Sams Polo 3.0

[sambb]

can this be done to grooved R spec's:

Cleaning my Avon tyres with a heatgun and triangular shavehook - YouTube

[Sydneykid]

can this be done to grooved R spec's:

Cleaning my Avon tyres with a heatgun and triangular shavehook - YouTube

Legally or physically?

Physically you can, it's tricky, and in my experience not worth the effort as you take the "skin" off very quickly.

Legally, that depends on the series regulations that you are competing in.

Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

A bit late on a report but Rounds 1 and 2 of the StateHillclimb championship held at Mt Panorama are done and dusted. To be perfectly honest,due to reasons I’ll touch on further down, I wasn’t competitive so there’s not much to tell RE timesor any great exploits. It was apparent pretty early on Saturday’s runs up the Esses (usually mybest day) that the weekend was going to be a test and tune for me. I’m glad I came to terms withthat early on so that I was still able to have good fun and not frustrate myself into going Kamikazetrying to get times that just weren’t going to be there.

Tyres:
My primary issue seemed to be with the tyres and the lack ofgrip I had. My previous setup for hillclimbshad been 215/50/15 medium A050 fronts and skinny little195/55/15 soft compoundA050 rears. Due to the Audi TT brakes on the new car I had tojump to 16’s and the Compomotive16 x 8’s were shod in medium compound 225/45/16A050’s all round. I wasn’t too concerned about the fronts as they’d havebasically the same tread face width as my earlier fronts. On the rear I figuredthat while mediums was not going to be ideal to combat FWD cold tyre oversteer,that being 30mm wider I should be OK plus at Bathurst you are staged at the topand taken down the mountain behind a pace car allowing you the opportunity toget plenty of heat into the tyres.
Well despite the abundance of rubber from the previous weeksSupercar round I had very little grip. The front end with the clutch LSD andthe front end mods was magnificent and pointy once underway with basically noundersteer so at least I got the de rating of the 24mm front anti-roll barcorrect when I mounted the new wishbone drop links. But off the line I waseither going straight into uncontrollable wheel spin or bogging if I droppedthe revs a bit. I tried boost loading it on the handbrake, sidestepping theclutch, walking it away before laying into it and can honestly say that Ifluffed every start. Whilst never particularly fast, launches were always repeatableon the old car so this had me scratching my head. I ran the fronts between28-30psi (set in the staging line up after a warm up) which always worked withthe 215/50’s. Its possible that my manic oversteer which forced me to run therear dampers much softer than usual were too soft and allowing the car to squata lot, but it was more of a chalk and cheese situation than I’d have thoughtthat could create, but who knows?
Once off the line, I had so much oversteer that I justcouldn’t build confidence with each run. I ran the rear tyres 28-30psi and sawvirtually no pressure rise throughout the runs (1psi max on Mountain straighton Sunday but that’s it.In contrast my soft rears used to come up a solid 2psi.That suggests to me that they were sliding and not gripping and having the sidewallsworked hard which is definitely how it felt. It was oversteering on turn in,mid corner or even if I just got out of the throttle a bit say coming around thelast right hander under the sign into Suliman Park at high speed. The rideheight on Esses day was same as I always set it so I don’t think I got the rearroll centre too high. Nevertheless I did drop it as far as I dared for fastSunday being reasonably sure I wasn’t going to get into the bumpstops and thathelped a bit for that day, but then again I wasn’t pushing as hard as Inormally would because I just didn’t have the confidence. Same rear springs aslast car. This car has 1mm rear toe out total, versus the 4mm on the old cars rearbeam and has the stock 1/1/2-1/3/4 degrees neg versus the 2/1/4 degrees neg theother one had. But because it oversteered everywhere – not just corner entry ormid corner etc, I think it may be that despite the opportunity to tyre warmprior to the run, my little light rear end was just simply unable to get heatacross/into such a big rear tyre in the wrong compound. Thoughts? That a trulylaughably skinny 195 soft could outperform a 225 medium on the rear is a bit ofa shocker but does seem to me to be a part of the puzzle. Don’t get me wrongthese 225 mediums will be sweet on a circuit after they come in – just not ahillclimb proposition.
