Nulon Nationals Round 2 28th-29th March

[crashdown]

[RBrennan25]

Cracking photos as usual Ciaron. Love them

[Daleo]

Awesome stuff!

Congratulations/commiserations to all the drivers, and their cars; some awesome runs, and epic sounds I've seen so far.

[Duncan]

well...that wasn't my best weekend of motorsport ever.

left Canberra at 2.30 to head home and pick up the stagea....got in at 5 to find it wasn't ready (who would have thought a leaky flange was a bad thing)? So I gave Pete a call and said I'd release the photos unless he shared his car with me; of course he said yes considering the alternative.

So Kel and I packed up and hit the highway in the cube and cima....about 8pm while hooning along in the fast lane THUMP THUMP THUMP, yes the Cube had run over a screw and got a flat.....destroying the sidewall before I go into a safe place to change it (but thanks Luke for offering to help plug it).

Anyway, pulled all the track gear out of the Cube and pulled the spare out (yes, of course it was flat too). Put the jack under the car (well of course it was too low to get the jack under at first), changed the tyre, pumped it up using the compressor, repacked the car and did the remaining 200klm at 80k/h.

Arrived at Boolambyte (yes, wtf?) about 11.30 to discover the worst news of the weekend....yes, Kel and I were sharing with Ciaran, Pete and family in the party house rather than Eric/Dave at the grown ups. Its hard to believe those farts were coming from living human beings.

Got to the track on Sat, changed the entry to Pete's car, sorted scrutineering, got the club stuff set up and ready to go. Pete went first in his car (good choice) then I had a quick run. Pete then had a second run and came back and said his crutch was broken and no gears, no go. Not to mention the potty words coming out of Eric's mouth while the tried a whole bunch of different CAS to get running properly. The 2wd guys looked on while polishing their cars wondering what all this 4wd shit is about.

Anyway...spent some time under the dash adjusting the clutch up a bit and shocking the clutch to free it up gave 2nd,3rd,4th,5th, and even 1st and reverse if you were cruel enough to the box. Pete gave it one more run, I demonstrated my awesome driving skills by destroying his clutch while he was driving (just ask face book ). Back on the trailer, beers and boring qualifying for F1 that night and then back the next day to watch everyone else having fun.

So in the end I got 40sec motorsport which I think is a new weekend low.....but despite bad luck it was a damn good event. Good on Nulon or looking at how last year's event went and making some big improvements, in particular extending it to 2 days.

The guys went awesome in the end for 2nd overall, so well done everyone....there were some really quick times across both the 4wd and 2wd guys.

[fatz]

i though our house smelt like roses

[Pezhead]

Bit of a disappointing day for me and hard for the SAU team all round.

Duncan's Stag wasn't finished so had to double enter with Pete.

Pete welded the clutch with a hard launch and was out most of the day. With a bit of team work they got it going again.

My woes were ignition cut out hard around 5.5k rpms. Did two passes and checking all wiring with no luck so I packed it up and came home.

Examining the ECU logs on the computer I noticed boost spike to 1.7/1.8 bar with the boost controller off. Turns out to have been a split line. Duh! Can't believe I was that stupid.

So I will get up early for another drive back up north for day 2. Let's hope I can lay down a good time.

Time for my progress update. As Duncan said potty words were free flowing from my frustration on Saturday before I discovered the problem. Poor Ciaron copped most of it as he played "1000 random could it be" game at me while I was trying to logic out the problem. Feeling defeated I decided to go home on Saturday before the event finished. But the extra 20 minute drive up and around made the trip home just that much longer. Funny how your brain clears after fighting everything all day.

Defeated, I couldn't even be bothered to change out my A050 Soft Semi slicks out for the drive home.

Well as above, the problem did turn out to be that split actuator causing the ECU to kick in the overboost protection. Full Injector cut on about 1.7 or 1.8 bar.

I decided to sleep in my own bed and head up in the morning. The news from the team was that we were 10 points behind first place and needed me to get my sorry ass off the bottom of the leaderboard

So up at 3am drive back out to Bulahdelah. All the way I'm thinking I shouldn't have left my jack with Dave so I could have swapped back over to my road tyres. Even though I probably didn't have the energy to do it. I was thinking, I wonder if I will have any tyres left after the runs for my track day on Tuesday?

Landing in to the SAU Farm House at 6 am, Alex greeted me at the door and promptly made me a hot brekkie. Quick power nap on the couch then out to the track.

Since I hadn't done a power lap I wanted to take it a little easy on the first run. Pleasantly a 38.3 put smile to my face immediately. Times dropped for the next two runs and I landed a 36.54 to place me 9th overall. Up a big way from 40th where I was sitting at the end of Saturday.

Thanks to EVERYONE who lended me a hand trying to sort out the problem. Especially Jez, Pete, Duncan and Ciaron.

Let's hope the next event the SAU team doesn't have it so hard. Doing the trip up at 80kph and doing 1000k's of commute is just a bit much for 40% of the team.

[GTRKat]

Well done guys!! Hard fought!!

Looking forward to round 2!

[fatz]

This photo explains what Duncan has become

And I felt sorry for this f**ker

[Pezhead]

^ so the club has come from skylines to cubes and micras!

[Redline_GTR]

Sounds like there were a few problems going around.

Eric so far that was 2 for 2 events with problems

Good improvement on the gains and all ready for the trackday I hope.

Still well done on the result guys, really shows what the club has

Also nice to see all the pics Ciaron, awesome as always.

And that addition to Dave's car lol.

[Aggroman]

Dicks make you go faster as they usually come with a decent set of balls

[Tonba]

Was great to meet you all. Good to see the Skylines out there doing consistent times. SpeedRun is currently working on a feature, and it should be ready this weekend or at the latest, end of the weekend..

[Pezhead]

In car of my quick run. Looks like being in a valley really messed with the GPS signal. All 5 runs trace different patterns all over the place. And through the second chicane the signal is off-sync and trying to "Catch up". haha.

Too bad my trap speed was 20kph slower than my other runs. You see me get out of shape, lift a little and correct out of the second chicane. Lost me another 0.5 second there!

[Pezhead]

Here is that same run with Dave's fastest run for comparison. Pretty sure Dave did a 37 flat on that run.

Clear that GTR grip and good launch gets me to the first chicane about 1.5-2 seconds quicker. But by the end Dave has closed that gap to 0.5 second. Good job Dave! Can't really tell how far the cars are out of shape from the in-car. But I know you were well hung out around turn 2-3.

[fatz]

i think the moeny is on the gtr through teh final chicane

whats everyone terminal speed

even with a slipping clutch i was getting 148km/h

[Pezhead]

Good effort there. My best was a 143.4 kph. Just rechecked the SMS and the GPS is off in that video. Trap speed on my fastest run was 138 kph - slowest trap speed of any of my runs haha.

Pretty sure that Mick said he was in the 140's too and he has 100 kw more that we do, just couldn't get traction with his 265's even though they were semi slicks.

[Pezhead]

Oh, and checked the ECU logs and on two runs I rev'ed it out to 8.5 - 8.8 RPM's. This new motor loves to rev, sounds sooooooo gooooooood!

[Aggroman]

fastest trap speed was a 148.6 but on the fastest lap it was a 144 dead

[fatz]

should listen to druncan

we didnt even check the tyre pressures and they were all at 40 psi

lol

[fatz]

going to write that down for the next track day

check tyre pressures

lol