Prawn and BigAls A3 Track Car

Cool, I'll chuck them on then. Cheers! I got them cheap so might as well get some use out of them.

Nice shots of the car. Be good to see the vids when they're done.
 
What a day, what a good bunch of guys, what a good organization at Bedford, ( nice people as well, very professional) what a good track and the car wasn't bad either. It appears we have sorted the brakes out at last, they were excellent, At the end of a session I tested the temperature of the discs with the ali bells some 200c less than the rotors. I think that is impressive. When these pads and rotors wear out the replacement 32mm wide rotors and uprated fluid with extra cooling ducts should be the. You Know What. All in all a cracking day. We will definitely be going back.
 
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Some cracking shots on here, under the file 'black audi aee' on the left hand side :)

Javelin Bedford 17.03.14


1622357_565267283570719_89109123_o.jpg
 
That last photo, it says it all. This was the only corner, with wee prawn at the wheel, when initially I was apprehensive. If you read my face, it says, how in the name of hell can a A3 corner at that speed.
 
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Haha, there was one corner, where we were REALLY flat and using LOTS of kerb on exit, where you kept suggesting I backed off a tad :laugh:

:racer: wasn't going to happen :racer:
 
Bearing in mind, I drive a 1.9 TDI Avant, (which has less acceleration than my Kona, ( King Kikapu, (Easton Ultralite)), it takes a spot of adjusting to the track car and its performance. (Excuses, I know) But it does take a few laps to settle down. (More excuses) . However, now that the beast is on song, we hope to do quite a few track days this year. So hopefully, more honing will be done.:thrashi:
 
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I'd like to spend more time on the suspension really, it's SO stable now it's crazy, but it does understeer a touch in the mid and low speed corners, but gives LOADS of confidence to pile into the higher speed corners without fear. the earlier GT track had a few more really fast corners that wern't in the south/east/north track in the vid above.



I'm somewhere between stiffening the rear ARB, or softening the front, or perhaps both, and playing with damping to make it a bit more lively.



It used to be a nightmare sliding around everywhere, but now it's just so stable, i could afford to live dangerously and make it rotate a bit more on request!
 
Prawn said:
Sure is mate :) Been in there well over a year!
Click to expand...

There is a bunch of lights in the right hand corner. I thought they were for external air temps. Blue for cold, red for hot. :sos: Thanks for the pointer, they could come in handy. :think:
 
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Water peaked at 91 degrees, compared to over 110 at ADI, so I think the rad is doing it's job very well.

EGT peaked at 861 degrees. Not TOO bad, but that is on low boost. Couldn't use high boost as it's too lean to risk. From road testing and track previously, Track EGT's have been to 904 at the highest back at ADI. I'd be happy to have it tamed back to a more sensible / useable ~360bhp to keep EGT's in check when the map is next looked at.

The brakes were absolutely fantastic :) The floating setup with your bells has really done wonders. very impressed there!
 
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That sort of region Bill, this is the plot from before it was mapped:



It's been on various dynos and always seems to make 290-300 on actuator, which is 1 bar.
 
Some random pictures.

I went on a high speed train yesterday, first time. clocked 143mph. Very bizzare on a rattler:



And whilst walking around China-Town on Bobs stag do at about 1am, we stumbled across these beasts:



This was awesome:



Crazy R33 GTR with underbonnet lighting :S



Anyway, enough of that.

it's been at least a month since Dad last bought some tyres. Thankfully, we bought these a while back, and I just picked them up from Bob this weekend:



BTCC 235/610 medium compound slicks :)

Literally like new, these have had SO little use:



Took the car out for a spin, all going well:





It seems that Bedford took it's toll on the drilled AP rotors, which were mint when they went on, but are now showing some pretty meaty cracks:



It looks alarming, but I'm told it's not actually an issue until these propogate further and start to join up, as the main structure of the disc is within the centre fins. So still a trackday or two left in them yet!
 
Some random pictures.

I went on a high speed train yesterday, first time. clocked 143mph. Very bizzare on a rattler:



And whilst walking around China-Town on Bobs stag do at about 1am, we stumbled across these beasts:



This was awesome:



Crazy R33 GTR with underbonnet lighting :S



Anyway, enough of that.

it's been at least a month since Dad last bought some tyres. Thankfully, we bought these a while back, and I just picked them up from Bob this weekend:



BTCC 235/610 medium compound slicks :)

Literally like new, these have had SO little use:



Took the car out for a spin, all going well:





It seems that Bedford took it's toll on the drilled AP rotors, which were mint when they went on, but are now showing some pretty meaty cracks:



It looks alarming, but I'm told it's not actually an issue until these propogate further and start to join up, as the main structure of the disc is within the centre fins. So still a trackday or two left in them yet!
 
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Will you be opting for drilled next time do you think?
Do you find that the drilled add anything to the set up?
Just out of interest.
 
Hi Daz, In my opinion multi grooved is better. Drilled to have a tenancy to crack under extreme conditions ,as shown. We are very heavy on the brakes, more so than most. Multi grooved also clean the pads or so the theory goes.
 
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Some people argue that drilled, dissipates the heat build up and this may be so, but with Bills ali bells, vented rotors and air ducts I would not choose drilled over grooved.
 
Ahh ok. Was just wondering seeing so many mixed views on these. Would make sense for you guys to avoid. You both done plenty of track days and lots of experience which i guess is why your so hard on the brakes?
be good to see how they hold up grooved only.
 
