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Old 25 Jul 2006, 10:02 (Ref:1664035)   #26
tristancliffe
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tristancliffe should be qualifying in the top 10 on the gridtristancliffe should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
Okay, so we went to our first sprint meeting with Borough19 on Sunday, at Bentwaters, Ipswich.

It was a very enjoyable day, and a steep learning curve was sort of conquered. I set times I was very happy with (a Jedi Mk4 was about 10 seconds faster, but he's got the same power, half the weight, and 4 years experience in that car alone). I spun on the power once (not enough opposite lock quick enough, and in my amazement at not hitting cones I didn't dip the clutch quick enough), and went outside the coned area on my other timed run. My brother, the second driver, locked up the rears downshifting a bit early, but recorded a goodish time on his other run. A third car in our class also had both times disallowed, so Andrew (my brother) won the class - coming home with a trophy was a surprising and satisfying turn of events.

Here are some pictures if you want a look.


The car, modelled by my Dad
The car, again modelled by Dad
Driving to the startline
And I'm off!
Probably getting ready for 3rd gear already before T1
Braking for the last chicane
Turning in
Powering out
Back in the Paddock 1
Back in the Paddock 2
Back in the Paddock 3
Andrew 1
Andrew 2
The car cooling down happily, a job well done (shame about the driving)

More piccies from my girlfriends camera

Me sorting gloves and balaclavas
Wandering off for another job
The car
Fathers pre-race calming words
Getting ready for action
Last minute preparation
Mentally preparing myself
5... 4... 3... 2... 1......
Embarrasing return
Post-spin debrief
Andrew ready for the go
And he's off

Video (no sound) : From the start at my first ever go!
Video (no sound) : Good start, but will be ruined by a spin in a minutes time

We intend to go to Cadwell in September for another meeting, and in the mean time we are going to rebuild both suspensions. The corner weights, ride heights, push rod lengths, ARB drop links and other stuff is all over the place, which can't be helping, so we want to find a baseline setup. Any tips for this bit? We are going to try and maintain the average ride height roughly as it is now, but raise it a bit to stop bottoming out. I don't really know what cambers, castors and toe to run with, so we need to see if that stuff has been recorded before in our file, or make some educated guesses and see what happens.

After Cadwell I think I'll try and do my ARDS, then attend some 'Official Test Days' when the chance allows. But so far it's brilliant fun!

Last edited by tristancliffe; 25 Jul 2006 at 10:07.
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Old 25 Jul 2006, 11:09 (Ref:1664070)   #27
driftwood
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driftwood has a lot of promise if they can keep it on the circuit!
The corner weights, ride heights, push rod lengths, ARB drop links and other stuff is all over the place, which can't be helping, so we want to find a baseline setup. Any tips for this bit? We are going to try and maintain the average ride height roughly as it is now, but raise it a bit to stop bottoming out. I don't really know what cambers, castors and toe to run with, so we need to see if that stuff has been recorded before in our file, or make some educated guesses and see what happens.


Martin was sent the technical manual so you can set the car up on crossply tyres as per factory settings
really there is no point in running these cars unless you have the car in a basic set up then any change syou make can be refererred back to the original set up

you will probably need softer springs ( perhaps by 10-15% ) for sprinting as u run softer tyres than circuit racing and the car is doing 1 to 1.5 laps as oppossed to 3 or 4 flying laps where the car will have more speed and react differently to your speed
you may need more wing than a circuit run requires due to lower average and terminal speeds
you will only get data by going testing -trying to gather data from a competition event is hard work as your concentrating on that side of driving testing is less pressure have more time to reflect between runs and time to experiment with no time limits like your next run due!!

you will find when you run in a proper circuit test day your sprint format is completly wrong ( factory set up will be more relevent here ) and you will need race tyres as yr sprint tyres will last 2 laps at most and your gears will need to be for higher speed ie 120 mph plus
i guess yr sprint tracks are 85-100 tops for a second or so
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Old 25 Jul 2006, 13:56 (Ref:1664209)   #28
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tristancliffe should be qualifying in the top 10 on the gridtristancliffe should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
I thought I had seen something in the file about it all. We just assumed the setup would be reasonable, and it was only because I had to move the cornerweight gauge that I decided to see what it was. We were surprised to see the fronts differred by about 70% and the rears by about 40%!

We are just using the tyres we have at the moment - whether they are soft sprint tyres or harder track tyres I don't know - they got fairly warm in 100 seconds on Sunday! But as we can't do a test day until we have done our ARDS this is out of the question. We will set the car up baseline to begin with (and improve some of the dodgy engineering on it whilst we're at it), and go from there to Cadwell. We're not good or experienced enough to be affected too much by a poor setup, just as long as all 4 wheels are on the ground most of the time (and on Sunday they weren't).

