I signed up for a two day event at Gingerman Raceway and then had a mad rush to get the max ready for the event. I haven't driven on a road course since 2004 I think, so I needed to get back in the groove. I forgot how fun it is. Saturday was rainy all day and I only went out for one session - wasn't terribly fun running a 3/10ths and still feeling like I was on pins and needles trying to keep the car under control.

Sunday though dried out and I got back at it, and had a blast. The basic setup of the car is:

95 SE 5spd
3.5 swap w/ 4th gen intake manifold (no power above 5300ish) and 4th gen timing
Quaife limited slip diff
PPG 3rd and 4th straight cut gears, shot peened
Shot peened, detailed and deburred 1st through 5th gears
Oscars Radiators 1.5" all aluminum radiator
short ram intake/Ypipe/3" exhaust
K-sport coilovers
generic front strut bar
Cattman rear sway bar
J30 calipers front
z32 rotors front
Goodridge SS brake lines
Carbotech XP8 pads in front
Hawk HPS rear pads
17x7.5" SSR Competitions
Kumho MX tires in front (245-45-17)
Hankook RS2 tires rear (245-45-17)
PLX Devices DM100/SM-AFR/SM-Fluid temp gauges (oil temp and water temp)


I was pretty happy with my performance and that of the car. The Quaife limited slip is pretty awesome - you can get on the power so early coming out of the corner it's incredible. The 3.5 has good grunt and this track can be run in 3rd gear the entire time with the power level I am running. I could have shifted into 4th in the straights and 2nd in the corners but after a session of trying that, I decided to save the wear on the trans and keep the car in 3rd the whole time and just concentrate on running the proper line and hitting my braking points.

This brake setup never missed a beat, pedal feel was consistent and solid the entire time, what it really boils down to is I had way more braking power than traction, so the brakes were not even close to being pushed to their limit.

I started out in Intermediate II (the higher of the intermediate classes) because I hadn't been on a road course in 4 years. I ran a couple sessions in Int II and was running over everyone so I moved up to Advanced I (the lower of the advanced classes) in which the split is about 50-50 cars on R compounds vs cars on street tires. I was middle of the pack in Advanced I.

Handling of the max was interesting - you can tell it doesn't handle or grip as well as the smaller/lighter cars but for the most part I was making up for the handling deficiencies under braking and somewhat under acceleration as well. I'd say braking was my biggest advantage over most cars out there and truthfully, I wasn't really braking at 10/10ths. I picked braking points and pretty much stuck with them even though as the day wore on I sincerely felt I could take it another 50-75 feet into the corners on the ends of the two straights before really getting on the binders.

My coolant temps were rock solid 195 degrees the entire time out there (temps were high 70s low 80s). Oil temp was a little on the high side, 260-270 degrees. Not out of this world high but high enough that I'm going to run an oil cooler before the next time i run out there (next time I'm out there I'll probably be turbocharged anyway, in which case I'll obviously need an oil cooler). Power steering never boiled and neither did the Valvoline SynPower brake fluid.

I've got in car video from each of my sessions that I'll post up eventually, and I've found a few pictures that different people have posted from the event that have my car in them, so I'll post those as well. Should have some external video of my car available pretty soon too.

Credit for these photos goes to Lovefab, briangaudy, cleanblackZ, etc. None of these were taken by me.

 

 

 

 

offcourse u couldnt take the pics...
always good to hear from you neal... great work

 

Hey Neal. Glad to hear you got the car together and got to have some fun on the road coarse. Now get the rest of the engine finished already!!

 

Dude.. whats that third gen doing in front of you... ROFL

 

good job holding it down in adv 1

 

great job neal and jeremy! that must have been a blast! looks awesome!

jeremy.... you got your car finished and up and running already?

 

Looks like a ton of fun! Way to show 'em how it's done in an A32

 

he should stick one of these on the back. newb lol

 

nice pics

 

O yea.. with 2 days to spare.

 

no wonder you never replied to my emails! ....you were too busy getting the car ready!! ....haha

were you happy with the turbo setup??

 

Ive got a few kinks to work out but overall so far so good. 14 psi on this setup feels similar to what 16-17 psi did on the other setup. o yea,.. sorry about the emails.. ill work on that

Jeremy

 

Awesome. Glad to hear the J30 setup standing up to RC duty, should get more interesting (for everyone) when you run some boost through the 3.5.

 

Good to see the cars out of the woodworks again

 

ah its all good jeremy! just messing with ya

great job on the car! i want to make a trip up there sometime to see it. might be a christmas break thing or something...we'll see how it goes. i need a turbo setup possibly

Neal what place did you come in?

