laps each session before the car went into limp. Now with the do88 full package, I have had no issues with variable redline/weird shifting/power steering overflow. I could not be happier with their kit, especially the quality and ease of installation. 10/10.

Hopefully I'll see you out again soon at some more events!

[m3heaven]

Originally Posted by fsmtnbiker

Great meeting you this weekend! Chuck was a blast, I can't wait to get back out there.

The do88 stuff was a big help for my car like I mentioned, but I also can't overstate how important sealing up all the gaps around the coolers was. Just taking some foam tape and a bit of aluminum and filling in all the gaps around my original heat exchangers got me several more laps each session before the car went into limp. Now with the do88 full package, I have had no issues with variable redline/weird shifting/power steering overflow. I could not be happier with their kit, especially the quality and ease of installation. 10/10.

Hopefully I'll see you out again soon at some more events!

What are your favorite modifications done on your car so far? Sorry to hi-jack

[fsmtnbiker]

Originally Posted by m3heaven

What are your favorite modifications done on your car so far? Sorry to hi-jack

Oh that's a tough one. Probably the top of the list is weight reduction - the car really feels better and better with every pound you can pull out of it. The seats, battery and exhaust were the biggest weight loss items, with a combined 200 lbs out of the car between the 3. Getting the car lighter makes every aspect of driving it better.

[macdude357]

Originally Posted by redpriest

Right now, my car's biggest problem is cooling. I can only do a few hot laps before the car just starts to complain and starts

I switched to Ravenol 10w50 last year and it significantly reduced my oil temps. Blackstone reports haven't shown any signs of excess wear. The viscosity specs on the Ravenol are very close to Castrol 10w60.

[admranger]

Originally Posted by macdude357

I switched to Ravenol 10w50 last year and it significantly reduced my oil temps. Blackstone reports haven't shown any signs of excess wear. The viscosity specs on the Ravenol are very close to Castrol 10w60.

That’s interesting. Very interesting!

[redpriest]

Went out again for SpeedSF's annual Black Friday event at Buttonwillow. Temperatures were great, first morning session was 40 deg. My engine loved it. Towards the end of the day, it got warmer, 60 deg or so and my car started doing its overheating thing. I have replacement radiators on the way so I've had it with this - haha.

It's been a long while since I've been to Buttonwillow, so while I knew the turns, my car didn't feel so great. I went to factory default settings at 10 / 6 rebound/compression all around, and it was not a good experience. Car felt like it was going to flip over with all the body roll and car didn't want to turn in.

After doing about 3 sessions with this, I went to an older setting I did a long time ago, 15 rebound/9 compression, 14 rebound/8 compression in the rear. Car felt much better, much more confident on track, but with traffic conditions and higher temps wasn't able to get down into the 1:56s that I wanted to do. Pity. I felt like the car was definitely capable of it.

Here's my fastest lap of the day, which happened in the morning. Ironically I almost binned it at the end of the lap, which for sure cost me a few tenths. It was not a pretty save - and for a moment I thought I was going to end up in the wall or tank slapping it!

I also managed to ding one of my new Apex SM-10 wheels on the curbing at club corner. I went way over it like I used to do, but I guess I tagged it just right. The wheel looks like it got curbed on the inner rim:

[rhyary]

Nice save at the end

[derbo]

I felt like someone was behind holding that camera with it moving like that. LOL


Nice, Glad you are back!

[redpriest]

Lol, yeah, it's the auto-horizon leveling and hypersmooth feature on the GoPro 9. I'm not sure I like it. I need to change my Solo positioning and see if I can get a wider field of view - it's too narrow.

[kyrix1st]

Should send my car to Cali to be a camera car for this guy.

[derbo]

Originally Posted by redpriest

Lol, yeah, it's the auto-horizon leveling and hypersmooth feature on the GoPro 9. I'm not sure I like it. I need to change my Solo positioning and see if I can get a wider field of view - it's too narrow.

I think I will turn off Hypersmooth for sure. I need to look at the options.


Edit: Wow did not know the hero9 does not support external 3.5mm MIC yet.. :| It's pending the firmware update.. Well that hinders my plans.

[redpriest]

Well, I had an interesting weekend. It's the Bimmer Challenge season finale at Buttonwillow. Since I haven't tracked all year, I was nowhere near the running for anything so I was there to have fun and shake off the rust.

Tires had already seen 3 track days, so I expected them to be near the end of their lifespan, so it would be an interesting experiment.

For this track day, I had just refreshed the entire cooling system, as the car was overheating when it shouldn't have. The last track day I did at SpeedSF was Black Friday's Buttonwillow and the air temps maxed out at 60 F at the end of the day, more than cool enough. But sure enough car started seeing higher oil temps then I would have liked.

For the Black Friday sale, I picked up the do88 radiator and power steering cooler, as those were the only 2 pieces I was missing for a complete set. I had the stock power steering cooler, and you can see what a difference in sizes there are:



The do88 radiator replaced the CSF radiator - but I don't really think the CSF radiator is an issue - rather the fact that it was just caked in lots and lots of dirt. I blame going off at Buttonwillow many many times.



You can see some of the differences in construction between the do88 radiator and the CSF radiator below:

CSF radiator top:



do88 radiator top:

[redpriest]

Well, needless to say, the new setup worked just fine. I had lower water temps and oil temps throughout the day, and didn't worry about the car pulling max RPMs on me.

Unfortunately, I just could not get the car to turn in, I pretty much understeered into each turn which didn't set me up for optimal lines. I went even stiffer on rebound and softened compression up front (was at 19 clicks rebound!) and this solved my turn-in problem, but I had no rear grip. Argh. I'm going to have to get better at this suspension tuning - need to fully understand what's going on so I can better address the problem in the future.

