Today I finally fitted those new Endless MX72 brake pads and boy do they grip !! I tried to brake really hard a couple of times when returning home from Seeker and I was AMAZED how strong they really were ! Looking forward to my next circuit outing, most likely at Tsukuba :)
For now though, a big decision is just around a corner...that long awaited suspension upgrade ! More details in the days to come !
I woke up at 5am and for some unknown reason felt like I should just maybe stay at home and not go out anywhere. I don't get this kind of weird feeling very often but when I do I always tend to regret not listening to myself ! Today was no exception !
I began packing for Fuji Speedway at 5am by taking my gear down to the car parked just outside the apartment. It started then when I was about to return for some more stuff that I realised I had forgotten my apartment key and simply couldn't get back into the apartment block ! My only option was to wait until some poor soul decided to enter or exit the building so I could sneak back in but I didn't like my chances at 5am and in particular on a saturday morning ! Fortunately some tenants here have dogs and thank god one of those dogs needed to take a piss at 5am so that was my one and only chance ! It bloody saved me !
Next, I drove down towards Fuji on Tomei Expressway and I knew I had to get off at the same exit I always do (and have done more than 10 times in the past), but for yet another unknown reason I completely missed the exit !! I had to drive for another 16km to the next available exit and come back in onto the highway ! Stupid !
My first 9:50am session at Fuji was great ! I managed to beat my personal lap record of 2'14''16 in 3 out of 9 laps I did in that session. My new Fuji Speedway lap record stands now at 2'12''09 ! An improvement of over 2 seconds ! Not bad eh ?!
So what did I do differently ? Nothing really except I experimented with tyre pressures after having read an article online targetted at ADVAN Neova AD08 drivers. If you follow this blog you know that I always start off with 240kPa front and rear. This time I started off with 210kPa for the front and 220kPa for the rear and when the tyres were up to their circuit operating temperatures I dropped the pressures down to 230kPa for the front and 240kPa for the rear while in the pit lane. The car was a little harder to handle, it actually felt like it wombled under cornering but the grip was much better than with higher pressures and hence a better, faster lap ! I need to adjust myself to that feel of handling because it is mainly due to the tyre wall flexing more than usual.
Needless to say, my best lap was the only good thing that happened today !
In my 2nd session, the unthinkable happened and is still a mystery. The car began to cut fuel under acceleration on some of the corners. First I was quite perplexed by this but then I thought maybe I was running out of fuel or the fuel pump didn't work or couldn't suck in the petrol under heavy swings during cornering. My fuel gauge was on low but it wasn't yet alarming me and then just as I was going through the NETZ corner it goes again and this time, not only did I loose acceleration but also power steering and oil pressure hit 0kPa!!! I immediately drove off into the grass and switched the car off and thought "Oh shit !!" I was worried that this kind of lack of oil pressure meant my engine was about to seize and that internal damage was immanent. The place I was at wasn't particularly safe for me and I saw yellow flags being waved frantically by the circuit staff and so I needed to get out there somehow ! After about a minute on the grass I decided to start the engine and hope for the best. It started ! Oil presure went up to the usual range and power steering worked as though nothing had happened. I slowly made my way out of the grass and back into the pits. I could not replicate this problem again but the fuel tank was definitely empty and perhaps that was the cause of the mishap. Perhaps I starved the engine of petrol and the ECU was somehow trying to handle the situation the best it could and eventually just gave up!
I packed away, ate lunch and drove back to Tokyo. There was no traffic and I was back near my place in just under 60 minutes. As I was passing the bridge over Sumidagawa River I suddenly heard and saw a cop on a motorbike behind me flashing and urging me to stop ! This was the second "Oh shit !!" I was speeding and doing 27km/h over the limt in a 50km/h zone ! He slapped me with a 18,000 yen fine (approx. 200 australian dollars) and 3 demerit points ! This was my 2nd run in with the law in Japan ever and I have no one else to blame but myself !
Tomorrow I have an appointment at Seeeker for an oil change and hopefully Ryo can advise me on what really happened at Fuji.
I can't tell you how much I'd been looking forward to driving at and when an opportunity in a form of HKS Hyper Challenge Round 3 presented itself I immediately jumped at it!
