gixxerdrew
DSM Wiseman
- 664
- 21
- Oct 5, 2007
-
Yokohama, Japan,
Asia
(written on 2009.1.5)
I thought this would be a great place to start a build and race blog for my car. I thought I would start out with some brief (REALLY shortened) history of the car and the team. Some may know me as gixxer_drew, from SupraForums or here on DSMTuners. My name is Andrew Brilliant. I designed and drove this eclipse originally for Land Speed racing (since 2004) and I began the transition for Time Attack last year. During the 2007 Land Speed season, some competitors got a little unhappy about us putting 10-15mph on their records in a street driven convertible (running on hard top records) that street drove 400 street miles to the race and back. So they made some possibly valid points to the stewards and got enough rules made up to where the convertable top was effectively outlawed.
So we set out to transition the car to time attack. My first thought as you might imagine was that the peaky power band we had for land speed wasn't really going to be what we needed for the road course so I set out to design a setup that could achieve what few had done on an engine of that size, ~700whp with a usable curve and the reliability you need for a track car.
I spent all of 2008 turning the car into a "nice" car, a well mannered stable and drivable platform. Reliable at the power level was the priority. The chassis flex in particular required some close attention and getting around the basic problems of a FWD car much as possible or at least more than the other competitors in FWD class were. Late fall we got it on the dyno and this was the result of the engine development ambitions:
AVI (high res):
http://jayracing.com/media/videos/TimeAttackTransition.avi
Quicktime (high res):
MobileMe Gallery
Now that I had the power-plant in line I have to focus on the other development aspects, cooling, tires, suspension, management, data, brakes, etc. Although some of those aspects can be worried about a lot less than a typical road course setup in time attack.
Here is a link to the car information. The mod list will be updated and the photos when I get new ones.
Douro Oni
The plan for this year is to run 2-3 time attack events (west coast tracks) , hopefully Silver State classic (at least for the standing mile) in the late fall and Super Lap Battle (if I can get an invitation). 4-5 races total, it's a self funded effort
Our team is sort of hodge podge mix and just a bunch of guys who live/breath/eat/sleep racing and built our own cars in our own garages. <shameless plug> We need sponsors! The more help we get the faster we can go, ambition is not our limitation our own personal paychecks are.</shameless plug>
We are lucky to have a couple of good sponsors for Matt and Curtis' car. My car has just started out into Time Attack. My Land Speed sponsor shop, KBR Performance stuck with me. YoshiFab (built my cage and a ton of other stuff) LG Motorsports and the guys over there have been really great to me and many long conversations with their crew has contributed much to the things I've learned. I cannot forget to thank Team NABR and the guys there. Thank you to my brothers.
This is our Driver:
Matt Andrew's
Matt is an amazing driver. You ever hear of the traction circle? Well I've never datalogged a driver where it was actually a circle on the G-plots before Matt.
Here is a photo of Matt and I at the close of last season with his Miata. This miata won the RWD Limited class overall for the season in Redline.
This is our crew with Curtis' Supra after winning Street RWD honors at Super Lap Battle:
A couple of quick action shots of the cars:
This is the Redline results poster. Check out the Miata next to the Brian Crower/Hancook tires car! I think I can speak for the whole team to say that was a real honor for us.
initial blog entry:
Unfortunately I had to pick a starting point somewhere so I decided to forgo the entire car history and start from today. Jan 5th 2009.
I decided to lift up my skirt a little bit on this and leak one of the very early conceptual body sketches and talk about some basic design concepts of the car. Things have changed a bit from the drawing, I'll talk more about when they are finalized and we tech at the first race. This sketch is pretty rough, however and many details unfortunately are intentionally omitted. I'm expecting some pretty rough feedback I know some of my ideas are unconventional but my experiences have lead me here. This is an investment in learning how to be fast as well as an effort to be fast.
The setup is a 285-295 front tire and a 245-275 rear tire. Which is looking pretty decent in the simulations although I've never seen it done like this, I have faith in the design I think the reason nobody does it like that is rules. The track is a few inches wider in the front. My goal here was to build a car with the characteristics of very mild understeer to neutral on exit, oversteer on entry as preferred for a FWD car but to achieve this without increasing rear natural frequency more than 0.25 hz over the rear and a balanced 50/50 roll resistance front to rear.
