wstar's Journal

wstar

Had a good weekend at MSR-H, learned a lot They put me in Yellow Solo this time (so no assigned/required instructor), and it was nice to just be out there by myself and not feel like I have to explain things (you know like - hey I'm not being inconsistent here - I'm experimenting with different approaches to this corner on each lap!). No real mechanical issues or spins. Had one very minor off coming into S+S (started my braking a little too late for conditions, so I just continued off into the grass by a car-length or so and then rolled over into the hot-pit lane).

Apparently the USB stick for my RK data got corrupted somehow, which is annoying, so I only got data for the first two sessions of the weekend. I know I improved a lot from there, and my best time from the data I have (1:56.98) is on a lap where I can see tons of mistakes I wasn't making later in the weekend. Oh well

Aside from known front camber issues, known failing-VLSD issues, etc, the biggest weakness now is I waited a little too long to upgrade tire compounds. These Conti DW were great to learn on, but at this point (a) mastering traction on them while slipping through corners is just completely autopilot for me because it's easy and (b) they're way too slippery on hot days to keep up and I know they're holding me back at this point. All weekend I was holding back on straight speeds or braking more than I felt I should have needed to, all in the name of "let's stay down to corner speeds these tires can actually handle." The upside was I got a ton of car-control work in this weekend. Even if it's mostly on auto-pilot, driving through that excessive slip on just about every corner is still building up my brain's abilities.

So before the next event I'll probably bump up a notch to something like an NT-05 or RS3. At least for one tire change (2-3 events?) to ease my transition over to something like an NT-01 or straight up used slicks.

This was my last event for a while. Taking a 3-month break from track events (hottest months anyways) to do some more major surgery on the car (finally gut *all* the forward interior and switch to cage + harnesses, etc).

Anyways, the fastest lap of my first session of the weekened, FWIW:

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

So I've taken the plunge now. I've had the dash out before and even pulled out the main steering member (horizontal beam underneath), when I removed the interior HVAC stuff. But that time around, I put the dash (etc) back in place afterwards to keep the airbag system functional, since I'm still on stock seatbelts, etc.

This time around, we're going all in. Airbag stuff and all interior plastic crap being removed permanently (as well as other useless ancillary things like TPMS and Keyfob sensors, etc). There should be no wiring left that isn't strictly necessary for a track car, basically. After I've gutted most of the useless wiring and tidied things up, I'll need to remount the factory 3-gauge cluster on top of the beam somehow for now, and attach a metal plate there in the center for a new custom "dash" to mount various gauges and switches to (including factory start/stop button, and a couple of pushbuttons tied to the cruise control for UpRev map switching). Also, I need to remember to get someone with a Pro license to NATS-disable my ROM before I remove all those keyfob sensors.

Then it's seats/mounts, steering wheel, harnesses. I'll do all that I can myself and then take the car somewhere local to have the actual cage and harness mounts welded in to match the seat arrangement. Hopefully I can squeeze all this in before the next upcoming local Driver's Edge event at the end of September, but I'm willing to skip an event if I have to just to get through this phase of work once and for all.

For now, the ugly ugly pic of the front area with most of the gutting done, but none of the wiring cleanup yet:

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

ChrisSlicks

Wow! Nice.

Why is the driver's carpet still in? Don't want to have to fill in the hole?

__________________
Hotchkis ARB | Stillen CAI | Art Pipes | Berk CBE | Stillen AP Racing Brakes | AE Performance Oil Cooler | BC Racing ER Coilovers | Doran Control Arms

Boost_lee

very nice! Are you still keeping those Bride seats?

__________________
My TT Z

travisjb

cool... you're doing well behind the wheel

not disabling the nats finally caught up with me so you're right to get that squared away now. also will want to remember my big mistake back in '09, label the hell out of your factory wiring harness before you cut any wires... there are so MANY wires to sort through... you probably thought of all this but ---- you'll want to decide early whether to cut the wires out right down into the clips (prob so just be careful not to damage clips). also there you'll want to do a visual of each wire on the main hardness when done to ensure you haven't cut any wires unecesarily... you'll of course want to go one step at a time as you de and re-construct your dash and test that everything is working after each step... you don't want to get to the end and have a brick and then have to trace back through all the changes... might think about replacing the steering column with something lighter. we ended up mounting the triple gauge on the bracket that holds my steering column and it lifts up/down along with the column which is nice... you also do have the option to keep the factory dash - nothing wrong with it once you get rid of all the crap behind you don't need... it's light weight and you can construct a new alum plate to go behind center piece

remember, label and tape all those wires (esp the ones you want to keep) before you cut! replacing my harness took me out of commission for nearly 3 months

last piece of advice... consider weighing the factory wiring harness... it's not much. think about whether it's worth saving 1-2 pounds for the risk of cutting into it

good luck!

