What's up next for the DDM 370Z?
Well with two track weekends in the books I have learned a lot about the car and the parts I have put on it. Road course racing is the ultimate proving ground for a car and for aftermarket parts developers. The track will uncover your car's weakest points in a hurry and once you fix one weak point, it may uncover another. One track may uncover issues that weren't relevant at another track. This is exactly the kind of testing and data needed to build a solid car with solid parts.
The biggest issue in building a track car is reliability, after all a car is only as good as its weakest part. This is why the immediate focus on the DDMotorsports 370Z has turned to cooling. At Buttonwillow Raceway back in late March, our 370Z was equipped with an off the shelf Mishimoto universal oil cooler kit. The kit worked excellent both on the street and on the track keeping oil temperatures in a safe range. Fast forward a few months and that puts us at this past weekend's event at Willow Springs. Temperatures were much hotter than they were at Buttonwillow, and the track layout meant there would be a lot more full throttle, sustained high rpms, which inevidably means more heat being produced by the motor. The Mishimoto oil cooler that worked so well at Buttonwillow found its limits at Willow Springs. The oil temperature after ~2 1/2 laps around the 2.5 mile track driving as hard as I possibly could would eventually hit 270 degrees, at which point the car's ECU would dramatically cut power and revs. Because of this, our next plan of action with this car is to upgrade to a larger oil cooler core.
Like the oil cooling issue, there is another heat issue that has plagued the 370Z. A post race inspection after Buttonwillow unveiled a differential fluid overheating problem. The stock limited slip differential was damaged at the first track day leaving bits of metal floating around and the factory differential fluid smelled severely burnt. Unfortunately we could not fix this in time for the Willow Springs event, but luckily everything held together for the event without totally blowing up and locking the rear wheels. So our plan of action to fix this is to install the Carbonetic 1.5 way limited slip differential in place of the stock unit. Although the Carbonetic part should generate less heat than the stock LSD, we will take precautionary measures and add a differential oil cooling kit as well to ensure no future issues.
While we are on the subject of cooling, we will also upgrade the factory power steering oil cooler to a larger unit as well as inspecting the transmission for signs of overheating to determine whether or not that will need a cooler as well.
All of these items are on our punch list before we start worrying about making the car faster again, although the Berk Technology Cat-Back exhaust is still scheduled to go on the car very soon.
Also on the horizon:
- Front camber arms
- Sway bars
- Different brake pads for the track
- 18" Forgestar wheels
- Wider Nitto NT05 tires
- Mines intake ducts (maybe)
- Painted door handles/rear diffuser thing