Sam's build thread

[sambb]

ha ha yep total OCD taking over. Just couldn't put it in there how it was. It just looked rough. To be honest I wasn't expecting that I'd see gains I just wanted to make sure that there was the least possible turbulence going through there so that I could get nice stable sensor reads which would kick on into nice stable fuelling. If I had an OEM airbox I wouldn't have bothered because in that case I wouldn't second guess what the VW engineers had decided on but since I'd modified the air filtering setup and the MAF would be drawing at close range within a tight filtered 'plenum' space compared to an OE airbox, then I figured I didn't want to upset anything. Weird though that all the 2.5in maf cars from the factory had bellmouths but not the 3in maf cars. All I can think is that the "2.5in" maf which is actually pretty far from it in reality eg closer to 50mm ID but the '3in' maf is actually a true 3in ID. They say that the maf sensor can reach its metering peak inside 2.5in housings quite easily (ive seen 190-200 g/s given as the max and one of my stage 2's was certainly maxing the sensor if that is the case, so maybe because its running closer to the wind in the smaller housing, they need the bellmouths on there to condition the air as much as possible. The 3in just looks massive compared to the 2.5in and maybe since the sensor is not topping out inside that housing they don't bother with the bellmouths. Yeah all along I thought the making of the bellmouth was overkill. But at the end of the day its now the best it can be and will flow anything I need it to.

[Sydneykid]

I do lots of things on race cars just because they "look better", it's a bonus if they also "work better". I know next to nothing about VW AFM's, but in general all AFM's have some form of air flow director around/before the sensor to ensure that only non turbulent airflow gets to it. For the Skyline AFM's we take the sensor out of a 90 mm Q45 AFM and stick it in a 100 mm alloy pipe. That gives us metering up from around 600 bhp (in a 90 mm housing) to 800 bhp (in a 100 mm). Although it does need tweaking we don't have to rebuild the AFM voltage table from scratch.


Cheers
Gary

[metalhead]

Nice work Sam, whether required or not! So you're not going to be heading up to Kempsey next weekend?

[sambb]

No unfortunately. The car is in the middle of being tuned. Just did some runs/logs with the existing hardware so he could build a picture on what the wastegate is doing and then the base tune will go in with the injectors and MAF probably this weekend. The aim is to have it ready for VW Nats on the 26th track day, so didn't want to delay things by doing events around now.
If I'd been able to run at Canberra and come away with some good points I'd have weathered the wife storm and committed to the whole 8 rounds of the championship but since I missed Canberra it pretty much put me out of the picture for a good overall result. I wont do Grafton either, but will look to do Tamworth, Huntley and of course Ringwood. I'd like to do the Tamworth 3 lap dash too maybe.
I will do Kempsey one day. Looks like a really fun track. I missed it the first year I was hillclimbing which wasn't a bad thing because that's the year the guy in the mini hit the bank and was killed which was horrible. They only did that one run and forfeited the round I think. Last year I missed it after I was hit by the 4WD. Next year probably, and Grafton too - everyone says that'd be a great track for my car.

[sambb]

Pete's upset that there is literally no one in the under 2.5L road reg class. I reckon he should just go into improved production but keep his road reg (if that's possible) so that he can compete. Instead he's focused on track stuff for now. He really needs Graham in the CRX to come back and then he'll be at every round again. We're opposites - he started out and was getting podiums left right and centre because his class had good guys and was very competitive but was small. As you know our class is very tight and other than the couple of guys that were guaranteed podiums it was very very competitive for third/fourth. So Pete's a bit demotivated when there's no one to compete against but I'm still super hungry to try and get a class win. I've told him he should supercharge and then he'd be in our class but I do agree with him that his car is better as an NA.
Did you get the header fixed? Want to hear how it goes up there.

[Sydneykid]

Personally I think the hillclimb regs for classes are a bit dumb, for example Road Reg Up to 2500 cc's. There are lots of people with 2 litre cars that just don't run because the class goes up to 2.5 litres, so they give it a miss. The 2018 NSW Hillclimb Championship proposal was that all of the production car based categories (Prod Sports, Sports Sedans, Improved Production, Road Reg etc) would have a class for 0 to 2000 cc's, then 2,000 cc's to 4000 cc's and Over 4,000 cc's. With Time Attack cars split between 2WD (where my car fits) and 4WD. Not that it worries me all that much, I'd just run in Sports Sedans, but there is no category that fits. Next year's Bulahdelah Hillclimb is on my list and Bathurst of course.

