[trackday_prep] 309 Trackday Car

[edbar 6]

Are the brembo good quality discs from motorfactors any good?

[Cloverleaf 1]

I've not had any experience of them, but someone else must have.

 

I've got the Bendix ones from GSF so we'll see how long they last....they weren't cheap

Edited July 1, 2009 by Cloverleaf

[Anthony 1,000]

Are the brembo good quality discs from motorfactors any good?

I've used the standard Brembo (not Brembo Max) disks that GSF do/did, and never had any issues at all with them

[Batfink 201]

I think its the brembo Max that have the higher carbon content. They will say in their advertising gumph whether they do or not. To be honest you only really have issues with the more aggressive race compounds like RC6 upwards. The RC5 is similar to the M1144's except it will work to a much higher temperature

[Cloverleaf 1]

It's been 6 weeks since I've updated this :-o

 

And, I haven't got much to report. I've had a knee operation that kept me out of action for a few weeks, and I've been really busy.

 

But I have managed 1 and a half days on the car fixing the exhaust and the washer jets! THe exhaust had a nasty leak which I thought was coming from the manifold to downpipe joint because. Also the downpipe was close to the gear linkage and the rest of the eahuast didn't fit all that well. So I spent about a day cutting and welding the downpipe until the whole exhaust fitted perfectly

 

Then it still sounded terrible! Turned out that the manifold was split down the middle!!

 

Took it off (I hate that job) and tigged it back together.....

 

 

It now sounds nice and quiet and raspy on throttle

 

However, in the process I knocked off one of the water pipes on the distribution block on the back of the engine. Turns out one of the clips wasn't the best so I replaced that. Lucky it didn't happen at a track.

 

Unfortunately I lost a fair bit of coolant in the surprise, so decided to change it.

 

Also fitted some washer jets on the scuttle panel and ran a tube from the rear washer bottle.

 

Then started it up to put it back away and noticed a fuel leak!!

 

I'm hoping that the fuel leak is the last thing to do then it's done.

 

Going to MOT it and then hopefully get on the track before the year is out!!

[Cloverleaf 1]

Another 6 weeks or so and today I spent a few hours on the car.

 

I'm booked onto my first track day of this year at Cadwell in November, so I have some motivation to finish all the little jobs.

 

When I rebuilt the engine I made a baffled sump with a windage tray but I neglected to check the dip stick fitted so I could never tell how much oil I had

 

So today I took it off and cut a hole

 

 

 

I then fitted it back on.

 

More work to come tomorrow

Edited October 17, 2009 by Cloverleaf

[Cloverleaf 1]

I fitted some new rear discs and pads (oow exciting!)

 

 

I then made a little plate and fitted my remote brake bias adjuster. I pre-cut a second hole in the plate for a 12v output (covered in black still)

 

[edbar 6]

Looking good, always a never ending list of jobs to do though as i know! Put mine to bed over the winter now, hopefully drive it next year. Keep up the progress and hope the knee doesnt give you too much jip working on it in the winter

[Cloverleaf 1]

Cheers mate, it's a pain in the ass having a bad knee, never mind, I just bend down and kneel with the other one! lol

 

You shouldn't put yours away for winter, the tracks are still open you know!

 

Anyway, did a couple of little jobs today, pretty much ready for the track now

 

Oh, got some Uniroyal Rainsport 2's fitted to my C5 "steelies" last week, sorted for wet and dry now

 

Secured the fusebox, the "motorsport" one will have to wait 'till I re-wire it next year

 

 

 

Made a sunstrip - I thought it was big, but now I'm not sure! Maybe I should have gone bigger, feels good sitting in the car though

 

 

 

Cut down the door pockets so only the bit around the electric window switches remain. The door pockets hit the door bars before. Looks quite neat I think

 

 

The windows will come out next year as I'm going to go crazy removing the last bit of weight.

 

Really excited about track now

[edbar 6]

Looking good mate, gotta remove the door card pockets in mine aswell. Wont be long till your out on track!

