tombate911
Paid Member
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.
The Clio in it's latest facelift with the Yellow cage and highlights, back with the fully gloss black spoiler now too.
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.
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!!
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.
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.
The Clio in it's latest facelift with the Yellow cage and highlights, back with the fully gloss black spoiler now too.
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.
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!!
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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