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Laguna was fun today, but then again when is it not? The fact that it’s 45min from my house just makes it that much better.

the splitter definitely helped, even at 4.75” from the road surface. Pleased so far. Will add the spats and tunnels and lower it a bit. But for now it’s already like a drift event when I’m on track so I’ll wait to do those things once I have a wing.

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Chopped 4 seconds off my first time at this track (last time there) so I’m happy with that too.
 
Oh and everyone should duct their radiator. Yesterday wasn’t that hot so we’ll see if it’s enough when it’s warmer, but ducting dropped peak CHT by 20-30* in most circumstances. Max oil temp was 20* lower as well.

At the beginning of a straight it was fun to watch the CHT drop as I hammered on it and the car gained speed. After seeing how temps behaved the first two sessions I didn’t need to pay any attention any longer. Which was great as the rest of the day was the first time I was able to push as hard as I wanted and not always be watching temps.
 
Oh and everyone should duct their radiator. Yesterday wasn’t that hot so we’ll see if it’s enough when it’s warmer, but ducting dropped peak CHT by 20-30* in most circumstances. Max oil temp was 20* lower as well.

At the beginning of a straight it was fun to watch the CHT drop as I hammered on it and the car gained speed. After seeing how temps behaved the first two sessions I didn’t need to pay any attention any longer. Which was great as the rest of the day was the first time I was able to push as hard as I wanted and not always be watching temps.

Good news! Cant wait to try mine!

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What kind of times does an EB run at Laguna? What sway bar do u run up front? Yeah...I would think you would be drifitng
 
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How are you guys doing on front tire wear? I was killing a new hoosier to the cords by my 3rd session but I am a heavy GT. I think I got a handle on it now.
 
Hey Bob. I’ve got a lot to learn driving and I’m still on 340TW 275 Indy 500 tires and ran a 1:49.3 yesterday. Dunno how that compares to a GT, especially since most times I see in the list here are on good tires. Bars are OEM GT350 front and oem PP rear bar. Balance feels great to me, think I just need a bit of downforce out back.

I know you were having a lot of trouble killing tires. Now that you might have a handle on it what do you think the bigger contributors were?
 
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Exp. Type
HPDE
Exp. Level
3-5 Years
New England
Got the splitter buttoned up, looking forward to trying it out this weekend. I have spats to install as well but ran out of time. Will also add diffusers now that the splitter is made and I can measure to see how big I can go with them.

Also ducted the radiator and intercooler, curious to see how temps are.

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I wonder how different my "grille delete" front would behave temp wise vs stock grille, vs ducted stock, etc. Just wondering out loud. Your car is coming along real nice scoots.
 
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Highly recommend getting stickier tires before anything else. I'm still relatively new to this as well but when I switched from S007A tires to Supercar 3's, it made a MASSIVE difference; more so than I was expecting. Tires are the performance king of go-fast upgrades.

Absolutely can’t wait! Tires are everything. Ordered some Apex 18x11 with NT01’s on Black Friday and waiting patiently for their arrival.
 
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Hey Bob. I’ve got a lot to learn driving and I’m still on 340TW 275 Indy 500 tires and ran a 1:49.3 yesterday. Dunno how that compares to a GT, especially since most times I see in the list here are on good tires. Bars are OEM GT350 front and oem PP rear bar. Balance feels great to me, think I just need a bit of downforce out back.

I know you were having a lot of trouble killing tires. Now that you might have a handle on it what do you think the bigger contributors were?

I do not know. I made the big sin of making multiple changes at the same time. Bigger front swaybar, more negative camber, more tire pressure, lowered car more, altered ride height. All can contribute.
 
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Absolutely can’t wait! Tires are everything. Ordered some Apex 18x11 with NT01’s on Black Friday and waiting patiently for their arrival.

If you need the hot OP 25mm front spacers I have them. I had to go bigger on spacers to dial in more camber because the roll center correction arms steal camber. I'm pretty low now. I have to drive on 2x4 to get my jack under. NT is a good tire as are the new crop of 200twr tires. I would use the cheapest of those and just spend time on driver development.
 
