JoeCools 2ZZ Project: Fast Fun!

[JoeCool]

I've been rough as hell all weekend - typical when the weather is good. Didn't even manage to change the oil. I did get it out for a spin though. Checked tyre pressures (set to 30R/26Front) and wound the shocks to 8 from softest at the back and 5 from softest at the front. Had a great drive out. Then grabbed some pictures - car hasn't been cleaned and I didn't have time to get anywhere picturesque.







Front needs dropping 1-2 cm IMO, as well as oil change, etc. Rapidy running out of time!

[jvanzyl]

Hey Joe - what did Wheels in motion charge you for the full alignment?

[JoeCool]

£90+ VAT.

I think they quoted you their top rate which is for every possible adjustment (I thought that was what they charged me). They get it on the ramps, check it, then charge per adjustment up to a maximum. They're nice people and jot rip off merchants, but you do pay for their expertise!

[JoeCool]

I went through the bits I pulled off my car last night. Looks like I replaced my sub frame in the nick of time:



I should now be in the final throws of prep for next week's trip to the Nurburgring. However my wife has other ideas. I've got perhaps a morning I can dedicate to an oil change, rear pad change, and putting my nice steering wheel on. Then I'm ready. Ish. It needs a wash too.

[JoeCool]

Oil and Filter Change (Petronas 5W30 Fully Synth + Bosch filter)

Put rear mudguard/spat things back on.

Fitted Nardi Steering wheel and new red stitched gearstick gaitor

Packed for the Nurburgring!

[manos3003]

 s:bounce: :bounce: s:bounce:    s:bounce: :bounce: s:bounce:    s:bounce: :bounce: s:bounce:  

Liking this! Have a safe trip Joe! Awaiting news!   s:D s:D

[JoeCool]

Didn't want to post before for fear of jinxing it. 3 evenings of lapping done: 10 Nurburgring nordschleif laps and 5 of the F1 circuit complete. I can't describe how happy I am with this car. Utterly neutral, utterly composed, seriously fast: I have footage of me keeping up with a 430bhp E92 M3 and a 480bhp E30 for 4 laps of the F1 circuit - until a wheel came off the E30!

Drove it to the bitter end, not a drop of oil used, no brake fade, embarassed some expensive metal and impressed everyone who had a ride in it.

Video/photos to follow.

Need to do more trackdays!

BTW, AD08R's are the tyre of choice at the 'ring now. The bulk of the ring rental cars and most of the regulars run them.

[Topdownman]

Great to hear that you got it all sorted in time and that it performed so well.

Next time you go you should only just need to wash it by the sound of things!

[jonty]

Sounds good Joe, looking forwards to video!

[PhilMC]

Sounds like you had a great time at the ring.
Was it wet or did you strike lucky with totally dry track conditions?

[JoeCool]

Right, now I've made it safely home, the initial Nurburgring April 2017 trip report:

We had an awesome trip this year. Really truly great fun and the MR2 performed flawlessly once again. In fact, I think it's for to say it overperformed as it turned plenty of heads, a few stomachs, and even prompted a couple of life long Toyota haters to change their tune (and start planning builds)....

The trip grew from last year's 8 people to more like 17. People came and went from the group over the 4 days I was there, bringing an eclectic mix of cars. We had E46 and E91 M3's, a 2005 WRX STi,  a brilliant £400 1997 BMW 323i with a rally driver piloting it, an air-cooled 911, a turbo mx-5, a Mk1 focus RS - we even had a star appearance from a 2014 Porsche GT3 RS. And then there was the frankly insane E30 BMW touring which looks outwardly stock but is packing a 480bhp supercharged methanol injected 4.4 V8..... More on that later.



The plan was that the 'ring was open for 3 straight evenings, so rather than do the horrifically busy open days, we'd do the quieter evening sessions. It also spreads the risk of bad weather across 3 days. As a bonus, the F1 circuit was open for public lapping too! Between the ring visits, we'd just do some drives, see some sights, lie in, eat cake, and afterwards of course have dinner and beers.... I also made it a lazy trip over on Sunday by stopping off in Bruges which turned out to be an excellent choice. Some truly top gear-esque issues in the old town finding parking, great dinner, then shared drinks in the square with some drunk cornish guys on a business trip!

Anyway, on to the serious stuff: My car and it's performance since the suspension upgrades.

F#@k me this thing is good. I mean really, really good. As an example, on day 2, my mate took me around the nordschleif in his 2010 430bhp M3 in 9m:42s. He's a police pursuit driver so no slouch. I took him around in my car in 9m:44S!

Then I chased him around the F1 circuit for 5 laps, and he was only pulling away on the straights, I reeled him back in under braking.

My best laps were 9m:28S and 9m:29S, both with passengers aboard oddly enough. That's 30 seconds faster than last year with no more power. All down to the suspension....

Now, given that I'd bolted it together myself less than a month ago, I was absolutely blown away. Firstly, it felt composed, comfortable even, on the way over. Only the biggest of potholes were jarring, and would have been in any car. But on track, and particularly the F1 circuit where you had the room to really push the limits.... I was so impressed. The limits are just SO high on this thing. It's almost any corner, any speed. Even on the 'ring itself. I didn't have a passenger who wasn't going to the jesus handle deep into the braking zones or round bends at warp speed. And it's neutral and balanced too: neither front nor rear is out to get you. Ask a little bit more, and it gives it to you. Ask a lot more and it surprised the life out of you. So, so happy with this, bearing in mind that this is an initial set up that I hope to incrementally improve on.

