Track day Silverstone GP, 21st August

Bjorn, Nadine and I are booked into Goldtrack for the 21st August at Silverstone GP circuit for a track day. Same format as before ie 1/2 hour on, 1/2 hour off all day. I am only taking my 40 this time sharing with Glenn again, with the aim of tightening down the handling as we still have a little amount of set up to do post rebuild. I really should have writtten down my settings before I dismantled the car! The aim is for John to bring his 993 cup car that I will be racing in September so that I can help put on miles pre race to bed a new engine in.

So if you want to come say hi please just drop in or if you want to enter your car and join in then call Goldtrack on 01327 361361 and book a place.

Charles, you coming?

Me: "Hi Melindi"
Melindi "Hi Charles. I can guess why you're ringing. 21st August"
Me "Yes please"

Guys, I'm in.

Charles

Great you can make it, Charles. Hope lots more will join us 21st August, especially considering that no GTD 40 club track day is happening this year. Why not make this the 'unofficial' club track day?

Nad and I have just signed up for a test & time day at Santa Pod 17th August. I have now done a few of these days and I can assure anyone mildly tempted that it is adrenalin-pumping good fun. Last year I ran the 40 there and did a 12.7 @ 110 MPH, not bad for a 40 with a 302. Same day Nadine did a blistering 10.8 in her Viper! The 40 is awaiting major surgery and is out of action this season, so I'm taking my Viper GTS to Pod instead. It now has a blower and I'm keen to see if I can get anywhere near Nad's 10.8. Please come and join us on the drag strip, the cost is £50.00 per car + £10.00 per person entrance fee. You can book by phone: 01234 782 828. You need helmet, long sleeves and drivers licence to run. The test days are for a limited number of cars and nothing like the 'run what you brung' days where you are having to wait hours between each run. Here you can pratically do run after run with no waiting. Both cars and bikes welcome. I hope some of you can make it.

Bjorn, Nadine and I had a good day yesterday. Didn't see too much of Fangs on track as we were in different groups so I will leave it for them to post their own story, but I heard the viper ran well.

My car ran well too. Glenn and I were sharing the driving and we always had people queing for a ride so we made a good number of people happy! We managed all 8 sessions giving us just under 4 hours of track time during the day. I have never had such a large fuel bill before (over 110 litres) so clearly the car is living on full throttle that little bit more now we have made the improvememts to the handling. Cerainly my confidence in driving the car harder is up and I think Glenn is going quicker now as well.

Very pleased that the new (newly modified at least) anti roll bars gives such a good adjustability so that just one hole difference gives a positive response to handling. Maybe I should post some pictures to show how I converted the standard GTD bar into an adjustable bar for very little money?

Only issues we had were one of my exhaust clamps vibrated its nuts loose and the front wheel bearings need a service now as they haven't been looked at since being bench fitted. Need to eliminate a small amount of play. I think the exhausts will need repacking prior to Brighton Speed Trials for Wendy but that too is straight forward.

It was slightly damp in the morning which made for interesting driving as there was a lot of oil down from previous dry race days not yet washed off the track but I was very pleased with two four wheel drifts managed through the long corner of Vale, playing the throttle in third gear. Not perfectly balanced drifts but drifts nonetheless. I didn't expect to be able to do those at all on these tyres (road going Avons) so am quite pleased.

Can someone please explain the physics of why, when you turn into a corner and get initial push, if you accelerate with an LSD, the effect of accelerating and LSD combined turns the nose of the car in very effectively?

Paul (with nephew) was up there taking pictures so hopefully he can be persuaded to post some. Chares had to pull out of driving but came to spectate anyway, as did Martin Potts who brought up his hairy looking MGC V8. Always nice to have spectators supporting.

I was also driving the race porsche 993 RSR so jump to that thread if you are interested to see how that went.

A few pics from yesterday.... (I hope the weather is better for the Revival at Goodwood!!)

Pics are in no particular order and include:

A curious silhouette Merc - which was not a Merc at all, but a space framed, panelled beastie with a 450bhp 351Ford V8 - 1200kg - "lots of steering input required" - (and I'd like one!!) It was running an old spare engine after "putting a rod through thr side of the race block last week" - oops!

The 'Judd' team - with their beautiful E-type lightweight, that Charles managed to blagg a ride in... Next time it's my turn!

A couple of rather nice Lola reps. The Orange GD was nice, although I'm not too sure about the rear of it and the 'Bardahl' beauty that - well I just like it!! - "Fran, I wish!"....

Obviously the Comp Coupe looked and went just great - my laps with Nadine at the helm were memorable, she certainly knows how to drive high power cars. My nephew was amazed with both rides he had (thanks Nadine and Bjorn) with his first session with Nadine being especially interesting as, out on slicks, a sudden rain shower fell, one lap out! One thing to be said about the coupe, it just soaks up all thrown at it - you can hammer around hour after hour with no ill effects to the car - certainly a change to many 40s (even Malcs suffered increasing wheel bearing play later in the day)..

A few other mixed shots including an amusing 'Gulf' mini, which seemed to be freshly built, with a modern injected 16v motor in the rear driving the rear wheels - was flippin' quick too.

The pics:

Last few:

Paul, that last picture of Fangs looks extra good. Did you use a filter to get that effect? Thanks for posting all the pics, much appreciated.

No filter, but I locked the exposure on the track surface before framing the Coupe, otherwise the camera would adjust the exposure for the headlights, causing a dark/dull image...

Seemed to work reasonably well - I'm still experimenting with varous settings to work out what works well for me. I think a lot of it comes down to paractice, practice and more practice.

So you will be perfected by the time I complete talking you into taking pictures on the 9th September.....

Actually I love the way digital cameras allow you to play around and see what works best without the need for expensive processing each time. And with big memory cards you can go nuts with the shutter release and each picture has a file to say what settings were used. Superb.

Went to service the wheel bearings today as all fingers were pointing blame towards them but they have proven to be completely innocent and fault free! What seems to have happened is that after some hard number of years service I have managed to knock out a nylon block suspension joint (lower A arm, rear joint) and the steering control arm rose joints have a miniscule amount of play developing. Fortunately all replacements are on the shelf so should be ready in no time! Famous last words perhaps....

Interestingly on that 110 litres of fuel used on Tuesday, 81 miles of road driving to the circuit and 155 miles on circuit. That equates to less than 10 mpg. Hmmmm. Parker did make me feel better though, when he told me I am running at least 4 times better fuel consumption than he is! Ouch!

The other measurement taken was tyre wear. We began the day with 5.5 mm of tread on the front left tyre. Equal across the tyre face. We came home with 2.5mm left on the outer edge, 3.5mm in the centre and 4.5 on the inner edge. We were running minus 0.6 camber, and had been discussing raising that to minus 1 degree for track work. However talking to an engineer who seems to have proven correct onmost occasions so far, it was suggested that I try an increased front tyre pressure before I alter the camber angle. This sounds quite radical to me as this recommendation means going from 25 psi hot to 32 psi hot. I think the answer of right or wrong decision might be known come the first corner!!!!!! However it is a very simple test but just needs to wait till the next track day as by no means is this the right thing to do for the road! Changing camber track side is a simple 15 minute job so easy to do this experiemnt. This is what I like about my 40 now. I built the thing yonks ago and my interest has since evolved into set up development. Love it! However this tyre wear issue makes me keen to get Avon to make a new front tyre. Time to start pestering them again.....