Frankiman's street/track GTR project

[canu_50]

hey frank nice seeing all those parts, we're gonna need to make a shoot next year.

[flipridah17]

any updates to this?

Congrats on the nice build! I just read it from page 1

[frankiman]

thx

and yeah, i've been saying that an update was coming soon.. for the last 2 months..

but i think this week its finally going to pick up again

[gts4-1991]

This car is just amazing , exactly what i want to do with a gtr sometime in the future when i can afford to make an upgrade from my gts4 to a gtr. Very sexy car, cheers!

[frankiman]

Chapter 7 - 2009 track days, part1

i know its been awhile, after months of promises, finally another chapter in my ''saga''

since the title of my thread is ''Frankiman's street/track GTR project'' i had to talk about my track experiences at some point

2008
i started doing lapping events (practices) in 2008 with my previous GTR, as some of my buddies where doing it, and it was cheap, and i had always had a great passion for racing

so there i was with a 300hp japanese racing icon
i started doing a couple lapping evenings at Autodrome St-Eustasche for starters

since i had to cross the whole island of montreal to get there, i didn't go to often, and got pretty unlucky as everytime i went either it was raining of there wasn't enough beginners to have multiple beginner session
(sorry for the quality, this is a pic of a printed pic)


then i ordered a couple parts to make the car more track worthy, ended up slowly working on it for 3 months, and then crashing it (refer to chapter 1)

=======================
2009

when i bought my current GTR, i new i wanted to do ALOT more track days
hence why i overhauled to whole brakes and had to car tuned on a dyno before ever setting foot at the track

-----------------------------

Autodrome St-Eustasche (ASE)

or course i went back to ASE first since thats where my passion for lapping started, and where all of my buddies went to


in 2008, the lapping club was called TRAC, sponsered by a shop also named TRAC that was based just outside the ASE, the club included about 10 instructors and a couple flaggers, and about 60 members tops, cost was 160$ for membership, and 20$/20min sessions, basically 1$/min

but, apparently, the shop's owner was paying his distributors, so the shop closed down, and the lapping club was dead

then, in 2009, Carl Wener, who worked at TRAC and was a lapping instructor, picked up the club, got sponsored by the ASE's owner
and Carl went back working at his family's shop; Perry Auto Laval, which is one of the biggest/best oem and a/m parts shop around Montreal, which also sponsors the club in a way, and Carl became the club's director and renamed it the ''ASE Lapping Club''
do to some clever web advertising, word to mouth and business planning, membership prices dropped to 100$ for new members and 60$ for returning members
which had the effects of having more than 150 people sign up

so this is how the club works,
you can turn up in any car you want, mechanically safe, no leaks whatsoever
a Snell/DOT helmet is required, a roll bar for convertible cars, and every loose objects must be removed from the cars prior to getting on the track, and NO drifting
its on monday evenings, starts at 5pm till sunset
drivers are seperated in 4 groups;
beginners ; instructor as passenger at all times, no passing
intermediate ; instructor on demand, passing on straights only
advanced ; no contact
pros ; race cars and lisenced pilots

so of course i started as a beginner again, since i never got the yellow sticker the previous year because i didn't come often enough

so i went there twice a month, right after my univestiy afternoon class, (sometimes even skipping the second half of it i'll admit)
and did a total of about a dozen sessions during the summer, sometime i got there so late there weren't any RED sessions left
the later in the summer, the sooner the evening ended, the less time we had

towards the end of the summer, i finally accounted for enough track time to get the exam (basic rules and flags) to get into the yellows intermediate
but i never lapped in that group since i tore my ligaments in my left ankle at work around that time, and couldn't really race, still i went there one last time just to pass the exam and get my yellow sticker


this is one the best pictures my girlfriend took, the only time she came with..













===========================

Mad Track Weekend 1

i'd heard about Mecaglisse from a friend, and since there was no club based there, i had register to one of Mecaglisse's own lapping day
and since they have a limit of 24 cars/day and only organize 3 days like that per year (rest of the time the track is rented for pro events, or by some clubs) i reserved 3 months in advance

then, 3 weeks before that, when i got my GTR tuned at Almasi, the afternoon appointment was a EK civic coupe with a supercharged SIR motor owned by a very cute girl named Cynthia
so i ''decided'' to stay a bit longer after lunch while her car was getting tuned
then she told me she was lapping too, but at SANAIR, which i thougt was only a drag strip, but it also had a road course
she told me it was only 100$ for the whole day **sweet**

but the next track day at SANAIR was on the same weekend as the one at Mecaglisse

