[spookypt]

Hi everyone, thought you might be interested to hear how we we've been going since the Nats 08. We recently took the car out to Morgan Park for what was basically our first shake down since last years Nats after all the suspension re-geomotry had been done...

The report card is as follows.....

I knew the day was going to be interesting when on arrival both Scott and I needed to pee. Well for those of you who have ever been to Morgan Park urinal it really is only 1 man wide! Well both Scott and I were so busting we just shoe horned ourselves in there. I think more came out than was supposed too as we literally squashed each other. We kept saying... You''ll fit, you'll fit and laughing and sighing.... Then we realised that they could here us in the pits and there was also a bloke on the loo so we either looked like a 2 very friendly blokes busting or 2 raving gay men from Brisbane who couldn't wait to get each other in public dunnies!!! For those unsure, we were BUSTING!

Anyway, to report -

The Bad. Well we had a few problems straight out of the gate. For some reason we are having problems with the auto. Its going from 1st then when we change to 2nd/3rd it runs as 2nd/3rd in overdrive. We managed to circumvent this "sort of" by disengaging the overdrive unit but still had an intermittent problem all day so it did affect our driving quite a bit. We also found that on the change down from 3rd to 2nd, it was going to a neutral zone then 2nd so we had no engine compression braking... This happened alot and eventually Scotty fell victim as he headed into the flip flop at warp speed and he speared off the track, breaking a bolt in the rear and bending a rear shock. We managed to fix this in the pits with a large hammer to get us back just as a temporary for the day. We also had the steering rack work loose and “nearly” fall out!!! Made the concrete straight wall and Scotty become almost too familiar!!!!! Phew.
We also STILL have a significant and constant engine misfire at about 5500rpm which means once we get there, after that we have nothing... Considering it should pull to 8000+ its a problem. Scotty is doing an assessment of the MOTEC to see what he can find. We also have a little too much camber in the rears so we will adjust to get more traction etc. We also think the brakes are still way too woody and unresponsive and have no feel so we may need to adjust as well. Of course there are a few other tech probs but they are the majors....

The Good. The car tracks and turns so much better now. Its way more controllable and feels steady under foot. Anything would be better than what we had. We have a dab of understeer but not much and we managed to dial most of that out by adjusting shock return valving so the car now feels so much more drivable. Obviously some major things need looking at with brakes, engine and gearbox but we have a good starting point now as the car is running at about a 6.5 out of 10 of its real potential.

So based on those issues we ran pretty well. Scotty managed a 1.13 - 7 ish (sorry Scotty if I got that wrong) and I a 1.14 – 4 (or so) so we are pretty close and with fairly significant issues to drive around and all working against us.... a pretty respectable time. I know the seasoned boys are running 1.09’s but if you factor in the probs we had and this being only the cars 3rd time the car has run in anger I reckon our times are OK and not bad out of the box!.

For me, I’m just happy developing the car and learning! Oh what a learning curve!

The biggest things I noticed outside that were when your car racing with non cobra guys they race on the track for sheep stations... Madness. It was practise yet they wouldn't let you pass even though we were quite a bit quicker and just did some silly things.. Lesson 1, let em fade ahead and just focus on your own thing....

Much more development to come but all in all we are progressing very well and when it all comes together it will be an amazing race car for a BUDGET price! If only all motor racing was that way!

SpookyPT