Back from BIR. Overall I think a very successful first track visit in this car. It wasn't perfect. I have a lot of learning to do when it comes to launching this car, my best 60' of the day was a 2.1.
My goal was really to just make some nice clean passes in the car. I was expecting 12's and 125 traps. I surpassed that with a best of 11.6 @ 131. If I can get that 2.1 down to say a 1.8 which I think is a very achievable goal, I'd be knocking on the door of 10's. And also getting the setup from it's current 20psi setting up to 30psi, I think my traps will be in the upper 130's. This will put it pretty much exactly where I had my old Talon at which was my end goal of this entire build. Similar power / track time as the Talon, but in a vehicle that is much more comfy / quiet / old man friendly / sleeper-ish.
Break down on how it went.
First "thing" that happened was we fucked up the front lip taking it off the trailer. That was super sucky, but it sort of fell back in place fine so it's not so bad. maybe I'll just get some carbon fiber band-aid stickers or something as a funny fix.
First pass was a 12.1 @ 127.5 with a 2.2 60'. This was in full street form (even still had the sub in the trunk). Car weighed in at 3460lbs. Launch was horrible, lots of wheel hop, NT05r's still at 30psi.
Second pass was an 11.6 @ 131.3 with a 2.1 60'. I removed a bunch of weight for this. Pass seat, sub/amp from trunk, all trunk carpet, rear seats all came out. Car weighed in at 3320lbs. This was my best pass of the day. Launch was a hair better, I had lowered the rear tires down to 20psi. The weight reduction had an awesome effect on the trap.
Third pass was an 11.7 @ 131.8 with a 2.2 60'. I removed the entire exhaust from the downpipe back. You can tell in the video it is significantly louder. It's stainless so I bet removing this put me under 3300lbs, unfortunately the scale was closed at that time so I didn't get to re-weigh it. I'd guess probably a good 40lbs was removed though, so probably right around 3280lbs would be my guess. I thought the reduction would have had a bigger impact on my trap, but I gained almost a mph with it. I put the tires down to 18psi. Lots of wheel hop again. Still was happy that I was able to basically duplicate the previous run. This was the end of Friday nights fun.
Fourth pass was the next day, Saturday afternoon. 2.4 60', but then you can see in the video this is where the car broke on the 3-4 shift. This ended my racing for the event, threw it on the trailer and called it quits.
I'm still not sure what exactly broke, but the symptoms are that the clutch basically no longer disengages the tranny from the motor. Everything feels right when you push the clutch. You can see the slave is pushing the fork just like it should. It just doesn't do anything. If you have the car in say 2nd gear and are driving around at 3k rpm, you should be able to push the clutch in and the tranny disengages, the rpm's drop to idle speed. My car right now, that same scenario you press the clutch in and the car just stays at 3krpm, the tranny is still engaged like you didn't press the clutch at all. But like I said above, clutch pedal feels normal. So the one thing that comes to my mind is perhaps the clutch fused to the flywheel?
Car will put in the garage and stored for winter early. So I guess I'll get a head start on this winters upgrades, which now also includes having to get this beast of a tranny off which I'm not looking forward to.
All in all though, I was really happy with the car. The car felt strong and I felt safe and comfy in it. If that is what truly happened, then I'd say the car actually held together well as this isn't so much something that broke, but 2 parts the decided to just get stuck together.
Here's a video of the 4 passes in order taken from inside the car. Also a few pics I snapped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcPb...ature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcPbRghQoQ0&hd=1
