82 vh ss

[ajvx01]

Of that's the case who cares about street tyre wear? 70% of your tyre wear would be on those track days?

 

[Darren_L]

Of that's the case who cares about street tyre wear? 70% of your tyre wear would be on those track days?

yes it's something I've considered. Depends on how quickly it chops up the tyre vs damage done by the track work
might be a case of 'suck & see'!

 

[Darren_L]

fairly big week for the car
Picked up a new pair of Cobra Dayton reclinable race seats from Revolution Race Gear on Saturday. They come with all the ADR approval paperwork. At $900 each I hope to have more luck than the last 2 sets of so called 'race seats' I've had. Two different brands, both sets literally fell apart after very little use..... A bit of advice if you want decent race seats, don't buy them from the likes of Autobarn, go to a race supply shop.... It's a prick of a job fitting seats to this car, so not sure when I'll get around to fitting them. But need to do it soon. Also the guy at Revolution Race Gear put me onto these detachable race harnesses. They mount to your normal seat belt anchor points. Just need to replace the anchor bolt with this special bolt that is supplied. Allows you to leave your seat belts fitted and clip in/out the harness as required..... hmmm....

cv joint on the tailshaft has been blowing grease all over the floor pan for the last couple of years. Finally convinced myself to drag my arse under the car. Pulled the shaft out and found the dumb **** at the tailshaft place who replaced the cv joint many years ago tightened all the hex head bolts with a rattle gun. I had to cut the heads off two bolts with the angle grinder to get it all apart. Went to repco and almost dropped dead at the price of a small tube of Loctite 515 Master Gasket - $45!!!!! Jeesuz... Anyway I picked up a couple of new hex head bolts, repacked the CV joint with the right grease, sealed up the joint with the precious Loctite. Degreased the grease slick under the floor of the car and road tested.

My Ebay NOS grille lower mount rubbers arrived. So I fit them up, now the grille sits straight and doesn't rattle

I also took the car down to my suspension bloke on Friday and got him to set the camber/caster/toe to a setting a little more suited to track days, whilst still not scrubbing up tyres on the street. Dennis is a good bloke, highly recommended, knows his **** about steering & suspension, especially on Commo's - Toowoomba Steering & Suspension. Ended up with -2.5 deg camber, kmac adjusters only managed 1.5 deg caster - I wanted more like 4-6 deg but will have to deal with 1.5deg for the moment. Adjustable caster rods now back ordered.

Tonight I mounted up the Go-Pro inside the car ready for the track day next Saturday, hopefully the bloody thing works this time...
My 400lb front springs (the 350lb springs I've experimented with seems a bit soft) arrived 2 weeks late (Friday). I have an early shift on Tuesday, so plan is to try and fit them on Tuesday after work, hopefully ready for Saturday.

 

[ajvx01]

Wow it's all happening! Sounds like fun though, when's the next track day?

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[Darren_L]

next track day is tomorrow!

 

[ajvx01]

Sweet! Got any pics of the new seat and camber?

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[HAZZA-VN]

Yes i want to see pics of this from the track day, should be fun, That type of caster is what you put on a Van Darren, once you have adjustable arms you will be set make sure you get some pictures of you running a muck too!

 

[Darren_L]

Sweet! Got any pics of the new seat and camber?

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I haven't got any photos yet with the extra camber, but to be honest, doesn't look much different then it did before. Look down the side of the car and there's a little more slant on the front wheels, but nothing radical. The seats aren't in yet, they are still sitting in the spare bedroom I have to work myself up to fitting those things. Would have liked them fitted in time for tomorrow, but I just didn't have the time. It's virtually a day job fitting them

 

[Darren_L]

Yes i want to see pics of this from the track day, should be fun, That type of caster is what you put on a Van Darren, once you have adjustable arms you will be set make sure you get some pictures of you running a muck too!

yeah the caster is kind of crap, it's only a little more than the standard setting. I didn't expect big caster settings out of the k-macs, but thought I'd at least get 2 or 3 deg. I'm aiming for more like 4-6 degrees. Tyre hitting the front of the guard will be the only limitation. My suspension guy has back ordered a pair of adjustable caster rods/z-bars, he said he's going to look after me on the price, a lot less than RRP. Won't be in until January which is fine with me, I've spent far to much $$ on this car over the last 6 months. My shed fund has come to a grinding halt!

I'll hand the video camera over to the g/f again, she usually does a good job of filming the laps.
I'm also going to try the go-pro again in the car. Last time everything went wrong, turned it off instead of on, then left it running which ran the batteries flat...
I want to get the GoPro 3 black edition with the remote so I don't have to stuff around with the camera itself to turn it on/off. I'll post pics/vids up when I get back

Tyres have seen better days and this is the first proper track day I've had for over 12 months, so between the shagged tyres and my lack of recent experience, I don't exactly expect to smash my previous best. Instead will treat it as a test day, see how the suspension setup feels.

 

[Darren_L]

finally posted some footage up on youtube from last weekend - thanks to my beaut girlfriend who was the camera-person
I've also included some footage of some of the other cars out there including a real nice VH Grp 3 - it was bloody quick too!

Front end felt really good, but the rear tyres let the car down - there was nothing left of them by the end of the session. So I didn't feel that confident pushing it too hard into the corners, I was over a second off my previous best, but not too disappointed, treated it more like a test session. Plus I haven't taken the car on a serious track session for about 18months. At the drivers briefing before the sessions they show you all these smashed cars - apparently they average 3 written off cars a week which kind of scared the crap out of me (a couple of people killed this year....), so with those images in mind, my driving was on the cautious side, plus it wasn't great either, need a LOT more practice lol Looking forward to next outing when I will have a full set of Toyo R1R's and some caster

Melted rubber over the guards..... regular street tyres have gotta go!

Strange thing happened on the last lap of the last session. Just rounded up a Volvo down the straight when a felt a big vibration through the entire car. I thought I'd blown a tyre so I pulled off to the side and limped it back to the pits. Turned out the rear uni-joint had popped out of place. One of the caps was hanging out the side and the other side fallen in. Thankfully the cap held on and I managed to refit it all back in place in the pits so I could get it back on the road for the 2.5hr trip home.

I've got some incar footage, but fairly disappointed with it. Sound is almost non-existant - I had to pump it up as much as I could with software, still not great though. Also the glare on the front windscreen means you can't see much outside. I'll post a small bit of the in car footage later