I haven't gotten to where I'm doing car simulations in CFD, I'm working on it. The aero may be adjusted down if tire loads become a problem. The tires that are legal for limited class have fairly mild maximum loads especially at the pressures we run. Warm up laps are especially worrisome. I also wanted a decent sized tire on the front to help manage the power/heat. The principle competitors in class are hondas with 2000lb curb weights so a really good weight to tire ratio. I have to capitalize on my strengths which is substantially more power production so I can push through aero drag. Downforce is critical for me.
The typical modus-operandi for FWD cars is to get the car to rotate by unsticking the rear, me I prefer to stick the front end so the rear rotates around rather than unstick the rear.
Springs and damper valves are luckily pretty inexpensive. So I can afford to take a risk there. KW (makers of my suspension) also does revalvings and turns them around pretty quick, so something pretty similar to running Koni's in terms of options, turnaround times etc. They can build to order. I can live with that.
2009.1.15:
I got the adjustable power steering working with the elecro-hydraulic pump. It's adjusted right and the steering response is now flawless. Huge improvement. Feels like stock with better feedback and slightly less assist. More linear as well, its perfect. Hopefully Matt will like it as much as I do. I can now adjust it for different tracks as well. High five myself, design goal achieved. The amp draw is extremely low for this pump but it's bulky, source was a renault clio the guy shipped it from Israel.
2009.1.21:
Overnight shipping from Taiwan is expensive. Thats the second part this month on overnight from asia. I keep thinking of all the beers I could have bought, thats a lot of beer.
Update 2009.1.29:
Short update, lots to do:
I finished up the aero package design for matt's car and send it off for him to work out with the fabricators. Gotta keep this stuff all under our hats though
Eclipse shut down on the dyno today looks like no signal to the injectors. Damn wiring again. I thought I could make one race with it as is but looks like not, I wont be re-doing it all for the AEM. Finally time to get a better ECU. I'll try to combine the Traction Control and the ECU into one box would be nice see what my options are for MoTeC.
Update 2009.2.2:
TEM Machine shop is building me the spherical bearing coaxial upper spring perches and they are almost done.
I first learned about KW in 2005 when I was at the britcar 24 hr race (the same race the famous top gear crew ran their diesel 3 series in, that episode was hilarious. highly recommended). I was shocked when I saw that about 50% of the field was running KW's including a mosler MT900R that I know comes factory with some well dialed penskes.
heres a photo I snapped in the pits:
sorry for the bad photo, it was a really dark nasty day.
A few pics I snapped of that GORGEOUS mosler just for some gratuitous motorsport pr0n. IIRC that car won the race.
I never got the perfect shot with the whole car framed motorsport photography is difficult 400mm lens in low light on a 140mph moving target.
Speaking of that race, there was this one driver that was hot, photo thrown in as an attempt to self promote my blog. I think shes famous? Anyone know who she is?
So back on topic, when KW showed up selling suspensions in the US and just so happened to be making a double adjustable drop in fitment I figured I'll give it a shot
some details on the dampers:
here is the front damper body, I dont give the germans much credit for picking color schemes but they are pretty damn good engineers. The upper spring perches that come with cup perfectly into the standard bilstein sleeve 2.5" upper hats to adapt to the 61mm ID springs. I want to try that out for the shelf springs to get an idea for where I want to move with the spring rates later in the year. I'll probably machine some new lower perches for 2.5" so I can use standard hypercoils.
Timken needle bearings for the spring perch lower are here. Need to get the upper hat designs over to TEM Machine then get the attachments for the linear pots.
