29. Croft Trip

Was time for a trip to Croft again and to try the new gripper diff and the Mocal laminova oil cooler.

Was a great day and the car ran faultlessly. The oil cooler has worked perfectly, previously after a decent few laps the car would ran at 75 degrees coolant and 120 oil temperature. With the oil cooler the car ran at a max of 80 and 110 degrees (coolant and oil). So couldn’t ask for too much more than that. Was 20 degrees on the day, so assuming even on a hot summers day we won‘t have an over heating problem.

First time experiencing the gripper diff! Such a different feeling than without, really does pull you round the corners. Took a little bit of camber out of the front tyres and gave much more grip.

James did a 1:39.468 and I did a 1:39.608 so both of us are close and we beat our target of getting into the 1:39s on the day so both really pleased. Here are the videos of the two fastest laps.

Kept having a small moment with the brakes. Most corners have a little tap to make sure the pads haven’t been knocked back but the worst moment was going into sunny it when even a small tap didn’t sort the pads out.

So not completely sure if this is a problem or not but can’t have that happening during a race as we could have been right in the back of someone. Discs warped? CL pads not having the springs like the standard Pads? I’m not sure. 

Did another 125 litres of fuel so assuming it would have been around 300 miles but need to check that one.

Haven’t got any more days booked in but hoping to get a late cancellation at Oulton park if the weather is good. But perhaps it’s now time to get started on the winter upgrades, who knows. Either way, couldn’t have asked for too much more for our first year with the car. Lots of plans to be made for us starting a race season.

Initial winter plans (some of which are still only a maybe):

• Engine rebuild (nothing ridiculous here, not really worth it due to the power to weight categories, but we’ll see). 
• Front splitter (more just to tidy the front of the car up and add a little bit of protection to the front subframe rather than aero related). 
• Need to sort a dash out, got a phase one dash which fits but fancy giving a custom one a go.
• Reduce the mass of the doors, boot and bonnet. Didn’t really cut much out of these to begin with.
• Add steering wheel buttons (alarm Reset, wiper, lights, page button may be good on the wheel?).
• Brakes. Do we want to upgrade the brakes? Stopping power isn’t really as issue, more is over heating but certainly consistency would be nice to improve.
• ktec 25L fuel tank? Saw these these the other week and look good but probably not necessary at all.
• AST 5100 service, bought these second hand so unsure how much they were used so will get them serviced.

However nothing set in stone yet, but will be sharing the progress over the winter.