EK4 budget racer


Frustrating issues there mate, good video...missing the grid badly! I will not be at Silverstone either due to the cnut of the olympics, aiming for Croft myself now, but again depends on the games :mad:

Hopefully Croft will be dry and you will be all sorted :nice:
 
Thanks folks. Fingers crossed I'll see you at Croft then Chris. It is a cracking track, well worth the journey and with the long weekend of the HoT trackday on friday makes it even more worthwhile.

Will be nice to actually have a bit of practice before hitting the track in competition for once. I can't see me ever shelling out for an actual test day, the prices are ridiculous. Mike said the price of full day testing for Silverstone National circuit is £230!!!!
 
Tell me about it! I found my times at both Snet and Anglesey came down at least 5 seconds a lap after I figured out the track. Only problem is the other guys I'm racing against have already done the track so have the extra advantage.
If I can get some $$ from the sponsors, I'd like to do a couple of Friday test days before qualifying first thing Saturday.
I'm up at Cadwell this weekend, fingers crossed for another dry day
 
Race 1 from Croft on 22nd July

VTEC Challenge - Croft Race #1 - car 17 - YouTube

Started 9th on the grid after Mark Chese relagated himself to the back because of gearbox issues. Had a shocking get away with Phil and MB coming up either side of me and ended up in 10th by the time we were on the back straight, which was a bit of a relief considering how bad my start was. Think I had a very good chance of getting past Phil at Tower on lap 3, but bottled out of it, and had a few decent looks inside both Robbie and Phil over the course of the race as they changed positions in front of me. Finally took Phil with a good run out of Chicane on the penultimate lap and managed to get down the inside for Tower and saw it through to finish 7th. Well pleased! :p
 
Very nice! Great that your really getting stuck in with a car built on a budget!

Good luck for the future races! :nice:

Wish I had the time free to do this :(
 
Great racing mate :D, a patient battle with the Accord. The olympics crashed Croft for me :mad:, just booked Snett though :drive:
 
NIcad7 said:
What I was thinking, takes a calm driver to wait to for right opportunity and not just muscle your way in! :nice:
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Thanks dude. I should have really been past him on the second lap but bailed out of it. This racing stuffs still pretty new to me so confidence isn't quite there yet. I'll try and be a bit braver next time ;)
 
Race 2

VTEC Challenge 2012 - Croft Race 2 - car #17 - YouTube

Started 7th on the grid as per my finishing position from race1 but with two very fast cars at the back of the grid (race1 DNFs) which I fully expected to breeze past at some point - which they did.
Made a better start this time taking one off the line (EP3) and another (EG) on the back straight, which I lost again at Sunny In when being held up by the yellow CRX through Jim Clark and Barcroft and forgetting to cover the inside line.
After quite a lot of trying finally managed to get a good run on the CRX who stuck to the right forcing me to take him on the left. Unfortuntely by the time I was on the brakes for Tower realised the EP3 was going past on the other side of him and had the inside line for the corner.
From then on managed to pull away from the CRX but dropped away from the EP3 as my tyres and brakes suffered in the heat. I planned to settle in trying to maintain my position but unfortunately my brakes were really starting to go, getting softer each time until I arrived at Tower with next to nothing under my foot and ditched it into the corn.
Yet to check it out fully but looks to be poor maintenance by myself as the front pads were down to very little material and due to the hard time I was giving them to get past the CRX and the hot conditions, I boiled the fluid. After getting the car recovered there seems to be a good firm pedal there again. Just a bit of complacency by me from being used to trackdays where it's not quite so important. Unfortunately in a race you can't really ease off for a couple of laps to let your temperatures come down.

Lesson learnt and fortunately looks like I got away with it. Will make sure it doesn't happen again in the future.
 
Looking good again man, looks like you've built a pretty competitive car?

What brakes do you have?

and I take it your in the tuner class?

Hope you don't mind my questions! VTC is something I'll be looking at doing hopefully in a few years :)
 
cooking 282mm brakes? hummmm...wich pads do you use?

try to know at what brake temperature do you have problems, to know if the problem is your pads or airduct for brakes.
when install you´re 260mm rears they will help your front brakes too
 
NIcad7 said:
Looking good again man, looks like you've built a pretty competitive car?

What brakes do you have?

and I take it your in the tuner class?

Hope you don't mind my questions! VTC is something I'll be looking at doing hopefully in a few years :)
Click to expand...

No probs, happy to help mate so ask away.

Yep, unfotunately in Tuner as a consequence of the engine swap but they're looking to adjust the SRs next year so that a standard B18'd EK would be in production, as really an EK4 sort of needs at least a standard B18 to compete with the DC2s, DC5s and EP3s in power to weight. But tbh you race the people around you anyway so it doesn't matter too much to your enjoyment what class you're in. Just looks like underperformance to those on the outside.

I was using 282 Wilwoods w/ DS2500 on the front and 242 OEM w/ Yellowstuff on the rears.

Performance-wise I was pretty pleased with them. Was managing to brake as late as most in to the bends and had a good feel to balance of car. I think it was probably a combination of things which caused my problems. Too much forward bias (caliper and pad combination) making the temp in the fluid at the front brakes higher than it needed to be, the lack of pad material meaning less there to disapate and insulate the heat from the pistons and the fluid probably wasn't in the best of conditions meaning the boiling point was lower than it should be.

I'm upgrading the rears to 262 for the next race and planning on running Yellowstuffs all round so that should share out the work (and heat) more evenly between front and rear. Fluid will obviously be completely replaced with a 300C race fluid and will probably replace the hoses for a bit of peace of mind.

Marco, don't worry. For trackdays the setup's perfectly adequate, tbh if it wasn't for the low front pads and ropey fluid it would've been adequate for racing too.
 
Why dont you try a more focused pad mate, something with some proper bite, PF97, RC6 or similar?
 
Sorry Chris, Been away for a few days.

Just always had a good experience of yellows on trackdays and also the theory that perhaps with going for a pad with a softer bite it might mean I'll have less chance of my brake temps sky rocketting. I'll just see how I get on an perhaps stat thinking of something more exotic if it needs it.
 
yellows are fine, used them on an EG for track use. they're really good for what you pay for them :)
 
Few pics from croft. Quite pleased with how the car looks now - love the shadows under the eyes looks its got as the bumper's been pulled back a bit when I ziptied it to the wings :p

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