[Rich_p 23]

Do you have the plans for the sunstrip at all please?

 

My friend has a vinyl cutter at his school I can use but if I have the measurements beforehand it will save me some time!

[Cloverleaf 1]

No plans at all mate.

 

Just got some fablon from B&Q and cut the roll in half height wise, lined the cut edge (obviously not as straight as the pre-cut edge) with the corner of the window rubbers and then stuck it on over lapping the window rubber. Then trimmed it with a stanley knife blade. Took about 5mins and was really cheap and easy.

[Cloverleaf 1]

Today I went over the car doing a bolt check, fluid check, ran it up to temperature untill the fans were on, set the tracking to a fraction of toe out and loaded it onto the trailer.

 

Can't wait untill friday now and my first trip to Cadwell

[philfingers 5]

these are mine from sheet ally, can scan the plans if you like and pdf etc

[Cloverleaf 1]

They look good mate. Mine are only untill I can afford some proper windows

[Cloverleaf 1]

After Cadwell I have 3 main problems to sort before I can start optimising

 

1) Engine cutting out

2) Rear wheels rubbing in the arches

3) Brakes sticking on

 

My plans are:

 

1) Rewire the engine loom into a new fuse box and relocate the battery into the car at the same time. I'm leaning towards the problem being down to a dodgy connector either under the dash/earth.

 

2) I've just found out Xsara VTS' had 21mm torsion bars, so I am on the look out. Another bonus of the 306 beam

 

I have also made up my bump stops ready to fit. When you jump in the boot of the car you can't get the wheels to touch so shows how much bump it's getting on track. The bump stops should act like a second spring rate

 

 

They will screw into a nut I welded into the shell when I was making the beam mods

 

 

3) At Cadwell I spaced the master cylinders out using two washers under each bolt. I could have just left it as it worked but I didn't like the bodge so made some spacers out of 6mm ally

 

 

I also noticed that I couldn't get enough rear brake with the bias bar fully adjusted to the rear so I spent a few hours making a spreadsheet to calculate the braking torque at each wheel. I wish I had done this when I spec'ed the master cylinders but instead I used an online calculator to save time! I found that my nominal torque ratio was 36:1 (front:rear)

 

 

Assuming a CoG for my car and the standard weight distribution (60:40) I also calculated that the maximum available braking grip front to rear is 8:1 (for a 1g stop). So you can see how far off I am. If I swap the master cylinders around and adjust the bias bar I can get the braking torque to 9:1 (using the current std rear pads) which will be spot on if I then upgrade to 306 GTi-6 rear calipers and better rear pads .

 

So I started swapping the master cylinders around and fitting the spacers when I found this

 

 

It’s definitely been like this since the start of the track day because when I was there I noticed that when I tried to undo the locking nut on the pushrod the whole pushrod came undone, but obviously I couldn’t see anything. I’m assuming it happened when the brakes got stuck on!!!

 

I think I can order a new pushrod from rally design for about £3.50 though so not too bad

 

Sorry, it's turned into a monster post! Thanks for reading

[Cloverleaf 1]

Well in the last two months I haven't done a great deal on the car appart from re-fit the master cylinders and pedals.

 

However, I have been doing a lot of planning to re-wire my car. As with all things I do, it seems to have escalated! The plan now is to relocate the battery into the car with an FIA cut-off switch, and move the ECU from the passanger footwell into the engine bay where the battery once was (in a sealed box). This means I have a much shorter wiring loom and fewer wires running through the bulkhead. I will have two fuse boxes on the dash, 1 perm. live and 1 ign. live and all the relays next to them.

 

I have now ammassed all I need to build a new loom, including all new wires, sealed JPT plugs, glue lined heat shrink, expandable polyester sleeving, all new terminals, power joining blocks, and earth bars, fuse boxes....

 

 

And I went all out for the bulkhead connector, this will be the only connector that needs to be un-coupled to remove the whole engine loom, ecu included, from the car inself....

