Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

There is no chance in hell that Dan Mackie would ever conduct himself the way the offending driver supposedly did.

Dan is very well respected on SAU and has been involved in the club for a number of years so lets be careful before bringing his good name into the discussion please.

Since pictures are making their way to facebooks and flickr's anyway here are the pictures of my car and his after the impact.

When you look at these remember that this is the first major incident for SAU:NSW in 9 years of racing and the other car did appear to have a mechanical failure as the root cause. We all know all the mechanical stuff on our cars that can go wrong - so it would appear I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just keep it in perspective.

post-16200-0-51967800-1299552999_thumb.jpg

post-16200-0-40418600-1299553017_thumb.jpg

post-16200-0-05074800-1299553027_thumb.jpg

Eric, you are a credit to the club the way you are remaining level headed about the incident.

As has been said, legally it was on the track so you are left with the bill. However morally most see it differently. I expect that the other driver was hugely embarrased about wrecking two peoples cars that he didn't know how to react appropriately.

Please let RENEW know what the plans are for fundraising should it be necessary. We supported a member who had a rollover at WP some years back - we all know what goes into getting a car to the track, and hate seeing anyone have their car damaged.

Mal

VP RENEW

Hiya, I was the guy that Eric and a few others helped to fix the brake issues on the yellow Evo 7 1/2 way through the day. They did it without even thinking about it. They gathered tools and brake fluid and had the brake system working again in no time. Wow. It was great to go out with a bunch or people who help without thinking about. So it is disappointing to see this happen, and more so the attitude of the other driver who blew Eric off and didn't man up to the situation. It is common knowledge that there is no insurance on the racetrack. This is where honour amongst men/women should prevail, where you'd talk and agree to sort out the problem.

Unfortunately, the other driver appeared to have none.

Cheers SAU.

PS thanks for the day, I had a hoot whilst the car was going. Can't wait till next time. In the mean time, back to the shop.

I feel for you Eric, as i would not ever want this to happen to me or anyone. AS i am preparing my car for track work, so I am worried this could happen to me. Is there a way of stopping these Hi-po cars getting out on the track with us. i know we are split up in groups according to experience and car types, but im driving a $50k car and there are people out there in $5k cars. Last track day i had a heap of fun but i did see this car (commodore i think that was fully track preped) come out in the beginners session and thought to myself who let him on. I can handle it if i crashed the car myself into a wall/barrier but for someone else would stress me out. anyways hope it all turns out well

Duff, as a club I can tell you we are not taking this lightly. I'm sure the subject will come up as a discussion topic at our May AGM. Come along and voice your opinion.

There are other venues for super fast high power cars to go to. Our club events are geared towards guys like you and me - I just want to be able to take a car out for fun at a race track or texi day. I've already had some discussions about possible changes and suggestions. The club executives will be discussing the matter and I'm sure I speak for all of them that our goal is to run fun & SAFE events. Our member's safety is top of mind.

THE PLAN

I know a few of you have been wondering what's my game plan. Well, I inspected the damage better the other night. The quarter panel is gone and has buckled the inner wheel arch. That seems to be what is causing the driver's door not to close all the way. The frame rails look ok from the top and bottom but I'm no panel beater.

Does someone have a car trailer they can loan me for a while? I'm in Turramurra on the North shore - so close would be good.

STEP 1 - ensure it is repairable! I need to take the car to a panel beater to see if they can pull the buckle out of the rear inner wheel arch. They should be able to pull exactly from the opposite direction of the impact and hopefully the door frame un-tensions and closes ok. I want to have the panel beater do just that work to straighten the frame and door frame and then bring it back to my place.

STEP 2 - pick up the parts I need to fix it. I've already been in contact with a couple of sources for the parts I need. I even sourced a bumper in the exact same Crystal Blue color, can you believe it? That wasn't a very popular colour. I still haven't found a rear diff or tail lights, but those can wait if necessary for a bit.

One of the sources suggested I just order a new quarter skin out of Japan. Is more expensive, but saves a whole lot of stuffing around trying to cleanly cut the skin free from an existing wreck. Would also look more tidy as a repair.

STEP 3 - Drop the suspension parts that are keeping the car from rolling freely on it's own. The rear wheel really flops around since the suspension's bent and rear hub is broken. I plan to replace the whole rear cradle in case the lower a-arm bent it out of shape. At this point the car should be driveable - I hope, I hope!

