After a little more than 3 weeks of ownership and I finally got the car onto the track... an open lapping day that is. This is also Monty's first time on the track in a rear wheel drive car
. This was the friday track day before the BMW driving school. 90% of the drivers were instructors and all have fairly fast cars... let's just say that everyone and their dog passed me
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The weather was cold and wet in the morning, I changed over the brake pads to the Hawk blues on the new Z32 brakes up front. I'm still using the stock S13 rear brakes and what's left of the unnamed brake pads, they should hold up with the cold temps. The tires are about 3 years old and already past there expiration date... 225/50/16 Fuzion ZR1 tires up front on Kosei 16x7.5 wheels and 245/45/16 Fuzion ZR1 tires out back on 16x8.5 wheels. I figure that I can get this and the next track day out of these before I go with a new street tire that can handle moderate track duty. I set my tire temps to 34F/34R for pressures, that ended up being about 37/37 hot... not really sure if those temps are optimal or not but it was a start.
My first 20 minute session that I went out for was in the wet and I was being timid. The car felt good in the corners, a few times I put it sideways in the slower (2nd gear) tight corners as I would try to power out of the corners, this just led to the backend stepping out then catching quickly... this resulted in a helmet slap on the window about everytime
. The tires also didn't want to brake like I wanted them to... squeeze just a little to much and those front tires lock, this is followed by some fast foot work to get the car down to speed and not miss the turn in!
The 2nd little session out there I started to get braver, pushing the corners a little harder... to the point that after about 10 minutes I could feel the front tires starting to chunk on the tight slow section and the faster corners. The car would understeer and I could feel the tires chunking as I pushed the car harder. Of course at about 15 minutes into this session I heard a hard hitting thump from the front of the car, and it really did not sound good at all
. I eased the car to the exit road of turn 4 and got over to see what happened. One of the two sliding pins that holds the front brake pads in place backed out until it caught the back side of the spokes on the front wheels and bent to a near 90 degree angle... also they beat the crap out of my wheels
. I pulled the pin and took a hammer to it to straighten it and found someone with safety wire to secure both pins... damn if I was going to let that happen again
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By lunchtime it was just cold and the track had dried up enough that brakes could be used without the fear of locking up the front tires. The car was so far down on power that basically I would brake for a corner to set up a turn in speed, turn in and step on the throttle and watch the car pull me through the corner without fear of the car understeering or oversteering
. It was so well balance through the turns that it scared me. I mean the sentra was fun in all, but I could feel the car always wanting to push through the turn... this typically lead to extra tire wear and alot less track time due to the tires heating up to fast.
The hawk blues were also doing a great job of allowing me to modulate the brake pedal and I only had a few times that I locked up the fronts, my fault of course. I checked temps several times, the fronts were reading 160F after a cool down lap and the rears were at about 350F... The Z32 rear setup needs to go on soon.
My friend Bob was also able to make it out in his Evo8. He had just finished up a few upgrades like larger IC, DP back exhaust, upped the boost to 21psi, and added 17x9.5 wheels and 275/40/17 Kumho MX's
. The car was stupid fast and gave my legs a workout in the braking zone. The joke of the day was he could lap me once every session if he didn't run out of gas first. The only session that he didn't lap me was when he ran out of gas, and he was only 1 turn behind me
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A picture of the car in the pits... between sessions.
What the tires looked like after the first session.
Bob's tonka truck... I mean evo
My safety wire fix, you can also see the lower pin looks alittle deformed. I am sure I know what happened after putting the stock pads back in at the end of the day. There is a safty pin that slides through both ends of the brake pad pins and also locks onto the caliper. I am sure that when I was locking the safety pin onto the caliper that there was enough flex in it to slip out of the one brake pad pin... I just need to be alot more careful in the future with this.
The damage done by the pin... luckily from the front you really can't see the damage unless you know where to look.
My tires at the end of the day... don't think these tires were meant for track duty
How Bob gets out of the Lotus exige
. This is owned by one of the three drivers for the local race team, this car is driven properly and spun occasionally on the track
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One of my best photo's of the day... actually from Saturday during the BMW school. 997 GT3 FTW
The local race teams (Adare Motorsports) car that just won the 8 hour enduro in Portland, Or last weekend with one of the three drivers standing behind it.
I have to thank Steve (98SR20VE) for all the hard work he put into the car. I've only added a few basic items to get the car track worthy in the limited time I've owned the car and the car did great out there for the limited power that it has. I still have alot to learn on driving this car, but in the 200 track miles that I put on it already I feel confident that I made the right choice on selling the sentra and buying this off Steve.
What's been done to the car... the 240 has an SR20DE transplant with a Spec clutch/PP and Fidenza flywheel. Besides that it has stock intake and stock header and KA exhaust, no other engine mods are done as of yet. The suspesion is another story... Silkroad coilovers, Progress swaybars, and a host of other parts that Steve has added to make this car very enjoyable in the corners.
I will keep this thread going with all my track days for the year... along with what is added and my best description on how it helped/didn't help with making the car faster around the track
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