Tom's Track Car - BMW E46 -Engine Number 3

Update - Oulton Park 18th November 2017

The weekend started with getting the car and trailer loaded up Wednesday and Thursday evening. I had managed to get all the little bits done like the gearbox temp sensor and the alignment measured the previous weekend so all that was left was to load up...
Friday evening was early tea and into be for 9pm. Tossed and turned for half an hour and managed to persuade my brain to get to sleep early.

4:50am Saturday morning I wake up a good hour before my alarm was supposed to go off considering I only live half hour away from Oulton. Decided to have breakfast, cup of tea and set off, a friend of mine was awake so we arrived at Oulton at 6-30
Plenty of time to unload and fit the dry tyres ready for the day ahead as the sky was looking promising.
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The Clio in it's latest facelift with the Yellow cage and highlights, back with the fully gloss black spoiler now too.

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The day was a great turn out of friends for the end of the year at our local track, We had enough people to fill 6 garages and lots of friends had planned to come down during the day as addtional drives/passengers or just for the catch up. This is what I love about these track days is the getting together of so many people. Random photo but really shows the buzz around our garage just before dinner.

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Anyway onto the car...

I set the car up with the same tyres, tyre pressures and suspension settings from a known good set up that I'd been running earlier in the year at Angleysey followed by Cadwell, then set out on the first sessions of the morning. Interestingly the car was very tail happy even at half speed. Few more laps under the belt getting more heat into the rear tyres and it was settling down a little bit but was still having some brilliant oversteer moments without even provoking it.
Obviously these change in car was down to the fact I've re shimmed the rear axle close to parallel and taken a lot of the toe in off.
Came in for the car to cool down. Knocked the rear compression back a two clicks and dropped 3/4 PSI in the rear tyres. When the car was cool, quick check on the wheel bolts with the torque wrench considering they were freshly powder coated and off I went out again.

I'd managed to get the car really balanced and started to push on with the pace and start to use the gripper to the full potential. Putting on the power well before the apex of the corner pulls the front in nicely towards the inside of the corner causing the car to rotate and the rear end just break traction and rotate perfectly. This is the first time the car has left this balanced and was able to carry considerable amount more speed through the corner with the extra rotation rather than the tendency to understeer.
Combination of the new geo set up and the gripper diff feel absolutely spot on!!

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Had a little play around with the gearbox temperature logger in the afternoon, wanted to test the set up and the program I had written, logged the temp for a good 20 minute session and the max the gearbox temp got to with the gripper diff was 90 deg with an air temp of about 5-7 degrees. Something I'll try again next summer but for the time being i'm happy with that temp.

Also did a little bit of timing just after dinner but was struggling to get a clean lap together all day. I don't mind a little bit of traffic or someone to have a play with the needed the clean lap for timing. Best I was able to put together was just under 2.07 with a passenger in too.

Spent as much time as possible out on track in the afternoon. Lots of hero's on track with a number of red flags, I only really came into the pits for fuel and to pick up a different passenger in the afternoon. Got some good footage from the day though with a front facing and passenger/driver reaction cam to make it more interesting too.

Overall a fantastic day on track totaling 120 miles on track.
Videos to follow.
 
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Want try get the rear toe’d out. That’s help rear rotate. also help rear tyres
Scurb which generate heat and
Reduce pick up.

Also instead removing pressure from rear increase it see how think that feels
 
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From what read on FB sounded like
Was a poor day from driving standards point of view lol. Some
TD’s seem to be going down hill.

Think MSV days are way forward

Yeah driving standard were poor at times sadly with a lot of red flags. Some of the videos my friends have shared on social media are shocking! Nearly getting swiped by the Radical and be Megane nearly swiping my friend E36 off too!
Luckily I seemed to managed to avoid a lot of the red flagsor they happened
When I'd already been out for 10/15mins. I just kept getting back in the queue to get back out.

Yeah I was running 31 all around, dropped down a couple of psi and found some more grip, that was a tyre pressure I was getting on well with. I'd added a bit more rake to the car as you can see from some of the photos, even though they're taken mid corner/underbraking. Next time out I'll fiddle some more and bump the rears up a few psi for a bit more rotation.
 
As the air and ground temps were fairly low I ended up pumping rears up to about 37psi in order to get some heat in them. This worked really well. Never really messed with fronts, left at 30psi. After about 8 hard laps the fronts started to give up, and were overheating. Due to red flags didn't really get a chance to mess with front pressures.

Was a cracking day though, even though I've never seen soooooo many red flags. Oulton on a weekend will always attract lots of people - think I'll stick to weekday events next year.

