The Top DSM Community on the Web

For 1990-1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser, and Galant VR-4 Owners. Log in to remove most ads.

Please Support Morrison Fabrications
Please Support STM Tuned

World Time Attack Challenge 2013 Sydney, Australia

This site may earn a commission from merchant
affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

It was a diff problem. Hoping to see them finally get out and post some times!

This site seems to be keeping more up-to-date than WTAC's site in regards to times.
http://racing.natsoft.com.au/results/

I see that Tom was studying the course at dinner LOL

600351_10151729309543137_1556746601_n.jpg


Gearbox being put back in.

1375757_10151729161033137_1079855560_n.jpg


And another great shot of the car.

1395840_372562169543088_456785893_n.jpg
 
Last edited:
It looks like there are 3 sessions today, can any one translate the times to Eastern Time Zone? The site gives the times but I assume they are in Aussie times.

Pro Group 1 Session 1 10:40
Pro Group 2 Session 1 11:00

Pro Group 1 Session 2 14:20
Pro Group 2 Session 2 14:40

Pro Group 1 Session 3 17:00
Pro Group 2 Session 3 17:20
 
It looks like there are 3 sessions today, can any one translate the times to Eastern Time Zone? The site gives the times but I assume they are in Aussie times.

Pro Group 1 Session 1 10:40 7:40pm
Pro Group 2 Session 1 11:00 8:00pm

Pro Group 1 Session 2 14:20 11:20pm
Pro Group 2 Session 2 14:40 11:40pm

Pro Group 1 Session 3 17:00 2:00am Sunday
Pro Group 2 Session 3 17:20 2:20am Sunday

Added US Eastern times above. Adjust accordingly if you live in another time zone.
 
Dammit! Wonder what kind of problems they were having with the diff this early? Hopefully either Tim or Andrew will pop in here and update us as to what exactly what wrong. At least they still had the spare gearbox to use.

Slow start for them, but that just makes a big from behind jump all the more satisfying!
 
O please god no... that would be a heartbreakingly early way to end the weekend.
 
Tilton certainly looks like the one to beat, you're right there. Still curious why Nemo hasn't gone all out this go around either. Hopefully something changes for the better on Andrew's car. They still have another session to go don't they?
 
I'll fill you in a bit on what happened. I just got did this thing called sleeping which was really nice haha

Firstly the car got an amazing response! Every time we pushed the car out a crowd formed around it taking photos. It was probably the most photographed car outside of the fastest group! We got many comments about how elegant the aerodynamic design was and the eclipse body seems much admired even in its original form. It did make me feel proud of the design and all the pain I went through to get it designed built and tested.

When we got into the car some months ago it turned out to be a much larger project than we imagined to get the car to where it would be ready to compete at this level. There was really not going to be time for proper testing. We would basically be unveiling this version at the event. With that being our first test and changing so many things we knew we were in for a battle. There is a curve of reliability and I just wanted to get from the worst part of that curve to somewhere further forward and hopefully do so without damaging an engine or gearbox. I had done some tests back home and I hoped that they would have gotten us to that point.

I was also hoping to start dialing in the handling and make some progress with the vehicle dynamics and have a good simulation and tire model built for our now spec tire Advan A050.

Heres how the weekend played out.

Day 1: We had an ECU or ignition issue we never saw on the dyno. The spark was just suddenly going into like a limp mode where the timing was massively retarded. We spent all of the days test sessions trying various things to fix the problem. At the end of the day we put our heads together and came up with a plan it was basically a "shotgun approach" where we had several competing theories about what the problem was and we would hit all of them at once in a big way. We thought it would fix the problem but the cost of this is we would not know which of the changes fixed it. So we still do not know what was causing the ignition issues that took out day 1.

Day 2: first morning session we went out now with the working ignition system and power to the ground we started working our way toward full hot laps and something let go, looked like a differential. Tim took the gearbox over to PAR they got it fixed up and back to us around 5pm, car was put back together that night to be on track next morning.

