Anglesey April 11th 2009

[Sanjøy]

Sorry about the poor quality taken at lunch time pre fuel run.

[mwmackenzie]

Great pics, loving the white S1's!! looks like a fantastic day...

[Sanjøy]

The "K" was in a minority yesterday

[meatball]

The track looks like a carpark!

[BiggestNizzy]

ooh a Proven Windmill, they have bendy blades.

Thay are also on there last legs don't think they will last the credit crunch

oh &

The white S1 is

[alicrozier]

Great day yesterday, circuit was surprisingly fast in places and had some good 'bottle' high speed corners combined with the technical/hooligan bits.
Quite a variance in pace of cars and drivers but no issues all day - I think there was only one red flag and that was for a breakdown.

My brakes were suffering - new 308mm grooved rotors and RS14's in the 4-pots - not sure if they weren't bedded in well enough but had severe pickup on the disk and bad vibration. Will need to get then skimmed now I think, anyone experience of these guys?
http://www.stationgarageltd.com/brake_skimming.html

Highlight for me was a drive in Sanjoys 340R (thanks mate! and sorry for the constant ribbing all day).
It really is a fantastic machine, I needed a few laps to recalibrate brakes, steering, gears and general lack of mass after the Exige but once into the groove... It's not easy to drive (Sanj said the Exige doesn't try to kill you at every opportunity... ) but sometimes you want more of a challenge and it provides and rewards in equal measure.
I think Nicola's highlight was a pax with McApe in the 340R (obviously he was taking it easy...), permanent grin afterwards.

Long day though, Nic and I stayed in Chester so hour and a half to get to the track in the morning, full day on circuit followed by over 7 hours up the road - home to Aberdeen just after midnight.

[mckeann]

Was a great day. Highlight for me was getting out of the 340R at the end of both the journey down and the journey home It really is a fcuk cold place to be for 5 hours on the motorway.

Great to catch up with you again Ali, and nicola to.

Thanks to Sanjoy for letting me drive his car. It really is a bit of a beast, and his driving improved massively once he put some air in his tyres. Just a shame his car prep is so bad, it took him about 4 hours to do it

[alicrozier]

tsk Iron Bru in the Engine and 9 psi in the tyres...

My BaT pics are up:
http://bookatrack.com/-pX?11101

[Scotty C]

I miss my 340r.

Good to see the boys still get to rag it

[Sanjøy]

Yup quite a wee adventure. Manic week at work so the most prep I had done for the car was a cursory was a fluids check and a new set of rears on.
Drive down was toasty and warm, heated seat on full, did not even need gloves. Worked Friday inc lunch of trying to change the wheels so dinner was a couple of pork pies on the road. McKean on the other hand went for the 2 course BP special, double Ginsters followed by a couple of "fern cakes". I managed to get some video of him eating them @ a decent rate of tuts, missed him feeding it in when he was wearing his helmet. Boy can he moan, its too cold, its too windy, I hate your car....

We arrive and 5 mins after they stop serving food, arse. Two bags of nobbys nuts and one salt and vinegar was all that was left, chuck in 3 pints of Guinness and we are set for the next day.

On arriving at track I realised I was needing oil and never realised till afternoon session (post McApe & Ali driving I hasten to add!) that the front left was @ 9psi!
I head out with Mckean and think I thoroughly shocked him and he probably understands why I have ended up in the gravel so much. In went, talked about lines, ground up stuff then back out. Spent some time on my own to build up confidence, not easy when there were some very fast SC cars out there.
Hand over the wheel to Mckean for a few flyers, okay so the line is 45 degrees to the normal of the imaginary line he painted in my head!

Spot of lunch and swapped cars with Ali, as Ali said it was such a more relaxed place to be, the threat of death was not there at every input!

Back to the 340 and I found the work I had been trying to practice earlier in it was coming together nicely and after time in the Cup which flattered & inspired confidence I found I was starting to tame the beast and build confidence.
I really would suggest you spend some time with SEs tame racing driver, I hear he accepts beer & Ginsters as payment. Cheers again fella.

Last 15 mins of the session hand over to Mckean and he manages to grab 20l of fuel and we set off, end of first lap on partial throttle in a bend and we start kangarooing, uh oh.
Come in and we can reproduce it, bugger. We call it a day and head off up the road keeping out of vtec (<4k). Not much fun going so slow and as soon as you push too hard and get close to 4k the engine starts to get in to trouble as if it is about to stall. Not much fun for Ali either, following and getting a liberal spraying of fuel over the Cup!

Stop for fuel (again, I counted 7 inc Mckean 20l) and we try disconnecting what we thought was the gearbox sensor to stop it going to vtec so we could cruise home on one cam and go faster than 80. No diff in the petrol station, Mckean stands behind the car peering in and asks me to rev it hard to check that at 0mph the car will not go above 5k as it is supposed to. It does that and then the unburnt fuel in the exhausts decides to let rip with a loverly yellow flame which might also be attributed to Mckeans sun burn. I honestly hurt myself laughing. Finally got home about 23:30 pretty chilly, was my turn for my heated seat to pack in, don't let me require your house any time soon.

Popped round to Robins today for some diags and guess what complex issue it was ? The boost tube, on inspection of the flex tube we reckon it was either kinking / collapsing. Removed it and unable to reproduce it. Sweet! nice one Robin.

Finally installed Adobe Elements on my PC (Windows 7 movie maker not liking my firewire camera) and found out that I have about 10 seconds of video. I have a feeling the tape either failed or the G force killed the tape, well thats the story I will be telling in the pub. Oh well there is bday cake still to be eaten so I am happy.

SP

[mckeann]

Yup quite a wee adventure. Manic week at work so the most prep I had done for the car was a cursory was a fluids check
SP

that obviously didnt include the oil though

[tut]

I AM PRESUMING that you checked the oil level, as on track if it gets below half or so, it will not engage Vtec.

tut

[mckeann]

yeh, the oil level was fine, once we told Sanj to top it up . I was just pointing out that his pre departure level checks leave a lot to be desired

[robin]

What a shed It does seem implausible, but we could reproduce the problem at will when Sanj popped over - then I disconnected the oil temp/pressure (which is it?) sensor (the thing that prevents VTEC engaging), but of course we also pulled off the stupid elephant pipeage as part of removing the engine cover. Car immediately behaved itself, but of course would not go into VTEC. I was suspicious about the sensor or VTEC being responsible for the problems, so reconnected it, and the car still runs fine. Tie wrapped the shorter intake pipe somewhere around where the rear wheel arch would have been, removed the pipeage from the engine cover, job done.

It sounds fishy until you realise that the pipe was doing at least 2 if not 3 180 degree turns, all squished into a small space, and is heavily worn such that the rubber is flapping loose form the steel coil wire. Pretty sure it must be possible at certain air speeds to collapse the rubber such that there is nearly no air flow (try sucking air through a balloon if you don't believe me). VTEC probably a red herring.

Cheers,
Robin

[tut]

Good result Robin.

How did the barge down the canal trip go?

tut