Ed, I have said it once and I will say it again, your linguistic skills are simply incredible and truly a joy to read. Incredibly smart without being hard to understand and just the right amount of humor.

 

 

Yep, that's it (thanks for posting the pic, Mike). Modeled after the one on the Nismo JGTC car, with additional research done to get the correct angle and reasonable dimensions to be meaningful. At over 500 sq. inches - a 0.2 psi pressure drop is worth over 100 pounds of downforce! And the really clever part is (if I do say so myself) is that it is held on by just ONE bolt! So it's very easy to put on and remove.

(Only works with single exhausts however - since it sits in the space normally occupied by the stock muffler.)

It is built from aluminum sheet and angle, drilled and riveted. It has survived 4 track days now with virtually no issues. IT WORKS!

 

Wow that is neat, Steve.
I have a true dual exhaust, so could probably put something like that on my G35.
Do you have anything to help keep the front down too?
How much downforce do you think you are getting from the wing on your rear deck?

 

Ed, One of Steve (white night) and my sponsors, Kognition Designes, is working on some dry carbn aero parts like, rear defusers, front bumper kanards, rear wings and hatches, hoods, front bumper splitters, etc. for the G as well as the Z...stay tuned, I will keep you posted. It is going to be some nice stuff.

 

Yep, been takling to them since the Time Attack and they have some really cool ideas like a full undertray for the cars. That would add insane downforce.

 

That is definitely of interest. Thanks!

 

Yes, Ed, I have a dry carbon splitter from Kognition Design for the front. We tested it at Firebird Raceway here in Phoenix a week before the time attack. It works great. It definitely took out some of the understeer and restored some balance to my car. There is a thread to that test session on this forum:

https://my350z.com/forum/autocross-road/233060-prelim-testing-completed-for-race-splitter-airdam-system.html

Kognition wants to build a carbon fiber version of my rear diffuser design. And we will be testing some other parts hopefully very soon. These cars are going to end up looking and hopefully tracking very much like the JGTC cars!

The wing I am using also makes good downforce. I am not sure the exact figure, but it is certainly well over 100 pounds given the size of the wing. I would guess several hundred pounds. (The small wing on the back of a Lotus Exige adds 75 pounds over that of the non-winged Elise - so you can make a correlation/comparison.)

 

That is good news indeed. The underbody splitter/diffuser to help pull the nose down is a very nice thing at high speeds like the Roval at Cal Speedway, as of course is the rear one, and a wing. Aero is the next thing I have to deal with on my car if I am going to keep coming out to the tracks like this. It just makes a huge difference. A better nose with more venting for the air hungry exchangers (oil cooler, power steering cooler, intercooler, radiator, and of course front brake ducting) is a must as well. Somehow, finding a way to duct some air to the rear brakes would be most desireable as well.

 

Well, the final results are up. Looks like my fastest time of the weekend was a 2:02.010 which is not near as fast as it felt, but thats usually the way it works. I ran a 2:02.850 in practice with a passenger so I thought that a good lap without a passenger would be close to a 2:00.XXX, but I guess not.

The good news is, that I can justify my slow times now. Seems that I had some serious suspension issues with my car that were probably costing me a good 3-5 seconds. We knew something about my car wasn't feeling right and upon inspection after the event VRT has found already found a few problems, the biggest being that somehow my toe adjustment on the rear wheels was 3" in. Thats pretty substantial and explains why the car had a "floaty" feeling to it. This makes me feel a lot better about only being able to pull off a 2:02.010.

 

The results for both the Modified and Street classes, second session of the two, when most of the fastest times are posted, are not up. Right now I only have my practice time of 2:06 and then the slow times from first session when, ahem, I went OTE in the Sunset Turn and ruined my session.

Bad alignment on the wheels is like trying to run with your laundry hanging out the window Mike......and it is dangerous. How the heck did you have bad alignment like that overlooked? All this time you have been struggling with the twitchy?

 

Alignment is definately critical and can change a car from being absolutely undriveable to extremely fast.

We always check the alignment before and after every race weekend. Even if you dont hit anything or have any off's, the various bolts keeping the alignment set on the car can loosen up and you can loose your alignment just from extremely hard driving.

 

TIME ATTACK SESSION 2 will be posted today.
Computer problems cause the delay of the posting....
Sorry, it'll all be fixed today.

 

Well, suprisingly, there were a few bolts under there in the rear suspension where the nuts had fallen off, and we are guessing it was either because of that or it all happened the first time I went off track. I don't know, but yeah, kinda scary. But now that the event is over and everybody is safe, I am happy to hear about these problems, it explains a lot about how the car drives.

 

Lok-tite time.

A good reason to always do a full underbody check and wrench a thon on every nut you can find. Same with re-torquing all of the lugs. I don't know how it happens, but you can have everything perfect on the lugs, run one session, come back in, and by golly three lugs take a quarter to half turn before the wrench pops. Always check those after every session.

 

No problem. Just will show how truly slow I was, even if I was having a good time!
(Actually, I almost caught the Evo that left in front of me on that second session, so I hope to have done a wee little bit better than the first session!)

 

Yeah, definately. We were so worried about changing tires in time for the next class and dealing with my brake line issue that none of us even had time to sit down and think rationally about why the car was acting the way it was. I honestly am very happy that the conditions of the car were that bad. Running a 2:02.010 is really not a bad time at all, but running that time with those problems tells me one thing...this is a fast car. I think somewhere close to 1:55s are very possible with this car and that makes me very happy.

 

For those of you that have competed I'm wondering if you can explain all of the passing rules. All of the HPDE's that I attend require a point by to pass but since this is a competition is it any different? And if a point is required to pass what happens if someone refuses to give the point and you're stuck behind him and can't get your full fast laps in? I can't remember a single event I've ever intended that didn't have at least a few idiots holding up traffic and either refusing to give a pass signal due to their ego or due to simple ignorance of the fact that someone is on their bumper. Drivers like that can easily ruin a competition such as this.

Also, congrats to those that entered the event. I'd love to try one someday but Cali is a long drive from Texas.

 

They run the Time Attack sessions completely differently. They let one car out at a time at 12 second intervals, thats a lot of ground to make up before you catch the guy and you only have 4 laps to do it in, one warm up, 3 timed. Then the 5th lap is a cool down which doesnt matter if you catch him or not. So for the most part there arent any problems, but there are occasions when somebody makes a mistake and gets caught up to. If you catch up to them there are no passing rules.

 

Oh, and they also send you out according to lap time so the fastest guys go first and so forth. That way they dont put a car running 2:10 in front of a car running 1:51.