It isn't perfect: steering weight and feel during normal drive isn't there. It feels too dead. That needs fixing. But there's no doubting the cars limits.

Anyway, onto some pics:




I don't think there is any doubting the loading going through that back tyre! Incidentally, Yokohama AD08R's are very much the tyre of choice at the Nurburgring now. We got chatting to two very nice Scottish guys who run 'racers retreat' and their entire fleet of Bmw's runs them. So do the ring rental clio rs's, as well as about 50% of the regular crowd. Apparently being non-metal in the wet and cold is a big bonus, as well as decent life and their prodigious grip of course.


So, a little bit about my friend Michaels BMW, which I conveyed with the whole way:





What a lovely E30 touring, right? Clean for its age,and rare to see them standard and unmolested....


Ahem.


ahhhhhh.....

So, sadly my little MR2 had to relinquish it's 'Most impressive engine swap' Crown to this 480bhp (at the wheels) methanol injected beast of a thing. In a car park full of exotica, this humble E30 drew the biggest crowds. And not once did it pass me without provoking hysterical laughter, either because of the speed (165Mph on the autobahn) or the noise.... In fact on day 2 it tripped the gantry noise meters on the 'ring at 132db and was summarily banned.

Which is how we came to be on the F1 circuit, and between the unstoppable force of that engine, and the immovable object of a high grip track surface, something had to give....





Yup. Of all the things between the explosions and the tarmac that can break, what chose to let go first was the 25 year old wheel bolts. It lost one, and sheared the other three in short order.


Luckily we're a resourceful bunch, and between us all we had it fixed (and the requisite amount of mickey taking done) in under an hour. All things said and done, it could have been a lot worse. That failure on the nordschleif doesn't bear thinking about.

And as a final epilogue, this is what the thing does to rear tyres in 5 laps...


Videos to follow... In a while, they're time consuming to process.

[Treboeth]

Eagerly anticipating the videos, sounds like you may have enjoyed it a little bit [emoji3]

Sent from my Lenovo P2a42 using Tapatalk

[JoeCool]

Youtube Link to my best lap - 9m30

[Treboeth]

Love the grins from the passenger, theres always a couple of cheeky sods overtaking   s:mrgreen: :mrgreen: s:mrgreen:  

Very Nice   s:D s:D

[JoeCool]

Was it wet or did you strike lucky with totally dry track conditions?

Dry all 3 evenings. The weather forecast was atrocious, it was saying snow 2 days: and it did snow in the afternoons! But by evening it was dry and crisp and clear. Ideal really.

That was part of the rationale of going for 3 days with evening touristfahten - more chance of the trip not being ruined by rain.

[JoeCool]

Crikey... No updates since April??

I think the phrase goes: Build it, race it, break it, fix it...... We're at stage 3.

Long story short: Car ran fine for a while. Then I took it to an ill fated Trackday at Bedford Autodrome in July. Had an awesome evening, car running flawlesly, but clearly I got carried away and completely failed to notice it was overheating.  s:( s:(   A squeal, a knock, and into the pits we rolled with the car overheating badl, the bottom end knocking, and also a split CV boot. Initially I thought the block had suffered catastrophic damage as there was ''milkshake" all over the subframe and suspension arms. This was just grease thrown out of the split in the CV joint though. That doesn't change the fact that the big ends are hoop-a-jooped. THe car suffered the ignonimy of a long trailer ride back to a spot outside my house... at vast expense.

22ZZ-ge death - Video

There followed a long dark month of the soul. Keep or sell? Decided to put it up as is, ust in case someone else fancied making a better job of it than I wanted to at the time. In the meantime I explored options....

Anyway, we're now at the 'good money after bad' fix it point!

THe car is booked back into Bonsai next week, and I have a complete, rebuilt engine being shipped over from MAG Engines. After exploring options, it jsut felt like the best middle road option for a quick, reasonable cost fix. If I could do a swap myself (Space and time prohibit, I'd be more than willing to do the spanner turning) I'd probably just take a punt on any old engine from a corolla. But Seeing as I did that last time and it broke, I'll try something slightly shinier.

I'm still not actually sure waht caused the failure, hopefully a bit of tear down diagnosis might shed some light and inform me as to what to change to prevent another failure.

Ongoing costs? Errr, shipping, plus new engine, duties and taxes, the weak pound, plus the kidney I sold, carry the one and.... errrr..... you'll notice I've removed 'cheap' from my readers ride title!!

[mikek]

Glad you're fixing it. It's a great car and once it's up and running again the pain/cost will be forgotten (eventually depending on cost!)

[manos3003]

Glad you're fixing it  s:) s:)  Totally worth the pain you're going through now. Many more smiles to come after this  s:D s:D

[delhusband]

+1, Glad to hear your keeping it  s:) s:)  Know what it feels like to plough cash ceaselessly into a car (in my case it was 8 years ago and a high milage daily drive estate) for it to fail terminally. But also know what it feels like to sell a 2 prematurely (my first black roadster).

[1979scotte]

Have spent big money on keeping cars alive. For better or for worse.
In this case I think it's the right decision.
Best of luck.

[Alex Knight]

So pleased to hear this news. You've made the right long term decision.

After all, what could you possibly replace it with?!

[JoeCool]

After all, what could you possibly replace it with?!

A bloody massive pile of cash.

[Alex Knight]

After all, what could you possibly replace it with?!

A bloody massive pile of cash.

To blow on another car?

[JoeCool]

   s:bounce: :bounce: s:bounce:

[1979scotte]

Cool