07/07/06 A couple months ago, Rodger Bright (the guy who bought my first M Coupe) mentioned that he was starting a trackday company, The Perfect Line, and suggested that I attend the first event at ThunderHill raceway in California on July 6. Few cars and lots of tracktime sounded tempting enough that I decided to do it, 1,000 mile round trip and all. David and Tracy also signed up, although Tracy had to back out when her track wheels and tires didn't show up on time. She didn't want to run the event on all-seasons (personally, I think it would have been fine but to each their own ;). So Thursday David and I headed south, armed with two-way radios and cars stuffed full of track wheels/tires (he can't fit all his wheels in his car). The drive down was uneventful if quite long, with a stop in Ashland to visit Brammo (see Atom page). Some pretty spectacular scenery along the way, too. It's hard to take decent pictures while driving so only one came out halfway OK, with a view of Mt. Shasta in the background.

The M Coupe is a fun car to follow. Given that we were not eager to add tickets to the $150 fuel cost for the trip, speeds were pretty sedate and on-the-road time was about 7-1/2 hours, half hour of it owing to a traffic jam early on in the trip. Turns out Rodger and his crew were staying at the same hotel so after check-in we all chatted about the event and cars in general for a while.

In the morning, at 7 am we met at the track and went over all the rules. Both David and I are instructing so there were some extra things to talk about. Overall, the event is really well organized and smoothly run - my hat is off to Rodger for putting it together and making it work. Anyone looking for quality tracktime in the Bay Area should check out his company site (see link above).

About 30 cars were in attendance, 20 of which were Mitsubishi EVOs. Some of the EVOs were actually quite fast, which is rare to see. Cool. The day started with cloudless sky and pleasant mid-70s temperatures which quickly elevated to a toasty but bearable 90 or so. While our students were in the classroom session, David and I went out for some laps to get familiar with the track again - it's been one year for him and two and a half for me (last time I was here was in the Meanie in December '03). One thing I quickly discovered about the track is the abundance of insects - grasshoppers and dragonflies, sometimes in pretty thick swarms. After just a few laps my grille looked like this:

Travis, my student for the day, is driving a brand-new black Exige. Only 1,100 miles on it and it's his first time out at the track, ever. This could be interesting. I do the usual track philosophy talk, then take him out for 15 minutes in my car after which I ride along in his. Thankfully he makes excellent progress (probably the fastest I've seen a total track novice learn) and gets the equivalent of a couple full days of learning into just two 30-minute sessions. It's going so well that I inquire about moving him to the intermediate group (because he is a lot faster than most of the rest of the novices) but then we decide to stay in the session since there are only 9 cars in it (on a 3 mile track) and he needs practice passing anyway. I also install the datalogger in his car which understandably produces a bit of pressure. Even though we specifically talk about that, I know that there's talk and then there's reality... In the earlier sessions Travis was having some issues with turn 3 which messed him up for turn 4 more than once. This provided some teaching opportunities, like showing the need to slow down and get the car under control if you're off-line rather than carry speed into a turn you're not set up for. It worked - for a while. Then, the combination of rapid progress, increasing confidence and the pressure of having the datalogger all added up to too much speed on an early apex into 4 and around and into the grass we went. Nothing bent but some dirt between rims and tires called for caution and much-reduced pace subsequently. Ah well, all a part of the learning experience. At the end of the day it seemed like Travis walked away with some useful lessons and as always I learned a couple of things about teaching as well.

Now, on to other adventures and this is where the day gets more challenging. First, my brakes. Before the trip I bled the lines and replaced the fluid with Motul 600. Pedal feel improved noticeably but stopping power did not. In the first couple sessions the datalogger showed only 0.67g deceleration despite really standing on the pedal (the car has done 0.98 previously on these tires and stock pads). Then, after the second session, the pad wear light went on. I hadn't replaced the rear pads yet because the Hawk ones were backordered and didn't show up in time (the mismatch in pads may be responsible for the reduced braking power). I checked the rear pads when bleeding the lines and it looked like about 1/2 the pad remained. Not anymore, apparently. Another half a session and I was grinding metal, with braking reduced to 0.5g. This did create an opportunity to practice running with minimal brake use. In an earlier session I recorded a best lap time of 2:19.6 - OK for a stock car on street tires and marginal brakes, but nothing too spectacular.