 

 

I've done many wiring diagrams and taken lots of measurements, and I've just started building the loom. I'll take some pictures of it when all the wires are temporarily taped in the right place

[GLPoomobile 958]

How much for the bulkhead connector? I'm a bit obsessed with wiring products these days

[Cloverleaf 1]

I'm not 100% sure as I put it on my xmas list after spec'ing it off a website which didn't have a cost, and just informed my family not to get it if it was over £100!

 

I think it was about £80 or so

 

BTW I got a fair bit of info off your thread, so thanks for that!

[Cloverleaf 1]

It’s two and a half years since I last updated but I have been doing the odd bit of work!!

 

Anyway, in the last few weeks I’ve spent a day or two finishing the fitment of my brand new loom. It’s all in now and completely separate to the rest of the original wiring. I plan to redo all the original car loom at some point but for now I’ve made a temporary fuse/relay plate to hold everything to the dash.

 

 

Should make any problems easy to trace/isolate. There’s also room for expansion.

 

The battery is now in the boot, and I have a proper FIA cut-off switch on the dash:

 

 

I’ve also replaced the dash surround as mine was cracked badly.

 

 

I’ve also built an airbox as I wasn’t ever really happy about any of the solutions I’ve seen for fitting the AFM in with an Mi16. I also wanted to take cold air from the scuttle panel as it’s nice and high pressure. These are some pics from when it was nearly finished:

 

 

 

 

And the only picture I have of the car…C5 ‘steelies’ fitted with road/wet tyres.

 

 

I have got some Plasticare but not had a chance to do it yet.

 

There’s so much I want to do still but that’s it for now.

 

And on Saturday I took it for it’s MOT and it passed!

 

Woohooo.

[Cloverleaf 1]

Following the MOT I drove a few road miles for the first time in 5 years....which is handy for discovering if it all works!

 

Turned out the lower engine mount was shot, so left hand corners meant the exhaust hit the gear linkage and every gear change felt like the engine was making a bid for freedom. So I fitted these.

 

BBM mounts.

 

 

 

Also, the oil didn't seem to be getting warm enough (judging by the renowned accuracy of the standard gauge). Not a problem on track. But I ordered a thermostat for the oil cooler and some new braided hoses.

 

I put it all back together and then I had oil surge! Odd I thought. I couldn't figure out why, everything pointed to not enough oil. And it had the same amount of oil as before fitting the thermistat. Anyway, I checked it all and nothing made sense. Drained the oil and there was only 4L in it, compared to about the 6L it should have had. Dipstick said max so it makes no sense. Anyway, I put 2L more in and all is good!

 

Following this i was ready for the track day I had booked, returning to Donington for the 1st time since it got dug up, on 30th October. Plasticare on the bumpers:

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

 

So driving to my house on the Sunday night before the trackday on the Tuesday and the dash lights didn't work (1st time I've driven it in the dark). No problem I thought (Except I couldn't see the speedo). Anyway, on the way home it seemed like the battery light was on very dimmly. Got home, measured the battery and 12.6V at 3k rpm! Nightmare!

 

I had an old alternator but didn't know if it worked so I bought a new one on the Monday and took the afternoon off work to fit it. I decided to keep the old alternator 'just in case! And can you believe it, the new one didn't work! When I turned the ignition on there was no battery light at all so it didn't excite. So back off and fit the old one. Luckily it worked! 14V. Not what you want at 8pm the day before a track day.

 

Anyway, track day was awesome. Car was faultless (1st time ever!!), very fast and ballanced. Did nearly 400 miles including driving there and back. It did highlight that I need to improve the driving position a bit!

 

Some vids:

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

Joe

[calvinhorse 870]

Bout time!

 

Awesome! Good to see another 309 getting used.

 

Who ran the trackday at donnington?

[Cloverleaf 1]

It was a Javelin day. Was pretty well run but maybe a bit busy. Busiest day I've ever been on.

 

And yeah, progress happens in bursts!!

Edited November 14, 2012 by Cloverleaf