Some details on the KW's
front damper assy, with the 61mm KW spring perches cupped over the bilstein 2.5" upper hat. Prototype spherical bearing to spring perch standoff shown.
closer photo showing the perfect (coincidence?!) fit of the KW spring perch and blisten upper hat
This is the compression adjuster on a rear shock, reminds of the Penske "sweep adjuster"
I thought this would be a great place to start a build and race blog for my car. I thought I would start out with some brief (REALLY shortened) history of the car and the team. Some may know me as gixxer_drew, from SupraForums or here on DSMTuners. My name is Andrew Brilliant. I designed and drove this eclipse originally for Land Speed racing (since 2004) and I began the transition for Time Attack last year. During the 2007 Land Speed season, some competitors got a little unhappy about us putting 10-15mph on their records in a street driven convertible (running on hard top records) that street drove 400 street miles to the race and back. So they made some possibly valid points to the stewards and got enough rules made up to where the convertable top was effectively outlawed.
So we set out to transition the car to time attack. My first thought as you might imagine was that the peaky power band we had for land speed wasn't really going to be what we needed for the road course so I set out to design a setup that could achieve what few had done on an engine of that size, ~700whp with a usable curve and the reliability you need for a track car.
I spent all of 2008 turning the car into a "nice" car, a well mannered stable and drivable platform. Reliable at the power level was the priority. The chassis flex in particular required some close attention and getting around the basic problems of a FWD car much as possible or at least more than the other competitors in FWD class were. Late fall we got it on the dyno and this was the result of the engine development ambitions:
AVI (high res):
http://jayracing.com/media/videos/TimeAttackTransition.avi
Quicktime (high res):
MobileMe Gallery
Now that I had the power-plant in line I have to focus on the other development aspects, cooling, tires, suspension, management, data, brakes, etc. Although some of those aspects can be worried about a lot less than a typical road course setup in time attack.
Here is a link to the car information. The mod list will be updated and the photos when I get new ones.
Douro Oni
The plan for this year is to run 2-3 time attack events (west coast tracks) , hopefully Silver State classic (at least for the standing mile) in the late fall and Super Lap Battle (if I can get an invitation). 4-5 races total, it's a self funded effort
Our team is sort of hodge podge mix and just a bunch of guys who live/breath/eat/sleep racing and built our own cars in our own garages. <shameless plug> We need sponsors! The more help we get the faster we can go, ambition is not our limitation our own personal paychecks are.</shameless plug>
We are lucky to have a couple of good sponsors for Matt and Curtis' car. My car has just started out into Time Attack. My Land Speed sponsor shop, KBR Performance stuck with me. YoshiFab (built my cage and a ton of other stuff) LG Motorsports and the guys over there have been really great to me and many long conversations with their crew has contributed much to the things I've learned. I cannot forget to thank Team NABR and the guys there. Thank you to my brothers.
This is our Driver:
Matt Andrew's
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
Matt is an amazing driver. You ever hear of the traction circle? Well I've never datalogged a driver where it was actually a circle on the G-plots before Matt.
Here is a photo of Matt and I at the close of last season with his Miata. This miata won the RWD Limited class overall for the season in Redline.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
This is our crew with Curtis' Supra after winning Street RWD honors at Super Lap Battle:
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
A couple of quick action shots of the cars:
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
This is the Redline results poster. Check out the Miata next to the Brian Crower/Hancook tires car! I think I can speak for the whole team to say that was a real honor for us.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
initial blog entry:
Unfortunately I had to pick a starting point somewhere so I decided to forgo the entire car history and start from today. Jan 5th 2009.
I decided to lift up my skirt a little bit on this and leak one of the very early conceptual body sketches and talk about some basic design concepts of the car. Things have changed a bit from the drawing, I'll talk more about when they are finalized and we tech at the first race. This sketch is pretty rough, however and many details unfortunately are intentionally omitted. I'm expecting some pretty rough feedback I know some of my ideas are unconventional but my experiences have lead me here. This is an investment in learning how to be fast as well as an effort to be fast.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
The setup is a 285-295 front tire and a 245-275 rear tire. Which is looking pretty decent in the simulations although I've never seen it done like this, I have faith in the design I think the reason nobody does it like that is rules. The track is a few inches wider in the front. My goal here was to build a car with the characteristics of very mild understeer to neutral on exit, oversteer on entry as preferred for a FWD car but to achieve this without increasing rear natural frequency more than 0.25 hz over the rear and a balanced 50/50 roll resistance front to rear.
