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Sorta related. This is a customers car, recently completed by TC Design in Campbell, CA. This particular car had it's engine provided by Trackspeed Engineering. Diff, wheels, clutch and several other bits from us, including the tub. The owner has a second car with an engine, wheels, Xidas from us.
The bare tub started life here with the intent of building an T25 E3 specific car. We had the tub dipped to remove paint, sealant etc. TC Design seam welded, caged for us late 2012. My intent was to run a fuel cell in the pax floor with 2" filler on the RR fender just under the B pillar. Not having to run around the other side of the car would save about 6s per stop. The special jug would dump 5g in about 6s. All in all we would drop our usual 40s 10g stop down to about 18s stationary. Beyond the time saved, the CoG and PMI would both be improved by this change. Mounts built into the cage for the carbon skin top. The box you see in the OEM tank area was repurposed as a bin to hold other stuff, such as a battery, alternator, fire bottle, etc. I'm not sure if it got used in this customers build.
We ended up running Crusher in E1 (and won) two E3's and an E2 car. This tub "Bubbles" never got built. A customer called early this year for parts going into national level PTE car. He bought the bare tub from us, we shipped it back to TC and here is the result.
Since it is not our car, I'm not able to answer too many questions about it. From the pics you can see it has an NB1 engine, USDM intake manifold, header and sway bars, no aero so do the math on class config
Trackspeed radiator in this application seems like big-time overkill and unnecessary weight in a not-so-good place. ??
Beautiful car though. I dig the metallic interpretation on 949 Orange -- the first combat scar will be painful.
I think the burnt orange is coincidence. Not our car.
TSE rad works. Yes a fair bit heavier than some other options but I'm guessing that was the option offered when the engine was being built. FWIW, our revised crossflows are on a boat, due here next month. Not availablel when this car went together.
Faster than say... SM7s with three or four sessions on them?
Million dollar question. From the little data I've gathered, fresh RE71-R's and Rival-S are only about 1-1.5s off R7's on a 2 minute course. So about as fast as an RR. Yes, stupid fast. 1.5g on street tires w/o aero fast. That's at full tread but that condition is not persistent should you avail yourself of their grip for more than about an hour.
UTQG tread wear ratings are as of the date of the current version of the TT rules. Any new tire or tire with a changed UTQG tread wear rating must be evaluated by the National TT Director before the rating will be legal for use in NASA TT classing
Million dollar question. From the little data I've gathered, fresh RE71-R's and Rival-S are only about 1-1.5s off R7's on a 2 minute course. So about as fast as an RR. Yes, stupid fast. 1.5g on street tires w/o aero fast. That's at full tread but that condition is not persistent should you avail yourself of their grip for more than about an hour.
So pretty much as fast as SM7s.
Has Greg given them a point value yet? I'd guess he is waiting until after nationals.
Hold up! Where's the data on sm7s being that much slower than r7s? I missed it......
Bringing this back up, I'm extremely curious. This would directly effect my tire budgeting
I don't have real data, just putting together internet conjecture. Here is what Dragoo had to say about the SM7.
J. Drago(SM champ) after the test day at Roebling Road:
"My observations..
-What I saw was a tire that was very comparable to the SM6.
-Overall lap times were thought to be faster, in actuality they were a little slower.
- The drivers all commented that the tires were much easier to drive ( which is suprising as the SM6 is already very easy to drive)
- wear was not an issue in either tire and I don't rememeber seeing much difference in wear in the tires
-there was no "magic lap" in the SM7 like there is in the SM6 (usually lap 2) We did not see that in SM7
-The drop of SM7 sticker was comparable to that of the SM6
-The SM7 is not supposed to grain( neither grained in test, but we were assured the Sm7 will not grain like Sm6 does at certain tracks ( COTA, Hallet, Mid Ohio)
- drivers all felt if the new tires read SM6 instead of SM7, few if any would notice any difference.
-this is not a new compound, this is what is being run in Grand am now
-also look for a regional contingency to be announced"
What I've read on the R7 is that it is a faster than the R6 tire once you change your setup to match it.
Direct comparisons of the SM7 and R7 are going to be difficult to find since PTE is likely the only place that is meaningful.