wstar's Journal

wstar · 02-24-2014, 08:05 AM

Yeah I'd say if you have any odd problems with the trans, check fluid level for sure. I suspect if your level is borderline, fluid sloshing around and affecting pickup under certain G-loadings will make the difference.

wstar · 02-27-2014, 10:19 PM

Just got done prepping the car for TWS this weekend.

I'm loving having this square tire setup now, with directional-but-symmetrical tires (the RS3's). I had the local NTB flip all four on their rims for $44, then rotated them all around (diagonal). Should even out the wear from my remaining slight camber issues and from 3 weekends in a row all running CCW (TWS->COTA->TWS). Changed the oil and trans fluid (Motul Multi-ATF again), swapped the stock AP bleed screws for SpeedBleeders (finally!) and bled the brakes. Good to go for load-out tomorrow

So far on the weather reports Saturday looks ok, maybe some light sprinkles, but Sunday will probably get stormy by lunch. Will be interesting to see how the RS3's feel as it gets progressively wetter throughout the weekend. If they can't take the puddles very well, I can always flip back to my staggered Conti setup, those have huge grooves in them. I really need to work on getting a *good* rain setup for this car though. After seeing some of Mike's various tire/wheel combos at COTA, I'm thinking maybe a square set of 18x9 or 18x9.5 with some rain tires on them, like the Hoosier H2O's or something roughly equivalent. I think he had some Conti/Hoosier actual race-rain tires (as opposed to the H2Os, which are DOT-rated).

sig11 · 02-28-2014, 04:20 PM

If I had the money I was going to pick up a set of the discontinued wets that Mike posted about. Tight winter for me though. ;(

wstar · 03-03-2014, 03:02 PM

Another fun weekend at TWS! Saturday morning's first session was a little damp, but the rest of the day was pretty dry and fast. Sunday was a wet mess dodging puddles in the falling rain - I only did one session and then packed up since it was looking like the weather was going to get much worse in the afternoon. My front rotor rings are surprisingly in about the same shape they started in, so I may push for another trackday or two on them before replacing them.

The RS-3 tires were better than expected (from internet hearsay) in the wet. They're not a fast tire in the wet; they're slow and don't handle standing water all that well even with good tread depth. But they were easy to predict, control, and recover on in the wet, as opposed to the sometimes-twitchy nature of my old Contis. The slow wet laps were fun instead of death-grip-scary

Not a ton else to report, it was fairly uneventful. I didn't do anything stupid, and I shockingly failed to spin the car or throw it off the track. I had a couple of near-misses on those things, but I'm adapted to the RS3's now and doing much better at control/recovery. My braking was sub-par and I did a lot of silly steering-wheel-shaking that I need to stop doing, but I don't care much. Mostly this weekend was playing with driving looser and becoming comfortable with a new level of car control and lots of small corrections, and it was pretty successful. I know where a lot of my suboptimal lines and speeds are at now, and I think I can correct them next time. Maybe next time at TWS I'll really try to optimize the whole picture in one smooth run and put down some really decent lap times.

Anyways, my fast-lap vid for the weekend:

And a highlights/errors vid (a nice traffic management clip, an almost-off in T1, a slippy situation in T4 in the dry that I pulled through without losing speed, and then several wet slip+recover moments):

VoBoy · 03-05-2014, 10:51 AM

yo! I see you on the roster for pds @ tws this weekend. I'll be there in my miata. see you this weekend!

wstar · 03-06-2014, 09:52 AM

Awesome. This is my first time w/ PDS, they put me in Blue Solo, we'll see how it goes

I'm only up there for Saturday this weekend, and it might be a little wet, but who knows, the weathermen are wrong half the time.

wstar · 03-06-2014, 11:04 AM

Just got my DVD of COTA pics from SSP, ~400 nice high res pics. I picked out a few to upload here:

wstar · 03-08-2014, 08:03 PM

Picked up a single track day w/ PDS @ TWS today. The dollars-per-track-hour just can't be beat there, I have to do more PDS weekends this year! I'm not sure about their entry-level Green group, but everyone else runs basically 8x 24-min sessions per day. Unfortunately I left my SD Card in the computer at home, so I didn't get any data logging or video. Luckily the dash timing stuff works without it, so I was able to record laptimes and see my realtime +/- vs best still. No spins/offs, again, so I didn't miss recording anything exciting really.

