Well I thought it would be time to actually update this page. Yay! However, this winter was very slow for the S14. Did a couple little upgrades and fixes, but nothing extreme until now. I always had a "High" boost stability issue, maybe because of the lack of any boost controller and just running on a standard 44mm tial wastegate. So I went ahead and installed a Greddy Profec B spec II in the car. Made our own modifications to it, like stainless steel braided lines for the vacuum tubing for the actuator, which will give us less worries of the lines failing under race conditions.
We also installed some Peak Performance Outer Tie rods to make the steering rack even with the outer mount on the spindle to help elimitate the horrible bump steer I had before.
Now here is the big changes. We trashed the front bumper, rear bumper and side skirts, and got the Version Select full kit, Origin-lab rear 50mm over fenders, and the D-Max D1 30mm Front fenders. Going wide body! Why? well we are going to attempt a larger front and rear wheel. I have plans to test fit the kit this week and take some pictures to share. Then Ill send the parts out for paint. I also modified the exhaust on this car. From a 9ft pipe we had before, side exiting behind the driver door, the exhaust is now dumping right behind the front driver wheel. The weight savings was tremendous! Now only have around 3ft pipe coming off the turbo.
Lastly, we stepped up our team with full Race Engineering Radio Communications. In car radio setup allows us to help the team better communicate with track changes, car changes, and other needed information that I need to relay to the crew.
Well, back to work again. 12hr drive for 3 days of racing. GTlive is the biggest event for us the whole year and was looking forward to it since the last gtilve in 2007. The car performed very good. Not excellent but very good. Still alot of suspension tuning and modifications will be needed to be 110% satisfied with the setup. Overall, I was very happy with the car.
Friday was just practice for about 1 hour. Took it easy, got a feel of the track and played with some of the rebound settings to maximize turn out traction and to get on the throttle sooner. Layed down some 2:15 times through out the day. Nothing to be impressed with but it was just practice and still needed to make more dampning changes to the the Stance 3 ways. I had made a "homedepot" special front splitter that lasted 2 laps. But man, WOW what a difference a splitter makes for front traction. I missed it all weekend
here is some in car footage of friday practice.
Saturday - Practice was soo early. 7:30 am we got to the track and it felt like 20degs outside with FOG. We warmed up the car and headed out to the track to get some laps in. Made a couple low-speed compression adjustments and got more comfortable in the car. Ended up with some 2:11 lap times. Again, not impressive and should be in the 2.05-2.08 range with the current setup. After 5 laps of practice, I go to put it 5th gear near the finish line and I get nothing, I put it in 4th, nothing, 3rd nothing....FAWK!!! blew the transmission. I roll to the stop off the track and need to get towed in . Get it in the pits and realize that I won't beable to fix the problem before the time attack session which was 1 hour later. Knowing that there is Sunday timed sessions, we start taking the transmission out and run around to look for another. Since there was US-Drift at this event, there must have been 90% Nissan 240's competing so getting a spare transmission wasnt really that tough. I talked to my buddy (VOSKO) and he let me use Steve's (his friend) SR Transmission. So we grab the transmission, head back to the pits and begin swapping bellhousings so this could fit on the KA motor we use.
As we started to disamble the KA trans, I got a good look of what happened. Broke the damn Counter shaft well its racing. Things are going to break one way or another. Maybe ill do a T5 trans this winter
Sunday - Another early practice 7:15am!!!....Got 2 laps before they black flagged the session due to the Takata Racing STI going into the wall. Felt ok but nothing great. Definitly would had felt better if i had more laps to practice and feel more comfortable at stepping up the speeds and later brake points. So the timed session comes up. I go out and feel real good about it but the session gets black flagged into my second lap because the DSG car blew his motor and dumped oil on the track and a S2k slid into a wall. So I get off the track and was kinda pissed that I didnt get all 3 of my laps for the time session. So they allowed me to go back out and redo my run. However I did not know the cause of the black flag was of Oil on the track. So I went out and was shocked to see how slippery the one section of the track was where the oil spilled. I went through the section too cautiously causeing my time to suffer and get a 2:11 for my time. Oh well, there is always next year. Some Drive-Bys at VIR
2009 Renovations are on the way! -More Aero , Splitter, Under Tray, Rear Diffuser, Side Skits, Better front Bumper -Wide tires/wheels -Most stable boost -Custom Blades Sways -Datalogger
-Carbon Fiber Rear diffuser -repair damage to rear passenger quater panel -OEM Kouki Tail light -OEM rear bumper -Paint -Greddy Front Lip???not sure on this yet, need to look at some dimensions - 11kg front and 9kg rear spring rates -Better brake pad compounds - Install a HOTLAP
This event was COLD....actually was snowing on friday. Took 3 laps to get the tires close to operating temp but still was too cold to get good lap times.
This was the first event with the new turbo setup. We changed to a GT3076R with tial housing and a bottom mount manifold. The car was INSANE at 12psi. The response was perfect for the 2.4L.
However on saturdays practice before the time trials, I lost the rear end coming out of big bend. I believe I got on the throttle too fast too soon. I ended up putting the rear passenger side into the guard rail. But its winter time, so we have plenty of time to fix and make ready for next season.
For time trials, the times were horrible. Tires were cold and not much fun in the 3 laps. Locked up with front a couple times and lost rear traction too. Had to take it easy and ended up with a 1.06 lap time.
GTLIVE was held on Oct. 5-6-7 at VIR Speed Way in Alton, VA. It took us 14hrs to get down there. Practice on friday went well with lots of track learning time and testing on different suspension settings.
On saturday we had some problems with our turbo setup. We started to stretch the turbo inlet studs on the manifold, thus causing the gasket to let go. To make things worse, flames started to push out of the turbo to manifold causing extremely high heat conditions near the brake master cylinder and distributor.
To play it safe, we decided to pack it in and not risk damaging anything else while on the track. we didnt get to run the time trials at this event. We will definitly be attending next years event at VIR.
More Updates to Come!...............