Engine:
So prior to the event I found that the only way I could keepany timing in the map with the generic APR tune was to run the water meth. WhenI went through the WMI gear bought with the car it needed a serious overhaulwith most of the jets completely clogged so I had to run just one of thebiggest nozzles post intercooler. In street conditions the logs showed that ithad killed off all but a few degrees of timing pull and Andrew (Metalhead) agreedwhen we gave it a bit of a hit on a recce run before Sunday that the car waspulling pretty hard when cool. BUT…. The days were hot, there were lots of stoppagesresulting in lots of idling/waiting. Compounding that, the fact that I had no tyregrip meant that I had to really lay into the brakes on the warm up decentswhich had me in and out of boost. This all meant I was heatsoaked as hell whenI made my runs. I never left the line with water temps below 98 degrees and thelowest inlet temps I saw were 60 degrees on the line, sometimes as high as 70degrees. In those situations I could feel it pulling timing like crazyespecially when I’d go to get back on it after a second-third gear change whereit felt like nothing was happening.
In addition to that I think maybe the Compomotive 16x8’s arepretty heavy. I weighed them with R-spec tyres and they are 18kg. A stock rimand road tyre is 17.5kg so I’m actually heavier on the track with them whereasthe last cars RP01’s and 215/50/15’s were 1-2 kilos lighter on each corner. So it may have been timing pull, heavier rotatingmass or probably a combination of both but in race conditions the car was nofaster than my K03s had been. Andrew commented after watching me coming up outof the dipper that the car seemed a bit docile compared to normal which kind ofconfirmed that too.
To do list:
Engine - Dave custom tune with 550cc EV14’s and bigger2.75inI.D MAF housing and bigger CAI, colder thermostat, startline intercooler water sprayoff the rear wiper stalk, a radiator fan over ride switch, cooler radiator fan tempswitch and extra WMI jet. I’ll get a street 98 tune and a 98 + WMI tune on theother ECU for the track.
Tyres –next hillclimb is Huntley. You don’t get to tyre warmthere so I don’t know if I’ll run unless I can get some rear softs. That’s whyI’d inquired about skimming pickup off tyres as the only alternative to rearsofts is to clean up a pair of the medium 225’s so that they maybe bite a bitbetter straight out of the pits. If I get softs I think I’m now a believer ingoing slightly narrower on the rears for hillclimbs so that you can get heatinto them and stress them a bit more easily when you prep them fo/during a run.
Chassis –front end is unreal. Nothing to do there now otherthan do lots of practice starts to learn what to do. Debating now whether I getDave to put launch control into the tune. Nothing mega, just something that’s asvalve train friendly as possible to at least have it so I’m not trying to makeup a second+ after each botched start. Fluffing a start really kills the joy at a hillclimb so I need to dosomething there. At the rear I’m considering swapping my whole previous carsrear beam in. It has the smaller lighterstock rear brakes ( I just don’t think bigger vented rears/calipers arewarranted), has more toe out to help it rear steer rather than rear slide andmore camber to hopefully prevent mid corner oversteer at the fork. I checked mycable tie damper travel tell tales after dropping into the grate at Sulimanpark a few times and it was still 10mm or so off the bump stops so I can alsofeasibly lower the rear another 5mm. All of this I think will be without meritif I can’t get a stone cold wide medium to grip though.
Either way despite going slower, the car was on the limit inthe corners a lot of the time because of the shaky handling which made the runs‘feel’ quick, so I still arrived back at Macphillamy absolutely buzzing aftereach run. It was great to get back on a track after nearly a year and see allthe usual faces and some new ones in the paddock. And Andrew in the vette wason fire. That thing was a sight to see (and hear) and he was PB’ing and pushingthe top two guys each day so massive congrats to him. His brand new softs wouldalso like to extend a big thanks to his wallet for those quick times too! l..ha ha..

