djr81

Well I had a fiddle - even messed about with the data. Anyway - Oran Park by the look of the X-Y plot... I am having a bit of trouble sorting out the logging rate & the distances. The disparity between the min & max speed is too great. can you give me an idea of what they are & I may be able to post you the speed trace & the longitudinal gees trace. Now, tell everyone about the off...... Oran_Park.PDF

Um I dunno then. Mine certainly won't. There is no chance that if I fire over the hill at Wanneroo & plant the middle pedal the anchors will lock. No chance at all. That is with 0.5 mu friction coefficient pads in it. There again you thing is probably lighter than my lard arse GT-R. Sure it is not the bumps at Calder? I routinely brutalise the brakes in my car & the only flat spot I get is on the ball of my foot. So who knows any more?

Some randon, um ramblings about brakes: Of the three parameters, corner speed, acceleration & braking as they relate to lap times braking is the least important. This is fairly self evident. Corner speed is the most important because you gain time in the corner & then all the way down the following straight. Acceleration is the next most important because you gain an advantage for the length of any straights. Braking is the least important because the distance travelled under brakes & time spent is usually the least of these three parameters. But. The but is that most people suck badly at braking. So whilst it is the least important thing it is also the thing people do least well. Most Skylines without brake upgrades but on R compounds will not lock their brakes unless the car is doing something else, eg cornering, unweighting wheels over bumps. So from that perspective you need to use all of the brakes capability. If you are only doing a 3 lap run there is no reason not to punish them as hard as you can. With regard to technique it is here that people come unstuck. Common problems are: Not braking hard enough at the start of the stop. It is much harder to lock a brake at high speed than at low speed, so you should mash the pedal at the start of the stop. Ineffective brake modulation, particularly during heel/toe downchanges. Check you data log - how much of the brakes capacity do you use over the whole of the stop? Poor modulation at the point of turn in. This upsets the car & your corner speed. What annoys me greatly is when people claim that with a change to one component of their car they will make large gains in lap speed. Tyres are the most influential but people tend to over estimate even this. Rest assured that if some clown is claiming his fully sick carbon fibre wang extender will make the difference the most probable result is that it wont. On the flip side, poor driving can easilly lose large lumps of time. Consider this. An average Australian circuit is 2.4 kms (1.5 miles) and can be lapped in of the order of 1 minute. Which equates to 90MPH (144kmh). A 59 second lap is 146.4km/h. So a miserable 2.4km/h is worth a second. So yes, you may only be going a small amount slower than you might otherwise, but that is all it takes to drop lap times from winning to trying hard in the midfield. If anyone has any experience of the former, please let me know because I spend my time doing the latter. If you have a logger you can use the equation listed in Roys essay to estimate changes in lap times. Just use the data in each cell rather than averages which can be misleading. Also in terms of distance, not time it can be expressed as v squared = u squared +2*a*s where a is the acceleration & S is the distanc travelled. Here is some logged data showing the braking gess of two different set ups. No prizes for guessing which of the two had the brakes behaving badly. None the less even the better one has plenty of room for improvement. No where near 100% of the capacity as was said. brake_gees.PDF

Yeah I know. I just get all bitter and twisted when I see what the charge out rates do to the tattered remnants of my project budgets. And wonder how it is I don't get paid almost $200 per hour as a lead ginger beer. New car has the highly covetted Sumitomo calipers. Much like the old one.

Yeah low fuel, new tyres to create a headline. That has never been done before.... Anyone want odds that the FIA wont squib todays hearing?

No mate, I don't get paid consultants rates. But I do have to sort something at some stage. They are just different to the local stuff which keep cracking.

I will, um, that is I heard that the person in question will be heading to Perth Saturday & then going to Wanneroo Sunday. Just need my rotors to turn up in time.

There are also practice days at the Collie circuit for those who don't want to drive to South Geraldton & pay $150. Generally they are only about $50 for the whole day. See www.motoringsouthwest.org.au

Yeah well it would be nice to see some Skylines turn out for some events. Other than the HSV owners club events, obviously. http://www.natsoft.com.au/cgi-bin/results..../2007.BARB.Q2.Y NFI what is going on there.

It shouldn't be bent. That it is indicates something is pretty fundamentally wrong.

Any chance of posting up some of the data? Just so we can see the sort of output these things generate. . . . . . And sAfrican American at your driving, obviously.

Actually while we are in the business of clarification the WASCC memberships are for the calender year, not from the date of application. So paying your subscription now will get you all of 2008 not from November 2007 to November 2008. Cost is $220 for a silver membership, but you can also nominate an associate member for $165 (basically a season pass) Junior memberships are $60.

Yeah sorry - I should have been more clear. Something like free spectator entry to all WASCC events or similar. Private stuff is perhaps a different matter, but then again I have never been asked to pay for turning up to watch so I dunno. In any case it covers the most expensive/interesting ones.

Yes seat frames end up bent when the seat (or the car) has been in a large side on impact. The only responsible thing to do is to throw both the seat & the frame in the nearest skip bin. Here is a shite numerical example. 7.

