When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Lol. No, I didn't die. I did manage to put the M3 into the wall in turn 11 though. TLDR: I'm fine, car is a little wrinkled but is fixable.
The day was cool, the car was making good power. I warmed up myself and the car in the first session, noted that the track seemed a little slippery braking for the carousel, I wound up blowing the braking and going deep in that corner before turn-in a couple times. I commented on it to other drivers afterwards, but nobody else had noticed the same thing. Huh.
About halfway through the second session I came into the brake zone for turn 11 with a few extra mph and braked a bit later than usual. There's a dip right there, the tires lock up briefly before the ABS releases them, then something confuses it and it goes to "ice mode", where for some reason the ABS is drastically reducing the amount of brake pressure it lets through and won't go back. I blow past my usual turn-in point and the car understeers into the tire wall at about 45 mph.
I winch it into the trailer (backwards, the impact broke the tow hook off the front) and bring it home. I haven't gotten it up in the air yet to look underneath yet (it's going to TC in a week or so for them to look at, and it was enough of a PITA to get into the trailer that I don't want to take it out until then). Initial inspection from above suggests that the frame looks to be straight, with just a little bit bent on the piece in front of the strut tower that the fender bolts to (not sure what that's called). I'm told that's easy to pull straight, but clearly it's going to need fender, hood, bumper, bumper cover, and splitter. There's something bent in the suspension because the front is massively toed out, perhaps a control arm? Oh, and the epoxy fix on the rear bumper (from where a GT3 rear-ended me on the out lap at Laguna last year) has let go, so I should probably do something about a proper fix for that too.
Let's see if ib has broken youtube linkey stuff again:
So why did it happen? I talked it over with Tony at TC Design, looking at the data and the video. I have data channels for both pre and post ABS brake pressures -- the red bar in the video is post ABS and you can see how little pressure is being let through to the wheels. The pre-ABS channel is pegged at max pressure.
Verdict is that I confused it by using too much initial pedal pressure. That's not a change in how I drive, in this car I've always relied on the ABS for high braking corners, the mk60 system is good and can stop the car faster than a person can with threshold braking. Nevertheless, I'm using a lot more pressure than is really needed and apparently that's part of what's confusing it. I suspect the timing of the initial lockup with the dip in the pavement is why it did it at this particular moment (vs plenty of other brake zones with the same pressure).
One other factor is that I noted on a previous track day that it had a tendency to do the "ice mode" thing (although nowhere close to this badly) after I replaced both pad and rotors. This time I replaced just rotors (pads only had a couple days on them), so perhaps that's related as well. The blown entries to the carousel on the previous session seem to suggest that there was something different about this day vs when I was there a month ago.
Ouch, I'm sorry to see that happened Ian, glad you're OK.
I'm no expert on the MK60, but this makes me want to look up the conditions that cause it to go into ice mode. I included the yaw sensor in my build, IIRC, because the system goes into ice mode more easily without it.
I use the same "give it all the brake and let MK60 sort out the rest" approach to this corner, so very, very relevant information.
+1 to both of the above, I'm sure you'll have it sorted out in no time.
I remembered at the last minute to let go of the wheel -- good thing I did because when it hit the wall the wheel immediately made like Bernie Sanders and turned hard left. Glad I didn't have my thumbs hooked in it!
Looking for parts, I thought I had found a fender the right color at a salvage yard in Rancho Cordova -- called them, they said yes, I was waiting for a photo to drive out there and pick it up. Then they called back to say it wasn't available -- I wonder if that means the guy they sent out to take it off the car managed to drive the forklift into it?
Probably going to take the opportunity to upgrade to an MA Shaw lightweight hood, it's not too much more than a used one and they'll both need paint.
I've done basically nothing to the Miata. M3 combo update, though.
TC Design got the primary repair work done back in Nov. New fender, bumper, bumper support, hood (MA Shaw fiberglass), rear bumper (if I'm painting the car I want to include the repair from the rear-ending last year). Some sheet metal in front of the shock tower needed to be cut off and welded on. One new headlight blank, plus the radiator support, headlight bracket, and various other little bits of metal that hold stuff on the front of the car. Tie rod and control arm were both bent, wheel was OK. Decided to do the wheel bearings just in case. Oh, and the windshield was cracked. TCD did their usual awesome job, and I picked it up ready for paint:
While it was there, they also did a bunch of maintenance that was due for this winter. Cooling system refresh, VANOS, rod bearings, some seeping power steering lines. Also, the impact seems to have damaged the power steering pump (backpressure from the wheels turning when they hit?) because it wasn't working. Rod bearings weren't as bad as the ones that came out before the build, but it was definitely time. These have about 110 track hours on them:
The paint shop was up near Sacramento, they did an awesome job on the car too. This is almost too nice for a race car:
After that it went back to TCD for a few last things -- alignment, windshield (left til last in case the paint guys wanted it out), stuff like that.
I've been looking for a race school for a while now, many of them have been cancelled due to covid. NASA SoCal has one scheduled for Jan 8 weekend at Buttonwillow, so I signed up. I've never been to BW before, so I decided to go to the SpeedVentures event there last weekend for some familiarization. The paint guys took all the stickers off for obvious reasons, so I needed to make some more numbers. Yay for vinyl cutters.