UPDATE: After looking closer at the data, on the fastest recorded lap I actually lifted to let David by at the end (the video lap below starts at that point) so by moving the lap marker to the start of the straight the time comes down to 2:18.8. Still, the data shows plenty of places where I wasn't using all of the car. It ought to be capable of about 2:15 on street tires if the brakes are functional. Perhaps one day I'll return to see if I'm right :)

Later, hardly using the brakes at all (mostly just engine braking), I was running 2:23s which is still a second better than what I did in the Meanie 2.5 years ago. So yeah, DarkHelmet is a pretty quick little machine :) I wasn't the only one having brake issues, as a short (3.5M) clip below shows:

With DarkHelmet grounded by brakes I got a chance to drive an EVO (thanks, Joe!) and it was quite entertaining. It was pretty easy to turn a 2:17 lap on squirmy street tires and lots of fun to pitch it into turns and hang the tail out a bit. And now I have major brake envy! :) Will need to do something about that... Stay tuned. Early in the day David and I did some lead-follow video laps, so here is a view from my car (19M file and yes, there's a Porsche that's faster than me - it's about time! ;)

And a view from the M Coupe (11M file):

The 7-hour drive back was uneventful except for when David ran over something that looked like a large blue Rubbermaid box lid (about 2x4 feet in size) which flipped up and promptly nailed DarkHelmet in the nose. 'OUCH!' I said over the radio. 'What are you talking about?' was the reply. He didn't even notice it in the dark, I guess. Pulling over to fill up on gas and NoDoz a while later, I found a blue piece of plastic wedged in the lower grille but no other damage - other than the fact that my front plate was now gone! Damn, now I have to deal with this too but could be worse so I'm not complaining. All in all a fun trip but not without some significant wear and tear even if we did make it back under own power. So how crazy does one have to be to drive 1,000 miles for 150 miles of tracktime? (Or, in my case, 75 miles on track if you don't have enough brakes to last the whole distance). I'm beginning to wonder if I'm really crazy enough. Will most likely stick a bit closer to home for a while. I do seem to gather enough resolve for a ThunderHill trip once every couple years or so and that's probably about right, especially given the track record (tow car breaking down in 105 degree heat, blizards and 20 foot visibility through the passes, flying tupperware, failing brakes, etc). Of course David's relationship with TH is much harsher - crashed bike, tires (as in plural) separating on pickup truck on the way there... Those are the risks we take though and we're still here to tell the stories :)

07/09/06 Was looking at the data some more and decided to post a comparison of my lap with a modified Elise running on Hoosiers. The Elise is exactly 8 seconds faster around the track at 2:10.8 which is not terribly surprising. What's interesting, however, is that my speed is 4 mph faster (42 vs 38) though 'Cyclone' turn 5. This generally confirms my earlier impression that I have this corner figured out better than many. Turn in sharp then go almost straight across the crest, this way I'm not trying to carry lateral g when the tires are unloaded. If you watch the video from the M Coupe, you can see it about 15 seconds from start. On the video lap I only went through there at 38 but still on my line. I could actually carry more speed still, I simply wasn't up to pushing it all that hard. The spot is just after the cursor on the plots below, my plot is in red.

The only other item that stands out is the fact that I'm faster on entry into turn 1 (the first dip in the speed graph) but then I scrub off speed through the turn where the Elise accelerates. I'm also not getting enough traction on the off-camber turn 3 to accelerate (just before the cursor). If I were at the track using the data to improve lap times, I'd work on getting on the power earlier since the Elise clearly has me beat in that respect. And I need a different line through 13-14, I'm too slow through that portion and it costs me big time on the front straight. If I were to make suggestions to the Elise driver, I'd say brake a little later and not as much (I was being quite conservative with brakes but he's even more so and Elise brakes are vastly superior) plus change the line through 5. One last note, a curious coincidence is that both the MINI and the Elise shift points happen in exactly the same spots. And no, MINI does not accelerate harder than the Lotus, I think there's just a longitudinal offset in the Elise data since shifts drop below zero and into negative g whereas they shouldn't (this is probably due to mounting of the logger). I, on the other hand, have a slight lateral offset of about 0.1 g.

A couple days ago I ordered a big brake kit from TCE so we'll see how well that works. Next event is at Pacific Raceways in Seattle, followed by a PIR event (mixed bike/car so that'll be interesting!).