Day 3: first session we are working our way back up to full laps, we only crossed start/finish once which was a 1:40.33 that was literally Toms first ever time around the track and the car's as well.

Something was way wrong in the handling, I started looking through the data and I thought the shocks needed to be adjusted for sure. I went to adjust them and something just didn't feel right inside the shock. I did some bench testing and worked out ALL FOUR shocks were blown. The only way I could think of this happened is that the car was strapped down very tightly or something damaged them in transport across the ocean. It was the only thing that made sense. But I knew even if we tried to find a way to patch this problem, the car was never going to handle worth beans. I could jump in the splitter and the car would have two or three more secondary oscillations before settling. It was obviously not going to work and we weren't going to be able to do anything with the handling.

Second session we told him to give us some hot laps and just after getting on it again something happened in the gearbox. When the gearbox was taken apart at PAR he did note that this was one of the very early units they built. The date of manufacture was 2004 so its a nearly 10 year old gear set. PAR wants to upgrade us to the newer stuff and that will let me do more optimization work with the gear ratios.

There were numerous other small problems that we found and fixed, things you expect with a recently rebuilt car. I would call it a successful event frankly because we expected things go about like this. From a management side I felt like it was good because I correctly predicted the right people and sponsors to get in place that would get us through the weekend and the guys started working well together as a team and everyone is very motivated and excited for what the car can really do. It showed us a glimmer of its potential, but without question we have a huge amount of work ahead of us to try and fight at this level. Thank you so much to everyone who supported us and some people asked me about the DSMTuners sticker on the car I told them about the message board of course! More to come in the future, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!
 
When's the next time you'll be on the track, whether it be practice or a race?
 
When's the next time you'll be on the track, whether it be practice or a race?

The guys need to get back to the workshop and catch up on their work for a little bit and we will ship the gearbox off to PAR to analyze what went wrong. After that I think we will tear down and inspect. Once we have an idea of what all we need to improve we can make a plan and set a schedule to get back testing again.
 
For all of you who were wondering about Nemo:
So, what happened to Nemo? | World Time Attack Challenge

I had heard about the cooling issues and the blown head gasket. But hearing that both the block/head were warped and having no backup engine, there was really no other option for them. Sad to hear this happened, but totally understand the decision.
 
For all of you who were wondering about Nemo:
So, what happened to Nemo? | World Time Attack Challenge

I had heard about the cooling issues and the blown head gasket. But hearing that both the block/head were warped and having no backup engine, there was really no other option for them. Sad to hear this happened, but totally understand the decision.

I was honestly so busy on my car I never even got a chance to stroll by the Nemo pit except to say hi to the guys a couple times. I did suspect there was a cooling issue within the engine from the early test day. The aerodynamic cooling was pretty much overkill from how I designed it and it didnt make sense to go from running so cool as it did last year to massive overheat just from warmer weather it seemed like too big of a jump to me. With that said I have to keep my head down now until next year to get my own car to perform at the level we owe it to everyone to achieve at. It was a bit of a rough start but it has just begun.
 
I rather suspect there was more going on than what they're saying with regards to Nemo. I base that solely on what I've heard from a few different spectators.

Regardless, I hope you can get the car all sorted and find even more areas to make improvements before next year Andrew. Good luck as always. And if you're looking for donations again next year, I'm game. :hellyeah:
 
Good luck Andrew, hope those issues won't hold you back too much.
 
Support Vendors who Support the DSM Community
Boosted Fabrication ECM Tuning ExtremePSI Fuel Injector Clinic Innovation Products Jacks Transmissions JNZ Tuning Kiggly Racing Morrison Fabrications MyMitsubishiStore.com RixRacing RockAuto RTM Racing STM Tuned

Latest posts

Build Thread Updates

Vendor Updates

Latest Classifieds

Back
Top