Suspension tuning day

Here are some photos from my "private" tuning day at Fuji Speedway last friday. I made a last minute decision to drive out there to play with the new suspension.

The weather was warm (low 20s), clear skies (check out Mt Fuji in the background!) and a light breeze was prevailing. There were 3 afternoon sessions all of which I participated in.











Now, a few words about how it all went.

I found the car to be very well balanced with a slight tendency to oversteer, handling was very good, corner speed and grip significantly improved all thanks to the negative camber and lowered center of gravity. A world of difference in corner speed !! For the first time it actually felt like the whole tyre patch was in contact with the track!

There was some "bunny hopping" but only when braking into the Dunlop corner and the last corner. In the last of 3 sessions I actually increased the setting to the hardest on the front (started off with 2nd hardest) and this "hopping" went away a little but didn't completely disappear. I think this is probably expected but I'm no suspension expert so can't explain it.

One more difference worth mentioning was braking at the end of the main straight. I was struggling there a lot, the car was a little wobbly in the rear on the first application of brakes but later recovered. The problem was this wobbliness was forcing me to brake lighter and earlier which is where most of the time was lost.

Anyway, after all that learning practice I attacked the circuit in the end and slashed my best time down to 2'11''33. Not a huge difference but I am pretty sure next time I can drop down to below 2'10''.



On saturday I finally got around to fitting in those tow hooks. Found a nice spot near Harumi where I knew cops wouldn't bother me much :)

Here is a photo showing all the hard work needed to remove the front bumper.



And here it is installed and the whole car washed and detailed.



Thanks to Russ for taking the time to make that new sticker for me !
Check out his blog here

Faded in transit ? ...

Tsukuba circuit license regulations are forcing me to install tow hooks on both front and rear. Had to buy these from J's Racing for a lack of other options for DC5s, thought they'd be red but somehow they arrived in yellow ... ?

Hope that's all as far as needed purchases go.



Going out tonight to play around with the suspension on a quiet stretch of road nearby. Had a stab at some settings last night and I am quite impressed but it's early days yet...

New suspension : First (early) impressions !

I thought today I'd wrap up the subject of that big decision regarding my suspension upgrade mentioned a few posts earlier.

After much research and deliberation I took the bait and ordered Seeker's circuit suspension for a DC5. Branded with Seeker's logo the suspension is actually made by Racing Gear (RG), a company well known in Japan for its motor sport performance parts.This particular suspension model is JTC'N1 7-stage circuit damper.

Between the hours of 3pm and 6:30pm today the guys at Seeker got rid of my already highly performing (but not adjustable) Type-R stock suspension and replaced it with the new RG fully adjustable circuit suspension.

The front damper is adjustable in 5 steps from softest (street) to hardest (circuit) whereas the rear damper is adjustable in 7 steps. Springs are from Swift and all four are linear with 10kg in the front and 12kg in the rear.

The car has been dropped 3.5 cms all around, camber adjusted to -3 degrees in front and approx. -2 degrees in the rear. Toe is set at 0 degrees all around.

As per Seeker's recommendation I left the shop with adjustments all set at 1 all around (softest) and will remain like this for the next 200 kms until the damper wears in adequently.

So moving on to my first and still early impressions !

Leaving Seeker I didn't feel anything different other that the car was much lower than I had imagined it would be! Steering-wise it felt nice and easy to turn (despite majority's somewhat negative impressions floating around on the internet) but it wasn't until I got on the highway that I noticed how a small steering input would really make the car turn. It was so responsive but mostly at higher speeds. Great feeling ! Love the camber !

Damper even though set at its softest settings was definitely much firmer than the stock DC5 damper. I can only imagine what the mid or hardest settings feel like (for that of course I need to head out to a circuit).

At the moment I feel like I need to go back to the drawing board and re-learn my car's handling in order to extract maximum performance from the suspension but I am looking forward to the challenge and will document it on this blog in the months to come.

For the time being, some photos from today

Enjoy !

A reminder of what the car looked like with stock suspension


Stock Type-R suspension


New suspension out of the box


Rear with stock suspension removed


Rear with new suspension installed


Front with the stock suspension


Front with the new suspension installed


Camber adjustments


Toe adjustments


Final checks before a test drive


And here it is !


Before and After



Car was dirty so I'll take more photos once it's washed.

Tsukuba Circuit license

As of today I have my very own Tsukuba circuit license!

I attended their lecture on last saturday with a japanese friend of mine (same guy who helped me buy my Type R in the first place) whom I brought along just in case I needed some translation. Language wise It turned out to be much easier than I thought.

I submitted my application form, paid the fees and attended their initial 2-hour lecture followed by a 1-hour on-the-course bus drive. The lecture itself was a world of difference compared to that given at Fuji Speedway. First of all, in Tsukuba they don't bother going through the textbook page by page and explaining what you can read about anyway in your own time, instead they talked about how to drive on a circuit, from heel-toeing, braking, shifting etc. It was almost as though I was in driver training ! The main lecturer spoke fast but somehow I was able to get 70% of his japanese and thus make out what the main points were.
In the end another dude showed up and went through the details of their unique reservation system, which again is completely different to what they do at Fuji. I won't go into the details of it but basically at Tsukuba you need to book a month in advance and on occassions 2 days ahead of your chosen day but only if there are open spots due to cancellations.

Ahh, the bus tour/drive, whatever you want to call it took place from 4pm to 5pm and it consisted of us being driven on the TC1000 (short course) and TC2000 course and explained about corners, clipping points (apex'es) etc. It was quite useful but a bit weird as normally you wouldn't be sitting on a bus with a suspension so soft it felt like you were about to topple over.

In the end we got told our temporary licenses would arrive in a few days (I got mine today !) and our actual cards (the plasticy, shiny thinges we all have hundreds of in our wallets) would arrive in a month's time. God knows why they need so much time but hey.

So, if you're out at Tsukuba and see me, come say hi, otherwise stay tuned for videos from Tsukuba coming soon !

And one last thing, I need to get a tow hook for both front and rear, circuit rules !