STEP 4 - On to the body work. I will need to cut the old skin off the car and cut out the pieces that are beyond repair. I do have a number of tools for a job like this, compressor & air tools, wire feed welder, etc. I wouldn't consider myself a body man, but I can bang out a dent as well as any other backyard mechanic. I'm not sure if I will re-spray it on my own or have a shop do it. I've sprayed cars before (about 15 years ago!) but my garage is just dusty and narrow for that kind of work. Of course the MX5 is HEAPS narrower than the GTR. So probably depends on the budget at this point.

I figure if each of these steps were about 1 to 1.5 weeks I could have the car sorted before we go on holiday over Easter - that would be a huge accomplishment.

Personally i'd be getting 3 quotes from local smash repair shops then drop it off when you have enough cash to get it done.

If you ever try to sell it in the future and a potential buyer notices that its been repaired and then asks for receipts only to find out you did it yourself it will never sell. Sure collect the suspension and rear end parts but leave the body work to an expert.

Lets get the ball rolling, takes all of 2mins and it's free:

www.Chipin.com

PS. As for whether cars like this 300zx should be allowed at our type of trackdays, it was 10th fastest on the day, does that mean the 9 cars faster should not be allowed either? I've been going to trackdays for nearly 10yrs now and its the first car to car contact i've ever seen, it was a mechanical fault that caused a freak accident. Nobody deliberately goes out on the track to hit someone else.

Eric,,,My wife works at John Newell Mazda so if you need any help with parts,,,please ask.

chunkylover69,,,nice detective work,,,NOT!!!.

I have some history with that "racecar" when Dan drove it years ago. Basically it's piece of crap and I should know I spun spanners on it. The last time I saw it,,,it broke an o/s/f lower control arm and expired at the fish hook. That's just one incident,,,,there were more.

It's a pity that 2 of our drivers stopped and put out the fire,,,should have let it burn to the ground.

Cheers

Neil.

As for the fire extinguishers, I would have thought there would be a fire Marshall at the track, or at least some bloke with a fire extinguisher in the back of a ute who can dash out when need be. Is this not a standard thing for track days?

Lets get the ball rolling, takes all of 2mins and it's free:

www.Chipin.com

PS. As for whether cars like this 300zx should be allowed at our type of trackdays, it was 10th fastest on the day, does that mean the 9 cars faster should not be allowed either? I've been going to trackdays for nearly 10yrs now and its the first car to car contact i've ever seen, it was a mechanical fault that caused a freak accident. Nobody deliberately goes out on the track to hit someone else.

That chipin thing looks great, Eric set it up and lets spread it around as many forums as possible.

Also Ben, well put on that last part.

As for the fire extinguishers, I would have thought there would be a fire Marshall at the track, or at least some bloke with a fire extinguisher in the back of a ute who can dash out when need be. Is this not a standard thing for track days?

As soon as the accident happened the truck with the extinguishers was dispatched and raced over there. He was there before some drivers even knew what was going on.

Ben thanks for the tip on Chipin. I've been struggling with Paypal trying to set up a separate account for this but this is way better.

http://fixwifiesmx5.chipin.com/help-me-fix-wifies-mx5

I also do agree. The incident seems to be mechanical. Wouldn't have mattered if it was a race car or not, a car without brakes has to find a way to stop and well... there we were.

Oh ok its just that I recall someone was asking over the PA for people to run over to the car with a fire extinguisher. Didn't notice the truck

That was me on the PA, with me on pit lane I couldnt see the severity of the accident (the timing tower could though) so I thought more extinguishers and people on hand wouldnt hurt and made the announcement. Better to be safe than sorry :)

