Awesome updates! Jealous that you've got such a tight crew to run laps against. Having close competition always makes it way more fun and I will be surprised if the competition there doesn't drop your lap times significantly compared to being out there alone.

I keep some JB Weld SteelStik in my trunk. I figure it's a bit easier to cut some off, rub it together and stick it on to something. I'm sure I could find a place to mix up some 2 part if I needed to, but the ease of use seemed like it would be beneficial if a roadside repair was needed. I also keep Rescue Tape in case a fuel/oil/coolant line needs a quick fix when we're roadtripping. I haven't needed it yet, but it gives me a little peace of mind.

 

Thanks dude! The car's been a ton of fun recently, and having neck and neck competition is helping me focus on technique and data review rather than throwing more upgrades at the car. It seems like I'd be wasting a good experience throwing a built motor/turbo in my car right now when these guys have been running my current powertrain setup for years and are still faster than me haha. The competition is definitely helping too. Without anyone else to compare off of, I'd have been jazzed on that sub-1:30 (although I still am) and probably wouldn't have looked for much more improvement haha.

Rescue tape has been added to the shopping list as well. How have I never heard of/looked up this stuff? Rad.

 

Alright, I had a pretty good streak of being reasonable but that ended today. In the car's current state, I can add ~10 horsepower or pull 100 lbs out of it, and still stay within my limits for TT5 class. I don't think it'd be possible to pull that much weight out of the car without resorting to extreme measures and spending a lot of money. As it sits, the car's roughly 2,420lbs with 3/4 of a tank of gas in it. I could go on about this, but I decided I'm adding power instead of substantial weight reduction.

Been milling over some options (basically e85 or the Fab9 intake manifold) and I finally decided to get the car set up for e85. Ordered a set of ID 1050's and an ECUtek bluetooth dongle from Fab9 this morning. The idea is to have ECUtek maps for 91 octane and e85 that I can flip between if necessary using my phone. FlexFuel setups for the OEM NC ECU are all pretty half-baked and the general consensus is that you shouldn't mess with flex on these cars unless you're on a standalone. I've never seen any of the e85 stations around here dip below 85% ethanol so I don't think I'll have an issue with emptying the tank and running separate maps. Honestly, I'll probably just run the car on e85 only from here on out unless it's an emergency. And yes, the 1050's are absolute overkill for my current setup, but I'm "older and wiser" now and am only buying injectors once regardless of what I decide to do for more power next year.

Unfortunately for us NC guys, naturally aspirated Duratec/MZR engines can reach MBT at WOT on 93 octane pretty easily. E85 is said to be good for just another 5-8whp, since there's not much, if anything, to be gained by advancing timing. I may gain a touch more than this since I'm running 91 over here. At any rate, I should end up at just a couple/few horsepower under my 190whp limit. Hopefully the car will be even more competitive because of it, and f*ck it I was already gonna have to buy injectors down the line anyways.



Little prep/checkover on the rig today. Hitting Streets of Willow (the smaller track at WSIR) with a bunch of buddies on Sunday. The track is tight and tech, and favors traction a little bit over power. I.E. it's a great Miata track. I've never been spectacular at driving this track but Mitchel and Frankie are sending me their AIM data tonight so I'll have some data to work off of and maybe adjust my usual line accordingly.



I'm also extremely happy with my current wheel/tire situation for this car. Having a dedicated set of track wheels/tires this year is something I always wanted to do on my last car, but never got around to. I should have done this on my last car instead of one or more other upgrades I spent my money on. Definitely getting more out of running higher end tires for track use and cheap tires for street use, instead of one set of mid-range tires for everything. I'm not timing myself in the canyons so it doesn't matter haha.

