Snetterton Track Test – BC Coilover review

Well, first time on track with the BC ER Series coilovers today at snetterton in the wet.  Although they have not been properly aligned yet I have set them up to visually replicate what was there before – way off being finished though but it doesnt tramline or pull either way so cant be a million miles out.  The ER Series are the external reservoir set up and I have uprated the springs to 10kg front and 8kg rear to use this as a baseline for future changes.

BC ER Series Coilovers

Previous suspension set up worked well but was always under-sprung bearing in mind the downforce I am now running and the power.  BChave been very helpful in providing excellent support during the set up process and I am pleased to have their support during Time Attack 2010.

I have played with the set up of these on the road and got them to what I thought was a good compromise set up for general road use and track work in particular. Today I managed to spend some time at Snetterton testing them and spent some time setting them up to provide a good predictable ride in the wet.

I was running T1R road tyres and normal fuel on low boost so not out for lap records but to get a feel for the composure over kerbs, on turn in, mid corner, exits etc to see where I go from here.

Unreserved judgement is that I am impressed – still. They work great and very smooth and controlled in the wet. I will reserve judgement for the dry until I have tested under those conditions but from what I have seen so far the extra stiffness of the set up is helping stability in braking as well as reducing weight transfer during turn in so it feels more planted than it did with the ex-tc in the wet. Riding the newly raised kerbs in the wet was a test to see how settled the car is on return to black tarmac. My passengers for the day seemed very impressed with the predictability of it.

No drama today but no lap records – some ten + seconds off the TA times but you would expect that in the wet. Mind you quite impressed with the T1R’s in the fully wet too.

I am very excited about a dry track test next month on 888’s to see whether this revelation continues.

More coming soon….

Dry Sump Kit installed and working

After spending four solid days on it and lots of work the Dry Sump kit designed and built by Zen Performance is now in place and fully functional !

Huge thanks to Paul, Liz, Tim, Steve, Ren.

Zen Performance Dry Sump Kit

The long awaited dry sump set up is now off the drawing board and firmly into reality…

Who says function isn’t beautiful ?

Paul at Zen Performance in Wellingborough has designed and developed this set up specifically to solve the dreaded oil surge encountered on track in an impreza on high g corners  – the most frequent cause of engine death on track.

With the continued chassis developments and set up from Zen in the handling department along with aero (and it would seem faster driving), this dry sump kit is now a necessity on my car and most definitely needed for the long right hander of Coram at my local Snetterton circuit.  I am pleased to say that we will be endeavouring to be fitting a kit to the car before the grand final of 2009 Time Attack at Snetterton in 2 weeks !

Initial indications from Zen are that the kit will retail around £2K – £2.5K which may initially look like a lot but it pays for itself every time the car is taken on track by saving from VERY expensive engine rebuilds.

I am very excited about having the opportunity to test this pre final production item and curing oil surge for good !

A huge thanks also go to Ben Viner at HEL for supplying of all the braided hose and lush black anodised fittings for the kit… pictures will follow of the install.

Rear diffuser made & fitted

This has been nagging at me for ages and have been meaning to get it sorted to tidy up the rear of the car and improve aero flow / reduce drag and help downforce.

I wont go into the research and ideas behind what works and what doesnt but the design is simple and should prove effective enough to assist in corners and on the long straights of Snetterton.

Fuelab Prodigy Fuel Pump and Filter

The single bosch 044 has been struggling to keep up with demand recently as a result of running on pure E85 BioEthanol and needing to be run at higher fuel pressure.  This was causing it to heat the fuel up unnecessarily and making the car run a little leaner than I want.

The solution I have chosen is a Fuelab Prodigy Fuel Pump from Lateral Performance – this is a 1000bhp capable fuel pump and will be more than enough for anything that I want to do with the car in the future.

This will be accompanied by a matching Fuelab Billet fuel filter to help protect the engine.

again from Lateral Performance.

These arrived yesterday and just waiting on a couple of extra fittings for the fuel pump which should hopefully arrive today from HEL and I will fit them later.