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Hey Dave, welcome aboard! Good to see another soon-to-be Stagea owner here. The wagons are awesome — plenty of space, still got that Skyline DNA, and loads of potential if you’re into mods. Definitely post up pics when you get it, everyone here loves seeing new builds. What model/year are you looking at?
    • See if you can thermal epoxy a heatsink or two onto it?
    • The other problem was one of those "oh shit we are going to die moments". Basically the high spec Q50s have a full electric steering rack, and the povo ones had a regular hydraulic rack with an electric pump.  So couple of laps into session 5 as I came into turn 2 (big run off now, happily), the dash turned into a christmas tree and the steering became super heavy and I went well off. I assumed it was a tyre failure so limped to the pits, but everything was OK. But....the master warning light was still on so I checked the DTCs and saw – C13E6 “Heat Protection”. Yes, that bloody steering rack computer sitting where the oil cooler should be has its own sensors and error logic, and decided I was using the steering wheel too much. I really appreciated the helpful information in the manual (my bold) POSSIBLE CAUSE • Continuing the overloading steering (Sports driving in the circuit etc,) “DATA MONITOR” >> “C/M TEMPERATURE”. The rise of steering force motor internal temperature caused the protection function to operate. This is not a system malfunction. INSPECTION END So, basically the electric motor in the steering rack got to 150c, and it decided to shut down without warning for my safety. Didn't feel safe. Short term I'll see if I can duct some air to that motor (the engine bay is sealed pretty tight). Long term, depending on how often this happens, I'll look into swapping the povo spec electric/hydraulic rack in. While the rack should be fine the power supply to the pump will be a pain and might be best to deal with it when I add a PDM.
    • And finally, 2 problems I really need to sort.  Firstly as Matt said the auto trans is not happy as it gets hot - I couldn't log the temps but the gauge showed 90o. On the first day I took it out back in Feb, because the coolant was getting hot I never got to any auto trans issues; but on this day by late session 3 and then really clearly in 4 and 5 as it got hotter it just would not shift up. You can hear the issue really clearly at 12:55 and 16:20 on the vid. So the good news is, literally this week Ecutek finally released tuning for the jatco 7 speed. I'll have a chat to Racebox and see what they can do electrically to keep it cooler and to get the gears, if anything. That will likely take some R&D and can only really happen on track as it never gets even warm with road use. I've also picked up some eye wateringly expensive Redline D6 ATF to try, it had the highest viscosity I could find at 100o so we will see if that helps (just waiting for some oil pan gaskets so I can change it properly). If neither of those work I need to remove the coolant/trans interwarmer and the radiator cooler and go to an external cooler....somewhere.....(goodbye washer reservoir?), and if that fails give up on this mad idea and wait for Nissan to release the manual 400R
    • So, what else.... Power. I don't know what it is making because I haven't done a post tune dyno run yet; I will when I get a chance. It was 240rwkw dead stock. Conclusion from the day....it does not need a single kw more until I sort some other stuff. It comes on so hard that I could hear the twin N1 turbos on the R32 crying, and I just can't use what it has around a tight track with the current setup. Brakes. They are perfect. Hit them hard all day and they never felt like having an issue; you can see in the video we were making ground on much lighter cars on better tyres under brakes. They are standard (red sport) calipers, standard size discs in DBA5000 2 piece, Winmax pads and Motul RBF600 fluid, all from Matty at Racebrakes Sydney. Keeping in mind the car is more powerful than my R32 and weighs 1780, he clearly knows his shit. Suspension. This is one of the first areas I need to change. It has electronically controlled dampers from factory, but everything is just way too soft for track work even on the hardest setting (it is nice when hustling on country roads though). In particular it rolls into oversteer mid corner and pitches too much under hard braking so it becomes unstable eg in the turn 1 kink I need to brake early, turn through the kink then brake again so I don't pirouette like an AE86. I need to get some decent shocks with matched springs and sway bars ASAP, even if it is just a v1 setup until I work out a proper race/rally setup later. Tyres. I am running Yoko A052 in 235/45/18 all round, because that was what I could get in approximately the right height on wheels I had in the shed (Rays/Nismo 18x8 off the old Leaf actually!). As track tyres they are pretty poor; I note GTSBoy recently posted a porker comparo video including them where they were about the same as AD09.....that is nothing like a top line track tyre. I'll start getting that sorted but realistically I should get proper sized wheels first (likely 9.5 +38 front and 11 +55 at the rear, so a custom order, and I can't rotate them like the R32), then work out what the best tyre option is. BTW on that, Targa Tas had gone to road tyres instead of semi slicks now so that is a whole other world of choices to sort. Diff. This is the other thing that urgently needs to be addressed. It left massive 1s out of the fish hook all day, even when I was trying not too (you can also hear it reving on the video, and see the RPM rising too fast compared to speed in the data). It has an open diff that Infiniti optimistically called a B-LSD for "Brake Limited Slip Diff". It does good straight line standing start 11s but it is woeful on the track. Nismo seem to make a 2 way for it.
×
×
  • Create New...