I almost don't even want to mention it but the NASA/Maxxis contingency is playing heavily into my plans for the year and plans for this car in general. I managed to walk away with a few RC1's after the last NASA event and grabbed another one off Maxxis's site so I have another fresh set at the ready. Gonna run my current set this weekend then throw the stickers on for next weekend's race in hopes of getting another small edge and winding up on the podium again. I made a thread last year about TT5 tire choice last year that @codrus and @doward answered a lot of my questions on. General takeaway from Doward was that building your TT5 car around the RC1 was the most favorable option, if not running Hoosiers with less horsepower. Codrus had lots of feedback and many good points as well and some of his input stuck with me.

I would not have figured any of this out on my own, so thanks guys. I have you to owe for that.



In other news, this motor's got 6 track days on it now and is statistically coming up on it's expiration date I'm going to procure a backup in the near future just in case something happens. In the meantime, oil pressure is the same as the day I first started it, I haven't seen anything concerning during oil changes, and it doesn't smoke, consume oil or make any weird noises. In all seriousness, I'm not too worried about the engine detonating, but I'm definitely going to get a spare to have on hand.

I also ordered a cheap bluetooth tire pressure monitor to mount on my dash so I know what the tires' hot pressures are as soon as hot lapping is over. Might not be necessary, but it should eliminate one more task to do throughout the day.

Hopefully I'll have some solid video to post after the weekend!

 

Got the tire pressure sensors/monitor in the mail today. Windshield angle is suboptimal for the display but it’ll function fine tomorrow.



Sensors are ugly as heck lol. Oh well.



Grabbed an Aim from my buddy on the way up to the track. While I was there, we pulled the bumper to trace out the GV lip for a local aero company. Car looks mean with no bumper.



I ended up noticing the passenger side of the splitter was angled upward yesterday, likely due to when I hit it unloading the car at WSIR a couple months ago. I lowered the splitter Mount a bit to get it flat again, but this left a bit of a gap between the splitter and lip. Naturally, I glued some foam to fill the gap and called it a day. That’s an issue for another weekend.

More fun to come tomorrow!

 

Glad it was helpful!

To potentially muddy the waters a bit more, the 1.0 category is looking really interesting this year. The new Hoosier RCEs have made the Spec E46s a lot faster, I've heard a couple people say good things about the new Toyo R, and I ran the new Hoosier Track Attack Pros at Sonoma last weekend. All are 1.0 category tires, and I really like the TAPs. They barely give up anything to the R7s in the corners and while they only have 2/3 of the power increase of the RC-1s they are so much grippier and better to drive. Same weight as the R7s (much lighter than RC-1s) and they seem to have less (but not zero) heat-cycle related dropoff as well. No idea how this plays with the TTC rule set, but for Super Touring I like them a lot.

--Ian

 

Well maybe if you stopped adding stickers to your car you wouldn't be so far over weight

Surprising that you don't gain that much by going to E85. Would there be any merit on tuning it on a lower blend, say E65, for safety if you don't need much ethanol to hit your power goal?

Nice mushrooms on your wheels. I didn't know they made TPMS sensors like that, but function over form.

Still jealous you guys have access to so many tracks. I'm starting to think about grabbing a tow rig to make it out to ORP or UMC. I ran some Willow Springs laps in the sim rig last week for fun though. Sounds like you're running the main WSIR layout and not Horsethief or Streets of Willow?

 

Damn, That's great feedback for this year. I've been revisiting the classification a bunch recently and somehow missed the addition of the TAP's to the 1.0 category. Honestly I hadn't even read much about them after seeing the price tag lol. But if they're lighter, grippier, and don't heat cycle out as quickly... Damn that could be really good. As it sits, I can swap my RC1's out for 1.0 category tires and still come in at 3whp under my limit. I'm already locked into burning through this next set of RC1's but I'll keep an open mind to those tires down the line.

The stickers are the only damn thing that make it a race car! Although one of my buddies noted that the ones on my wing endplates are probably adding drag...

Yeah, I was surprised as well about the ethanol gains, or lack thereof. Don't ask me why but the general consensus is that MBT on these engines is around 24-25* at WOT for N/A applications. Way lower than what I remember BP engines liking. My current tune runs around 20-21* of timing across the board at WOT, so maybe I have a little bit to gain there? I think I'm going to need to tune on full e85 to get close to my power cap. I'm not going to hold my breath and am assuming I'll get a ~8whp bump from it.