07/10/06 The rear brake kit showed up (the front is a couple days out still) so since I've been metal-on-metal in the back since the last session at ThunderHill, I decided to at least take care of that. The new rotors are significantly larger than stock at 11.75" vs 9.5". The kit uses stock calipers and pads so the pad area is still the same but it gets a lot more leverage and cooling.

The old pads were beyond gone. My theory is that the stock material has a much higher friction coefficient than the Hawk HPS pads I put on the front so this gave a significant rear bias (backed up by the fact that it became very easy to get into ABS without much actual slowing). I just remembered that when I test-drove the Aston V8 Vantage it had the same problem - sounds like their brake bias was too much to the rear as well though likely for different reasons. On the MINI, the bias I believe is what so rapidly destroyed the rear pads. So it is definitely NOT a recommended combination, HPS front and stock rear, because it actually decreases overall performance and results in huge rear pad wear.

By looking at the above pictures you can imagine what it sounded like. Yeah. Of course the rear HPS pads are still backordered so I had to stop by the dealer and grab another set of stock rears. The install went fairly smoothly although it did take about 4 hours. I'll still need to re-bleed the brakes when I install the fronts. For now, the result is just as expected - even easier to ABS, even less overall braking because the rears lock up really early. But this is temporary. Hopefully installing the 12.2" front rotors and 4-piston front calipers is going to fix all this. We'll see. At least it's not grinding anymore.

Since the pads are stock they only sweep a fraction of the rotor surface. A little odd looking but I'm sure it'll be ok. Lots of experiments here and as always much to learn.

The wear items tally at 4,400 miles: five R compound tires, one-half set of street tires (they still got some life in them), two sets of front pads, one set of rear pads and one set of rear rotors. Hmmm... Sounds like I'm having fun here! :) I have decided that from now on I'm just going to run street tires on DarkHelmet - it's slower on the track but I'm just not up for dealing with R compound wear on this car. Hopefully the Atom (whenever it's done) will be kinder to tires. Should be, since it's less than half the weight (but then it's more than twice the power so who knows).

07/15/06 A while back I had weighed DarkHelmet on the corner scales and found the crossweights to be over 100 lbs off. I had guessed that it would take about a 1/4" shim on top of the right rear shock mounting plate to put it right. So a couple of weeks after that when I was rummaging through my random-bolt box I found exactly two washers that seemed perfect for the job - 10 mm ID, a little over an inch overall diameter and 0.2" thick. I've no idea where they came from but there they were. So I installed them the first chance I got and the car did seem to feel subtly better, more balanced in left and right turns. I ran the last couple trackdays with the shims in place. Today, while weighing a couple classic Minis on the scales, I decided to check my setup and lo and behold - it's almost exactly spot-on (the pictures show scales with me in the car and 1/2 tank of gas). Cool.

The interesting part is that the change has put a lot more weight (about 80 lbs) on the left front and removed 35 lbs from right front, 40 lbs from left rear and 10 lbs from right rear (the last is just due to less gas in the car). It is about 2% heavy to the left (so carrying a passenger at PIR might actually help) but the cross-weights are now just 0.4% off. That's close enough for me. Not bad for a shot-in-the-dark guess and some scavenged parts of unknown origin. You can definitely see why the front tires last half as long as the rears! Also, it is amusing to note that in the picture below, the first two cars put together weigh almost exactly the same as the third car. Not sure if I 'd call that 'progress' ;)

The Moke weighs 1250 lbs and is a really funny sight on the road (it moves, too, with some 140 hp, straight-cut gearbox, disc brakes and Hoosier race tires. Amazingly the corner weights were dead-on, to within a pound.

Later when we went to grab some lunch, the Moke ended up parked next to an SUV. Hilarious.

07/17/06 The front brake kit finally showed up so I went ahead and installed it. Fairly straightforward although it comes with no instructions whatsoever so it took a little bit to figure some things out (the brackets required some shims for proper alignment, the shims were supplied but it took some time to determine how many to use where). Because of this right side took 2 hours, then the left side took only 35 minutes.

The braking power is considerably improved although the pedal feel is still a bit iffy (will need to re-bleed the whole thing when I change to track pads for the next event). It's still pretty easy to ABS although at that point the car is decelerating pretty well. We'll see how it works when the HPS rears show up, whenever that might be (over a month late so far). At least cosmetically the new setup works much better, it doesn't look tiny and lost inside the wheels like the stock rotors did. So at least there's that. But the real test will be at the track on the 26th.