26. First Donington Trip

This one should be a good one (possibly rather long).

A few topics to cover:

1.     Pure Motorsport Billet Rear Stub Axle Kit.
2.     New Protrack One wheels and Toyo R888R tyres.
3.     Trailer Storage Box
4.     Trip to Donington
5.     ECU Master ADU
6.     Things to sort before our next trip to Donington

1. Pure Motorsport Billet Rear Stub Axle Kit.

As discussed in the last post we ordered the PMS stub axle kit as we were having problems with the rear left wheel bearing, assuming the original stub axle was bent but still have not been able to know this for certain. Anyway, kit arrived and as usual the stuff from Nick looks great.

Nice and easy to fit, direct replacement apart from if you have wheel speed sensors. Kept the same shims so had to then check the alignment but was bang on where we wanted. a little toe out and 3 degrees of camber.

The good news was that for the whole day we had no issues with the rear wheel bearings so was well worth the money! Still intrigued to find out what was causing the problem however, one to look at when I have nothing else better to do. So time will tell how long the new discs last but from our first day experience I would highly recommend.

2. New Protrack One wheels and Toyo R888R tyres.

Ordered the new Protrack One wheels a couple of weeks ago and was hoping they would make it before Donington but it was unlikely however they turned up on the Friday (were heading to Donington on the Sunday) so was a bit of a rush get them sorted. As you may or may not know, Protrack has just released the 15x7j wheels with either Et35 or Et15 offset. Ordered them from Ktec Racing and couldn't recommend them enough, Ayshe and Adam kept me up to date every couple of days with the progress of the order. Gave us a couple of days notice so we could also order the tyres (Demon Tweeks next day delivery to the rescue again). Gone for Toyo R888R tyres as they are the control tyre in the TDC and seem to be one of the best.

So wheels are Protrack One 15x7 et35 and tyres are Toyo R888R 205/50 R15. 2kg weight saving per wheel and tyre compared to NS-2R and Speedline Corse. Had to removed the 10mm stub axle spacer at the rear and the front fitment looked good with no spacer (Laguna upright also gives a little more track width). Think they look great and are something slightly different to the typical TD 1.2 wheels.

3. Trailer Storage Box

Not sure if anyone will be interested but thought I would add this. Was in the mood for another over engineered bit of fabrication so decided to make a storage box for the trailer instead of loading the car to the roof with kit for trackdays and in future race days. Got most of the kit we could possibly think of into 6 attached lid storage boxes which makes life much easier and most of the kit stays packed up and ready to go which saves time. So wanted a box to be able to store 6 boxes and then have a little room of items such as alignment poles and also have the ability to make a tyre rack in the future.

Couple of locking aero catches and some gas struts from SGS finished the box off perfectly. Worked out really well. Gave it a coat of Jotamastic 90, very similar to the stuff we coated the bottom of the Clio in. Still need to use some seam sealer in the corners and give it a second coat but ran out of time before the first trip to Donington. It uses the same 6 bolts the Brian James tyre rack uses to bolt it to the trailer. Worked great for the trip to Donington. Lot of work and not cheap with the current cost of steel but was worth it, was lovely not having a load of stuff rattling in the back of the car for the journey down. Will have a picture of the box on the trailer later.

4. Trip to Donington

So after having the week off work getting the car ready and building the box it was time to head to Donington, both of us were looking forward to this one. We had only ever been to Croft before so first time at a new track in the Clio and high expectation of the Clio with sorting a few problems out.

Long story short it was a brilliant day! By far the best day we've had with the Clio. The track was epic and the Clio ran faultlessly all day. I (Fred) can say it was probably the best day I've ever had, James being married and with kids probably can't/shouldn't say the same.

We both loved the track, not sure if it was just because it was new and we have been to croft a fair bit but it seemed like a much better track than Croft, just a pain its an extra 2 hours further south.

Found the track pretty busy for most of the day and there were lots of stoppages for red flags which probably didn't help. No where near as strict with overtaking safety than Croft. People were overtaking in every corner they could, flashing to be let past, not letting you past even though you were much quicker, so this was a bit of a shock at the start but just had to roll with it. Ended up knowing which cars were going to come past no matter where you were and knew which cars you had to dive up the inside of a corner to get past. Towards the end of the day the main Javelin bloke was waving the blue flag at people to try and sort it out but it was rather chaotic.

Ended up doing 135 laps (270 miles) which was great to get some good miles on the car to test it out.

I managed a 1:24.285 and James did a 1:24.638. Really pleased with the times and good that we were so close to each other. As you can see from the video and the delta I basically made up the 0.3 seconds in the final chicane by cheating and cutting it a fair bit. But looking at the TDC qualifying laps this seems to be allowed so best practice cheating. New R888R tyres also felt much better than the NS-2Rs which we sort of expected.

Just for interest we went through 125 litres of fuel for the 270 miles, so averaged 9.7mpg. Seems pretty low, anyone have any other experience on fuel usage?

5. ECUMaster ADU Display

 The ECUMaster GPS had been dropping out which meant the lap timing features wasn't working correctly but Greg at RRR Engineering had a look at the logs and suggested there were some CAN messages getting mixed up and sure enough there was, so sorted this out and the GPS didn't drop out at all at home so was hoping the lap time delta function was going to work.

Sure enough it worked perfectly! Was really useful whilst learning the track to see what was fast and what wasn't. Both found it really useful having the live delta. So going to be making the delta a little clearer for the next trackday. Really adds to the experience of driving on track.

6. Things to sort/change for the next trip to Donington

 Bit of a list of things we are going to sort or change:

• Front pads (DS2500) are pretty much done (560 miles) so changing these out for a set of CL RC8s.
• Check clearance/rubbing on front right wheel, getting a noise through Craners.
• Make lap delta timer larger.
• Coat the new wheels to make them easier to clean in the future.
• Look at increasing front camber - outside of the tyre wearing quicker than the inside on the LHS wheel and feel turn in could be a little better.
• Check oil levels - Engine seems to be using quite a lot of oil so assuming a winter rebuild is going to be needed.

Clio parked up after the session had finished and then packed up on the trailer ready to head home.

Not long until the next day at Donington, keeping our fingers crossed for another successful day!