Tow rig is the way. Potentially expensive and adds a lot of factors into the mix, but my life changed for the better once I started towing the car to the track lol. Camping out the night before instead of hitting a 3am wake up call is a game changer haha. So today, we ran Streets of Willow (the small track) and then the race next week is on Big Willow (...the big/main track). Which one were you running on the sim? The main track is fun because it's almost all *****. I excel there more so than Streets, which is much more technical lol.

 

Track day report and videos will come this week. For now I leave you with this.

 

Its alive

I might have all the layouts now that I'm looking at it. I definitely remember taking a lap or two and ending up on a skidpad that I wasn't expecting. I assume that was streets of willow, but I'll have to check next time I'm on the rig.

 

A sign from god!

I was gonna ask you, with the splitter mounts you have, and the length of your splitter, do you think you could get away without the front support rods? I was thinking I could brace the plywood with a boxed alum frame of some sort and maybe not have to run the front rods/supports, as those frame mounted splitter mounts seem pretty BEEF. Am I trippin?

 

hahaha that's gold! Looking forward to your track update!

 

Ahh yeah, definitely Streets of Willow then. That skidpad is fun. Very easy to oversteer as you get on throttle at the exit. And it's right in front of the stands so everyone can see and know how cool you are.

With 4" of protrusion on my car, I could get away without the rods. Actually ran the splitter rod-less for a weekend of mountain driving before adding them on. Stiffness was borderline, though. You could stand on the splitter no problem but it would dip/flex a a bit. If not running rods, some sort of bracing would have been prudent.
Funny you'd ask, though. When my buddy Frankie and I pulled my front bumper off on Saturday, he was really surprised at how stiff my splitter was compared to his with the rods installed. He's running the same mounts with 3" of frontal protrusion I think and no other supports. Doesn't seem to have any issues, though. He drives the **** out of the car and it's seen speeds of up to 120mph before.

 

Frankie's car in Super Street is *hilarious*

 

Not sure if he mentioned it, but he was planning on swapping his 2.0L back in for a bit to make the car fit into the class. Glad he figured out how to do it without the engine swap, but his level of dedication is still admirable haha.

 

That car is so hawt. Pretty similar to what I had in mind.

I've read before that standing on your splitter is nifty and all, but not at all how aerodynamic load on it works, since the load is far more spread out than standing on it. And also that while a splitter might make several hundreds of # of downforce, the actual load on the splitter is less than that, due to science.

But I have no idea what I'm talking about and generally just copy stuff that I like from the internet

 

That's a good thing. Sounds like the MZR has a faster charge burn than the BP series. 20 years of tech development I guess.

Think of it this way - the more spark advance you run, the more work you're doing to push the piston down, while it's still moving up on the compression stroke. Negative work.

 

I kinda figured that was the case! But never bothered to do any substantial research on that front either haha. Top priority is the street cred that comes from having a splitter you can stand and bounce on. Everything else is a distant second.

Wow, yeah great explanation. I know what's going on in there but I've never thought about ignition timing like that haha. Makes perfect sense.

 

Track media! Pretty kick *** Sunday. Got to see a lot of buddies from down south, beat my all-time PB by 0.3 seconds, and was able to run neck and neck lap times with my buddy David in his K24 NB for the first time in over a year.


I'm not expecting anybody to remember, but David and I were neck and neck with our Miatas back when I had the NA8. At GTA Buttonwillow in 2023, he was running a 13.5:1 compression bottom end and fully built head netting around 260whp. My NA8 running 16psi on 91 octane was right on par with his car in the straights. He ended up murdering that engine (cylinder wall cracked and the valve seats were also beginning to collapse) and put a stock K24 back in for the time being. On Sunday, our cars were once again perfectly matched. He PB'd with a 1:23.6 and I PB'd with a 1:23.5. Felt super good to be running head to head with him again.



