FTO AUSTRALIA

taking MRS STIG for a little stretch on Thursday at Wakefield Park, open track day.
any one want to come and play?

Make sure to post pics, vids and times

thats a quick notice...

yeah want vids!

just curious, how much is it?

Wakefield Park is $120 per day on weekdays, and $150 per day on weekends, you also need a cams licence otherwise they hit you with another $50
if you go to their website on their calender it shows what days you can go, they are heavily booked out for private functions on most weekends

zuihoujueding wrote:thats a quick notice...

yeah want vids!

sorry about the short notice but I just made up my mind on the weekend to go.

What a day at Wakefied Park in the FTO on Thursday, had a ball in the car for the 1st time I have driven on the track.
The day started with hubby Graeme floating the car to the track and doing all the preperations before the comencement of my 1st run. Graeme took the car out 1st to get the release compound off the TOYO P888 semi slicks and to bed in the ECB red stuff brake pads. After 3 warm up laps he started to bring the car up to speed to see what it would get up to. The car was very "Grippy" on the surface considering the track tem was still under 10 degrees, and the brakes surprisingly good for the temperature, Graeme took notes on the tyre tem and pressures to compare latter in the day.2nd session and Graeme let me drive with him sitting beside me instruction on braking, turn-in, lines and acceleration, after a few laps I started going faster and faster, there was a fair amount of traffic on the track as we where put in with race cars.3rd session and Graeme drove with me taking advice in the passengers seat on how to go fast and 'smooth'' at the same time, after 3 laps he let the FTO get up to full speed, the grip and braking of this little car and the balance is a real surprise, its super stable and very hard to get out of shape, Graeme had the car sliding and throwing it around corners with huge amounts of confidence in what it would do.We came in half way through and swapped seats for me to drive. I couldent get over the grip.....its awsome....the brakes are just as good, no fade even after 10 hard laps.The car was so quick through turn 1 on the front straight (155+km) and showed no sign of running off.The ABS was annoying Graeme for awhile with the constant "clicking"on his left foot but got used to it after awhile. All the other cars there either burnt some thing out ( WRX---clutch ) or refused to run on all cylinders ( mini ) but at the end of 6 sessions the FTO was still going strong. We used 60 ltrs 98 fuel and 10m of brake fluid ( + 2x toasted ham cheese and tomato sandwiches...haa haa ) The notes we took showed us the front end needs more camber as the outside left was reaching 63 degrees at the end of the session and the right had as low as 44 degrees, a trip to Capital steering with the data in hand will fix the issue.All in all a brilliant car, even with 103 kwatw. Cant wait for the next test day.

Sounds like fun. Extremely jealous
What was your best lap time?
What was Graemes best lap time?

PHIL069 wrote:Sounds like fun. Extremely jealous
What was your best lap time?
What was Graemes best lap time?

We brought a lap timer but it chucked a hissy fit, I could only get it to record the whole session not individual lap times.
If it gives you an idea of the car, we overtook the MX5,s RX7's and BMW323i, we were no match for the pulse racing evo 9 (800hp) and the sss datson 120y with a FJ20 motor. hoping to get out there again in mid July and will try and work out the lap timer

check out this link for photos
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 5cad112f5b

Haha Paul was down there (pulse evo) I would say he is doing a test and tune for time attack! He will be going for out right first this time

Sounds like you had a ball of a day .

Awesome stuff, good to hear there's another track dedicated FTO out there

I'm planning to bring the racecar down in a couple of weeks for testing, if you're free you should come out for the day. Hopefully a few from Sydney will also come down for a run.

Be careful you don't give the front too much camber, you'll lose straight line acceleration. An alternative is to stiffen up your suspension to reduce body roll, this will keep the tyre 'flatter' through the corners. I find on the racecar though the outer edge of the front right gets the most work regardless. I'm still working on suspension setup though.
Edit: Not that you'll get much more than 1-1.5% out of the front anyway

Good work !

Shane001 wrote:Awesome stuff, good to hear there's another track dedicated FTO out there

I'm planning to bring the racecar down in a couple of weeks for testing, if you're free you should come out for the day. Hopefully a few from Sydney will also come down for a run.

Be careful you don't give the front too much camber, you'll lose straight line acceleration. An alternative is to stiffen up your suspension to reduce body roll, this will keep the tyre 'flatter' through the corners. I find on the racecar though the outer edge of the front right gets the most work regardless. I'm still working on suspension setup though.
Edit: Not that you'll get much more than 1-1.5% out of the front anyway

Thanks for that advice, wasent going to go to silly on the camber anyhow,it was just set back to 0 degree camber to give us a starting point to work from.Harder coils are on the list also.
I was planning to do another day at wakefield soon,keep us informed when you are looking on going and make a meeting and day out of it.

How much camber are you running at the front?

Shane, at what camber range do you start feeling that forward traction/braking is reduced?

This is the problem with MacPherson strut setups, their camber change is minimal

yeah you definitely need a little bit of camber

I'm running coilovers with adjustable strut tops and camber bolts, both set to their maximum setting, and I'm getting around 1.5deg, which I think is about the right compromise for a fwd. I've just installed a stiffer swaybar so hopefully this will reduce body roll further.

I've also found a touch toe out on the front and a touch toe in on the rear works well. I run around 1mm per side out on the front and around 1mm per side in on the rear, measured at the rim, not sure what this works out to in degrees lol! My wheel alignments are done trackside

spetz wrote:Shane, at what camber range do you start feeling that forward traction/braking is reduced?

No idea, don't have the time or resources to test it, I'm just going off what I've researched and what I see at the track. You certainly wouldn't want to run more than a couple of degrees on the driving wheels, front or rear. You'll notice most rear wheel drive race cars run bugger all on the rear and sometimes up to 5/6 degrees on the front.