 

NICE.

I have been wanting to run a track day for quite awhile but I was afraid my brakes are inadequate (stock except for HPS up front) and it would wear the hell out of my tires.

Congratulations on the track day man, I hope to see some more from you. One more thing, why'd you go with the USIM instead of the 3.5 IM?

 

the reason neal used the USIM was due to time. he needed to get the car going so he didn't mess with the time consuming job of getting the 3.5 IM on, he was working in a friends place and needed to get it going. he has other plans anyways

 

Exactly as kevin said, I just ran out of time to do the swap and doing the USIM was less time consuming. I've got both a DEK and 3.5 IM sitting in the trunk of my beater and I'm going to throw one (or both, and do a dyno comparison maybe) on my car one of these days. Just hasn't been a priority.

Kevin - it wasn't a real race it was just hot lapping which is basically just for fun. There is no official timing.

Morpheus you are right those brakes would not hold up. Back when my other max was stock (except for ground control coilovers) HPS pads and stock rotors were not sufficient. You would need better pads and it'd be wise to run a heavier rotor as well (more mass to absorb heat).

 

ah ok. well that is awesome! i wish there was more of that kind of stuff around here! haha. i would for sure go try that out!

 

Haven't we done that already? 3.5IM > 00VI for the 3.5, not only does the 3.5IM flow better but the ports of the 3.5 heads and the 00VI don't match up IIRC.

Yeah, I was looking at Z32 fronts with milled rotors and some better pads. I flogged the max hard up and down a mountain road recently and I did witness the beginning of fade so I backed off, but I also noticed that HPS were worlds better than stock pads and did hold up to a fair share of abuse. Obviously a 60-20mph mostly second gear mountain road isn't going to compare to consistent threshold braking from 100mph/third gear road course.

How'd your pads look afterwards, notice some taper or were they ok?

 

Who tested that? I'm not aware of any such test, certainly not on a 3.5 with proper matching of the 3.5 LIM to the 00vi (which is what I'd be doing). Dandymax's 270whp and still climbing at 7500rpm all motor dyno would indicate to me that a 3.5L intake manifold is not capable of as much airflow as the 3.5L IMs which peak at like 6100 and then start to fall (96sleeper's cammed 3.5 dyno for instance). If there has been such a test I'd like to see it so I can re-sell this DEK manifold I just bought and not waste the time putting it on.

The pads are perfectly fine. I don't know what you mean by taper - they are worn perfectly even across the surface if that's what you are asking. They probably have 5-6 more lapping days of similar intensity left in them, based upon how much they were worn down from this one.

 

I can't remember who, when or where--I could be wrong. Maybe they were referring to an 00vi lower IM as well in the 00vi setup.

Pad taper is exactly what it sounds like--something I have heard of happening when you beat the **** out of a street pad. The leading edge of the pad tapers off.

So you're running the entire Z32 front setup then? Milled rotors et al?

 

I think tilleys99 had a DEK mani on his 3.5 but didn't have an adaptor and thus was still dealing with the mismatched ports. Other than that I can't think of anyone who's tried it.

No the pads look perfectly normal. I've never had anything weird happen with my pads from HPS to HP+ to HP+ with 13" cobra rotors to this setup all run on road course. These pads are certainly not a street pad by any stretch of the imagination. Carbotech is very adamant about that.

 

Glad you had fun out on the road course Neal!

As far as all the 3.5 manifold dynos peaking too early... I'm not sure it's just the manifold... one has to consider cam timing and cam specs also plus header design...

However that 00VI does flow very nicely when matched with a proper intake/TB/valvetrain/headers etc. It's true my dyno was still climbing slightly, as my cam timing was set to give me a peak at 7700 or so for an 8200 limit (presuming the bottom end would hold up, which was proven not to), but I wouldn't have gained a whole lot more by 7700, a couple whp maybe. So the timing was pretty much set optimally.

 

Seems like sum1 had lots of fun.Looking good man.Where are you spin-out pics.?

 

Hes running the J30 brake upgrade, using j30 rotors, j30 calipers, slightly moded Maxima torque members, and maxima pads. This way you can have Full rotor diameter.

 

Still waiting on that video....

 

yea neal

 

looks like a ton of fun.

that viper is the ****!

 

 

me too. guy that took the external video hasn't done anything with it to my knowledge, and the guy that has the in-car video camera hasn't either because he lost his video editing program when he installed his new OS on his mac.

 

Don't you know how to run a business? Go break their legs

 

lol, thats an awesome pic. saved.