818206SCR

Session 2 Bit more of the same as first session, felt the tires/track had gripped up a little bit so I started trying push a bit more, and found the limit at T1. Then that same lap took too much speed through 4 and didn't feel the front bite like it should which was alarming, but gathered up the car and started driving a little more conservatively.

Session 1 Temperature was about 90* ambient and sunny, so this was going to challenge the cooling mods I had done on the car: revised roof scoop and water injection post intercooler. The first thing I noticed during the warmup laps was how little grip I was feeling, track felt greasy, so either the tires weren't to pressure or they've had too many heat cycles. That sapped most of my confidence about cornerning for the day, I never regained the feel to push very hard. After warmup I tried pushing on the front straight and hit fuel cut again; so another failure in getting the intake temps to a reasonable level. When I took a look at the IC temp gauges I saw peaks of 200* at the inlet and 170* at the outlet; which is still way high. There is a 5 GPH water injection nozzle post IC, and I verified the system was running as expected when boost was above 12 psi (where I had set it). So given the car is basically crippled and won't run at WOT on the track, I resigned myself to lapping and trying to keep from blocking the faster cars - which is frustrating.

Logging the performance of the revised roof scoop/intercooler plenums and the water injection system (post IC). A few WOT and partial throttle runs. Calling this a partial success, the intercooler seems to be doing a better job of cooling the charge air. Don't hear any massive boost leaks, and the peak boost level shown is what the current map is set to deliver.

(not) Fastest lap of the day: 1:35:148 Added data for oil temp, pressure and lat G. Temps look a little low, but happy to see that at 1 G the oil pressure seemed steady. That's a major concern for EJ engines with mostly stock oiling.

20230804 Friday At the Track Summit Point Main Beginner Group Session 3: 2:45 - 3:10 PM After lunch - still dealing with heat issues; oil and water temps are good, but the intake charge air is high. Started playing with line through 3 and into 10 while continuing to short shift. Unfortunately, the session got red flagged because a Porsche lost its brakes into T1 and found the tire barrier.

20230804 Friday At the Track Summit Point Main Beginner Group Session 4: 4:50 - 5:15 PM Last session of the day, I was feeling pretty tired and didn't want to push the car too hard. Ran some laps, called it a day about 1/2 way through the session.

20230804 Friday At the Track Summit Point Main Beginner Group Session 2: 11:50 AM - 12:15 PM Confidence rebuilding session. After spinning in session 1 needed to get my head readjusted to the car and the track. Needed a few laps of building up speeds into turn 3 to put that behind me. Due to the lack of the roof scoop (lost in session 1) the intercooler temp gauge was showing really high temperatures (~200 pre IC/~170 post IC), way too high to be safe; so I was limited to mostly 1/2 to 2/3 throttle and short shifting for the session. That turned out to be a good learning tool for me this time out - forced me to focus on smoothing out my midcorner and exit. Overall, got some laps in; started fixing my approach to turn 3 and felt pretty comfortable in the car by the end of the session.

20230804 Friday At the Track Summit Point Main Beginner Group Session 1: 9:50 - 10:15 AM First time back to Summit Point in a few years and the 818 SCR has changed. Replaced transmission (damaged at VIR) with the same LSD, but it feels like the preload is a lot higher than it used to be. Also, swapped in 400# springs in the rear to reduce some of the understeer. Wanted to go out and get a feel for the car, but I was a bit late off the grid and I had to deal with other cars already at speed; that was a distraction I didn't need and I got frustrated. Finally, started getting a feel for the car and ran through pits to get some clear track... and didn't. Then I started pushing way too hard way too fast. Ultimately, I had an idiot moment and spun in turn 3. Don't even remember why I was trying to get such an aggressive exit since there was a car a not very far ahead of me that wasn't going faster, so I would have had to slow down immediately. Chalk it up to knocking the rust off and not having my eyes up properly. Spun happened, got the car to the pits and examined it - no real damage except some grass and gravel in the passenger front tire bead and a bunch of gravel in the front compartment - so I needed to get that addressed before going back out. Also, the roof scoop detached and flew off on the main straight. That became an issue throughout the day (overheating of intake charge air). Live and learn and get back out next session (TBC).

Testing extended roof scoop and revised/split intercooler plenum on the 818 SCR. Apparently an A2A intercooler will never lower the intake charge air temp to below abmient, but saw some good evidence that these changes are doing a better job of routing air from the roof over the intercooler.

Acceleration run after reassembling the 818 with a replacement 5 speed transmission (4.11). The original (200K mile) transmission failed after VIR. Still resolving airflow over the A2A intercooler and (probably) a last vacuum leak.

NCM HPDE at VIR Day 2 session 3 818 SCR Finally starting to put some laps together after working out my braking technique issues. Towards the end of the session some additional noise is being picked up, believe the transmission might be beginning to fail -it has over 200K with the original gear set except for an LSD. With only about 300 HP 5th gear is currently useless - the engine falls flat on its face after the upshift (loses speed), and there is probably some synchro or shift fork damage because I could never hit a 5 to 4 downshift. So instead just ran in 4th on the straights, at nearly 7000 RPM was pulling about 118 mph. The coupe style bodywork seems to work well for aero stability, only noticed some buffeting/drifting when going over the rise on the back straight.

Second session of the day, running with FATT at Summit Point Motorsports Park on the Main Circuit. Still novice session with follow-the-leader. Speeds are a bit higher in this session. The 818 is still performing very well, car has a ton of untapped potential. I start driving a little harder through the corners and braking later to begin exploring what the car can do. Currently running on street tires (Dunlop Direzza 2's). Learning to use the LSD in the transmission is fun, coming out of turn 5 the carrousel and the next series of corners I'm trying to use more throttle than steering input to adjust how the car turns in.

First track session of the 818 SCR This was a shake-down run, ran with FATT at Summit Point Motorsports Park on the Main Circuit. This was a novice session and we were doing follow-the-leader with the instructor in the lead and tail cars. Needed to make sure the 818 wouldn't blow up (again) and would finish the session with all the parts attached. Happily, car worked (almost) perfectly. There was some aero instability at around 100 MPH, I think from the front hood vibrating, but other than that everything felt good. Car was easy to control, braking was very good with the CarboTech track pads and cornering was neutral and easy to modulate with throttle.