My buddy Chase rallied the troops and got a pretty massive group from San Diego to come up for the event. A lot of first time trackers and more than a few of our friends from down there. I rolled up late Saturday night and there were already quite a few people camped out.

Naturally, a late-night track walk ensued.



Conditions in the morning were perfect. First session was at 9AM and ambient temps were in the mid-40's. I've never been spectacular at driving this track, and had been watching videos of all my fast buddies driving it all week. There were a couple lines I watched Mitchel and Frankie take that I'd never seen or considered before. I experimented a bit after my warmup laps and noticed that the predictive timer showed their lines were way faster than mine. Started changing my lines based on what the predictive feature on the Aim said and on lap 7, I beat my PB in the NA by 0.3 seconds. 4.3 seconds faster than the last time I was here in the NC, before the 2.5 swap and addition of the wing. Off to a solid start!



Unfortunately, we're getting into that time of year where it starts getting warm quick in the morning, and the first session is usually the fastest of the day. I couldn't get back into the 1:23's for the rest of the day, but could feel myself driving much better with the aid of the predictive timer. Not only that, I was driving more consistent than I usually do as well. On session 3, six of my twelve laps were all within 0.3 seconds of each other. That's gotta mean something good, right?

I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off for most of the day, as usual. Helping friends fix minor mechanicals on their cars, messing with my tire pressures, cooking hot dogs, etc. I didn't get to look at my Aim data in between sessions, but made sure to do a lot of experimenting with lines so I'd have some data to run through later. Last night, I shared my data with Mitchel and Frankie. They absolutely clobbered me, running 1:21.7 and 1:21.8 respectively. Though I have a lot of time to make up, we were able to deduce that I lost a lot of time due to gearing alone. Mitchel's car in theory is making a couple less horsepower than mine, but with the 6 speed and 4.44 diff (compared to my 5 speed and 4.10), he just takes off on me at every corner exit. I was a few mph slower than both of them at the end of the front and back straights. I actually made up some time on both of them in a couple corners, but they were generally faster than me there as well. Good, I guess. I still have plenty to work up to haha.


Really hard to see, but one of the guys from San Diego brought his AZ1 up to the track. The thing was absolutely comical. Made the Miatas surrounding it look like half-ton trucks.

Another mild blunder of mine was the DTC-30/DTC-60 pad combo I was still running. I ordered and received a new set of DTC60s on Friday last week. Unfortunately due to the rain we were getting, I couldn't bed them in on Friday night. I was running them with no problems at WSIR two weeks prior for 4-5 lap sessions, so I figured I'd be fine on them for another weekend. I was somewhat wrong. Running longer sessions (no reason to bring the car in after 5 laps since we weren't racing), I was able to get the pads to fade pretty bad by the midpoint in a session. Luckily, the ABS is responsible for controlling brake bias on the NC, but it could only do so much and my braking distance would start to increase substantially around lap 6-7 if I didn't take a cooldown lap. It wasn't debilitating, but I made a point to slap on and bed the new DTC-60's last night so I wouldn't have to deal with it this weekend.



Otherwise, it was another solid, smooth sailing day! The beefier sway bars took care of the slightly excessive body roll that the car was previously exhibiting. Just by chance, the balance with both bars in the soft setting was perfect as well. Just a little more oversteer than with the previous bars. Gotta do an oil change and slap on the new tires for this weekend and the car should be ready to rock!

 

Looks like a blast. nice job on the PB's. always fun to compare data with similar builds, I see more time heading your way!

 

Thanks, Ed! Hopefully lots more time eventually haha.

Weekend was sick. A bit of in-car footage from my PB lap for now. Very happy with it aside from scrubbing too much speed through turn 2. I'll write up a report later this week.

This dude Sergio and I held it down for the 4-banger crew this weekend. The grid lineup after qualifying was hilarious, I wish I had a picture of it. Some Shelby GT350 and 5.0L Mustangs, C8 Corvette, silly grey NC Miata, GR86, followed by more Mustangs and Corvettes...