It was dry before lunch and wet after. I trimmed my dry time down substantially. A week ago my best was 2:05.65. My first session today I hit 2:04.78, and then in the last session before lunch I managed a 2:03.10 and a 2:03.22 back-to-back when I got free of traffic for a while. I think mostly I was picking that up with being more aggressive on my speeds through T7 and T12, and slowly getting a little better at T1->T3.

My braking is my weak spot now; I really need to up my braking game to keep up with the rest (mostly smoother transitions, but also the location/duration of my braking zones). Still, even if I keep sucking at braking about like I am now, I think I could push my current runs down into 2:01-ish territory if I could get a solid dry weekend in. The wet sessions were fun too, but there are too many different levels of "wet" to really bother tracking times much.

Next event scheduled is Apr 5-6 @ MSR-Houston. It will be nice to get back to my first track again, I haven't been in a while

DR_ · 03-09-2014, 08:48 AM

Very respectable times. Good job!

wstar · 03-09-2014, 10:01 AM

Thanks!

wstar · 03-11-2014, 03:20 PM

Tire plans are coming together.

I went ahead and ordered some of those discontinued Conti/Hoosier wet race tires, in 265/645R18 (Hoosier Racing Tire -- Tires Designed For Champions -> Road Racing -> Discontinued -> bottom of page - $100/tire!).

Ordering another set of 18x10+34 Forgestars to stick them on, too. It'll probably be ~5 weeks to get the wheels in, at which point I'll finally be able to swap between decent dry+wet options in the paddock. 18x10 may or may not be the most-optimal rim size for those wets, but it'll be close enough to work, and in the long term I like the idea of having all my rims the same size and then just keeping an eye out for matching tire deals.

On the dry side, I'm figuring when this current set of RS3's run out of steam (probably mid-Summer?), I'll be ready to try some dry slicks too. My plan there is to pick up random brands of cheap scrubs, it shouldn't be hard to find them in 18x10.

wstar · 03-11-2014, 03:32 PM

Also, the next long-overdue equipment upgrade on my list is a 1.5-way clutched rear diff. Any recommendations? I don't want to spend forever on setup and go customizing the internals, I just want a reliable diff I can shove in there and change fluid regularly and it works better than the VLSD (well, by now I'm just using an open diff, my VLSD is shot). I'll probably have a local shop that specializes in diff/trans work do the install, I don't have the expertise or patience to sit around trying to shim gears together perfectly (I've done it before on an old truck - it sucked and I doubt we really got it perfect, but it kinda didn't matter on that vehicle!).

My shortlist from remembering older threads: Cabonetics, OS Giken, Nismo.

synolimit · 03-12-2014, 10:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wstar

Also, the next long-overdue equipment upgrade on my list is a 1.5-way clutched rear diff. Any recommendations? I don't want to spend forever on setup and go customizing the internals, I just want a reliable diff I can shove in there and change fluid regularly and it works better than the VLSD (well, by now I'm just using an open diff, my VLSD is shot). I'll probably have a local shop that specializes in diff/trans work do the install, I don't have the expertise or patience to sit around trying to shim gears together perfectly (I've done it before on an old truck - it sucked and I doubt we really got it perfect, but it kinda didn't matter on that vehicle!).

My shortlist from remembering older threads: Cabonetics, OS Giken, Nismo.

Fingers crossed, I still hope with my diff cooler that the OEM can be used fairly well. We know the diff fluid reaches 300* + on the track. That can't be good for the silicone filled VLSD. But if you could keep that fluid always cooler, the silicone might do its job as well as it does on say lap one...all I know is just being on the highway my fluid hits 204* after 45 min. Within 10 seconds the temp drops 40* when I hit the switch. Highest I've had it with the pump on was like 164* I think. Only time will tell now.