I got up at 5am in the morning and drove to Moriya SA to meet up with Ken and his friends. Most of them drove Skyline GTRs, some of them drove Hondas and I believe there was a Vitz in there somewhere. We left Moriya after 30 minutes and headed to Tsukuba Circuit. On our way there we drove through pockets of very thick fog with visibility at a mere 2-3 meters and at such an early time in the morning driving alongside 2m high grass it all seemed a bit spooky !
When we arrived at Tsukuba, we signed-in and all received our race numbers (mine was #126), GPS receivers and a booklet with the schedule for the entire day. It was nice to see your name on an official HKS brochure amongst hundreds of other drivers (don't laugh at me but in Australia being a part of an event of an HKS caliber is almost an impossible ask)!
The event was sponsored by :
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After sticking on our race numbers and taking care of some minor preparations we drove through an unbelievably narrow Tsukuba circuit entrance tunnel and parked our cars in a designated spot for our class.
Most of us ended up in CLASS A (beginners and first timers to the circuit), there were other classes ranging from B through to D with special classes for drifters and race categories (I don't know why but I always end up in those beginner classes only to realise my lap time easily warrants me to be in a faster class...Oh well, hopefully next time they will put me amongst the beasts). Oh and 2 of our guys (both Skylines) ended up in class B and seemed to have enjoyed it.
My first session started at 9am. It was actually delayed by 10 minutes as there'd been an engine blow-out in an earlier run in a different class and so the circuit had to be cleaned. I was a bit nervous but ready ! I'd studied the circuit with some of the tips given to me by my friend Tom. I knew in my 1st session I wanted to take it easy and just learn the line and practice. When the lights went green I left the pit lane and began to conquer the circuit.
On my first impression, I felt like it was a much slower circuit than Ebisu and of course Fuji. It was however a lot of fun ! The 1st corner had to be taken in 2nd and it was as Tom had said out-in-out type of corner, followed by a shikane which was a breeze although exiting that shikane my car was not ideally positioned for an entry into the next hairpin and when I braked it tended to unsettle my car a fair bit. Later on I solved that problem by simply cutting through the ripples on the exit of the S. The hairpin was a 2nd gear approach and I quite liked it but on the exit I must have been carrying too much speed because understeer became an issue. Going into the Dunlop corner I clipped the inside but didn't quite exit as wide as I should have loosing precious speed (and time). Later on in the 2nd and 3rd sessions I went as wide as possible and was able to maintain high speed and a perfect exit.
On to the last hairpin and again down to 2nd from 3rd and well it should have been 4th to 3rd to 2nd because way before I reached the corner I had been on the limit of my revs and the engine kept cutting off...lesson learnt here and clearly that's again where I lost some time.
The last straight leading into the last corner was very enjoyable, 2nd to 3rd to 4th and just before the corner drop into 3rd with a nice, tight follow through the corner. Looking back at my footage I kept too close to the inside and should have been more in the middle and as the corner tightened I should have headed for the apex and gradually exited onto the main straight. It would be a hairy experience if you drove through there too fast and sheer centrifugal force would push you outwards towards that "fake green grass" area which if you didn't have enough grip on would have sent you straight for the wall...and believe me on the day I saw 2 such incidents in other cars ! No thanks !
So, let's cover lap times! In my 1st session at 9am, my best lap was 1'13''130. In my 2nd session at 10:20am, my best lap was 1'11''236, which also happened to be my best lap for the day. And for the 3rd session at 1:20pm, my best lap was 1'11''349. I was very happy because I could maintain a consistency in these lap times. There was a lot of traffic in my class and some inexperienced (and at times bloody dangerous!) drivers who prevented me from attacking more but overall comparing myself to other drivers in faster classes I was quite competitive. My best virtual lap time was 1'10''883.
Here is a photo showing all results for the entire day. If you click on it you'll see a full resolution photo and if your vision is good you can make out the numbers and compare.
The car worked very well! No overheating on the water front but some overheating on the oil front. This time max oil temp was at 136 so that prevented me from attacking for more than 2 consecutive laps. Tyre pressures were set at 220kPa (front) and 230kPa (rear) at race pace. Much lower than Fuji :)
Here are some photos from the day and a video of my best lap (with 2 pre-warm up laps). I have a lot more footage but it is such a time consuming effort I can't be bothered posting. If anyone wants to see it let me know and I'll see what I can do.
