Friday, May 29, 2009

Today's forecast..

Oh my god! What a gorgeous day today. Proper sunny, proper hot and it lasted all day. Cressylicious has been a little neglected for the last couple of weeks. I've been snowed under with uni work so very little progress has been made with the car. However! By some weird miracle at uni we have all been granted an extra day extension for our projects which effectively meant I gained a free day from no where. Result! That combined with the fact it's far too sunny to be stuck indoors staring at my mac.. and the bits I needed to fit the front wheels arrived..well, it was time to go play in the sunshine.














































The digits as it stands at the mo are as follows.. 17x9 +30 at the rear and 17x9 -0 at the front (with the spacers) It's not perfect yet. I recon I'll shim the rear another 4mm as the clearance between the semi-trailing arm and wheel edge is too close for comfort and I need at least another 5mm on the spacers at the front to make it deathproof. That should end up at about +26 at the back and -5 at the front. There's plenty of room to be made at the front with the hammer on the arches as they are only slightly bashed in at the moment. Getting there though so I'm happy.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

S.O. Life: Testing times

On Wednesday we took the Uni's global light race car testing at Mallory park as part of our data logging module. The Aim was to try out the rebuilt car, now running on FI instead of carbs and gain some data in order to write a technical report on all aspects of data logging and data analysis. The global light is an awesome little car, running lap times of around 48 sec it is easy to upset bigger and better cars, and with our fearless driver who loves nothing more than showing up a bigger car it gets driven hard.

The cockpit of the beasty, very spartan but has the essentials: a rev counter, sequential shifter, brake bias valve and temp gauge.

Powered by a Yamaha R1 engine, modified to run on throttle bodies and megasquirt rather than carbs, the car is a really light and powerful package. With high end brakes and Ktech tuned Ohlins suspension, which cost around £500 a corner before modification, the car has awesome handling and awesome stopping power and that's before you factor in the real aero devices on the car.

Sadly the car only made it out for two sessions. The driver complained of "excess camber" on one rear wheel. On inspection it turned out the split pin which holds stops the hub nut from coming loose had sheered, allowing the hub assembly to become loose and allow the wheel to move around. After a speedy repair the car went back out but after the next session a drive shaft UJ was found to be unserviceable and the car was put retired.

All in all a mixed day but the car ran well and put in decent lap times and we were able to gather enough data for the report. Win, win!

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

S.O. Approved: Clash Productions..

..doing good things for drifting.

Clash have been making awesome motorsport promo videos for some time now. Their latest work is some of their best yet. The music and editing in this are right on the money.



Their videos do what they are supposed to. How bad do wanna be there, sucking tyre smoke and bits of burnt rubber up yer nose!!?

Clash's production style really does offer something fresh and exciting. Great music choices, gorgeous photography and appropriate editing keep them head and shoulders above the sea of crap motorsport videos that are out there. Keep up the good work guys!

Here's a best-of selection of their work. Enjoy!












http://www.vimeo.com/clashprod/videos

Monday, May 18, 2009

Minty Fresh!

Why does J-tin always look tasty in white?

This be my old Chaser..

The Boi's old sil80..

and our friend Rob's KP30 over at Racer86..

..currently having a minty re-fresh.

Yum!