Shame we never met on track - we'll defo have to arrange something next year ;-)
 
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Great footage Tom - loved the Fiesta getting a bit sideways! Bet you had to keep your wits about you with the Radical taking no prisoners...
 
Great footage Tom. Surprised at how quick Oulton is. Never lower than 3rd gear from what I could tell.
Some good sweeping 4th gear bends as well!
 
Was a cracking day though, even though I've never seen soooooo many red flags. Oulton on a weekend will always attract lots of people - think I'll stick to weekday events next year.

Shame we never met on track - we'll defo have to arrange something next year ;-)

Yes Certainly. I'll always post up on here when i'm doing them, will be looking for a weekend one in the new year too hopefully.
Great footage Tom - loved the Fiesta getting a bit sideways! Bet you had to keep your wits about you with the Radical taking no prisoners...

Yeah there was a couple of really quick aero cars which were coming from no where. Blue flags were being shown well before you could see the car behind you!

Great footage Tom. Surprised at how quick Oulton is. Never lower than 3rd gear from what I could tell.
Some good sweeping 4th gear bends as well!

Cheers. Not forgetting I've got the slightly shorter ratio final drive in my gearbox with the gripper diff so the car is better suited to 3rd 4th and 5th. Last time I was there I always found my self between gears and never quite being in the right rev range to find the power. No issues now, especially being able to get on the power so much earlier in corners.

Here's a little video of one of the clear laps in the morning, this was only about my 10th lap of the day so wasn't pushing it too hard as was still adjusting to the cars new setup but one of the only times I managed a full lap without a car getting in the way and also happened to have the data/GPS etc being logged at the same time.

 
love your track updates..the car goes like a bullet..well balanced and it grips superbly..glad you had a great time..shame about the red flags but it was dry at least.. :thumb:
 
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Cheers @Pav appreciate the positive comments. The car is a completely different car with it's latest set up. Really itching to get out and do another track day again soon! Already looking at onesjn Feb!
 
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Sometimes it's easily over looked the little changes that you make or the little things that people don't see. I've spent a little bit of time this week putting together a spec for the car. Interesting thinking back and trying to remember every little adjustment or purchase you've made.

Clio 200 Cup Pack - Albi Blue 2010

Engine
Clio 2.0 F4R – 201.5 BHP 165 FTLB mapped at EFI Tuning
7750 RPM Limiter
ITG Panel filter
Clio 197 gearbox TL4 003
4.73 Shorter final drive (137mph @ 7750RPM)
Braided Clutch line – Solid to chassis leg – Braid from leg to box slave.
Genuine replacement Clutch and Slave.
Redline MT 90 Gearbox oil
Toyo manifold
Miltek resonated exhaust
AC Delete kit
Smaller lightweight pulley
Purple Polybush Torque mount
Purple Gearbox mount
Solid Lower Engine mount with custom PU Bushes.

Suspension/brakes
Black series Wishbone bushes
Purple ARB bushes
Gaz Gold adjustable Dampers 600F/350R Linear springs
Gaz Gold adjustable top mounts.
335mm Compbrake two piece rotors
DS1.11 Brake pads
Motel RBF600 Fluid
Hel Braided lines
Clio 200 Cup wheels 9.3KG
Federal RSR
Clio 197 Std wheels 10.4KG
Uniroyal Rainsports
Pure motorsport Toes and Camber shims


Interior
Safety devices R020 Cage – Double Rear Cross
Sparco EVO LF
L-TEC 6 Point harnesses
Arduino data logger

Exterior
Cup Spoiler with black end caps
Black vinyl sun screen
20mm KTEC Front spacers

Geometry
Front Camber – 3.5 degrees
Front Toe – 0 degrees
Rear Camber – 2.5 degress
Rear Toe – 0.05” toe in
 
i've done the same not long ago..seems like a good idea to write it all down to see how much it's been done..impressive and i bet all that has improved your car massively..
 
Cup racers used the original harmonic damper off the 1*2. Smaller and I'd imagine a tad lighter.

Yeah. May move back over to that at some point and sell the solid pulley. The 1*2 pulley was considerable smaller and lighter if I remember, I've seen someone do a comparison side by side previously. Either that or I'll wait till I do something drastic with the Engine department!
 
Black Friday sales.... Well i absolutely hate shopping but knew that Halfords had the socket sets discounted again down to £135. Now I've got enough tools, sockets, wrenches and spanners but for the money you really cannot go wrong with the set to treated my self to one for Christmas.

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In other news.... Just placed my order for the First track day of 2018. Off to Anglesey on the 4th Feb with Circuit Days once again. Great little circuit doing the coastal track.
Image taken from a track walk i did earlier in the year one evening as the sun was going down. Great views from the track to be seen when you're not driving it!

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