Megan370z · 03-11-2014, 04:02 PM

Look up Cusco LSD
Ive read a lot of good comment about them also they are very popular on the my350z dot com. They arent priced as high as the OS giken and pretty much as tuneable as them plus Cusco wont say no to help you with some tuning info/parts if you ever go that route later on.

sig11 · 03-11-2014, 04:42 PM

I've heard very good things about the NISMO GT Pro. That's what I've got to put in my SpecZ car

02-24-2014, 08:05 AM	#1 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Yeah I'd say if you have any odd problems with the trans, check fluid level for sure. I suspect if your level is borderline, fluid sloshing around and affecting pickup under certain G-loadings will make the difference. Megan370z likes this. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

02-27-2014, 10:19 PM	#2 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Just got done prepping the car for TWS this weekend. I'm loving having this square tire setup now, with directional-but-symmetrical tires (the RS3's). I had the local NTB flip all four on their rims for $44, then rotated them all around (diagonal). Should even out the wear from my remaining slight camber issues and from 3 weekends in a row all running CCW (TWS->COTA->TWS). Changed the oil and trans fluid (Motul Multi-ATF again), swapped the stock AP bleed screws for SpeedBleeders (finally!) and bled the brakes. Good to go for load-out tomorrow So far on the weather reports Saturday looks ok, maybe some light sprinkles, but Sunday will probably get stormy by lunch. Will be interesting to see how the RS3's feel as it gets progressively wetter throughout the weekend. If they can't take the puddles very well, I can always flip back to my staggered Conti setup, those have huge grooves in them. I really need to work on getting a good rain setup for this car though. After seeing some of Mike's various tire/wheel combos at COTA, I'm thinking maybe a square set of 18x9 or 18x9.5 with some rain tires on them, like the Hoosier H2O's or something roughly equivalent. I think he had some Conti/Hoosier actual race-rain tires (as opposed to the H2Os, which are DOT-rated). Boost_lee and sig11 like this. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

03-03-2014, 03:02 PM	#4 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Another fun weekend at TWS! Saturday morning's first session was a little damp, but the rest of the day was pretty dry and fast. Sunday was a wet mess dodging puddles in the falling rain - I only did one session and then packed up since it was looking like the weather was going to get much worse in the afternoon. My front rotor rings are surprisingly in about the same shape they started in, so I may push for another trackday or two on them before replacing them. The RS-3 tires were better than expected (from internet hearsay) in the wet. They're not a fast tire in the wet; they're slow and don't handle standing water all that well even with good tread depth. But they were easy to predict, control, and recover on in the wet, as opposed to the sometimes-twitchy nature of my old Contis. The slow wet laps were fun instead of death-grip-scary Not a ton else to report, it was fairly uneventful. I didn't do anything stupid, and I shockingly failed to spin the car or throw it off the track. I had a couple of near-misses on those things, but I'm adapted to the RS3's now and doing much better at control/recovery. My braking was sub-par and I did a lot of silly steering-wheel-shaking that I need to stop doing, but I don't care much. Mostly this weekend was playing with driving looser and becoming comfortable with a new level of car control and lots of small corrections, and it was pretty successful. I know where a lot of my suboptimal lines and speeds are at now, and I think I can correct them next time. Maybe next time at TWS I'll really try to optimize the whole picture in one smooth run and put down some really decent lap times. Anyways, my fast-lap vid for the weekend: And a highlights/errors vid (a nice traffic management clip, an almost-off in T1, a slippy situation in T4 in the dry that I pulled through without losing speed, and then several wet slip+recover moments): __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details Last edited by wstar; 03-03-2014 at 03:10 PM.

03-06-2014, 09:52 AM	#6 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Awesome. This is my first time w/ PDS, they put me in Blue Solo, we'll see how it goes I'm only up there for Saturday this weekend, and it might be a little wet, but who knows, the weathermen are wrong half the time. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

03-06-2014, 11:04 AM	#7 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Just got my DVD of COTA pics from SSP, ~400 nice high res pics. I picked out a few to upload here: Megan370z, guru and Rusty like this. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

02-28-2014, 04:20 PM	#3 (permalink)
sig11 A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Detroit Posts: 1,294 Drives: 09 370Z Red Sport-MT Rep Power: 18	If I had the money I was going to pick up a set of the discontinued wets that Mike posted about. Tight winter for me though. ;(

03-05-2014, 10:51 AM	#5 (permalink)
VoBoy Base Member Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Chicago/Houston Posts: 37 Drives: 06 350z Rep Power: 17	yo! I see you on the roster for pds @ tws this weekend. I'll be there in my miata. see you this weekend!