They are all common classes in other motorsport, so people can move between disciplines and levels of competition. Hillclimbs just seem to want to hang out there on their own and they suffer as result.

End of rant, put soap box away.
Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

No I agree totally. Deciding the classes was literally one of the Hillclimb panel guys coming over to us and asking for a vote on what we wanted. That was a bit of a joke because here is me with 1781cc with about ten other guys with over 6.0L V8's and they all voted to keep it the same. I spoke up and said how does a 2-4L class that I would slit nicely into have any effect on them and they all just shrugged and the Hillclimb panel guy said ok that's it it's not changing. It could be that at the time there was still some discussion about whether or not the classes were all drivelines or not and they were scared of AWD entries messing up their dominance but I thought that was a soft way for it to be resolved. Yeah under 2.5L has seen a 2.4L franken vtec civic and also a super/turbo 1.4l Fabia smash that class and it took for those guys to quit before the clio and 1.6l crx got a look in last year.

[Sydneykid]

It's a common problem in motorsport, they ask the people that are already there. When they should be asking the people that aren't. If we want to attract more people then it's a pretty obvious step to ask them why they aren't competing. We made quite a few changes in the IP regs this year (long overdue mind) with many coming from ex competitors who were asked why they stopped and from prospective competitors why they aren't. In order to get their wish list up we had to compromise and give existing competitors some (but not all) of the things that they wanted.

Enough politics, let's talk about cars ..................
Cheers
Gary

[metalhead]

Pete's upset that there is literally no one in the under 2.5L road reg class. I reckon he should just go into improved production but keep his road reg (if that's possible) so that he can compete. Instead he's focused on track stuff for now. He really needs Graham in the CRX to come back and then he'll be at every round again. We're opposites - he started out and was getting podiums left right and centre because his class had good guys and was very competitive but was small. As you know our class is very tight and other than the couple of guys that were guaranteed podiums it was very very competitive for third/fourth. So Pete's a bit demotivated when there's no one to compete against but I'm still super hungry to try and get a class win. I've told him he should supercharge and then he'd be in our class but I do agree with him that his car is better as an NA.
Did you get the header fixed? Want to hear how it goes up there.

I've been tossing up running my Midget in under 2500cc next year. I'm not sure how much more development I want to do on the Vette - there's a few little things on my list, but to compete with the supercharged LS guys would take a bunch more $ spent in the engine bay, and having only built the engine a couple of years ago I'm not in a huge hurry to toss it and build another - though I do have some ideas and a bigger set of heads waiting. The Midget should be finished and back on the road in a few months hopefully. If I get the supercharger working well on it then it should hopefully be reasonably competitive in under 2500cc as is, without sacrificing it's street car nature.

If I run the supersprint championship in the Vette then I'll end up in time attack clubsprint n/a - which I can probably do ok in, looking at the current competitor lap times. I'll need to fit harnesses and seats, but they're on my to-do list anyway.

[sambb]

I'd love to see the Midget happen. That'll get Pete back. He's now doing a W182 clio head (better combustion camber ,bigger inlets but tiny exhaust ports that he's taken right out), bigger valves and W182 cams on the older W172 block. Hes after an extra 20hp to try and break some of Grahams CRX records especially his Ringwood one. I'll gee him up abut the midget.

[sambb]

hey question for you Gary - in the 2.0 - 4.0L classes do you see many NA Falcon straight sixes prepped for the track. A ford die hard work colleague and I were talking today about something light like an Falcon AU with an FG LPG high comp bottom end running 98RON, ITB's, one of those alloy billet blocks, a 6 speed manual. That'd have to be a great car for a class like that. Even the lighter live axle rear end car would have to hammer off the line at a hillclimb.

[sambb]

I finally setup the camber/castor gauge that Gary was kind enough to source for me. Before I go to Wakefield in spring some time i'll fit slightly longer springs to my front coilovers so that I can set up the bump and droop lengths correctly. I'll be going to a slightly higher ride height for better RC and a side benefit will be that the 215's I want to run on the fronts will have a better chance at fitting. So I thought I'd get the gauge in action and work out how to measure with it etc.