If you need the hot OP 25mm front spacers I have them. I had to go bigger on spacers to dial in more camber because the roll center correction arms steal camber. I'm pretty low now. I have to drive on 2x4 to get my jack under. NT is a good tire as are the new crop of 200twr tires. I would use the cheapest of those and just spend time on driver development.

Same issue here... I'm not running 30mm spacer, that combined with the smaller wheels mean my car is on the ground
 
Few updates before Sonoma this past weekend.

CMS roll bar. Nice piece, bolts into pretty stout areas of the car.
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OMP HTE-R seat along with Racetech harness. Had been running Schrothe quickfit on a stock Recaro seat but wanted a containment seat and 6pt. Mission accomplished.
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PCI seat bracket. First one out in the wild, fitment is great. CNC cut and bent vehicle specific base with integrated seat side mounts that are adjustable on the base for fine tuning of seat placement. Can be used with sliders as well but I opted to forego sliders. Integrated lap belt mounts both inboard and outboard as well as sub mount bar. And all that for less than a sparco/planted bracket and universal seat side mounts.
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Angled the splitter down a bit, now its level with the road surface. Also picked up a loaded torsen pumpkin with 3.73's from an auto wrecker and installed that.

Went to Sonoma on Saturday and had a great time. Set a new PB despite it being a hot day, so that's nice. Unfortunately in second session was over-driving the car and lost the back end coming out of turn 5, thought I had saved it but alas did not. Luckily the damage is all cosmetic. I got the bumper straightened out a bit and zip tied in a couple spots and didn't even miss the next session. Bought some used parts on ebay when I got home and should have it all spiffed back up fairly quickly. Good enough for a track car at least.
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Been going over the mistake(s) I made leading up to my tango with the wall and the main contributors are as follows as far as I can tell:

-Driver. Well duh that's the only real reason. But why specifically?
-over confidence. I used to do a lot of drifting and am very comfortable with the back of the car coming out. But that was mainly with speeds up to ~70mph. I was doing ~95 when this happened and my skill/experience did not match my confidence.
-Torsen. I've driven only clutch plate diffs till now and a Torsen behaves much differently when the back comes out. Less predictable during oversteer that a clutch plate diff. I noticed this but didn't take enough time to really learn it before pushing 10/10. This diff is awesome though, it has so much more traction on corner exit the car feels like its down on power. Not all over the place. Its great, looking forward to getting to know it better and take advantage of it.
-Splitter. Do a wing first. I had been having mid corner understeer which I was hoping the splitter would solve. It did. and then some. The back end is much less stable than the front now and its just too much. Wing is on order so hopefully that will help. At a minimum the car wil look really rad.

So will get this all fixed up in the next couple weeks and will be back at Sonoma next month. Looking forward to it!
 
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2,116
Exp. Type
Time Attack
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5-10 Years
SoCal
Ugh, tough weekend - glad you’re OK and it looks like mostly a flesh wound on the stang. Which wing did you go with? Great find on that seat bracket - I wish they made one for the S197. Looks very quality, and I’m sure it would allow lower mounting than the Sparco bases. The Sparco bases are surprisingly heavy - not sure how these compare.
 
Yeah was kicking myself on my tango with the wall as I was just telling a buddy before my second session "I'm over driving the car/tires, need to back it off a bit". But then I was having too much fun to slow down.

PCI's owner is named Brian, really good dude. I'd call him up and see if he's got any interest. With how many S197's are being tracked these days he might be up for it. The bracket is pretty light as its 1/8" steel vs 3/16 that Planted and I believe Sparco build theirs out of. I was wary of the reduced thickness till I inspected the stock seat and read the FIA rules which stipulate 3mm for steel seat bracketry. Also the PCI bracket is really low, I've got it on the highest setting currently and its still ~1-1.5" lower than stock recaros.

Wing is 9Lives. Heavier than carbon, but also about half the price. Also offered up to 74" width which I wanted so that's nice too.
 

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