So other than that, I got some good feedback and comments from other drivers some congratulating me on a very good lap time for a Tsukuba circuit beginner, I got to give an interview and share my thoughts and I managed to sneak a peek at some other DC5s' setup which gave me some interesting ideas for my car!
Overall, I really liked Tsukuba. I want to try it more and I think I will through my new Tsukuba circuit licence (in the making). I love the feeling of driving my car, I love the way my car handles and I enjoy competitive racing like this. I didn't win anything but others did and it was great to see a good bunch of guys putting it all out there and bringing home good results !
HKS came out with lots of prizes including engine and gear oils of various grades, YOKOHAMA came out with foldable chairs with their logo (very cool !!) and ENDLESS came out with brakes whose winners could decide on and were not forced to go with any particular model !
Another highlight was meeting 2 SUPER GT professional drivers who not only lead in the driver's brefing but handed out prizes and made themselves available for questions and photos !
Big thanks to Ken for offering me to join the event and others for your support !
In a pre-emptive move I ordered today a set of front/rear brake pads. This time I've decided to try ENDLESS MX72 (part #MX72400312)
My current Project Mu HC+ have served me well but we're nearing the last few milimeters on them and I am sure after this Thursday there will be nothing left.
MX72 are carbon metalic just like HC+ but their operating temperature is 50-600C which is slightly different to HC+ whose operating temperature is 0-800C. From the ENDLESS website it appears like I can expect less noise and less brake dust whilst an equally comparable performance should remain.
Again, for the best deals I bought them through www.kakaku.com and saved 25%
Keep checking the blog for updates once they're fitted and I get to try them out at , which I hope will be at least once this month !
Whenever there was a discussion concerning my car's brakes people tended to mention brake lines and it always amazed them that I still had the stock Honda lines fitted.
Although I haven't yet tried them out on a circuit I am noticing a significant difference in a pedal feel when braking strongly on a street. They feel less "spongy" and "harder" than before. Can't wait to test them out at Tsukuba on the 10th !
Here is what they look like in a box
The car before it goes under the knife :)
Here is what they look like fitted
In comes the brake fluid from Racing Gear (DOT 4.2)
Final adjustments
I also changed the transmission oil to SEEKER recommended Omega brand
Last saturday a friend of mine Ken and I went back to FEEL's in Yokohama where I'd had the exhaust originally fitted.
Ken using his perfect japanese complained strongly about the quality of the work and our desire to have the muffler replaced asap at no cost to myself. I also brought along some high-resolution photos showing the damage as well as a 2 minute video showing what the current state of the exhaust was just to make sure they didn't try to get out of anything (damage is a lot worse than originally thought)
After 2 and half hours in the shop we finally came to an agreement. They would pick up my car, tow it back to their shop and take a look underneath on sunday. If the state of the muffler is due to their poor workmanship, they will replace it free of charge and won't charge me for the tow (which happens to be a ridicolous 30,000yen !!). If it turns out it was my fault (I wonder how they can try to arrive at that conclusion) I need to cover all costs. Just to be on a safe side I took detailed photos of the muffler to make sure there is no damage anywhere so they can't blame it on me later on.
At 10pm FEEL's tow truck arrived and they took the DC5 away. Now the waiting begins ...
Update #2: FEEL's have admitted there was a problem with the muffler! *sigh* They ordered a brand new exhaust which will arrive this Thursday and will be fitted on Friday all FREE of charge !! If all goes well, I could get my car back this saturday !
Final Update On Friday evening straight after work Ken and I drove to FEEL's to pick up the car. The manager told us the part which had been fitted in my car originally was faulty and they were very sorry and apologetic for the inconvenience that caused me. They fitted a brand new part with an additional support (just in case we have a repeat), bowed about 10 times (in Japan it's a sign of respect and in this case deep apology), detailed my car and obviously did all that at no cost to me !
I wanted to write a bad review about them which I knew would deter others from doing business but their conduct on friday and the fact that they covered all costs and admitted their fault (and the fact that it was a genuine apology), I am actually not going to write any review anymore.
I do have some advice though ! For those thinking of choosing a tuner, do your research, speak to people whose cars were worked on by a tuner, get some advice and listen to opinions. I heard some negative opinions and chosed to ignore them. My mistake.
I am now fully associated with SEEKER and it's been good so far !
and when an opportunity in a form of 
