Trackday, part duex. — Apex Attack

Well, here's another regularly scheduled, and regularly late, blog update. If you just can't handle the suspense, follow my instagram: apex.attack

So the car had survived it's first trackday, but there was a long list of deplorable parts needing attention, or just plain replacement (#MakeMR2sFastAgain). I had signed up for another trackday a month or so later, so we had a lot to get done.

Let's start with an easy one. Just to get some momentum heading our way. At the last track I found myself wishing I had a turbo timer when coming off the track. You need to let your engine cool down a bit, and idling is the best way. Luckily, Rat2 Motorsports has a cheap and effective solution. Their turbo timer.

It's only $45 from their site (rat2motorsports.com), and runs off a simple knob to set your desired time from no time, to 5 minutes. It also turns on your radiator fans to keep the coolant at an effective temperature while circulating through the motor. Install is also easy, 4 wires!

But first I wanted to make it a bit cleaner for install. So I added some mesh looming and heat shrink to the harness.

Now tear apart your dash a bit.

Excuse the bad lighting. Basically you tap into 3 wires off your lock cylinder, and a ground. Instructions are easy, and the wires are tough to reach... but persistence and elfish fingers pay off. Install took me about an hour. (Hey Mike, cool Sparco gas pedal you Sparco whore)

Here's another awful picture of where I mounted the control box, right under the steering wheel clamshell. Easy to see and adjust, and out of my way when driving. Thanks Ian, works great.

Next up, let's give the engine a lil tune up. I've had extra plugs, wires, cap and rotor for years... just never thought it needed it. With the slight misfire the last trackday (which I now believe might be due to turbo oil in combustion chamber), why not. Can't hurt, and I've never replaced a cap and rotor, first time for everything.

Old wires, meet new. (red +5hp)

Old plugs, meet new. Fun fact, the engine still had original factory plugs! I was told the motor had 19k on it when I picked it up, I've since put on another 5-6k, maybe? The factory plugs had a "W" on the ends. (maybe it was a "M"?)

New rotor! I know, this is boring maintenance.

After the routine stuff, I fired the car up, it ran, great. I decided to pull an intercooler pipe just to see how oily it was.

Oh boy. That's a lot of dead dinosaur. Since I had nothing particular interesting going on, I decided to see how quickly I could pull the turbo. 1 hr 45 min later (and only 2 beers), it was out.

Now, what exciting amazing crazy spinny turbo will I replace this with? I had plans for a big engine build coming up, I must admit, so why not put a big turbo in now? Yeah, let's get nuts!

Ye shall searcheth, and the interneteth provides. KO Racing GT3082r dual ball bearing turbo. V-band, .63 ar, yadda yadda big power, less lag. I was pretty pumped on it. The turbo is capable of more than I'd ever want in a track sw20, but that means it can be used at lower boost reliably. But, the kit wasn't exactly for my engine, so I sent the manifold adaptor to KO to get a new one made for the gen3. The waiting game begins, he had over a month to get back to me in time for my July 2 track day. While we're waiting, let's play with other stuff on the car.

So, aero. I don't know too much about it, but I like to mess around. Last track day, the car needed more stability. Coming down the main straight into turn 1 at 125mph things felt...floaty. So, let's build a splitter to match that rear diffuser now.

Or actually, let's buy a used and abused one and re-purpose it! This was picked up from another MR2 owner on the cheap, like $50 cheap. It's built using this crazy strong, lightweight, and cheap material...wood. Whoah. Wood isn't new to racecars if you're thinking I'm crazy for strapping a piece of douglas fir underneath my finely tuned cornering machine.

Here is a 90s Honda F1 car using a wood plank as a skidblock. While mostly used to limit the aerodynamics effects of a F1 car here, other (grassroots) racers use wood for splitters all the time. It's cheap, relatively light, and very sturdy. If you wreck one, $30 later you have a new sheet to build another. My splitter was shaped well, but needed a lot of work to get where I wanted it to be in looks and fitment.

Mainly, the attachment method was crude and sketchy. I just didn't trust it. Neither did the creator too, as it somewhat broke free at a drag event and rubbed the road pretty good. He used some aluminum angle, which attached to some underbody brackets. I thought I could do better.

I picked up some metric all thread and cut it to some lengths.

Screwed into the OEM underbody panel mount locations. Once the splitter is mounted we'll trim to fit.

Mark and drill a bunch of holes on the diffuser.

Hey, that's looking alright. But we also need to support the front better. The splitter came with some support brackets.

Buckteeth in full effect. It was fitting much better, and even passed the "skrawny guy on a splitter test." But, that carbon fiber wrap was ultimate cheese. So it had to go for something a bit more discrete. I also wanted to improve the actual aerodynamics on the underside.

This is the underside of the splitter, I'm just drilling some reliefs for the mount washers and nuts to sit flush. Little details add up.

The splitter also came with some side fins, and the previous owner had just bolted them to the underside of the splitter. The look was kind of there, but I wanted to improve it. So I traced the fin, and cut out a small inlay so the fin sits flush on the underside. Working with wood is much easier than fiberglass.

Blurry picture, but you get the idea.

Cleaning up the exposed parts of the splitter a bit with everyone's favorite filler.

After some sanding, things are feeling good. I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to finish the splitter... pondered just black paint... but then my old can of truck bedliner caught my eye. It's tough stuff, why not.

Alright, looking fresh now. Also pictured: 2000 Tundra daily driver. 277k miles... everything works and runs like a champ. Hoping to get 400k+ out of it. Once the bedliner dried, it needed some paint just to give it a little pizaz.

Out on the town, sippin only the highest octane (which in WA is diluted 92). Doesn't all gas come from the same refineries? I don't trust the 92 here, so Shell only. (I know, fix the headlight cover) Overall, I couldn't tell much of a difference on the car at normal driving speeds, but I sure did scrape it on everything!

Now I know in blog reading time, only like 5 minutes have passed (ok, you're reading at a 5th grade level, 3 minutes), but in real life, weeks had gone by, and I still didn't have a suitable turbo. KO Racing wasn't getting back to me with what I needed, and track time was less than two weeks out. I panicked, bought a used CT20b off a nice gentleman on the internets. I thought even if I got the GT3082r back with a few days, that was cutting it very close to make sure I had every nut and gasket, install the kit, and test/tune it to satisfaction. Even if I didn't have all the POWERZ, I'd rather still go to the track day!

The CT20b is a great turbo, I've owned like 8-10 of them, mostly OEM units, and now one blown up billet wheel version. I wanted to run this one the way it is, but have had boost creep issues in the past with the stock wastegate ports, so I ported out an exhaust housing myself which was on my billet CT20. I wanted to trade exhaust housings to be sure I don't have boost creep/fuel cut all day.

Disaster struck.

The OEM CT20b exhaust wheel is ceramic to help with quicker spool. My billet CT20b wheel and shaft are inconel. I forgot that when removing the exhaust housing. Snap. Effectively ruining an OEM CT20b. They say experience is the best education, but the tuition can be high. This was a $450 lesson. Now we panic, yell a bunch in the garage, walk around to calm down, and come back to the situation and try to figure out a solution.

I had two complete turbos (minus one with blown seals and one ceramic shaft broken in half), could I Apollo 13 together a useable turbo in time? We'll need a few more beers for mechanic lubrication, duct tape, and bubble gum.

Using the new-to-me CRHA (center rotating housing assembly), billet wheel and inconel shaft, and the billet turbo compressor and exhaust housing I had cobbled together a turbo that, let's be honest, I had little to no faith in.

So back into the car it went! With only a few days before the track day, I had no choice. KO Racing was unresponsive, so I ruled that out as an option. We went for a test drive with crossed fingers... and after a full boost pull... smoke. To say I was surprised would have been a lie. The glass was half full though, it was less smoke than before!

So I would bring a not-so-perfect running car to the track. I know this was kind of a big risk, but I had low expectations. I know the likeliness of hurting the motor was pretty low unless I totally ignored the turbo failing very badly and kept boosting. What's the worst that could happen otherwise? I planned to keep a very watchful eye on the smoke plumes, oil levels, and any black flags pointing my way to get the hell off the track if it got bad.

So, this track day was different than the typical SCCA Track Night in America. I had signed up for a Revscene day put on by The Speed Syndicate. Speed Syndicate is a very well respected shop up north in our oh-so-friendly neighborhood, Vancouver. They come down here 3 times a year and rent out The Ridge Motorsports Park for a track day for their clients and others. The days fill up VERY quickly, like months ahead of time. With good reason, they're relatively cheap, well run, and some truly impressive cars show up. They are the who's who of track days in the PNW as far as I'm concerned. So, that was a big factor is still attending this track even though my car wasn't 100%.

That being said, I was still very apprehensive about my car making it there, beating the shit out of it, and driving it home. So, with my wife's blessing, I rented a trailer for the day. A common theme with 23 year old track cars, trust issues.

The 277k daily beater now relegated to tow pig status. Handled it like a champ. Loading and unloading the U-haul, not so easy though. Ghetto home built ramps, and about 1/4" clearance on each side made some entertaining bickering with my wife through repeated reverse attempts at loading. Did I mention the trailer doesn't have brakes, and weighs about as much as the car? At least I'd have A/C (and a stereo!) while careening over Tiger Mountain pass.

Left early the next morning, and actually enjoyed the drive while really taking my time over the ~90 miles to The Ridge. Cupholders, stereo, quiet ride, what a treat! (I'm old)

I arrived pretty early, which I like. Time to unload the car and tools, setup for the day, and walk around and see what else has shown up. Needless to say, I was impressed.

2x4 ramp extensions, use the trailer jack to lift the tongue even higher, simple tricks for on and off. Just don't curb your precious BBS (spoiler: I did when loading at end of day).

I had seen all the social media coverage of the cars that show up to these events, and like I said, it's a who's who of cool cars in the PNW. It felt like I was living through a Narita Dogfight time attack coverage post. Let's have a look around eh!?

FRS Gang. I know the popular opinion of the FRS is too little horsepower. But all these cars were quick on track. They easily carry high speeds through most turns. The owner of the red is a popular IG account: derpyfrs. Simon had a lot of nice things to say about my car, and told me he owns a SW20 as well, pretty cool! His rocket bunny FRS is also turbocharged, so it's no slouch. He was having overheating issues most of the day but still got out for most sessions.

Just a bit more expensive, the Porsche gang. The black Carrera was seriously clean and had a mean bark. The Martini livery GT3 car had an even nastier bark. Really, really sweet track cars. Great to see the owners out there beating on them.

Oh yeah, a 458 showed up.

My paddock neighbors were also packing some heat. The Evo 5? was really rare to see stateside. The GT40 was a home built replica, and the craftsmanship was unreal. We had some great dogfighting one session.

Yeah, the Lotus is owned by Kalson, the guy putting on and organizing the day. The R34 was tastefully done, all the right mods (IG: cw_unit). Oh yeah the Radical SR8 was spinning laps in the 1:4X's. He came up and passed me so quick one session I didn't even know he was there.

Amuse S2000 anyone?

Evo 8 was all sorts of aggresive... but somehow tame next to this turbo R8 with all carbon widebody. This car pretty much stole the show.

The aero, the livery, the color scheme, the bark, it ticked all the right boxes.

Ok, time for the driver's meeting, and inspections. Then let's get out there and break some stuff!

The inspection line quickly grew, but the Revscene team handled it well, they were quick and thorough. Even though I know the car is ready for the track, I always let out an internal "whew" once I'm signed off for the day.

I was running the intermediate grouping. On other track days, with other groups, I feel ready for the Advanced groups, but with the caliber of cars here, I was very OK with intermediate. Out for the first session. I once again was going to take it easy and just get things warmed up and feel the car out.

Well, things were going OK, I ripped off a 2:10, then a 2:07 as I settled into the driving line and braking points again, and then POP went an intercooler coupler. Danget. Came back in after three laps and missed the rest of the session making a simple fix.

After a relatively simple fix I was ready to get back out for the second session. Well... I must have had a big boost leak before because the car was now boosting harder than ever (after a mandatory few laps of white smoke), which included hitting fuel cut regularly. I ripped off a few laps in the 2:06-2:09 territory while adjusting my boost controller on the front straight at 120mph before I got it to stop hitting fuel cut, and lapped a 2:03.8! New PR! Hell yeah! But, then the next lap... I hit the rumble curb coming out of the last turn and slipped my rear alignment... again. Frustrating. I eased the car around and back in before spending the next 30 minutes adjusting my rear tie rod link back to "close enough." After speaking to Alex Wilhelm, he's already come up with a solution and mailed it to me. This time I knew the car had more in it before the turbo would give up.

Now out for the third session, I was focused, and hoped the car would hold up without any more stupid problems. After a few laps I had settled in and:

2:02! Consistency is improving as well. Here's the lap via gopro.

What's changed? Well, probably mostly my driving. But, the car was running well minus turbo smoke, and honestly, felt much more stable along the front straight. I'm calling it due to the front splitter and rear gurney flap. Coming off throttle and onto the brakes hard at 125mph into turn one is always puckering endeavor, but seemed much less floaty now. That being said, watching that lap, there's another easy couple of seconds to be had on that lap, mainly just braking later and harder. I know the car is sub 2:00 capable, just gotta tighten the nut behind the wheel! (dadjokes) I bring the car in with surprisingly no problems, I'm just happy as the Rat2 Turbo Timer ticks down the idle. Time for lunch when I meet up with some local MR2 members out at the track to spectate for the day. After lunch, one wants a ride, sure why not.

Dueces in the duece. We tick off a few 2:10ish laps with heavy traffic, and battle that seriously cool GT40 replica. He smokes me on the front straight, and I'm right on him through all the backside turns. Lots of fun playing cat and mouse. Unfortunately, my turbo is smoking more and more. Eventually I realize it's not making full boost any more, and just pilot the car into the pits. It was a great day while it lasted for my car, but not worth risking if the compressor wheel decides to suicide bomb my engine.

So my day driving seems to come to an end, but after that session, I meet another buddy whom I didn't even know was attending the event, in his stock C6 Z06 Corvette. He offers me a ride to see if I can help him improve on his 1:59 PR. Sure, why not?

Well, unfortunately at this time my GoPro battery had perished to the heat, so it was just me riding along, but oh my god Becky is that car fast. 3k-7k nothing but 505hp to yank your neck into the headrest. It is unreal. Even on the somewhat soft OEM suspension, I felt a bit carsick after the session. Ben could easily save some time by trusting those 6 pot brakes more, basically needing to brake later, and use the full width of the track. It was a lot of fun "coaching."

To my surprise after that session Ben point blank asked, "want to take it out the next session, see if you can crack 2 minutes?" I was a bit speechless, and finally said I didn't feel comfortable driving such a beast as my first FR car around a track, and gently reminded him of the demise of my last track car. He kept insisting... and eventually I folded like a cheap Ikea card table. I was phsyced, and a little scared.

We rolled out the pits and I hit the go pedal... holy shit. The power band is unreal, it's almost cheating. You barely have to change gears, I was in 3rd a majority of my laps, maybe 6 gear changes per lap vs 12+ in my car. The brakes were also bomb proof. I know my Wilhelm BBK is one of the best aspects of my car, and his OEM brakes were just as good, even with a 3100 pound car behind them. I quickly found out the difference between FR and MR cars though, and that's power application. In my car (I know, 200 less hp, shutup mike) I can hammer the throttle at the apex or even before, in the Z06, patience is key before rolling into those 505 horsepowers. What's even crazier with the C6 Z06, half way through the session Ben turned on the A/C!

When we came in after the session I learned I had lapped a 2:02... wow. First time ever in the car, and tied my PR with my heavily modified track rig. My only complaint is the the car is almost too easy with all of its' power, and you can easily develop bad habits and rely on the ol' power pedal to recover. It's easy to get in and lap, but probably difficult to squeeze consistently low laps out of. Overall, a helluva experience, thanks Ben! Sorry I didn't have any pics, I blew it!

To make up for it, here's some of my favorites from the staff photog, IG: estwokay.

So, I loaded up the trailer, and enjoyed my trucks' A/C the whole drive home through traffic and kept thinking to myself, "so this is how the rich man enjoys his track days..." except their cars make through the day easily. Overall a great day even with only getting 4 sessions in. A lot of compliments on my car from people with much more expensive and beautiful track cars. When I was going into the day thinking I could possibly blow up the engine, and came out with a new PR, you know your glass is half full.

So now what? New turbo of course... that's up for next time, when I promise to get these out more frequently... yeah right.