New Toy

I have been putting off buying this. But there are 2 track days coming up at Winton, and last time I went to Sandown only and back. I had to pick so many stone chips that it is not funny. These soft compound will become rock magnet when it is soft. It is better off changing them at the pit lane. I have tried this on the tyre already and I was surprised how easy I can be done.

It is a 18V impact driver that rated 220Nm in torque. Hang on, that is just slightly more than my rotary engine. Haha. It can take the nut off any time and it is like taking about 5 clicks to take a 80 lbs-ft torqued nuts. Impressive. I have to make sure I don't thread them when I put them in. The gun has variable speed so I can slow wind them up before I gun them in. I will of course finish it off with torque wrench too.

TrackVision is coming soon with RaceChrono

Antti from racechrono has told me that he is planning to make this work. Some people already trailing to use the data on the TrackVision program. The result is this on YouTube video! You can add your video with the track data generated by RaceChrono. Cool!~~

Here it is. Nice cool video. God bless Racechrono.

(BTW I add code "&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" to the end of the URL of the youtube link to get high quality embedding)

New blue battery - Exide Orbital 750CCA

Well yesterday my car would not start and the electric shows signs of dying. Well lucky someone at work had jumping leads and I could start again. There was a yellow engine light so I don't want to drive the car to recharge it. So I quickly went home and recharge the good old battery. It has been a few year since it has been replaced and I thought... may as well.

Battling the flu, I took a day off. The car started without problem today, and I use the OBDkey to monitor the ECU voltage while driving to Nelson's workshop. The yellow light was permanently on and the OBD scanner show that it is due to throttle position error. I had no problem with it today, although the OBD logger show the throttle position from 15-78% (from full off to full on). Change the battery, clear the code, never returns.

Then the problems started rising. Only a spot of the leads, there are too much residue on the old battery. So it is time to clear up and think that the positive lead is corroded. So went to a local battery shop to buy a non spillable battery. It felt lighter but no way to know since I did not weigh it (other website said 18.6kg, which is about right). It fits perfectly, but the leads are on the other side. We had to add an extension cord to fit the lids, therefore to replace the worn out old rusted lead head. But the power steering did not work! It turns out the plate came out of the relay and lost. Need to seperate the battery from the relay man!

 
More info of battery HERE

At the same time I decided to change the coolant and use more concentrate than prescribed. See if that works well.

 

I also got a N95 specific phone holder, it is so nice that I can see the lap time on the right of the steering wheel.

Next is to get an impact wrench to take the tyres off at the pit lane.

OBDkey

 

That is what I just have recently. I am getting a lot of useless gadget lately. This is a bluetooth OBD/CAN scanner that can take data from ANY car. Any car is nice, since I am shopping for my 2nd car. Just been putting it in my car. The unit is pretty small and it will not in anyway affecting the driving.

 

It can be used in PC with bluetooth. Windows smartphone or Palm/Window CE PDA. No Nokia smartphone program yet, but racechrono can use it to scan the data and it works! Data logging capability will allow logging of the data. Although it cannot be exported, just reading the data on the screen is cool enough.

  This is what you can see in the screen of Nokia N95. The grey line is 

 

I also went with my friend WAY in his new 135i (experimenting ECU tune and catless downpipe). We did a 4.95 sec! We thought after reviewing the GPS data that we prob did a 5.70 sec, but after consultation with racechrono developer Antti, we just need to determine 100kmh GPS speed in OBD then we will have a time! So it is just over 5 sec! Fast.