Back in May 2022 we bought a headlight cold air feed 3D printed duct from @RSRowe

Since then @EthanMenace had cut a hole in a spare headlight and spent time with a dremmel to tidy up the hole - then he left the project as he was a bit frustrated with the headlight looking a bit tatty. We decided to try and make some more progress with the cold air feed today. I spent some time trying to get rid of the dust that caked the inside of the headlight. Where the reflective silver panel had been cut and the front had been cut the inside the of the headlight was covered in a light coloured dust covering. I used the vacuum with the car cleaning/detailing tiny attachments to get as much dust off as possible and then decided that it really did not have to be entirely clean or perfect.

When @RSRowe received my order for the headlight duct he made me aware that it had been modelled on a 197 headlight and he had no idea if it would fit properly in a 200 headlight. I bought it on the basis that it may not fit but I would give it a go.

The headlight duct did not fit flush with the 200 headlight but that could be because of the profile of the hole that we had cut. The duct came in two parts with the large flanged part to fit on to the headlight and the second pipe to attach to the first duct and then be secured with a tab.

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We had struggled to get the two piece combination to sit nicely in the headlight so decided just to "make it work". When both parts of the duct were connected it sat too close to the inner parts of the light and would not sit properly over the outside edge of the headlight cover. We decided that we would use some sealant to stick the flanged duct to the headlight and then use some 2.75 inch brake ducting to act as a flexible pipe and just do without the second part of the duct.

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The flanged duct has now been attached and we are now waiting for the sealant to dry before we put the light on to the Clio.

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There is a lot of sealant around the duct and we have found that the 2.75 inch brake duct hose that we had left over from doing the brake ducts is a good tight fit for the end of the duct inside the headlight. It looks a bit rough and ready but hopefully it will deliver a blast of cold air to the V6 air box when it is attached.

@EthanMenace and I had a look at our used tyre collection today so that we could work out which of the 8 Direzzas we could use again to get one more days use out of them. Most of the tyres we had used at Anglesey were pretty much worn out.

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The tyres in the middle looks like a slick. Most of the tyres we used at Donington were in far better condition than I remembered. The bottom tyre below is definitely not fit to be used again.

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We have labelled up the four good tyres as they will have to be moved around between the Cup wheels and Ultraleggeras, and swapped around in terms of direction. I will need to take them to my local friendly tyre garage to sort them out.

The plan is to buy some new track tyres after Snetterton on 4th August 2022 and before Croft on 23rd September 2022. MRF ZTRs are likely to be the tyres we go for - they seem to be about £700 for a set. Nankang AR1s are cheaper for a set for about £600. Can anyone confirm that the MRFs are not directional tyres?

We have worked out that using a tyre pressure of about 31 PSI hot gives us even wear with two of us in the car on the front tyres. I want to get tyres that I can swap from left to right, and front to back, to get the most out of the tyres.
 
MRFs are definitely not directional. Mine get swapped about all the time, just make sure they're mounted correctly as they have an inside and outside rather than a directional pattern.
 
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We had some time today to finish off the cold air feed and do a bit of maintenance on the Clio.

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At Anglesey the rear passenger side wheel bearing sounded noisy. After checking it in the garage there had been some very slight movement when it was wiggled. The noise and movement went away when the hub nut was torqued up to 175nm.

Today @EthanMenace and I took off both rear hub nuts and applied some thread locker before torquing up them back. Hopefully this preventative maintenance will stop any noises coming back in the future.

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We then turned out our attention to the cold air feed. We took out the existing headlight and moved a relay box out of the way. When we installed the V6 airbox and moved the battery we had moved around the fuses and relay box that were originally attached to the battery holder. The relay box was taped up to prevent any water getting in and was then cable tied to the chassis leg.

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With the relay box out of the way we attached a length of flexible ducting to the air duct that was attached to the headlight. We slid the flexible ducting over the length of the fixed air duct inside the headlight. Then we put the headlight back in place a fed the other end of the flexible ducting in to the opening of the V6 airbox. The opening of the V6 airbox is bigger than the width of the flexible ducting so the air getting sucked in will be a combination of some from the engine bay but mostly from the cold air feed.

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The front end of the car was reassembled.