03-08-2014, 08:03 PM	#8 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Picked up a single track day w/ PDS @ TWS today. The dollars-per-track-hour just can't be beat there, I have to do more PDS weekends this year! I'm not sure about their entry-level Green group, but everyone else runs basically 8x 24-min sessions per day. Unfortunately I left my SD Card in the computer at home, so I didn't get any data logging or video. Luckily the dash timing stuff works without it, so I was able to record laptimes and see my realtime +/- vs best still. No spins/offs, again, so I didn't miss recording anything exciting really. It was dry before lunch and wet after. I trimmed my dry time down substantially. A week ago my best was 2:05.65. My first session today I hit 2:04.78, and then in the last session before lunch I managed a 2:03.10 and a 2:03.22 back-to-back when I got free of traffic for a while. I think mostly I was picking that up with being more aggressive on my speeds through T7 and T12, and slowly getting a little better at T1->T3. My braking is my weak spot now; I really need to up my braking game to keep up with the rest (mostly smoother transitions, but also the location/duration of my braking zones). Still, even if I keep sucking at braking about like I am now, I think I could push my current runs down into 2:01-ish territory if I could get a solid dry weekend in. The wet sessions were fun too, but there are too many different levels of "wet" to really bother tracking times much. Next event scheduled is Apr 5-6 @ MSR-Houston. It will be nice to get back to my first track again, I haven't been in a while travisjb, DR_, SPOHN and 1 others like this. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details Last edited by wstar; 03-12-2014 at 09:14 PM.

03-09-2014, 08:48 AM	#9 (permalink)
DR_ Track Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Dallas Posts: 981 Drives: Touring/Sport M6 PG Rep Power: 17	Very respectable times. Good job!

03-09-2014, 10:01 AM	#10 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Thanks! __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

03-11-2014, 03:20 PM	#11 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Tire plans are coming together. I went ahead and ordered some of those discontinued Conti/Hoosier wet race tires, in 265/645R18 (Hoosier Racing Tire -- Tires Designed For Champions -> Road Racing -> Discontinued -> bottom of page - $100/tire!). Ordering another set of 18x10+34 Forgestars to stick them on, too. It'll probably be ~5 weeks to get the wheels in, at which point I'll finally be able to swap between decent dry+wet options in the paddock. 18x10 may or may not be the most-optimal rim size for those wets, but it'll be close enough to work, and in the long term I like the idea of having all my rims the same size and then just keeping an eye out for matching tire deals. On the dry side, I'm figuring when this current set of RS3's run out of steam (probably mid-Summer?), I'll be ready to try some dry slicks too. My plan there is to pick up random brands of cheap scrubs, it shouldn't be hard to find them in 18x10. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

03-11-2014, 03:32 PM	#12 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3595	Also, the next long-overdue equipment upgrade on my list is a 1.5-way clutched rear diff. Any recommendations? I don't want to spend forever on setup and go customizing the internals, I just want a reliable diff I can shove in there and change fluid regularly and it works better than the VLSD (well, by now I'm just using an open diff, my VLSD is shot). I'll probably have a local shop that specializes in diff/trans work do the install, I don't have the expertise or patience to sit around trying to shim gears together perfectly (I've done it before on an old truck - it sucked and I doubt we really got it perfect, but it kinda didn't matter on that vehicle!). My shortlist from remembering older threads: Cabonetics, OS Giken, Nismo. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details Last edited by wstar; 03-11-2014 at 03:39 PM.

03-11-2014, 04:02 PM	#14 (permalink)
Megan370z A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Canada Posts: 1,156 Drives: 370z Rep Power: 24	Look up Cusco LSD Ive read a lot of good comment about them also they are very popular on the my350z dot com. They arent priced as high as the OS giken and pretty much as tuneable as them plus Cusco wont say no to help you with some tuning info/parts if you ever go that route later on. __________________ Megan Journal Click Me ....................One Man Team Motorsport Click Me

03-11-2014, 04:42 PM	#15 (permalink)
sig11 A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Detroit Posts: 1,294 Drives: 09 370Z Red Sport-MT Rep Power: 18	I've heard very good things about the NISMO GT Pro. That's what I've got to put in my SpecZ car

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