robzracing

A quick update tonight. Now the holidays are over it's time to get on with this again.... Made up some floors for the zed now which tidies things up a bit inside. Now, will the bonnet close if I put this here? :wink: Accusump, about to be installed behind the bumper. But it's a tight fit! We'll see...... To be continued.......

No expert on these cars (yet :wink: ) but I would have thought just coilovers would be an improvement over the standard set up without the adjustable arms. Your money would be better spent on uprating the antiroll bars too which I'm sure would give you a noticeable improvement. Suspension is next on our list, but Accusump is currently being installed so some pics of that will be up soon.

Depends what series you enter. Steve, aka MrLizard will be able to answer you better, but the Team Trophy which is the next step up from the track day trophy are classed by power to weight and not much, if anything else as far as I know.. Check out Steve's car though, he has non standard aero, brakes and wheels.

We have a stripped out 328i coupe too! Lots of fun and a bit more manageable than the zed :wink: And cheap as chips

Yes, when I watched your on board footage, testing at Brands I thought your car looked a handful on a damp track. Now I understand!! Apparently they are having issues with the surface at Brands due to the solvents they use to disperse the synthetic oils being used these days. It's due to be jet washed over the Christmas period which should improve things apparently.

Yep, Clearways was catching a lot of people out. I think there were 34 cars there at the start of the day but the numbers dwindled after lunch. Like you say, it was impossible to get any heat in to the tyres.

Not sure if this will work. Some footage from one of the cameras........

Interesting! Arrived just after 7 to them gritting the track. Never a good sign and it was a good indication of how the day would go. Most people there were teams testing plus the usual "rent a caterham" outfits which was fortunate really because even with mostly experienced drivers on the track I lost count of how many red flags there were! We are lucky to have David Brown involved with our venture who is an instructor for MSV and we had him with us for the day but the bottom line is, with new unscrubbed AD08s, wind chill of -6 for the whole day and a track that remained damp and icy all day, PLUS no traction aids I think it is no small miracle that we managed to keep it off the grass and out of the gravel for the whole day. It was impossible to get any heat into the tyres which was the common thread all along the pit lane so there was never really a point where we could get a real feel for the car. However, it was good to get it on track and we have come away with a list of further work, most of which we knew already, that we need to get done before our next outing in Feb or March before the season starts properly. While we were there we managed to get the car on the weigh station which was good. 1460kg with half a tank of fuel, so, as everyone on here knows already, this is not a light car to take on track! But we could also see that the weight distribution has changed due to the strip out and now seems to be about 60/40 as opposed to the 52/48 that the manufacturer claims. I'm certain some adjustable suspension will help to remedy this but we may end up with some balast too. Any advice is welcome on this point. I also had a chance to dry run some of our cameras, the views of which you can see below.... If I can get the file sizes down I may post some footage up. This video editing is new to me and I don't have any decent software either. So, something else for me to work on. It's going to be a busy Christmas in the garage I think.

Testing at Brands tomorrow. Not sure it's going to be the best conditions for our first outing but we'll see

So, today the car got liveried up. Our sponsors will be getting a certain number of trackdays throughout the year where they can drive (with tuition) the car at Brands Hatch. We seem to have people queuing up to sponsor it, so I think we're on the right track and a bit more tidying inside. Painted the metal plate holding the rubber gear leaver boot down and fitted some stainless bolts. Also ordered a missing Sabelt logo from the passenger straps. FOC, thank you Sabelt

A quick update this evening. Cut-off switch is now connected. A small thing but it became a pain in the proverbial trying to locate the correct wires to route the ignition and fuel pump through the switch, even with Nissan's wiring schematics. At one point pressing the cut-off switch while the car was running just turned the headlights on! So, I'm currently working on the seat runners. This is the subframe that was fabricated by the guys who fitted the rollcage. Sparco side mounts were bolted to this. I've removed these and the runners will bolt underneath the seat. If I can keep the brackets slim enough I'm hoping that I can get the seat a little lower than it was before.

Great write up Steve and well done! Is that series the next step from the Trackday Trophy?

So, the discs have now been skimmed, a new set of DS2500 fitted and some new RF800 super DOT 4 brake fluid put in. Just need to bed the pads in now, so if anyone remembers the correct bedding in procedure for these pads it might save me looking it up. I know they need to be taken through their heat cycle a couple of times which is basically going to consist of an hour or so of spirited driving and heavy braking but I believe you can get it wrong quite easily and end up glazing them. I went down to the workshop to see the car go on the dyno before taking it home. and a little video if you want to waste 2 minutes of your life And the result..... I think 288bhp isn't bad for a 9 year old car. As far as we're aware it only has a K&N filter on it and apart from that it's standard. All in all, we're pleased with that, and although we're going to be concentrating on handling this gives us a good benchmark for the future when, I'm sure we'll need a new exhaust for example. And it's very unlikely that we'll fit a standard one back on it. So it will be interesting to see what effect if any a change like that will have on the figures. Probably not an awful lot with out a remap though.