__________________
2009 370Z #104
*For Sale*

travisjb

one more thought... now'd be the time to consider a polycarb windshield... get it thick enough so you don't need bracing (check latest scca/nasa safety rules)

__________________
2009 370Z #104
*For Sale*

SPOHN

You scared yet?

__________________

SPOHN

Finished. No issues.

__________________

Megan370z

good job !

I'm not there yet as I still need my heater core for another year ;/

__________________
Megan Journal *Click Me* ....................One Man Team Motorsport *Click Me*

sig11

I'm scared to death of the wiring but I think that's the next step for me and my Z33 race car. :P

SPOHN

Do it. Do it.

__________________

wstar

Yeah, the driver's carpet and the foam underneath seem to be sort of an integral part of the stock dead-pedal and maybe the accel pedal setup? It'll go eventually, but maybe not in this round of work. Depends how fast I get through all the other little fabrication jobs.

Thanks for all the advice, guys, it's appreciated. A lot of misc things won't be done at all on this round of work (like above), including stuff like the windshield and a final solution for the doors and door glass, etc. Mostly I'm just trying to get quickly done with the basics to gut the forward interior + airbags, put in the custom dash panel, and put in a cage + seats + harnesses and get back on-track. Then the other stuff can be done as smaller projects between events from there. The initial cage install could be rear-only as well, pending dealing with doors, doorglass, handles, etc...

Definitely with you on being afraid of the wiring and careful. The first plan is just to trim back to where all the excess harness is exclusively along the horizontal steering member and still attached to the major ECU/BCM/whatever modules (so killing all the small wiring going up the sides of the car and through the center console area, etc for simplification). I'll make the call on the final really tough bits at some later date.

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

Was going back and reviewing old data and logs and whatnot. It's really crazy to compare back to the last weekend before the coilover switch. Don't get me wrong, the coilovers feel awesome and are a big improvement, but driving this setup without the requisite front camber adjustment has really hurt in the overall. It just destroys the outside edges of front tires and the front doesn't grip like it should, forcing other setup changes and driving habits, etc. I really do have to fix that before my next time out. If SPL's arms aren't ready, I'll buy cheap ones and mod them to hold their settings or whatever.

For comparison to the recent video a few posts up, this video was from just before the coilovers went on, and it was my first weekend at this track, whereas the one above is one I'm very familiar with now. When I watch this video I see a much better version of my driving than the more recent runs, even though I've really picked up some raw skill in the interim. The car was just much more natural and easy to feel through things when I could use all the front tire:

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

travisjb

Corvette = slow you down in the infield then vroooooom!

Seems to be a trend in our sport

As I type, finally let's you by...

Your driving has improved a lot since your first vid. Getting set up well before, accelerating sooner out of turns, etc

__________________
2009 370Z #104
*For Sale*

wstar

I'm getting there, bit by bit. At this point I generally know what my mistakes are and what things are supposed to feel like and look like, it's just a matter of getting it done more consistently and building up the seat-time experience (and confidence in the case of some corners with scary setups) to do so.

With Driver's Edge (the group I usually run with) they do four rungroups: Green, Blue, Yellow, Red. There's a half-promotion during blue to "Blue Solo" where you run alternating sessions solo/instructor, and then Yellow starts out that way and progresses to Yellow Solo where you just run all day by yourself (although it's not uncommon to pick up a random instructor ride-along to work on stuff for a session). Passing in corners doesn't start until Red, but they give us a little more leeway on starting our straight-passes early and ending them late in Yellow. In practice it seems more like "final apex to first apex"

I've just made the transition over this summer from being a solid top car in Blue (e.g. that video with the Corvette pass above where I'm kinda owning the field) to moving into Yellow where I'm definitely down in the lower 1/3 of the field on skills and speed. I'm hoping that my car setup more-or-less stabilizes at a good point between now and the end of the year, and then I'm probably looking at another year or two of events on that relatively-stable setup to get to where I really feel like I can hang in the top-level run group and start trying to run with them. We'll see how those predictions pan out

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details