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Another track day down and in the books! Yesterday I went to a TNiA event at Charlotte again. It was a HOT one. When the event started at 4pm, it was 97* out. Thankfully, RSX Friend got there right as the gates opened and snagged us a garage spot.
As mentioned earlier, since the last event I've realigned the car with slightly more front camber, pretty much dead on the recommended 0.5* more front than rear. I could feel the difference on the street, so I backed off on the RARB from my 14mm on the softest setting to a 12mm unit. Funny how I tried to carve my own path and wound up exactly where the professionals told me I would be at my ride height and spring rate. I've also got no hardtop this time and ran with the soft top up, back window zipped down, and no front spats.
On the drive there I had the AC blasting on max and my oil temps were pushing 240 on the highway. Seeing as I normally run 250 on track, I was a bit concerned about how things would go.
Parked up in the garage.
After the first session it was the usual check pressures, oil level, and generally just make sure everything held up. On one wheel of the RSX, we found some kind of liquid flung out from the wheel onto the tire. Looking at the caliper, there was a white residue on it coming from the bleeders. Crap. The Wilwood NPT bleeders were leaking! We quickly got it in the air and cranked them down. Some of them were just slightly more than finger tight.
These are racing brakes that came with some kind of thread sealant installed, they shouldn't need to be tightened up after the first high heat cycle! That's the intended use case! Either ship them dry or uninstalled, or torqued tight enough to avoid coming loose on track!
Queued up for a run. The advanced group was packed full of Mustangs and Corvettes. Two BMWs, one other Miata, and the RSX were it. Pretty small run group all things considered.
My last session was the best, unsurprisingly. Slightly cooler weather and cloud cover plus more time on track will do that. I'm pretty happy with my time all things considered. I'm only a half a second off what I ran last time when it was 75* instead of 95* with worse aero. Of course, the increased camber didn't hurt either. But those last three laps were really consistent!
Like last time, my main takeaway is that I need to focus more on getting the most out of my braking. Straightening out my braking zones has helped, and I feel like I'm harder on the brake pedal than before, but I still need to focus more on eliminating distractions like downshifting and trailbraking as much as possible to get consistently at the limit of the tires in a straight line.
The car itself handled the heat fine. Oil temps stayed around 250, the suspension was well balanced and I didn't make any adjustments throughout the event. I did notice however that my rear brake rotors were running much hotter than the fronts. Using a temp gun (unreliable on shiny metal) after the cooldown lap, my fronts showed 190* and the rears 350*. I may want to remove the rear dust shields and add some kind of air vane to cool these down just for pad life.
We had a nice sunset leaving the the track.
During the parade laps, we swapped cars and I took the RSX for a spin. Man, what a different experience! His seat is far more vertical, the steering wheel is closer, and of course it's a FWD K24. Honestly, I think the go-kart description everyone loves to give a Miata fits his car better. I couldn't go to the limit of course, but I got a few WOTs in and maybe 75% of the cornering limit. I couldn't believe how the combo of a helical diff and FWD just pulled you wherever the front wheels were pointed. The new ball joints didn't make for a harsh ride either. The K24 is just such a flexible engine with torque everywhere. I can see why people love putting these in Miatas.
I'm really not sure what's next for the car other than paint. It just goes and goes with no issues at all. Maybe I need to jump back onto that Mk60E5 swap.
Last edited by OptionXIII; 06-27-2024 at 03:23 PM.
Nice, dude! Glad to hear it went swimmingly (aside from maybe swimming in your own sweat).
Those last three laps are tight, congrats on that. 0.3s spread is awesome for three laps in a row.
All in all, it seems like you probably drove faster overall than your last time out. Looser chassis with no hardtop and 20* hotter ambient temps would amount notably to higher lap times, I'd think, even considering your improvements with the camber.
Your brake temps seem awfully strange, though. I wonder if the readings were accurate. I remember reading even Emilio saying once that they've never found a need for more than sport rear brakes on the SuperMiata rigs, and have never ducted the rears either.
Oh, also mad respect to the guy tracking his Cobra R. Don't see many of those around, much less at the track.
Sadly it's just a replica, it was there last time too! He built it from a bare shell with a 351 Windsor in place of the stock modular.
I don't really NEED more rear brake cooling, but I do like keeping them as cool as possible so I can continue to run less aggressive pads. I saw a post somewhere on here where a guy said that removing the dust shields and directing air at the inside of the solid rotor dropped his temps by 100C! When I ran stock Sport package brakes front and rear, they were pretty much the same visually. I don't really trust the infrared thermometer, but the difference between front and rear with the new BBK is visible to the naked eye. I could practically hold on to my front caliper.
In contrast, the RSX is running Gloc R10s in his Superlites (or the Cobalt equivalent) and he can't brake below 30mph on the street without waking up the whole block. It's really cut back on how often he street drives it. I told him to look into the GS1 pads so he can switch back and forth.
The speaking of Mustangs though, the coolest car I saw there was definitely this SN95. I'm not sure which engine this is and TNIAs are so fast paced I often don't get to talk to as many people as I'd like, so I didn't even get to meet the guy. I actually saved the first picture on my phone from a Facebook post on a national group like Professional Awesome Technical Forum or something, so seeing it in person was sweet!
As soon as I posted my reply, I thought to myself "It's probably a replica" hahaha. Still a good looking car, though!
Totally forgot about the rotor shields lol. I removed mine so long ago that I forgot they were ever there. Would be very interested to see how much of a difference removing them makes. I assumed the difference was somewhat negligible but maybe I'm wrong! In reference to your buddy's setup, I run GS1s on the street and an R12/R10 F/R combo for the track. R10s and above on the street are brutal (and make me feel bad for my rotors).
That SN95 is sick as hell, though! Yeah, that's an early 4.6L 4v, albeit decked out with lots of shiny things. They put those motors in the Navigators and Marauders as well. The 4v equivalent makes the heads on the 2v and 3v modular motors look tiny as hell haha. Damn that's a sick looking car. Funny enough, the only guy I've ever seen track a decked out SN95 was at our TNIA events last year.
The SN95 is Ricky_Roadracer on Instagram. The car has a pretty cool story behind it. The motor is a built 4v modular motor that would have come in a 96+ Cobra and the Lincoln Mark VIII
The SN95 is Ricky_Roadracer on Instagram. The car has a pretty cool story behind it. The motor is a built 4v modular motor that would have come in a 96+ Cobra and the Lincoln Mark VIII
06-27-2024, 03:04 PM
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