Gary do you use the flat add on base plate that makes it hands free or just run with the two top and bottom pins. I just used it with the top and bottom pin, no bottom plate fitted. That convoluted setup procedure for squaring the frame did my head in so on a marble block flat surface we have at work I just used a right angle to make sure that the base and vertical pins were at 90 degrees to each other and then calibrated the sensor on a known zero degree plane. That's ok to do it like that isn't it? I also did it your way where instead of re calibrating for the surface plane at each wheel before measuring, I just subtract the ground plane measurement from the wheel measurement. Like you said I can definitely see myself forgetting to re zero at each wheel if I did it the former way.

Turns out I don't have the front camber that I thought I did (or their print out said I did!). I'm at less than 3 degrees at each front. The front right has slightly more neg camber than the left but that and the overall amount probably would be spot on for the upcoming southern loop I'm hoping!?
I'll check the toe's tomorrow. I had a hard time trusting that those squishy eibach toe shims would hold a solid long term toe setting so we'll see if the rears are still in the same spot.

[sambb]

FWD drift legend!

YouTube

[Sydneykid]

hey question for you Gary - in the 2.0 - 4.0L classes do you see many NA Falcon straight sixes prepped for the track. A ford die hard work colleague and I were talking today about something light like an Falcon AU with an FG LPG high comp bottom end running 98RON, ITB's, one of those alloy billet blocks, a 6 speed manual. That'd have to be a great car for a class like that. Even the lighter live axle rear end car would have to hammer off the line at a hillclimb.

There are plenty of 3K Saloon Cars (6 Cylinder Falcon and Commodores) around, they'd fit that class perfectly.
Regs; http://docs.cams.com.au/Manual/Race/...-3K-2016-2.pdf

Cheers
Gary

[Sydneykid]

I finally setup the camber/castor gauge that Gary was kind enough to source for me. Before I go to Wakefield in spring some time i'll fit slightly longer springs to my front coilovers so that I can set up the bump and droop lengths correctly. I'll be going to a slightly higher ride height for better RC and a side benefit will be that the 215's I want to run on the fronts will have a better chance at fitting. So I thought I'd get the gauge in action and work out how to measure with it etc.

Gary do you use the flat add on base plate that makes it hands free or just run with the two top and bottom pins. I just used it with the top and bottom pin, no bottom plate fitted. That convoluted setup procedure for squaring the frame did my head in so on a marble block flat surface we have at work I just used a right angle to make sure that the base and vertical pins were at 90 degrees to each other and then calibrated the sensor on a known zero degree plane. That's ok to do it like that isn't it? I also did it your way where instead of re calibrating for the surface plane at each wheel before measuring, I just subtract the ground plane measurement from the wheel measurement. Like you said I can definitely see myself forgetting to re zero at each wheel if I did it the former way.

Turns out I don't have the front camber that I thought I did (or their print out said I did!). I'm at less than 3 degrees at each front. The front right has slightly more neg camber than the left but that and the overall amount probably would be spot on for the upcoming southern loop I'm hoping!?
I'll check the toe's tomorrow. I had a hard time trusting that those squishy eibach toe shims would hold a solid long term toe setting so we'll see if the rears are still in the same spot.

My gauge is so old that it didn't come with the additional (lower) triangle, I just use the 2 pins on the wheel, top one adjusted to suite diameter and flat surface. My brain isn't so fuddled (yet) that I can't subtract or add one number (the ground level) from the camber reading. Plus I seem to always only have a short amount of time to it, so zeroing just takes longer.

For a car that gets driven to and from the circuit they are OK camber numbers. On the front I used to run -2.0 on the street and then -3.0 on the track with a quick strut top adjustment, pre marked so I din't actually have to measure it.

The weekend before a track outing I used to do the wheel alignment adjustments, change the brake pads, bleed the brakes, install the harness, remove the back seats and stick the race tyres in their place. Plus take the spare tyre, tools and jack out of the boot and put the big tool box, axle stands and trolley jack in their place. For a handful of outings a year that was OK, but it wore a bit thin when I got up to dozen or so. That's when a dedicated race car and trailer appeared and I have been poor in dollars but rich in fun factor ever since.

Cheers
Gary