Cadwell Park Aug 2020
Another week another update, this time it's another track day in another corner of the country.
Interesting how many people read through this thread on a weekly basis then message me privately on social media or private message. Always interested to hear comments and developments. The more discussion the better, always good to hear what other people would do in similar situations.
Luckily the car was faultless at Snetterton the previous week so the car only needed a wash, some fuel and clean SD cards putting in the cameras and logger, with that done it was loaded back onto the trailer ready to head over to Cadwell Park with Track Obsession. As we always try to do we set off over to Louth the day before saying in a hotel 10 minutes from the circuit.
Cadwell was set to be a great day with a fantastic group of cars going from our track day friendship group.
BMW's - E46 330 - E36 ITB - E36 Turbo - E36 S54 - E36 328
Renault - Clio 197 - 182 - MK1 ITB
Along with a wide range of other friends from track days coming along with their cars was making for a great day.
The morning got off to a nice smooth start, it was great to hop back into the driving seat off the back of Snetterton, the car felt pretty good straight off the bat and only required a slight adjustment in suspension settings on the rear. I went back to the known good set up I ran at Cadwell last year.
Spent the day lapping the car, very little disruption to time on circuit with only a couple of red flags through the day. I did however start to get a louder and louder grumbling noise from one of the
wheel bearings which was getting louder and louder as the day went on. Between sessions I had the car on the
axle stands and checked over all corners of the car and gave it a quick bolt check. Nothing was found and all wheels were solid, I put it down to a dry
wheel bearing that was starting to wear out and monitored it as the day went on.
Had some fantastic sessions out on track with a number of different cars. Have a look at the end of the post for some videos.
If you wondered what it looks like approaching in the rear view
Weighing
So at the beginning of 2019 I weighed the car at Oulton Park and it came in at 1300kg. During that summer the car went on a little diet when I changed the battery, wiring, heater matrix for a heater screen and repainted the car. I weighed the parts as they were removed and offset that against anything that was refitted or replaced but I wanted to have a proper note of what the car weighed, especially knowing that it had just made 265bhp on the new engine.
I took the car over to the weigh bridge and got it on there, really happy to find out it weighed in at 1250kg, pretty good weight for an E46 considering it still had glass all around and I haven't cut out any of the doors or boot... yet!.
BMW's post weighing
I managed a couple of good afternoon sessions and was finding a good flow on the circuit. Cadwell never fails to impress with the circuit layout and elevation changes.
However just before the end of the day around 4pm the grumbling noise from the
wheel bearing turned into a loud crunch and clunking as the wheel went around, this happened at the end of the Park Straight, I turned into the corner and it didn't turn in with the usual precision so let the car run wide onto the grass and brought the car back to the pits.
It was easy to pin point the location of the grumbling now as the front wheel was wobbling ~30 side to side and top and bottom. That was the end of the day for me but really happy with how the car performed and the
wheel bearing lasted through the day without causing disruption to the day or much lost time on circuit. Nice easy fit and we'll be out again.
Removed the
wheel bearing and this is the state of the damage, one broken bearing race, multiple cracked ball bearings and the ball bearing cage in a number of pieces. This was a higher quality bearing from FAG as some of you may remember me having a number of bearing issues on the front left when I first built the car.
Data from a 25 minute session on track
-Good to see nice and solid coolant and oil temps hitting 105 and 97 degrees,
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Fuel pressure holding nice and solid at 3.5 bar, the little bit of pressure in the swirl pot drops slightly at high loads as the fuel is being consumed by the engine and the in tank pump is replacing the fuel in the pot. Fuel pressure at the rail is maintaining perfectly with only 15L of fuel in the main tank, previously the car has cut out completely at Cadwell with less than 20L in it. Proves that the swirl pot is the perfect solution.
-Diff temp is being logged in raw ADC readings from the Analog to Canbus board, the 245adc equates to 118 degrees for the diff oil. You can see the longer I stay out the hotter and hotter the diff gets. This is something I'm going to log on a couple of track days and may need to address, especially with planned changes.
Tyres
So since getting into track days back in probably 2015 I have always ran a Federal RSR and it's a great tyre that I've always said give great value for money in terms of grip vs wear vs cost. I have ran multiple sets of them on the Clio and the BMW. Over the past two years with the BMW I have stuck with them as I kept saying I would until I felt like I was driving towards the limit of the tyre. In the past it's been my driving which has held the car back. Obviously with more practise and smoother driving I could get more from the RSR's but I want to experiment with a better tyre choice so i'm going to look at my options and consider something with a bit more grip and a stiffer sidewall. At the moment I am leaning towards the Nankang AR1.
Videos
Cadwell Highlights
Cadwell Following MK1 Clio ITB and E36.