Umm you might want to pay Earls a visit. Trust should most likely have one for your car... i'm using a trust kit.
Earls in quite exxy, but worth every penny. Just like ARC... they are amazing... but veeryyy expensive! You get what you pay for tho, and an oil cooler is not something you want to 'save' on! Neither are gauges. i wouldn;t trust anything else but Defi.
the details for the trackday arent up yet, and nobody is booked in. The event is going ahead 100%, just there has been a couple of changes pop up in the past couple of weeks that we need to clarify.
best bet is to send me an email first, that way i can reply to you as soon as its ready to go!
OK, no worries, I'll get onto that later.Originally Posted by narada
First on the list would be look at your brakes - they cop an absolute beating on the track. Get yourself some good pads (Endless, Ferodo, Hawk all have good track offerings) and change your brake fluid (Endless RF650 and Martini GS610 are my two favourites, although Motul RBF600 is also very good and well priced)
If you're due for a set of tyres have a look at something like a set of Falken Azenis RT615 - they're a R spec tyre but on the street side of the scale so you can use them for everyday driving as well. They have nice big chunky outside blocks so are better at copping a beating without falling apart.
Definitely do an oil change before you head out there. Also consider gearbox and diff oils as well. Fill up with good fuel before you hit the track. Take a bottle of drinking water with you as well. When you get to the track don't worry too much about how fast you are - just take it easy, learn the track, find out where your braking points are and keep it smooth. Then work up the pace - brake later etc etc...
I reckon your biggest risk is that your radiator may be clogged and so you might overheat. A bigger rad would fix this of course, but since your motor is stock, I would say that a restored stock radiator would do the job. Your engine already has a huge oil cooler underneath the rad btw.
Getting the stock radiator inspected and cleaned out will prolly cost about $200 or so. Also make sure that all of the plastic ducting and panels in front of the radiator are still in place. The FC has the radiator in a weird spot, and so if the stock plastic panels have been removed, then the incoming air can just go around the radiator instead of thru it.
Apart from that, the only other reliability things would be (as many have said) to change your brake fluid, and inspect your pads to see that you have at least 4-5mm of meat left. And you should get a boost gauge anyway and we've talked about before and what Justin said is good advice, if you keep your hot laps to only 5 at a time, then that will keep the temps down and the car happy. And never come into the pits without a cooldown lap. If you're still having probs with temps, turn your heater on full bore to give the engine some extra cooling (not so cool for you unfortunately)
And that's it really, that will take care of the car (you've just had a service recently anyway), just go out there and have fun
Thanks guys
Kev~Yea i was just doing some reading of my own and it seems the stock oil cooler is enough to handle quite alot, so thats good news! The bad news is, as you said, the stock raditator is quite hopeless. But $200 is not bad, definitely less than i'd been budgeting for.
Is changing brake fluid a big job, is it something I can easily DIY? Same with brake pads?
Changing fluid is a 2 man job but if you have a few bucks in the budget I would recommend you buy a set of these: www.speedbleeder.com which makes it a pretty easy one man job (also get the optional bag and hose). Pads are also easy to change once you know how (the hard part is jacking up the car).
bleeding brakes is very do-able with two people DIY, but its so easy to get it wrong and put an air bubble in your brake leads! just be careful cos once you get one of those, you wont stop on track all of a sudden! haha
but just in case it does happen, just try and keep pumping the brakes until you can stop again (and dont panic!)
Go visit Ben@ Touge tune. He changed my brake fluid. WOW!!! that's all I have to say. The old school way of doing things are heaps better.
Same break set up, felt 10 time betters with worse fluid.
FMIC are more about reducing intake temps to starve off detonation and do offer a slight increase in power but will also increase lag. Heat is the killer of turbo cars and hot induction temps can be adressed with CAI and FMIC's which improve the reliability factor paticularly in summer and on track days.
If you are doing a track day with a stock IC then keep the boost down; more boost=more heat
i would dfefinatley get the guages fixed and buy tyres and if you can afford it a larger oil cooler if you can keep the engine oil temps down then not as much heat will be transferred to the water plus it makes things last longer
fwiw i would spend less and buy cheaper tyres cause its your first time to the track you should focous more on learning the lines how to brake etc etc not setting a sub 1 min time
Tein flex on Nangkang tyres ftw!
My suggestion is to do a full fluid flush before you go to the track, especially if it hasn't been changed for a while.
Since you're a track novice, don't bother with semi slicks. Having that much grip just masks driving deficiencies (see the quote from me in VTECMACHINE's sig). Drive on relatively bad tyres (the Nankang NSII's are a cheap tyre that can handle a lot of abuse, and grip reasonably but not well), that you can afford to destroy, and learn how to detect a car at its limit and how to drive it there at a lower speed before you start trying to do it fast.
Hey guys great advice~
re oil cooler: The stock oil cooler in the FC has actually turned out to be quite competent, however the radiator isn't. So i'll be either flushing or replacing it with a bigger one come track time...
Also, I've decided to go with getting:
- Gauages (boost, oil pressure, temp and maybe engine temp). Have no idea where to mount them though.
- Tyres: Adrenelins? I seem to be hearing nothing but praise for these and they are reasonably cheap. However, i'm still open to idea's with this, I will consider getting the nankangs becuase I like the idea of getting used to my car on crappy tyres and then upgrading later.
- chaning brake fluid and oil. Maybe some of the others too if I find good DIYs for them
- Brake Pads. I don't mind forking out for these, Endless seem to be quite good
And thats it! (for the track day anyway)
I'm pretty happy with that, in the end I think i'll end up spending alot less than what I had initially budgeted for.
what are we looking at for a good set of brake pads and machining rotors??
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