Again we are still running the gearing as we recieved the car. 5th gear is too tall even for Bentwater, which apparently is quite fast for a sprint track. But right now I don't think we'll bother adjusting it, as we are not fighting for the last few seconds possible - we just want something that is drivable so we can learn. It won't be long before I do get interested in adjusting the gearing and the downforce (I think it's on max anyway), but right now we just want a baseline setup. It's not that big a job - just got to undo lots of nuts and bolts, write everything down, adjust it, write the new values down, and bolt it back together. A couple of evenings work per end (less once we know our way around the car a bit better).

Are you the previous owner Driftwood (sorry if you've already stated that), because I'll be very pleased to have your knowledge reasonably close at hand. I'm in charge of all the internet stuff, as my Dad is as good with computers as a fish is at climbing trees!
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Old 25 Jul 2006, 14:10 (Ref:1664213)   #29
Arty B
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Arty B should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
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Originally Posted by driftwood
karting is good value for money motorsport i find it hard to better it even with all the "toys" i have !!

Sprintimg doesnt do it for me not enough seat time for the ££
£90 at mallory will give you 50-100 miles running
£200 at Brands or snetteton 4 sessions easily do 100 miles at snett

I appreciate the concept of ards test but its too expensive for what it is
having a race car will keep you skint so your gonna have to get used to it!
Not every circuit demands a Race Licence, it is possible to test on a Speed Licence - Pembrey for example.

http://www.barc.net/venues/pembrey/p...ar_testing.php

Go to this link and look at 'requirements'
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Old 25 Jul 2006, 14:41 (Ref:1664240)   #30
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driftwood has a lot of promise if they can keep it on the circuit!
1 i have always felt to test u just need rac licence
2 i have all reynard parts sent the old fella the manual
3 u must gear the car to the track yr at or u may as well stay at home
4 cornerweights u want no more than 10 kg dfference across the axles ideally want a slow as poosible5 u really need to spend upto 8 hrs setting car up with ride height corner weights tracking camber etc castor is more in the car than an adjustment u need to worry about at present
5 tyres are everything wrong tyres again u may as well stay at home- just cos a tyre gets warm dont mean jack ( with the weekend heat we had an ice cube was warm ! )

the way yr heading yr starting to waste yr valuable ££ on sprints when u have no time/ date to work with adn the way yr heading u will spend 4 times the money and half the track time than going testing so i suggest 2 things

1 set car up as per manual and then GO to Mallory and drive the car far better VFM if u and yr brother have rac licence u can drive 20 -50 laps between you ( watch yr mirrors)
2 take car to a qualified f3 man who can sort yr car out faster than u will and watch him do it and ask pertinent questions spend £2-300 and get the car right and learn more that way
pm me and i will give u my mans details in milton keynes (he is f3 engineer)
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Old 25 Jul 2006, 21:47 (Ref:1664522)   #31
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tristancliffe should be qualifying in the top 10 on the gridtristancliffe should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
Interesting - my initial enquiries led me to believe that I needed a Race licence to test... I shall enquire further.

We didn't gear it yet as we had very little idea of the performance of the car - without being able to judge top speed or corner speeds then it's impossible to gear the car accurately. In time this is something we will learn to do.

We intend to spend days setting the car up. If we don't know something we'll find it out. If we have to repair or improve something then we intend to do it properly. We are not total novices with cars, and so the basic stuff should be easily achievable.

We will have to investigate tyres a bit further, as it's hard to know what the best route is. We may have had the wrong tyres on Sunday, we may not have - I don't know. But we spent a very small amount of money and had a lot of fun doing it. As time passes and our experience and expectations grow we will of course do it a bit more professionally - ensuring tyres are of the right compound, and have not 'gone off'. For now we are after the cheapest way of seeing what an F3 car is like - it won't be long before we are prepared to spend money/time sorting the car and travelling to far away events.

We have no data, but we also have almost no expectations - none of us have driven anything like this before, and we might have decided that it wasn't for us. I'm aware that in the long term sprinting is not a cost effective series to drive in from a track time point of view, but it's entry requirements and commitment requirements are perfect for us at the moment. When we are a bit happier with the car, and understand the stuff we need to do or bring with us when driving it we can go to more proactive driving days - an ideal time for my brother, my father and I to learn about the car. So far it seems very easy and natural, but for all I know it might get harder.

I've added Mallory and Pembury to my list of tracks to investigate, and I'm going to enquire about Snetterton again - surely we must be able to drive there (as it's only 15 mins away).

I shall PM you now - even if we don't get the F3 Man to actually do the work, it will undoubtedly be a useful and knowledgable contact to have. And he may get us out of trouble when we do something silly. Actually contacting him will be Martin's job, as he is the main financier of this 'project', but I'm sure I will pick his brains from time to time also.

Thanks again to all of you for your advice - it really is invaluable, interesting and positive.
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