Custom Secondary Catch Can

Some progress to replace the make-shift overflow catch can that was created at Silverstone from an old oil bottle. This and the clamp hold nice and steady in there with the small battery.

Made for me by Mega-Tech in Brandon – very nice work too. I will be adding a second breather outlet onto it as I didnt spec the right size of outlet. (There will be a filter to go on that) The sight gauge doubles as a drain.

This is the same company that moved my exhaust 6 inches upwards to clear it out of the way of the diffuser when that gets fitted. They can make anything and from looking at some of the projects they have on the go and the work they have done for me I am impressed.

Build Update …

so…

Baffled sump is fully in place, I had to make some minor modification to the oil pick up pipe rear stay to enable it to fit with the sump baffle without fouling but a good excuse to use the dremel to do it.  It is also a lot easier to refit the baffle plate with this mod so I didnt need 3 hands this time.  Sump went back on and dropped the engine down to bolt the mounts in place.  This should be an improvement.

Headers and up-pipe were removed as part of this job and also to rewrap them.  Lucky I did this as it showed that the 3 bolt up-pipe gasket had split into 3 parts and was not sealing the exhaust.  Looks like it has been like this for ages so it would have been costing spool up and power.

I got some fresh new exhaust wrap and a new gasket from Lateral and re-wrapped the headers/up-pipe as the old stuff was hanging off.

I fitted these back on last night.

Also done:

- re-routed the MAP sensor take off to a central position to give smoother boost control.  It was taking off from the FPR vacuum take off.

- re-routed the cylinder head breather pipes

- regreased ARB bushes

- properly fitted the towing eye

- tidied the induction kit pipework to reduce pushing out of wheel arch liner.  This has reduced but i still need to make some proper wheel arch liners that fit with the new wider wings.

The need to do list for round 1 is looking very small now and should be finished on friday/saturday leaving next week to clean the car, bleed the brakes again and do a couple of nice to do bits.

Lateral Performance Baffled Sump

As Snetterton showed the need for additional oil surge protection – Mark @ Lateral Performance came to the rescue with a properly baffled and superbly built twin scroll baffled sump to replace the std item fitted to my car.

Looks a proper piece of kit !!

I am going to fit this along with the Cosworth Baffle plate that I already have fitted to give added protection from surge and blow by.

Cheers Mark

KSport brakes fitted … and they are good !

Following on from the recent Snetterton test it was obvious that more stopping power would be needed with the increased speed from tuition and handling advances.  After that event I set about finding a good solution that was also good value.

After a conversation with Paul and Liz at Zen, I managed to persuade them to let go of the excellent KSport calipers, discs and Performance Friction pads from their race car for me to run on mine.

Today was the day to take off my old brembos and to fit the new brakes.

The kits consisted of:

• 8 pot front calipers with 356mm discs and Performance Friction 01 Race pads
• 6 pot rear calipers with 330mm discs and Performance Friction 01 Race Pads

A superb day at day at Zen fitting them myself but with adult supervision on shimming the calipers to match the disc offsets and the end result is pretty amazing.  Very impressed with just how sharp they are even on cold brakes, I can’t wait to get some heat in them on track

Testing at Snetterton

Well, first track test on the new set up yesterday at Snetterton and I can see distinct progress already.

Hardly off track all day apart from detailed de-brief with Mr Glew who was there all day with me to teach me a trick or two about driving imprezas fast.  They seemed to work lol.

So many positives from yesterday:

- smoother performance from the Solaris ecu meant power could be applied much earlier and progressively. Ran low boost (1.5 bar) to start with but upped it to a little more    and had a ball 

- handling… wide is good

- aero works … experimenting with a few rear wing settings gave great feedback that hopefully will translate into other venues.  I need to figure out a way to stop the dents in the double layer metal bootlid getting much worse though lol.

Some distinct improvements are needed in sump baffling now though.  Even two up, full fuel level and with having to back off to protect it from oil surge around Coram (looking at the oil pressure all the way around) we were clocking quicker times (I am told) than the final of TA.

There are obviously one or two other small things to sort but in general everything worked like clockwork and I got a huge amount of seat time and instruction from Phil.

Other improvements to come should improve the car further.

Some pics: