Not logged in [
Login
-
Register
]
You Are Not Registered Or Not Logged In
Corsa Sport
»
Message Board
»
General Chat
»
Projects and Builds
»
Lotus Exige S
» Post Reply
Post Reply
Who Can Post?
All users can post new topics and all users can reply.
Icon:
Formatting Mode:
Normal
Advanced
Help
Andale Mono
Arial
Arial Black
Book Antiqua
Century Gothic
Comic Sans MS
Courier New
Georgia
Impact
Tahoma
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Script MT Bold
Stencil
Verdana
Lucida Console
-2
-1
1
2
3
4
5
6
White
Black
Red
Yellow
Pink
Green
Orange
Purple
Blue
Beige
Brown
Teal
Navy
Maroon
LimeGreen
Message:
HTML is Off
Smilies are On
BB Code is On
[img] Code is On
[quote][i]Originally posted by Kyle T[/i] TRACKDAY UPDATE Well both the car and myself survived, so the day can only be classified as a success! There were some niggles however, so i'll go through the day in roughly chronological order and outline my plans afterwards. Weather was heavy fog when I woke up, so it was a slow trundle to Blyton. I misjudged the journey and arrived far too early, but no harm done. A few miles from Blyton I came to a temporary traffic light for some construction, I had my first "on boost" pull of the day as the light went green and felt the car was maybe a little flat... nothing too drastic, but something niggled in the back of my head to say that wasn't as fast as it should be. [img]https://i.imgur.com/0G4Q8uV.jpg?1[/img] The fog was so thick at the circuit you couldn't see the track from the pits, so was expecting a delayed start but there was a miracle turnaround during the briefing and it was bright sun from that point forward. Happy days. Approx. 35 cars booked on for the day so the circuit was quiet for most of it. I've attended a load of LoT days now so I'm fairly used to the usual audience, but special shout-out to SeriouslyDave and his 311 - absolute monster and had some real presence about it. Wish I got some pictures, but I'm sure we'll meet again... I got on track for my first 'hot' session soon after the sighting laps and had a steady run around. My mind kept imagining this flat spot at around 6k rpm, not enough for me to jerk forward like with a proper misfire and not enough for my passenger(s) to notice, but I couldn't shake the feeling I was missing a bit of response. [img]https://i.imgur.com/ztjfc2X.jpg?1[/img] After a couple of sessions I was just checking over fluid levels etc and I noticed an intercooler hose join was ever so slightly on an angle and not flush to the supercharger. I straightened this up and this brought the car back to life! The car felt much sharper and I was almost 10mph quicker coming into the bigger braking zones than I was before! In fact this change combined with dropping a passenger meant I was just rubbing the limiter in 4th at the end of the Lancaster straight, I've never been over 4th gear in any car around Blyton and I'm tantalisingly close in this! [img]https://i.imgur.com/BJAiJMb.jpg?1[/img] Spot the difference [img]https://i.imgur.com/CyMADzi.jpg?1[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/FX1XnKS.jpg?1[/img] Mid morning I had my first and only real drama, I noticed the ABS light come on after a warm up lap so came straight back in to "reboot" the car and check for codes. Nothing shown, I went back out and decided to check the brakes with a bit of anger. Sure enough, a lap later I had a massive lockup going into the penultimate turn which luckily has the "Eastern Circuit" as a run-off zone, and I was well into that alternate layout before the car slowed down! In addition to this, the T/C kept kicking in with the car doing about 30mph in a straight line... problem. Sheepishly coming back into the pits, feeling the eyes of every S1 ABS-less car burning into me we had a quick look around the car and it took a friend 30seconds to identify the problem. [img]https://i.imgur.com/FDzk96B.jpg?1[/img] The wheel speed sensor wiring had escaped its p-clips and the front nearside wheel had burned right through it. Thanks to Deggles' Jack and 3M tape this was bodged in a few minutes and was back on track without drama for the rest of the day. As I started pushing on a bit, I was starting to become a little concerned with the brakes. I wasn't getting fade in my relatively short sessions, but they were just very inconsistent. Sometimes I was pulling up too soon, other times barely making the corner and in general they didn't feel great or confidence inspiring. I have a couple of theories, and will be exploring both. [img]https://i.imgur.com/OwlXRxW.jpg[/img] 1. With the harness in, I can't get my seating position right. Either my legs are comfortable or my arms are, not both. I feel like with my arms at the appropriate distance that my legs are too bunched up and I have real problems catching my knees/thighes on the steering shroud or the wheel itself. This had an impact on my braking because over the last few years I've bullied myself into rev matching on downshifts and I actually felt it was fairly adequate on my Elise. I told myself soon into the trackday at Blyton that I should just stop trying as it was messing up my braking all the time, but it's a difficult habit to shake. 2. The insides of my brake discs were very corroded when I bought the car. I cleaned them up a bit with wet/dry and I hoped/assumed a couple of trackday sessions would clean them up the rest of the way. It turns out, it didn't - and they still look pretty borked on the inside. Whether this would explain my issues or not, who knows - but there must certainly be room for improvement. This is them when I first got the car... [img]https://i.imgur.com/KOMrI40.jpg?1[/img] And after the events of Saturday... [img]https://i.imgur.com/hm6wtlq.jpg?1[/img] I was following a good friend in his ~240bhp VX220 Turbo and he has a pretty sorted brake setup with AP 4 pots and some 308mm floating discs and it really drove it home when I saw him comfortably braking way later than I was (and I was then only just making the apex!) I didn't let it fluster me too much, I just made a much more conservative approach to braking for the rest of the day and concentrated on other areas - still had an absolute blast and gives me good room for improvement. After the IC Hose fix the car pulled like a train all day long. There are lots of Exige S complaints about the factory intercooler positioning and airflow leading to massive heat soak and subsequently loss of power on track. Some stories of NA cars easily pulling away from an SC car after a couple of laps... hyperbole or not I'm not sure. My butt dyno didn't feel this happening but I was prepared for it, and as such I spent the day "logging" intake temps via my ODB reader. This will form an experiment that I'll be tickling away at over the summer, to give me something to do and maybe even make some performance improvements for not a lot of wonga. [img]https://i.imgur.com/OpSSqw1.png[/img] You can see the temps here over a session, they don't get much higher during a session - but this could be because the IC is already heatsoaked. On the road tests I did prior to the trackday I struggled to get the IC temps above 40 degrees. The non-scientific touch test of the hot side and cool side of the intercooler suggested that the temp drop between each side is minimal, compared to the anecdotal evidence of my Subaru setup some years ago. A few friends had asked on how I was missing the adjustable shocks that my Elise had. Honestly I'd not thought too much about it until they asked, but in hindsight I certainly felt the car was a little bit wayward through the fast Port Froid section compared to the Elise. I think I was maybe a touch slower through there in the Exige but more because the stiffer shocks feign confidence rather than provide extra grip, I think. [img]https://i.imgur.com/2WZm906.jpg?1[/img] I had been running the car up till about 2pm with the traction control on, mainly because I wanted to lean on it and figure out where it was kicking in first before taking liberties without it. I found it kicking in a lot to be honest, it didn't feel too disruptive at first but because of how often I had it flashing away I was increasingly nervous of switching it off! Eventually after brave pill and a good talking to myself it came off... and the car was bloody brilliant. I discovered the car had tonnes of grip and although switching the TC off probably slowed me down a bit, I think it's raised my ceiling considerably for improvement. Where the TC was previously kicking in, I was now getting just enough rotation at the rear to push me round and as a result I was understeering less. This is the single biggest difference between the Elise and Exige, as the Elise just didn't have the torque to achieve this. I think with a full day without TC I could honestly knock chunks of time off, and on the few occasions that the rear did let go, it was dead easy to collect it without dropping any momentum. The car still spins the inside wheel like the Elise did, but just more often. I think this is what engaged the TC more often than not. [img]https://i.imgur.com/PA3CfYd.jpg?1[/img] The only other glitch of the day is that I seemed to have recorded most of my sessions in timelapse mode rather than video recording! I got the final clear session in whilst I was in smooth mode which is good, but I'm a bit disapointed I didn't get the huge lockup or my many half-moments that got rescued by the TC earlier in the day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1nRQ3C68MI The ride home was a bit butt clenching as a good friend had a clutch failure on his S1 Exige which we had managed to just about bodge (was a fluid leak) and get him rolling so I said I'd follow him home in case he got stuck. Problem is, my fuel level was critical and there's no way we wanted to risk Les pulling into a service station and putting unnecessary gear changes into the mix! So I hypermiled it about 20miles on the red light (which is a bloody lottery on these cars) and once we got to the M180 services I decided Les was bound to make it home, so I peeled off for a drop of fuel... which is all I could afford @ £1.52/litre! Car home safe, I've had a quick post day inspection and can confirm that: 1) My Sump isn't leaking. YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY, so relieved that it doesn't have to come off again. 2) Inside of my brake discs are (still) knackered. Oh, and I fixed the ABS wiring properly. [img]https://i.imgur.com/dgC4a0E.jpg?1[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/hPtZQPS.jpg[/img] So my immediate plans are: 1) Get the discs swapped, not sure what to yet. Some tempting options to go larger and space out the front caliper for some more stopping power or just save money, go OEM and compare. - OEM Cheapest (£250ish for a full set) - Budget Lightweight with Alloy Bells but OEM Size (£500ish for a full set) - 295mm with alloy bells up front and 288mm rear (£900ish for a full set) - 308mm with alloy bells up front and 288mm rear, allows for a maybe later addition of AP 4 pot calipers (£millions) 2) Look into options for either extending steering wheel reach (or reducing the reach, rather) to allow my legs to be comfortable. Either putting a spacer on the OEM wheel or going aftermarket, need to try some out. 3) Start sciencing with my intake temp data. [/quote]
Post Options:
Disable smileys?
Turn BBCode off?
Receive email notification of new replies?
This is a long topic, click
here
to review it.