I haven't gotten to where I'm doing car simulations in CFD, I'm working on it. The aero may be adjusted down if tire loads become a problem. The tires that are legal for limited class have fairly mild maximum loads especially at the pressures we run. Warm up laps are especially worrisome. I also wanted a decent sized tire on the front to help manage the power/heat. The principle competitors in class are hondas with 2000lb curb weights so a really good weight to tire ratio. I have to capitalize on my strengths which is substantially more power production so I can push through aero drag. Downforce is critical for me.
The typical modus-operandi for FWD cars is to get the car to rotate by unsticking the rear, me I prefer to stick the front end so the rear rotates around rather than unstick the rear.
Springs and damper valves are luckily pretty inexpensive. So I can afford to take a risk there. KW (makers of my suspension) also does revalvings and turns them around pretty quick, so something pretty similar to running Koni's in terms of options, turnaround times etc. They can build to order. I can live with that.
2009.1.15:
I got the adjustable power steering working with the elecro-hydraulic pump. It's adjusted right and the steering response is now flawless. Huge improvement. Feels like stock with better feedback and slightly less assist. More linear as well, its perfect. Hopefully Matt will like it as much as I do. I can now adjust it for different tracks as well. High five myself, design goal achieved. The amp draw is extremely low for this pump but it's bulky, source was a renault clio the guy shipped it from Israel.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
2009.1.21:
Overnight shipping from Taiwan is expensive. Thats the second part this month on overnight from asia. I keep thinking of all the beers I could have bought, thats a lot of beer.
Update 2009.1.29:
Short update, lots to do:
I finished up the aero package design for matt's car and send it off for him to work out with the fabricators. Gotta keep this stuff all under our hats though
Eclipse shut down on the dyno today looks like no signal to the injectors. Damn wiring again. I thought I could make one race with it as is but looks like not, I wont be re-doing it all for the AEM. Finally time to get a better ECU. I'll try to combine the Traction Control and the ECU into one box would be nice see what my options are for MoTeC.
Update 2009.2.2:
TEM Machine shop is building me the spherical bearing coaxial upper spring perches and they are almost done.
I first learned about KW in 2005 when I was at the britcar 24 hr race (the same race the famous top gear crew ran their diesel 3 series in, that episode was hilarious. highly recommended). I was shocked when I saw that about 50% of the field was running KW's including a mosler MT900R that I know comes factory with some well dialed penskes.
heres a photo I snapped in the pits:
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
sorry for the bad photo, it was a really dark nasty day.
A few pics I snapped of that GORGEOUS mosler just for some gratuitous motorsport pr0n. IIRC that car won the race.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
I never got the perfect shot with the whole car framed motorsport photography is difficult 400mm lens in low light on a 140mph moving target.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
Speaking of that race, there was this one driver that was hot, photo thrown in as an attempt to self promote my blog. I think shes famous? Anyone know who she is?
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
So back on topic, when KW showed up selling suspensions in the US and just so happened to be making a double adjustable drop in fitment I figured I'll give it a shot
some details on the dampers:
here is the front damper body, I dont give the germans much credit for picking color schemes but they are pretty damn good engineers. The upper spring perches that come with cup perfectly into the standard bilstein sleeve 2.5" upper hats to adapt to the 61mm ID springs. I want to try that out for the shelf springs to get an idea for where I want to move with the spring rates later in the year. I'll probably machine some new lower perches for 2.5" so I can use standard hypercoils.
Timken needle bearings for the spring perch lower are here. Need to get the upper hat designs over to TEM Machine then get the attachments for the linear pots.
Some details on the KW's
front damper assy, with the 61mm KW spring perches cupped over the bilstein 2.5" upper hat. Prototype spherical bearing to spring perch standoff shown.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
closer photo showing the perfect (coincidence?!) fit of the KW spring perch and blisten upper hat
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
This is the compression adjuster on a rear shock, reminds of the Penske "sweep adjuster"
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