That's interesting. It was the Brands videos I was watching. After that I was thinking about having the traction control reconnected (although turned off as default) so we could continue in situations like that. I'm not aware of the Syvecs TC, may have to look into that. I know that ours is very frisky in the wet at the moment but having the standard suspension is not helping!

You're probably right! Although after watching your videos from last week the zed looks a bit of a handful in the wet We're hoping to take it to Brands in the next couple of weeks for a shakedown. The seat runners arrived this morning so that's next on the list after the brakes are done.

Hey! Nothing wrong with my LCR. It's a great track toy and as it stands at the moment probably quicker than the zed on track . Had a chance to get some better pics today. And here's the problem with the discs. Due to be skimmed this week And this weekend's project. Connecting the cutoff switch. Just need to locate the live feeds from the battery to the ignition and fuel pump which need to be routed through the isolator. This is a solid state cutoff switch rather than a mechanical isolator but apparently still FIA approved which is handy should we ever decide to race this.

So last night I tackled the drivers window which hasn't been working since we got the car. As we don't have any door cards stripping out the regulator and motor was easy enough. However, after taking the motor out and testing it everything seemed ok. But once it was loaded with the regulator it would wind in one direction and then stop working again. Then, thanks to the guides on this forum I discovered this is a common problem with a simple fix. The motor gets very clogged with carbon and grease on the inside which stops it working properly. A quick clean and bingo! All as good as new Another job off the list. Next stop, FIA cut off switch.

Actually the airbag ECU is still in the car, I plan to remove that when I investigate the passenger airbag. Good to hear it's worth something, should help to pay for the second set of wheels we picked up at the weekend. It'll be interesting to hear how you get on with the DS3000s. We do have brake ducts so hopefully all in they should provide some good stopping performance for the duration of a trackday. I doubt they'll get as hot as in race conditions anyway.

So today the car was booked in to have all the discs skimmed and new pads fitted along with some fresh racing brake fluid. According a label on the reservoir it has Motul RB600 in it already which would be fine except I have no idea how long ago it was changed. So better to be safe. The discs are very pitted from the car standing around a lot out in the open and they are definately not working as well as they should be, but there's plenty of life in the discs still, which is why we decided to have them skimmed rather than replace them at this stage. Longer term we'll probably go for a floating disc, but we'll get a few track days under our belts first and see what's what. The car has DS2500 pads on it at the moment which I have used on and off on other cars over the years and have always found to be ok. But I think we might try DS3000s this time and see how they are. While the cars in the garage the guys are going to stick it on the rolling road to see how it's doing after 60k miles. It'll be interesting to see and also gives us a starting point from which to begin our improvements. All opinions and recommendations are welcome

First update after the first weekend of having the car. After compiling what seems like an ever growing list of jobs I started with the easy bits on the inside. As the last piece of trim on the center console was in the way a bit and hanging in mid air around the gear lever I decided to do away with it and, after removing the stereo (which with no speakers was as much use as a chocolate fire guard) decided to make a panel and reposition the heater controls along with the hazard switch and also the internal cutoff switch. In the boot I continued to strip a bit more out removing the rear wiper and aerial and also the tailgate counter weight. Next job is to remove the whole airbag wiring harness and control unit, although I still don't know whether the passenger airbag has been removed or not. All the others have but as it's behind the dash there's a good chance that it's still there. Once that's out I need to get the airbag light turned off, so if anyone knows an easy way of doing this (with out using black tape!) I'd be grateful for any input. Noticed we still have the cupholder tonight. Perfect to hold my coffee in through druids!

TCS can be completely turned off but VDC will still break the wheels probably explains the switch. I shall be investigating further. TCS lights are up on the dash as to be expected but it would be handy to know if it could be turned back on at any time.

Ha Ha, you maybe right! Just what I was told, but I guess that sounded better in the sales pitch! Started a project thread if you're interested...

I'm going to have to do that I think. +1. Does that hump not serve any purpose then? Is it just for strength? I think that's going to be the only way to go either way

It would be a lot of hassle to be taking the front section in and out for track days I think Luke

Thanks. It's a shame we don't have the polystyrene bits ourselves, that would have made life easier.