Rolled the car out of the trailer on Saturday morning to put them on:
Dropping the trailer off Saturday night:
Sunday morning was cold (29F) and foggy.
I signed up for intermediate because advanced was full, and since it was my first time there I figured I'd be OK with point-by passing. In the end it was moot though.
Supposedly there's a track here, but I can't see it:
By noon the fog had lifted a little bit, but there were still no cars on track. National weather service had a fog advisory for the central valley and I decided that if I was going to be towing home in the fog I didn't want to do it in the dark as well (San Joaquin valley tule fog has caused some major pileups in the past). So I called it that point, loaded up the car and headed out. They sent out the first group as I was strapping the car down, but there was only about enough time for a session and a half and I had made my decision. So my first laps at Buttonwillow will have to wait for another time. 450 miles of towing, another 50 miles on the truck back/forth to the hotel (there really isn't anywhere decent to stay near BW). 2 tanks of diesel, 1 hotel night, and 1 jug of DEF and no laps to show for it. Ah well.
Also, with the omicron numbers, I'm wondering if spending a weekend in a classroom with a couple dozen people I've never met before is a good idea. I may cancel on the school and do another one later in the year.
^
Pos-cat left for the use of the word "moot" - apart from the song "Jessie's Girl", it's rarely used unless you're correcting idiots that say "mute point" when they really mean "moot point".
I took the M3 to the NASA season opener event at Thunderhill last weekend, running TT4 again. I didn't feel like burning up a set of Hoosiers, so I ran the car on RRs instead. The 2022 rules allow a significant power/weight boost for these tires, so it turned out that if I put the OEM/Laguna muffler on it and ballasted it up a bit by filling the fuel tank and coolshirt cooler, I could run the full power tune. I managed a new personal best of 1:57.9, which I'm pretty happy with for the time being. I can see at least another second or two in the data that I'm not getting yet, so there's still work to do!
I met up with @EO2K and @afm who were putting together a lift in Albert's garage. It looked like a lot of work and less fun than driving the Integra.
One thing about winter events at Thunderhill is that I usually wind up getting to the track before it's light. Dawn there can be spectacular:
Glad you got the car fixed and back out. I've fixed a few 330s and m3s from front end impacts, so I know how main pieces of plastic and little brackets are required to get the front end of those together, it can be both painful to the wallet and frustrating. As for the PS issue, it's a common one. There's a check valve in one of the banjo bolts to keep force on the wheels from getting to the pump. If actuate this valve hard enough, and enough times (curbs), it breaks and clogs the system, and you lose power steering. So often this valve is gutted, since it's the first thing to fail. After that, all back pressure does go to the pump, and as I learned at Laguna, it can be enough to snap the shaft of the pump, when the engines turning the pulley one way, and the fluid pressure wants to turn it the other.
Also, I'm sure you checked your alignment already, but wrecks in e46s are enough to bend knuckles. If you can still hit your front camber numbers, it's probably fine, I've never seen them break, but it's worth keeping an eye on.
Argh! I was working tech all weekend and didn't make the connection between you and car #256. Darn. Next time.
I probably won't be at Sonoma in March, but the current plan is to go to the SoCal competition school in April (covid got in the way of going to the January one) and then try out ST4 at the NorCal Thunderhill event a week later. So look for me then!
Glad you got the car fixed and back out. I've fixed a few 330s and m3s from front end impacts, so I know how main pieces of plastic and little brackets are required to get the front end of those together, it can be both painful to the wallet and frustrating. As for the PS issue, it's a common one. There's a check valve in one of the banjo bolts to keep force on the wheels from getting to the pump. If actuate this valve hard enough, and enough times (curbs), it breaks and clogs the system, and you lose power steering. So often this valve is gutted, since it's the first thing to fail. After that, all back pressure does go to the pump, and as I learned at Laguna, it can be enough to snap the shaft of the pump, when the engines turning the pulley one way, and the fluid pressure wants to turn it the other.
Also, I'm sure you checked your alignment already, but wrecks in e46s are enough to bend knuckles. If you can still hit your front camber numbers, it's probably fine, I've never seen them break, but it's worth keeping an eye on.
Yeah, the check valve in the bolt was trashed and apparently it took out the pump at the same time. The rack was fine, fortunately.
TC Design said the car aligned fine. They've done a lot of E46 M3s (kind of their speciality) but I'll keep an eye on it.
I spent the weekend at Buttonwillow, taking the SoCal NASA competition school.
The event was run on the 13 CCW course, so I was very glad I went to the GGLC event last month that ran both directions. The track exercises would have been a lot trickier without having run the course before.
I was there with a friend who has a similar car to mine. All the hotels near BW suck, so I stayed at a HIE in Bakersfield -- it's a half-hour drive to the track, but it's better than the bedbugs at the motel 6 that's 15 minutes drive. We were looking for somewhere for dinner Friday night and randomly found a just-opened sushi place that was really tasty.
I passed! I was also given a hat for asking "the most interesting questions". People who've known me for a long time are not at all surprised by this.
So now that I've got a provisional NASA competition license, it's time to hit Thunderhill next weekend and try it for real. Woohoo!
--Ian
ps: I really hate that this forum is STILL broken if you try to link to external images, but only when displaying in Chrome.
09-24-2021, 11:52 AM
2
