Was great to spend a few hours at Wakefield on Sunday. Was also excellent to have Ian and Pete there for a drive and meet up for a chat. Just looking forward to the day when we can have a drive, chat, then drive again without all the manic work to get the car sorted for the next session. Was also great to meet up with Adam with his newly aquired SW20 Tarmac Rally car. Very nice and quick piece of kit which I hope to see again in the new year.
 
The car is still having teething issues but it was great to run the car and find the problems before the trackday in Jan. Turns out the coil was more than likely a bad wire which was fixed yesterday only to find out three of the four turbo mounting nuts had fallen off! No wonder the engine bay was a little hot..The manifold wil be removed over the next few days then wrapped in hitemp titanium wrap with a sock fitted to the exhaust housing, the coolant pipe will also be wrapped, the orginal rear windscreen will be replaced as the lexan unit was damaged due to heat, turbo housing studs will be welded to the exhaust manifold with interferance nuts fitted.
The brake pedal feels very long but it may simply be lack of brake pad as I could still lock the wheels up under braking but still effected confidence in late braking. Still havent sorted the balance just yet but its getting there. If you hold it flat through the kink then brake hard then turn in when you run out of track to pull it up, it will still step out which entering the apex. Great for setting up for drift/powersliding but would be better if it would be a little more settled with less slip angle on entry to the corner.
Electric water pump was working perfectly. Set it at 85 and it never moved.
Oil never moved passed 90 at any stage but its still not being run at full potential so will have to see if it can manage it when it is sorted.
Exhaust temp was 650 but I think the other 200 was being released into the engine bay when the bolts came out.
Water injection was also working fine. You can hear it working very clearly but Im having trouble with the data logger so I dont know how much its helping intake temps under load.
At least the alternator is working fine relocated to its OEM location. Funny that..
Im not all that happy with the tyres. They were suspect at Winton and when I was pushing a little in the second session on sunday, the same thing happened. When pushed, they get hot then fall off over then require management which slows you down.
If I can manage a 1.08 with these tyres when its running at the 330rwhp as it was tuned, I will be pretty happy.
 
 
 
 

Any ideas why the alternator wasn't working on the other side? Was it a belt tension issue? Did you connect all the same wires, ie warnign light, Batt sensing ect?

No, it was simply being destroyed by the turbo. The connections had melted into a blob, the power lead had all the plastic melted off with shorts coming from every direction causing the isolation switch to fail.All the wires coming from the altenator are used and recognised by the Dash2/DL1/Adaptronic ECU. Tension was never an issue.
The exhaust system was removed with heat wrap fitted, new stainless studs/interference nuts to overcome the problems I discoverd on the last outing. The manifold is still a pain as its needs to be welded up again. Chances are, the manifold will be upgraded to a more robust unit in the near future.
Ric Shaw may be coming down to the trackday challenge to dial in the handling of the car and see what it can do.
 

B24

The exhaust system was removed with heat wrap fitted, new stainless studs/interference nuts to overcome the problems I discoverd on the last outing. The manifold is still a pain as its needs to be welded up again. Chances are, the manifold will be upgraded to a more robust unit in the near future.
Ric Shaw may be coming down to the trackday challenge to dial in the handling of the car and see what it can do.

I heard that exhaust wrap can lead to cracking.  Have you considered ceramic coating?  It's an expensive alternative, but doing the inside of the pipes will keep them cooler, and doing the outside can be very attractive (if that's important).
http://www.jet-hot.com.au/

Flighter

B24

The exhaust system was removed with heat wrap fitted, new stainless studs/interference nuts to overcome the problems I discoverd on the last outing. The manifold is still a pain as its needs to be welded up again. Chances are, the manifold will be upgraded to a more robust unit in the near future.
Ric Shaw may be coming down to the trackday challenge to dial in the handling of the car and see what it can do.

I heard that exhaust wrap can lead to cracking.  Have you considered ceramic coating?  It's an expensive alternative, but doing the inside of the pipes will keep them cooler, and doing the outside can be very attractive (if that's important).
http://www.jet-hot.com.au/

Im aware of the prospect of cracking but Im willing to risk it. It's a steam pipe manifold with ceramic coating but still have too much heat for my liking. Its more than likely to crack due to getting up to operating temp then moving around so a few additional braces will be made to support the turbo to reduce this from happening. If it lasts 100 hours it will be have been driven to ten track days/race meets per year for over 5 years so it should be ok. 
 
Cheers

Its three weeks until the Wakefield Park 300km race and the car is in good shape. All the issues experienced at the MR2 trackday Challenge have been resolved will new stainless steel fittings fabricated for the turbo. So no more stainless steel braided lines with rubber inserts failing..
Brakes have been given the once over again with a larger front master cylinder to get the balance right.
There are a bunch of smaller jobs which we are also sorting out in the next week before we have it tuned then taken to the track. Pretty confident it will be reliable for the race as the only thing holding it back was the leaks from the piping.
Also fitting a cooler for the gearbox.
The front splitter will also be replaced with a more solid unit with decent mountings and a flat undertray to the engine.
We, is the team who are driving and supporting the first MR2 to enter the Wakefield 300. A good friend with plenty of experience in Nissans has paid for a seat and another friend who has competed  six times on the Wakefield 300, is the other driver. He will have 4 pitcrew with him, we will have 3 addition crew so plenty of hands on deck.
The racing starts on the Saturday with all of us driving one sprint round each, then qualifying and the race on the Sunday.
No real idea what times we will be running but expect to be around the 1.07 for the weekend. Thats quick enough if we stick with these tyres.
 

