Glacier White 200 Cup

We took the Clio to AW Motorworks today to get an alignment done. The gearbox had been dropped out of the car a few times since the last alignment so we knew that the alignment would be slightly out. We also wanted to see if more camber would help with tyre wear on the outside edge of the front wheels.

When we got to AW Motorworks there were quite a few people about who were making various suggestions for a geo set up. I wanted to go a little bit more aggressive generally and was I then enlightened about the importance of caster. Eventually we agreed to go for 4 degrees of negative camber at the front with 5 minutes of toe in for each wheel at the front. At the rear we decided to go just over 2 degrees of negative camber but more toe out with about 15 minutes out on each side.

The idea was that caster is pretty much fixed at about 6 degrees even with a cup racer front end and Gaz Gold top mounts would not give any extra caster. The front of the car was really stable and both @EthanMenace and I were happy with the turn in. After showing a photo of the wear on the last set of tyres we took off the car it was suggested that we had graining on the fronts as the rear of the car was too stable. If we could make the rear more lively with some toe in and higher tyre pressures we could get more rotation in the rear of the car that may help with tyre wear at the front.



This is how the car was set up eventually.



Over a year ago the rear beam was shimmed by Alex and when he did not have a shim that was the right size he cut up a can of Monster and used that as a shim. I am pleased to say that the Monster can shim is still part of the rear beam set up.

Whilst the car was on the ramps it was pointed out that the drivers side rear Gaz damper has a very slight leak so that will need to be rebuilt soon.

We were also given the idea to consider adding another bump stop, or a bigger bump stop to the front Gaz Gold dampers to see if that would stop the front wheels eating in to the front bumper. Another idea we were given was to buy some PMS top mounts as they can give a bit more caster.

Our exhaust is hanging low again and needs to be tightened up so that the elbow near to the rear beam stops twisting and coming down.

We have had front and rear track door cards delivered from Track Car Door Cards but they won't be installed until after we come back from Germany.

We now need to book a track day in early June to test out the new alignment.

On the short term to do list is:

1. Sort out the exhaust
2. Remove and rebuild the rear Gaz dampers
3. Buy and fit a set of PMS top mounts

We have just booked on to a MSV track day at Snetterton on Monday 2nd June 2025.

It will be a chance to push the car with the new geo set up to see what it feels like on a track that we are both familiar with.

LiamP said:

Jesus, good luck with Coram with that much toe out

Regarding the bump stops I did a lot of work to stop the car hitting the bump stops as it makes the car very tricky to handle under compression. I was getting an oscillating type motion that was causing the car to load/unload the front tyres.

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You are filling me with confidence. If it is awful we can go back to a tamer set up.

LiamP said:

Sorry don’t want to scare you but 15 minutes toe out is very aggressive, I imagine in the racers with Cook at the wheel they probably ran this much but it’s going to be loose especially on the brakes whilst cornering hence mentioning Coram.

The toe in on the front should help things but not sure I know of anyone who has run a setup like this, might be optimal

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On track days most of the time we are both in the car, I am not particularly light, so I would expect the car to be carrying an extra 80 to 90 kilos of weight compared to other track cars. It was suggested to us that we had graining on the front tyres on the last set of Direzzas we used because we were over working the front of the car by just dragging the rear of the car around the track. The proposed solution was to make the back end a bit more lively so that the extra rotation would help share the work that the front tyres were doing.

As we all know I am no expert when it comes to cars. I really do value people's opinions, particularly when you (@LiamP ) have raced your Clio and are a current Hot Hatch champion. I am willing to make changes and see if things can be improved. It could all be a disaster but we are trying to cater for two largish men sitting in the car where in the past the back axle has been really stable.

I have absolutely no idea whether our additional weight will impact on the rear toe out.

I think that if the rear axle does get really loose at Snetterton we can throw some spacers on the rear to widen the rear track and give it a bit more stability.

We got a few jobs done on the Clio over the weekend.

First job was to replace the old sun strip that had bubbled and perished. It had been on the Clio for a few years so I had done well as a cheap bit of vinyl from eBay. It was a horrible job removing the old sun strip as the black plastic peeled off and left about 50% of the adhesive stuck to the windscreen. After using a lot of glue and tar remover the glue was off of the windscreen. The new sun strip was from a chap on Instagram called @taylormadedecals. I told him what I wanted and sent over some image files and he then printed it out on air release vinyl.



The air release vinyl was a lot easier to use when the sun strip went on to the car. I think that the new sun strip looks good. We will soon find out if the windscreen wipers are going to ruin the sun strip and either tear it off, or scratch off the design.



The next task was to replace the door kick plates. I had seen a French chap selling kick plates on Instagram and got in touch with him about 2 months ago. He sent me some yellow and black kick plates but the first set he sent me did not have enough lacquer on them and were peeling when they arrived. He was really good about the issue and sent me out another set free of charge.

@EthanMenace removed the old silver kick plates with some fishing line and then left me the task of trying to get the old foam backed adhesive off of the side skirts. Another horrible job which required a lot of scraping with a trim removal tool and more glue and tar remover.



When all of the glue remnants had been removed the new kick plates were stuck down.



The combination of the yellow and black compliments the existing colour scheme in the car.



The third job was to replace the exhaust clamp at the rear of the car where the centre section and back box connect. Every 6 months or so our exhaust clamp decides it has had enough and then the elbow of the exhaust twists and ends up dipping on the rear axle. Hopefully the new exhaust clamp will last longer than 6 months this time.

We are off to Snetterton tomorrow, 2nd June 2026, for a MSV track day to test out the new geo settings on the Clio and see if the rear toe is okay, or too much. I gave the Clio a quake clean to make sure it was presentable for the track day.



Provided that noting goes terribly wrong at Snetterton the next task will be to put in a new clutch.



The gear changes still are not quite right and it was cheaper to buy a new clutch than rebuild the gearbox so we thought why not? When the old clutch comes out we will see if it is damaged at all, if it is not we will still put in the new clutch, make sure the slave is fully primed and hope for the best. We would ideally like to have the gear change issue sorted before we head off to the Nurburgring at the end of June 2026. The only other task, at the moment, that we need to sort out before we go to Germany is to take off the rear dampers and drop them in to Gazmatic to get them serviced. One of the rear dampers is weeping.

Yesterday we went to Snetterton for a track day.

The track day was organised by MSV and despite the weather being predictably sunny, warm and dry, there were only 66 cars booked on. Our plan had been to take the Clio to a track that we knew well to test out the new geo of 4 degrees of negative camber at the front of the car, negative camber of 2.5 at the rear and toe out of between 10 and 15 minutes at the rear. Both of us had thought that the car might be really unstable at the rear and could have been a real handful to push around Snetterton.

In its usual "road" trim the car has 20mm spacers on the back to fill out the arches. When we arrived and put on the track wheels we decided to keep the spacers off of the car on the basis that if the rear geo was unusable we could throw the spacers back on to widen the rear track and give us back some stability.



@EthanMenace did the first proper session in the Clio. His feedback was that the car felt looser at the back. Before it had been possible to launch the Clio on turn in and the car would remain stable and predictable throughout the corner, the only downside to this stability was that the car felt like it was fighting you and resisted slightly. The new set up made the car more pointy and easier to turn in, the rear seemed to follow and felt like it could let go if you pushed the car too far.

I did a somewhat slower session and also found that the car was a bit more alive and even though the car had to be respected even I could cope with it.

We finished off the morning sessions taking turns in the car. After every few sessions we had a look at the RaceBox data to see if our lap times were improving. Generally the times were getting better but it was noticeable that the gearbox was causing issues and we were losing time compared to previous Snetterton track days. At the track day the gearbox was "okay" in that it would change gear but most gear changes required patience. You would engage the clutch, move the car out of gear, and then apply a small amount of pressure to put the gear stick in to the right place but have to wait until the box was ready to then accept the gear change. If you were to look at a graph the speed trace shows noticeable drop offs between gear changes compared to other similar runs that owe have done at Snetterton.



Notwithstanding the gearbox issue the day was good fun. There was enough of a mix of cars out on track to find challenges in terms of chasing down or trying to keep ahead. As seems to be the norm these days a few groups turned up in their modern BMW M cars and would go out as a train and do three laps, then have to cool down and come back to the pits. The Clio was good for long sessions on track. The oil temperature gauge crept above 120 on a few stints but all was well with the engine.

The brakes on the car feel very good. Since installing the Megane 3 callipers and bigger front discs we had only been able to test them out at Blyton Park. Snetterton has some longer straights where the Clio will get to about 115 mph before braking. @EthanMenace kept telling me to brake later and brake harder yesterday. He was right as they take the abuse and do stop the car really effectively



When we finished the day we took a look at the tyre wear to see if the new geo had actually made any difference. The photo below is of the front left tyre. This is the tyre that takes the biggest loads at Snetterton as most of the fast corners are right handers. In the photo the inside edge is on the left and the outside edge of the tyre is on the right. I think that we have worn the inside edge of the tyre less than we would normally, and it looks like we have achieved pretty even wear across the tyre. This might be a placebo effect, particularly as the tyre has also done a session on the rear of the car at Blyton which is an anti-clockwise circuit.



Ethan's best lap time yesterday was a 2m 20s. The Clio has previously done a 2m 18s with Ethan driving it. There could be a lot of reasons why Ethan drove the car faster before but I am pretty sure it is a gearbox related issue.

This is a graph from a previous lap of 2m 18s.



This is a graph from yesterday's 2m 20s lap. The G-Force axis on the second graphic a little bit different as it has a maxim value of 2g and not 1.5g.



I am picking at very small details here but the dip in the red speed line suggests to me that a gear change is taking longer than it did on the previous 2m 18s lap.



Helpfully on the way home the gearbox started to noticeably crunch on downshifts in to third gear. This is not at all helpful as we are off to the Nurburgring at the end of the month. I have spoken to Alex at AW Motorworks and he is overrun with work and cannot fit the car in to drop the box and rebuild it before Germany. So, it looks like we/Ethan will have to deal with the gearbox ourselves due to the tight schedule we have got. The slave has already been replaced and has done a few hundred miles. We have a brand new OEM clutch to go in. We also have a separate working gearbox with no LSD in it sat in the shed.

I think that are options are, drop the current gearbox and replace the clutch to rule out that being an issue, and then the options are:

1. Put in the gearbox with no LSD and hope that it does actually work
2. Put in the second gearbox if the Gripper can be easily moved and dropped in
3. Try to rebuild the current gearbox with new synchros and any other parts that look knackered.

Ethan has managed to do everything else on the car so here's hoping he can learn how to rebuild gearboxes in the next few weeks!

Dowling93 said:

Here you might want the tl4 manual for that

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

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Thanks for the link. I did find the manual a few weeks ago. But yours is the first free link that I have seen.

Have you made much progress with your box yet? We are trying to work out if we need to acquire a press for a gearbox rebuild.