[BenT]

Great read! Thanks for sharing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sydneykid]

My guess, no particular order.
Rear;
Toe out on the rear helps to "warm" the tyres.
So does neg camber (less tyre on the road).
I used to run the handbrake on going down the hill to help transfer some heat from the rear brakes to the wheels/tyres.
That's where larger diameter rotors help.
I also used to swap the front tyres to the rear after a couple of runs, they get "cleaned" up (take the skin off) on the front.

Front;
The larger tyre contact patch is possible the issue with getting off the line, traction control might be a must. The smaller tyre (diameter and width) has more slip (but not smoke) at lower throttle positions (power output), the larger tyre has less accessible slip so needs more power and judging the amount of throttle gets multiples harder. Especially with rapid boost build confusing the progression. Lots of guys run boost in gear, so less in 1st and 2nd for that reason.

We run a 2 stage rev limiter (traction control is not allowed) so we have a low (around 4,000 rpm) limit activated by a button on the steering wheel, this stops the uncontrollable wheels spin in 1st gear, then simply release the button to use the full rpm range.

Hope that makes sense, I had 4 goes at finishing it, interruptions .......

Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

I’m stoked you replied Gary. Its been doing my head in all week trying to figure out why I battled the car so much, so thanks for that. It never bloody occurred to me to switch the rears to the front – even just for day 2 on Mountain straight. In the past on rear softs any pickup has always cleared up straight away and I guess I assumed the same would happen after the first run on day 2. The right rear on day 1 up the esses does nothing except for the last corner before the run up to skyline. It had Justins pickup on it and also mine from that day. When I saw just how bad it was when I packed the tyres away on Monday I cant believe that was the loaded rear at the top and that I didn’t hit the wall!

It looks like I was never getting over to the shoulder at all despite 4 runs and all the warm up decents. I guess pickup on mediums is way harder to clear if they never come up to temp and maybe on the thinner sidewall and still with reasonable pressures they needed a lot more to get over onto that. No wonder I was sliding around. Lesson learned – those would have cleared up with a few start lane burnouts and been fine if I’d switched them and maybe they are much much less inclined to get over onto the shoulder than the little 195 softs and might even benefit from even less air in them on the rear? I’ll definitely be doing a tyre switch for Huntley then!! Only other option that I have the budget foris a pair of 205/45/16 AR-1’s on the back as I hear that despite their many shortcomings one thing they do do is grip immediately when cold. Still looking into that one.
I do see toe out making more temp in the rears at Bathurst since you can do a warm up decent. That wont help me at any other Hillclimbs though but I will get the toe out back into it whether I stay with this beam or the earlier one with the smaller brakes and more camber.

Im on messenger now with the UK remote tuner discussing the best way to do launch control. He can do boost by gear to try to control the manic boost ramp, play with throttle maps (this car had a stock throttle map whereas the last had a more linear one which might have been part of the problem too) and also an anti lag launch so we’ll see what he comes up with.

thx

[Sydneykid]

We will have a pair of 205/40/16 A050 mediums at some point, they don't wear much on the rear, especially at Wakefield. Justin is going up to Morgan Park in 2 weeks to get some racing in before the Nationals, which are there over the October long weekend. The rears might need changing after that, I'll let you know.

Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

So you are running staggered tyres on the Civic. 225/45 front and 205/40 on the back?

[Sydneykid]

So you are running staggered tyres on the Civic. 225/45 front and 205/40 on the back?

Currently yes, in the chase for weight reduction we have been looking for a set of TE37's (in the 16 x 8 they are ~0.7 kgs lighter each than the RPF1's). Finally we found a staggered set of TE37's that were 8" and 7", so we tried the 225/205 combo. The driver liked it and the smaller rear wheel and tyre saved even more weight, all up ~5 kgs, plus rotating and unsprung weight is gold. With the smaller contact patch we have been able to reduce the rear toe out and we can run less rear sway bar on the opening laps, plus the smaller tyre heats up faster. We still have around 5 kgs to go to get down to the weight limit, so I still have to find some more reductions.

Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

nice. Plus a rear CoG reduction if only by a smidgen.