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The cold air feed has taken the place of the two bulbs that provide the sidelight beam and the full beam. The remaining bulb is the dipped headlight. So the car will be stealthily driven around in the summer whilst we do track days and we will put the proper headlight back in when it starts to get darker and the track day season is over.

This is another photo of the fixed air duct with the flexible ducting slid over it. We had to buy some black flexible ducting to make sure it matched the cars colour scheme.

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The cold air feed is a bit rough. We have no way to measure inlet temperatures so no real way of determining if it will or does improve performance. Cup racers seemed to cope without a cold air feed by getting their air from the area of the left wheel arch. But, it always fun to have a little project to work on.
 
@EthanMenace and I went to Snetterton today. The last time we went to Snetterton was in August 2021 when there was a bit of a Clio197.net gathering.

Normally when we do a track day there is a new upgrade to try. Today was no exception as we had the new head light duct on the car. There was no real way of testing how effective duct was. @RSRowe is sending me a bung to go in the front of the head light duct but as it has not arrived yet I have no way of comparing the open duct to a closed duct. Using an OBD2 dongle and Dash Command I have seen over the past few days that the air inlet temperature is about 12 degrees centigrade above ambient temperatures using the head light duct if the car is driven at a steady pace like 70 mph or so.

We turned up at Snetterton with a well used set of Direzzas on the bronze Ultraleggeras. We have solved our tyre shredding issue by getting tyre pressures about right over the past few track days. We were hoping that the Direzzas would last the day today.

I always turn up to track days and look around the paddock to see what other cars have turned up. I then feel slightly apprehensive when I see a range of powerful cars and then look back and see the Clio. Today the paddock was full of Porsches, M3 variants, various K20 and K24 powered Hondas and a new Megane Trophy R. I immediately felt disappointed and thought on a circuit like Snetterton that I would spend all day getting out of the way of more powerful cars.

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@EthanMenace had a tuition session and then we set about trying to attack the circuit. My fear of having to spend the day getting out the way of other more powerful cars was completely wrong as we had a really enjoyable day chasing down other cars and finding that the Clio was able to punch well above it's weight. What the Clio lacked in power on the straights it made up for in the corners or braking.

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One problem that we did have today was brake judder. The new DS Uno front pads had performed really well at Anglesey but today they just caused judder. They still seemed to have the same bite and be effective when we stamped on them, but they just caused the car to judder which is somewhat unsettling when you are braking trying to slow down from 115 mph! We will have a look at the surface of the pads and discs at the weekend and see if cleaning them up will help - if not we will have to invest in some more front discs.

The head light duct on track appeared to keep the intake temperature down, but again I have no data to compare it to yet.

Last year both of us were very much novice track day drivers. I had a best lap time last year of 2m 36s and @EthanMenace had a best lap time of 2m 32s. Today I managed to achieve a 2m 27s and @EthanMenace managed a 2m 21s. With the combination of the car being more track focused and us both having experienced a bit more track time we were significantly better drivers.


The vast majority of the day was spent holding the steering wheel to the right to go round right hand corners whilst the tyres gripped and slid towards the limits of the track on the left. As the day went on I grew in confidence in going round the first bend Riches in fourth gear at about 80 to 90 mph, taking Williams without trying to brake and just lift off the throttle, and trying to use the cornering agility of the Clio to pass cars at Bomb Hole and Coram. @EthanMenace was a completely different level of driver to me today and put the Clio to good use following and passing other cars like a four wheel drive Audi S4, a few Mini R53s and the other two Clio 200s that were there.

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I think that today was the first time that I have managed to record every session that we did on both GoPro cameras.

Today was another good learning experience and it turned out to be more fun that I thought it would be. There were a few red flags but overall it was another well organised and well run Track Obsession track day.

The Direzzas did last the day but they are now dead. They are great tyres but I am now in the market for some MRF's and will pick some up and get them fitted before Croft on 23rd September 2022.

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To be fair the tyre squeal is not as loud on the video as it is in real life. A bit like elevation changes - everything seems flat on videos but when you go to certain tracks you find out that they really do have up and down sections.
 
I have always wanted a photo of the Clio going round a corner with one rear wheel in the air. With two big gentlemen sat in the front of the car I guess it makes achieving that task a bit more difficult.