Good stuff Steve, really hope it all holds together for you and goes to plan.

Thanks Alex,
If reliability was based on time and effort it would run for 50 yrs! But unfortunately this isnt the case. We are constantly tweeking and removing anything that could break. As its under high load for 2 1/2 hrs it needs to be right.
Its nice to be running out of jobs an thats where we are at.
Will be spending a few hours on the car tomorrow.
We are changing ball joints as these one av been smashed around, then remounting ecu and checking the wiring. Rob will be fabricating a new.engine cover so he and the co driver can use a rear view mirror. I said drive faster but they could.not b convinced..

The Wakefield 300 2013 has been run and what a experience it has been .
Very different from the other Wakefield 300's I have competed as I entered my SW20, first time for a Toyota MR2. It was the only Toyota in the field but not the first to compete.
The difference to 'arrive and drive' is very different as you have so much more work to do. It was almost a 'do or die' approach as people were pressuring me to enter the car instead of talking about it so I just pulled out all stops to make it a reality. We were behind the eightball right up to the last hours before the race, but we did start and finish the race which was the number one goal.
There were five crew and two drivers involved who managed pit stops, tyre temps and pressures, fuel stratergy and refuelling, timing and managing the drivers on track. Without these guys, it would not have happened.
The car was unable to run to its full potential over the four days due to a over boost/boost creep problem. We spent 20 hours trying to get this under control but we unable to get it below 1.8bar under full load/rpm(7500) so we decided to manage boost with throttle control where we would change at 4500/1.4 bar/50% throttle. The tune was very good as it didn't blow up but the water injection would not engage as we were below the threshhold of operation so we suffered high intake temps. If I didnt have the head built for extreme punishment we would not have finished the race and the engine would not be in any fit state of operation. The only time I gave it everything was starting the race from pit lane and giving it everything until the braking zone in turn 2. This displayed the power of this engine as it flogged one of the fastest cars in the race from a standing start. The car was a 550hp/1280kg 6.0ltr Chev powered Series 6 RX7. When I can prise the video file from his hands I can show what happened. We both took off, in 3 seconds the MR2 was missing. Unfortunately we could not continue this speed due to high boost concerns so we slowed back down and nursed the car around till the end of the race.
It was not without its ups and downs with many lessons learnt and some very interesting studies on heat management, fuel burn, importance of sound electronics and wiring, turbo characteristics under extended high pressure enviroments, tyre managment, fastening systems and how they react to heat and load, heat expansion of components including manifolds, throttle body, cables, engine cover, brakes, driver erganomics and stress managment, fatigue, managing the team in a positive direction or negative direction.
We finshed 92 laps of a potential 137 laps due to mainly electrics.
The first was the fuel pump switch dropped a wire causing the engine to stop on track. We brought out the safety car, was towed back to the pits where we fixed it, changed drivers and fuel then when back on-track about 7 laps off our class competitors.
10 mins later we had the seconf driver back in running on three cylinders. The wiring to the coil over plug system was getting punished with some abrassive soldering causing shielding to break down causing shorts in the system. This was quickly taped up for the interim, a rouge connector was tidied up and off he went again. Was OK for a few laps then back AGAIN! There was a coil with the mounting tab broken off which failed. So this was removed and the only spare available was fitted. Back of four cylinders, problem solved.
All OK for a while then he was back in the pit with no power. ECU was OK, then I realised it was the same symtoms as my first stop so it had to be the fuel switch. The switch was fine so traced it back to the fuse to find the 30amp fuse was blown. With none in site, I raced out the van and removed the only 30amp fuse on the van, installed it and it was up and running again. There was a short debate to wait till the end of the race so we only did two laps but I said 'no, just get out there and race', so the co-driver(Robert Field) was sent out for the final 12 laps of the race but this was not without incident. With only 10 laps to go, Robert was punted of track though the 130km/h kink that leads onto the back straight! The dorian was lost, the MR2 experienced its first battle scar, I saw it all and laughed and joked at what had just unfolded before my eyes. He managed to get the car back on track, got back up to pace and became the last of the finishers, 34th from 47 starters.
 

Forgot to mention we built a sreamer pipe on the Saturday night , reducing boost creep by .05bar. We tested it on the service road to the cabins. Now that was a ton of fun.
Experienced fuel surge so a surge tank will be fitted.
Installed a full undertray.
New engine cover.
Rear view mirror.
OEM rear window.
Changed spring rates and alignments to improve the handling.
Change bump and rebound too.
Damn data logger is still in a world of its own..
Tyres would be perfect for a NA looking to crack a 1.13, ok for long stints at this rate but 'let go' above this rate.


like this pic