I ran into an interesting problem on Saturday, since I was trying to get on the podium - and I would have been 3rd place for event in my class had my transponder not been .5 seconds off my Aim Solo DL! I've never seen such a wide discrepancy before, it's usually only off by thousands of a second at most, as you can see in this comparison below - every lap is within a few thousands except for the fast lap. Go figure, lol.



This cost me 3rd place, as the 3rd place contestant got 1:57.4ish. Oh well, it's just a fun competition and I wasn't really competing this year, but it's funny.

This happens to be a personal best on tires that are not R1S or Pirelli DH slicks in this particular car, so progress is being made. I'm faster in my E46 on RE71R though by almost a second. I'm not sure if it's because the tires were roasted, or my car isn't set up properly.

I suspect my issue with rear grip is my inability to put power down coming out of corners thanks to my tired differential. It's time to replace it I think - I just need to do some research on what I can replace it with that will 1) preserve street driving, 2) not break the bank, 3) work with DCT/tune.

[redpriest]

Sunday was the final day of the Nankang AR-1s I bought originally for the Chuckwalla event. I was determined to completely roast them.

The day started poorly as you can see, it was too foggy for cars to run for a good hour and a half after the track was supposed to go hot:



When we finally did get to go out, things were looking good. Traffic was exceptionally light, and I went out with no one in sight. It was bone cold though, 28 F to start. As such the corner workers had doubled waving yellows at every station for the first two laps. As I was about to start the 2nd of the two yellow laps, the track workers let two cars on in front of me as I was coming down the main straight (Why????? Would it have been so bad to let them out after me?), so as the track went live (green flags) on my 3rd lap, I went to try to pass these guys since I had the benefit of two warm up laps.

Alas, it was not to be, for the exact moment I went to start a pass on the F82 that was in front of me, my car went immediately into limp mode and tripped the engine malfunction light. Not knowing what the heck it was, I took it very easy, and unfortunately since it was the start of the lap I had to complete the lap to pull in. Since the car wasn't smoking and there was no check engine light I figured it wasn't that serious.

After I pulled into the paddock, I had to boot up my laptop and update the Tuning software, which sucks, since BPM auto-expires their tuning software I think every 6 months, so you have to reinstall. I used this to pull the codes, and the only code I had was 2B29 Torque Management Monitor. So strange - best I can tell, this is related to the tune and I can only surmise after talking to a few people that the combination of the cold, full throttle and top of the gear, the conditions were just right to trigger it.

Fortunately, I did the rest of the track day without encountering this code, but it basically ruined the coldest session of the day and my best chance to get a faster lap time. Alas it was not to be, since my handling problems from day 1 just continued into this day and got worse. It basically turned into a drift session:

It was fun though. Tires were done at the end of the day, you can see they are starting to cord. 21 heat cycles. I have a new set already haha, since my next track day is on the 28th at Thunderhill East, 3 mile.

[Kelse92]

This is (edit: Supposed to be) a great book on suspension tuning: https://www.amazon.com/dp/147724736X..._-uk5FbRBC12FS

And sorry about your limp mode problems, that sucks! I've never heard of that before.

[rhyary]

Originally Posted by Kelse92

This is a great book on suspension tuning: https://www.amazon.com/dp/147724736X..._-uk5FbRBC12FS

And sorry about your limp mode problems, that sucks! I've never heard of that before.

Amazon reviews are not great.
Did you read it yourself?

[Kelse92]

Originally Posted by rhyary

Amazon reviews are not great.
Did you read it yourself?

I haven’t read it yet. Was recommended by a friend

Ross Bentley has one too on his website that I have been told is a good read also

[DRLane]

Originally Posted by Kelse92

I haven't read it yet. Was recommended by a friend

Ross Bentley has one too on his website that I have been told is a good read also

I downloaded the one you referenced Kelse, as a kindle book. Simple $5 gamble.

I prefer a physical books for these things, but figured for suspension references I'll create little laminated cheat sheets for trackside experimentation.

[redpriest]

Originally Posted by Kelse92

I haven’t read it yet. Was recommended by a friend

Ross Bentley has one too on his website that I have been told is a good read also

I have the Jan book and it is hard to read. I have the Ross Bentley books and they are decent. I skimmed them for the last event but I will really need to sit down and study.

[roastbeef]

I have a friend that showed me this book in his collection. I have no experience with it... he has some custom cars with suspension he personally worked out through computer drafting.

How to Make Your Car Handle https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912656468..._4BD5FbNJM8R96

[redpriest]

Did a private track day today at Thunderhill East, a place I haven't visited in over 2 years. Last time I did a day here in this car was actually 3 years ago - so I'm pretty rusty. I tend to not do the Northern California tracks for whatever reason, but I do like this track.

I brought a brand new set of Nankang AR1s that I had just mounted. I abused them and did a lot of laps. I set them to 34 PSI hot - and once I got the tires in that zone, they stayed that way - even after doing long endurance sessions in the afternoon - which was crazy.

I did a LOT of laps. We did Cyclone in the morning:

And then we did Bypass in the afternoon:

Bleah, close to sub 2 but couldn't do it. There was a lot of traffic I had to navigate via point-by passing, so that would be the reason for any large delta swings in lap time. Was extremely impressed by how well the car held up for those last two sessions where I did 16 consecutive hot laps and 19 hot laps.

Probably should have rotated my tires - top tires pics are the right side of the CCW circuit which take the most abuse.



Both times are personal bests, but only the bypass time is a huge improvement. Car is down on power, since I only have exhaust + tune instead of intake + pulley + exhaust + tune.