Here is a revolutionary idea. Write a letter. Not an email because that will be ignored. A proper letter. Type it out, even. Use punctuation. Maybe even correct grammar. Make your argument in a lucid, coherent way with out resorting hyperbole & without pointing the finger at everyone else in the community eg saw some dickhead in a Commodore blah blah blah. In other words a letter quite unlike most of the posts in this thread. You could perhaps explain how this sort of law making, despite having the veneer of being targetted against social outcasts has a wider & indeed more pervasive negative effect on the car enthusiast community as a whole. You could perhaps give examples of such effects. Nothing over the top, just demonstrating how these stupid laws make you life as a proper, responsible grown up harder than it needs to be. You could also explain how this sort of nonsense has a negative effect of the type of organised, legal & beneficial activities & facilities that do their part to stop the sort of stupidity the laws are designed to prevent. You could also explain how the sorts of people who have "no regard for the law" will still have no regard for the law, irrespective of how punishing any law may be. Then perhaps, politely ask him to stop being such a spanker & stop taking advice from malformed fkwits who think anyone under the age of 60 is out to rape, pillage & generally destroy society as we know it. Ok, maybe leave that last part out.

As said you need to be a member of an affiliated car club to get a CAMS license. The WASCC is particularly good value for money if you enjoy your motorsport. You get: 1. Access to all the events held there, which include the V8 (all days), truck races, drift events plus all the local stuff. 2. A voucher for a practice day where you get to do as many laps of the track as you can manage/be bothered. 3. Quarterly mag. 4. Plus loads of other stuff as per the www.wascc.com.au website. Yes it is more expensive than some other affiliated clubs but there again you get much more value for your dollar. Hell if you take out the cost of just attending the V8 race for Sunday alone (With, say a pit pass) it is nearly half paid for.

Am I the only one amused by the fact that the mock up cover for this years Autocourse has a picture of an McLaren on the cover. Lewis's McLaren at that. Last time they did that was in 1983 with Prost in a Renault on the cover. Oops.

The inherent flaws in this sort of stupidity are in multitude, but here are just a few: *It has little to no influence over the brain dead clowns who may engage in "street racing". It does however have a major affect on the constabulary who will now be out accusing every man & his dog of doing so. * The clueless spankers who advocate this sort of nonsense do so for the publicity, not for any effect on road behaviour. Other than any minor affect on a select few morons who may engage in "road racing" overwhelmingly all this sort of nonsense does is help promote a culture of intolerance on the roads towards other road users. * It diverts attention from the fundaments of road safety, ie improving roads, improving education & improving the standards of the cars on it. What shits me to tears is that those with their snouts & both front trotters in the trough of "road safety" will happily ascribe any improvements in accident rates to their malformed "initiatives". Please note "initiative" is used here in the Pickwickian sense, ie it can be taken to mean slavishly copying what someone else in another juristiction has done. On the flip side any temporary cluster of bad accidents or fatalities is taken to show the need for more stringent measures, ie heads I win, tails you lose.

Flava Flave says harden up you FIFO weiners & get your entries in.

It would be nice to see some Skylines along to one of the Speed Event Series sprints - even if it is just to spectate. The next on is on at Wanneroo on the 2nd December (a Sunday) and goes from 10am to about 3pm. Entrry is absolutely free & you can get yourself some lunch etc at McCracken house. The series website is at www.speedeventseries.com. Flyer for the event is at www.wascc.com.au. There are a good variety of cars that turn out - everything from wings & slicks open wheelers to sports sedans to road cars to historic cars. In fact you name it & it will probably be there, HSV's aside. There will even be some twat there in a white R32. For some photos of the previous event are at www.circlework.com.au - see the July photos.

Sorry, what day is that again? My browser has been playing up too.

The interesting bit is that the FIA appear to have something more substantive than vague generalisations this time. Anyone care to raise the bar on 100 million?

Well I am off down the TAB to invest $100 in Spyker winning the 2007 constructors championship.

Well to be perfectly honest I don't know. I had changed a bundle of things since my last track day so a difference in the springs is hard to fish out. I can say that the car handles much better during changes of direction particularly through the chicane & even the left/right after the start finish straight (At Collie in WA). The balance of the new car is better than the old, but there are other factors involved not just springs. The grip hasn't improved but then the tyres I was running are not getting any younger & it was bloody hot. If I had to put a number on it it I would say maybe 2 or 3 tenths over a 51 second lap. The advantages are that the car is much less pondorous than before. I would post a photo for a compare & contrast but whomever the blokes in the orange jackets with the long lenses were, they aren't publishing anything. Maybe after next month at Wanneroo.... xmas_sprint.pdf

The FIA has summoned representatives of the Renault F1 team to answer charges of possessing confidential McLaren information, as a new spying scandal threatened to engulf the sport on Thursday. "Representatives of the Renault F1 Team have been requested to appear before a hearing of the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Monaco on Thursday, December 6, 2007," read an FIA statement. "The team representatives have been called to answer a charge that between September 2006 and October 2007, in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, the Renault F1 Team had unauthorised possession of documents and confidential information belonging to Vodafone McLaren Mercedes," the statement continued. "Including, but not limited to the layout and critical dimensions of the McLaren F1 car, together with details of the McLaren fuelling system, gear assembly, oil cooling system, hydraulic control system and a novel suspension component used by the 2006 and 2007 McLaren F1 cars."