This is the closest I think I have got to the photo so far.

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I had a look at some of the RaceBox data from Snetterton earlier and the system must be very accurate. In my last session I was a bit overzealous trying to overtake another car and spun at Bomb Hole. The RaceBox lap data shows the exact pattern of the spin where I ran wide and spun towards the right side of the track before coming to stop on the left side of the track facing the wrong way.

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Now you’ll be able to record the data from all your spins and compare notes between track days

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Here are a few of the track day photos.

The car in front in the photo below was a new Megane Trophy R. It was good to see a modern car that was tweaked for the track actually out on a track.

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@EthanMenace tried to keep up with the Megane bu it was just too powerful on the straights.

I have compared the photos taken on Thursday against photos from last year's trip to Snetterton and the car is definitely lower and squats in to the corners with no real arch gap. The Gaz Golds are so much better than the B14s that we had last year.

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The car had great grip around corners. In the photo below you can just see that the tyre on the front drivers side rim is taking the load as the rim is exposed very slightly.

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You can't beat a good bridge photo.

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We had a post track day inspection of the brakes today to see if the DS Uno pads and the front discs had any obvious deposits on them that might be causing the brakes to judder when hot.

I ordered some Mr. Pink Pins from www.turborenault.co.uk for the Brembos to make removing pads a bit easier in the future. Hopefully these pins will mean that we don't have to smash the pins out of the callipers each time we need to remove the brake pads. They look like a good design.

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After taking off the first wheel we noticed a problem.

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The drilled discs have got hairline cracks in quite a few of the drill holes. When we got the discs I remember everyone saying that Brembo HC discs are the best and most cost effective option - of course I wanted style over performance.

The plan had been to remove the pads and discs and to sand down the surfaces as per @LiamP suggestion. When we saw the discs we decided to leave them on the car for the time being and replace them with Brembo HC discs before the next track day.

The DS Uno pads were taken out of the callipers. I did not really have any experience of knowing what condition a brake pad should be in or knowing when the pad is glazed before today, but now I think I have been educated a little bit.

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The pads had a metallic smoothish feeling to them and clearly where covered in crap. Both sets of DS Unos were taken off the car and we raided the parts bin and got out some used DS2500s to go back on to the car for the time being. The process of swapping brake pads is not that difficult so we may try to keep a road set on the car whilst it does normal driving and a track set for when it is on track.

I took the Clio for a quick test drive to make sure that the brakes were still working okay with the DS2500 pads in and it was really noticeable how different they are to the DS Unos. The DS2500s have a progressive feel to them and the harder you push the break pedal the better they feel whereas the DS Unos just have instant bite.

@EthanMenace used a sander with some 120 grit paper to try to clean up on of the DS Uno pads but it was not having much of an effect after 5 minutes. We decided put the wheels back on the car and I will try sanding the DS Uno pads some more tomorrow.

I picked up some parts to service the brakes on my Megane RS 280. I am hoping that my decision to get fancy bimetallic discs will not be the wrong choice again.

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I was able to compare the surface of the new DS2500s that I have for the Megane to the DS Unos from the Clio and it seems that the pads are going to need a lot of sanding to bring them back to life.

We are off to visit @jwillo on Sunday to pick up some nearly new MRFs from him to replace the dead Direzzas.

I have a few tasks to sort out before Croft on 23rd September 2022:
  1. See if the DS Uno pads can be revived from the dead
  2. Collect the MRF tyres
  3. Get the MRF tyres mounted on the Ultraleggera track wheels
  4. Buy and fit new front discs
 
The general consensus seems to be that drilled discs aren't much good for track use as they tend to crack, I've never had any issues with the standard Brembo HC discs.

Funnily enough I've also just gotten a set of Mr Pink pins. While I was happy using the cheap £12 pins from Kam Racing, I figured it would be worth giving these a go as everyone raves about them.
 
Pads don’t take much rubbing, and you’ll soon wear them away with sandpaper.

I would just clean them up and ensure they’re flat. Then re-bed.

Ultimately, this is just part of high performance pads I think. The grooved Godspeeds certainly fixed the issue, but also suffer from cracking.