First Trackday Impressions

Originally Posted by RCZ

It crossed my mind to mention it, but I guess I must have forgotten. VDC was off ALL the time. I had it on for 3 corners on the first lap of the first session and then I had to turn it off because it was getting in the way.

I would say that it does affect it quite a bit. You can't possibly drive the car the way it is meant to be driven with the VDC on. It is waaay too limiting and cuts in too early.



I appreciate that you value my opinion. That sounds like a good plan. Just to be on the safe side, I would definitely use the Ester oil Nissan recommends, or at least something with lots of ester additives. (Nissan oil is just oil with ester additives). I would stick with the factory filter. As far as your oil change. I would drive on the Nissan Oil until at least 5k, specially since you aren't going to track the car and therefore you wont need high heat/ high stress oils.


ANOTHER POINT ON OVERHEATING:

Now this one may seem a little crazy for most, but it does have some logical foundations and it worked in practice. So my friend had his TT built race 350Z there and as ALWAYS it was overheating. One of the guys there suggested turning the heater on full blast because that fixed his old car's overheating issues. The logic behind the suggestion was that the car uses engine heat to warm up the air that comes out of the vents when you turn the heat on. To do that, it runs the air through a separate radiator that is designed to warm up the air. Now, through that heat exchange, the energy used to heat up air has to have been lost somewhere else. He argued that the heater actually helps cool down the engine. So having tried just about everything else other than removing the front bumper of the TT350Z, we ran it with the heat blaring. No more overheating....at all.

So the next logical step was to try it on my car. The results were questionable...I don't know whether it was wishful thinking or not, but it seemed like it took a few extra laps to overheat than it had with the heat off. Don't take my word for it, but I think this might help a little bit. Someone who is getting on the track soon should check...

Originally Posted by ssqpolo

I (hopefully) will be taking my baby to sebring at the end of march. I will keep u all informed. I too have used the heater trick on the Hummer to prevent it from overheating.

Originally Posted by LiquidZ

So does this car suck on track days? That's what it sounds like to me.

Originally Posted by RCZ

Well, driving it around the city today I noticed the car is much louder (exhaust note) and feels faster than it did before the trackday. I guess you could say it is broken in now. The roughness of the clutch pedal is going away as well, which is great.

Yeah LiquidZ, the Z doesn't suck. It was a lot of fun and compared to other stock cars, it is pretty good around the track. I made a disclaimer at the beginning of my review saying that I was comparing it against the cream of the crop. If you saw my videos you will see I was racing against race cars all day long and that added to my negativity. I got passed a few times by Radical Prototype cars for gods sake. So to be fair, the Z was alright.

So you guys know, I think my fastest lap time was about a 1:51. I think I can shave that down 2 seconds if I drive more aggressively next time. I am eager to see what kind of laps I can do with more upgrades

Originally Posted by RCZ

hmm, not really...thats not getting any better. Feels a bit more awake though.