If you look at that last vid, just after we passed the Carrera RS, you will see a board stating 150m to the chicane, then 100m and then 50m, we were braking ,down from 147mph (143mph for me) at the 50m board and into the chicane at 105mph ish. That gives an idea of how good the brakes are. Bill's floating bells have really come home for us on this one. Also, which is obvious, more track time/practice and light fuel loads compared to a full tank makes a big difference. Plus our speedo over reads by about 5/6mph at higher speeds.
 
Last edited:
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Like all sports, there are so many variables. We have had people say that certain braking products are the best available and they have never experienced fade or degradation. We have tried several of these and ALL have failed under the arduous conditions we put them through. All of these products have not shown any adverse results under hard road use. Hard track use is something else. We now have The best setup to date.
 
I don't quite understand. Are you suggesting that the more the brakes are used, the better they become.
 
think he's proposing that as the car stays out on the track for a longer period of time when compared to if it were just the one of you on a track day then the disks suffer from more abuse and suffer from adverse effects than they might otherwise do?
 
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that's how I understood the qeustion Alex.

it could well be a point, definitely. I can't imagine too many race cars are asked to cover 240 miles in a day, and although we do do cooling laps after each session, it certainly doesn't sit in the pits cooling off for long. brakes and tyres are still up to temp as soon as we head out!

Speaking of which, Jonny has edited and uploaded the first of his clips from Bedford, somewhere mid afternoon Im guessing (You can hear me comment we'd done 168miles at the point we went out)

Jason (Vorhees) as passenger, low boost for the whole session, lovely dry conditions :)

One out lap, then about 2 and a half flying laps:

[video]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-6js5KoqVc[/video]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-6js5KoqVc
 
We do a lot of track time, but the problems we have had with other setups is they JUST fail to work and we have to come off. ADI last year was an example. The brakes faded and vibrated uncontrollably after about two laps. This current setup was used very hard and no problems whatsoever, apart from the rotors which we knew were past their suggested lifespan. We used these rotors to test if the setup worked. We did not want to spend some £340/50 on new rotors if they did not work. So now it's uprated rotors and hopefully an even more foolproof and reliable system.:racer:
 
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Prawn said:
I can't imagine too many race cars are asked to cover 240 miles in a day
Click to expand...

There's a bunch of race cars that are often found in Le Mans bombing about Circuit de la Sarthe around mid June :p

You may want to pop over purely for the grid walk to see what they use and get some ideas :)

I will be there this year and I'll be poking about all the aero/braking parts for some inspiration (dreaming) on what to do to my car :laugh:
 
Lavis89 said:
^ Is that the fia world enduro race? I'm going to the Silverstone leg of it in April
Click to expand...

Yeah it is dude - 6 races across the world...24 Le Mans being part of it.

I wonder if they'd let a certain black A3 racecar into the LM GTE am class as a guest car at Silverstone :)

Judging by the videos I've seen so far you need some more stiff competition out on track Nick! lol
 
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haha, Cheers Kris (assumption on spelling based on username!)

I have competition for sure, I had some great fun laps with Nige in his mk2 ABF turbo, and a few of the m3 bunch on Northloop are seriously fast too!

we'll be going back to Bedford with Northloop shortly, and hopefully I'll have full boost available by then :)

Timing isn't allowed at all on trackdays, but from looking at the video time stamps it looks like the two flying laps were both around 2:47 region with traffic on both. a friend on northloop was doing 2:46 in his very nicely prepped track m3 on the day Westy was there back in 2012, so that's a good indication.
 
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videos look wicked! You have created one hell of a machine there :racer:

I am heading up to bedford on the 14th of April if you have the time to bring the beast out again?

Tom
 
Thanks Tom, given your background in motorsport that's really much appreciated!

I'd love to be out at a trackday every weekend, but sadly, time / money doesn't allow it, and we're already re-booking another discounted day at Bedford with Northloop in June. I like the idea of going back again soonish, in theory I should be able to pick up where we left off and be on the pace from the start rather than having to learn the entire track from scratch!

I'd like to think that on full power, with a few suspension changes we could get it down into the 2:45's or lower on slicks, although of course there is no timing on trackdays, so it's purely from looking at videos afterwards :)

Another reason for not doing TOO many trackdays is consumables! Now that we're travelling at a reasonable pace the rate the car gets through consumables is terrifying! The day at Bedford probably used around £100's worth of the front pads, and took a fair toll on the discs. Not to mention a fair bit of wear on a set of WTCC slicks.

Expensive game this motorsport lark! And we're only playing at this stage, not competing yet! Eek.

Still, wouldn't change it for the world :racer:
 
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You need to shed more weight buddy!!!
You ever thought about cryogenic treatment on rotors? No idea how well it works. Read a report years ago of people getting upto 5 times more life from discs. No idea how true it is. Just a thought.
 
Apologies for random lunchtime at work comment, then disappearing off to work!
Yes you understood me correctly, just suggesting 2 people driving may make a difference to the amount of heat, resulting in cracking but appreciate you have been piloting this setup and for all intents and purposes it has been a success. Car is looking fantastic in te videos and to be so consistently fast is brilliant, so no criticism intended, wouldn't be on here if I didn't love the post and what the hell, all of you!!!
Seriously, great stuff and keeps me sane at work and elsewhere :)
 
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