--------------
a week before that dreaded weekend, i drove down to the shop where the girl worked at (JDM transplant) to give her the 100$
nextdoor there was a wheels and tires shop, so i got in there asking if they could do me a favor

at that time, i'd been already driving for a while with the wrong tires on the wrong wheels, because i got my wheels painted way before i got my spacers, only my +28 wheels could fit in the front, so i had my Neovas mounted on them, and my Azenis on my +38 in the rear
when i got my spacers, i could finally swap my wheels in the correct positions
but then my tires' grip balance was more to the rear which made the car understeer much more, and with the Azenis in front, they kept locking under heavy brake

so i got the guys from that shop (who had absolutely nothing to do that day from the looks of it) to swap all the tires/wheels and rebalance

but .. i seemed to had lost the key to my sweet Rays nuts at ASE 2 days prior ......fuuuuuuuuuuuck
we had no choice but to destroy the locks with some nut pullers thingy

now i had everything set-up perfectly

------------

SANAIR

so on saturday morning of that weekend, i met up with all the drivers very early at a mcdonalds, they had some serious cars, which i didn't really anticipate, STI, S2K, turbo civics, S4, FD3S, turbo golf, built S13
so we drove for 40 minutes down to the track, waited in line to sign the darn disclaimer




since it was my first time at SANAIR, i asked the STI owner to drive me around a couple laps to learn the road course, he was a super guy, except for 1 thing,
on his first lap (my first lap ever) while going threw the chicane, he tells me;
''be carefull here, theres a bump, just last week 2 skylines slid here and smashed in the tire wall''
my confidence went out the window..

then i realized most of the hondas (and the turbo golf) where there just to get top speeds on the drag straight and didn't really care about the corners,
but others, like the Carbon S2K (see much below), the STI, the EP civic SIR and the clown EG turbo civic where realllllly serious
and the S13 seemed to test its shoddy build quality by testing how long he could drive without a hose poping off, he used my tools more than i did








the FD never made it onto the track apparently because of a radiator issue
and we were joined by an NSX after lunch which had busted brake pads, which was fixed after a quick trip to canadian tire

since we were a group that rented the track, there was no instructors, thus no ''rules''
we could just get on/off the track whenever we wanted

**since i'm running out of caracters, i'll have to continue this story in another post**

[frankiman]

Chapter 7 - 2009 track days, part2

''Mad Track Weekend 1'' continued

the track wasn't as fun as others like ASE, the only interesting part was the straight,
i started by running my low boost setting (360hp) and i was getting just over 200km/h top speed
later i turned up the boost (450hp) i got 225~230km/h top speed :wink:

but this track is seriously deadly on brakes
since at the end of the straight lies the slowest corner of the track, so you have to brake from ~220km/h down to ~60km/h
that is ALOT of energy to disperse
which ulimately proved fatal to my Hawk HP+ pads and Nismo rotors
my pads were melting and making sooo much dust
this is how my WHITE rims looked like at mid-day


after i drove home, i went to the car wash after diner, since my car was dirrrty and told the guys there not the get water on the wheels
that was 2 hours after i left the track
my drilled rotors had gotten so brittle, and were still a bit hot i suppose, that they cracked right along the holes (typical for drilled rotors) from the humidity and overspray

400$ worth of rotors scrapped


now what, i had to be at Mecaglisse the next morning, a 2 hours drive, or lose my 130$ deposit

luckily, i had another set of rotors, the ones that came with the car,
but i was so tired from my whole day, after taking a shower i fell asleep
woke up at 11pm..

got to the door and my dad said; ''your not realllllly going to go are you?''
went to the garage and swapped the dam rotors, took over an hour! i was so tired

-----------
Mecaglisse

sunday morning, i had to be at mecaglisse for 9am, got up at 6;45am

here you have to know that before any track day, i completely load up the car with tools, bottles of every fuilds, extra battery, 10L fuel tank, cooler with plenty of bottles of water, chairs and lunch


well i forgot to refill the tank, change the water and pack a lunch
which i had to do before leaving
yey, great day to come

to make it worse, it started raining 20 minutes after i left
and around that hour, on a sunday morning, when its raining, there isn't alot of people on the road
i must have met 15 cars max on my 140km drive

when i finally got to Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci, which might be one of the smallest town ever, because i passed right by it,
the signs ''welcome to..'' and ''you are leaving..'' were within half a km of each other
theres only 4 things in that village; a caisse populaire, a general store, a gas station and a race track

so i turned around, and entered the path to the track, which looked like a rally stage with packed gravel and a sign saying; ''please respect the residents and do not powerslide'' of something like that and had to drive another 5km along that path at 30km/h following those signs


finally got at the end of the path, saw 2~3 old houses which one had a ''Mecaglisse Inscription'' sign in front of
it was only 8;40 (ok maybe i drove a tad fast on those empty roads)
i knocked on the door, no answer, got back to the car, parked it behing the sign, folded the seat back, put on some MUSE, closed my eyes
at 9am sharp, Frank, the track's owner knocked on my window; ''you can go sign in now''
got inside and while i was signing the disclaimer, looked at the list of participants;

out of 24 possible spots, 18 had been reserved, out of 18, 4 didn't cancel because of the bad weather, including me
i took a quick peek, skyline, lancer, lancer, mazdaspeed
shwweet

after i signed in was told to wait in front of the bridge to wait for the others
''what bridge??'' this bridge.. where not at the track yet!


followed Frank on his ATV for another 2km to finally see what can only be described as motorsports sanctuary


than we got briefed, and Frank told us since there was only 4 cars, that he wouldn't stay around to check groups, basically it would be open lapping all day and that we could change direction whenever everyone would agree
he left a walkie-talkie with us and went back to the house

so these were the cars

skyline GTR, 1st timer
lancer EVO X, 2nd timer
lancer ralliart, 1st timer (girl coached by her ''tremblant instructor boyfriend''
mazdaspeed3, 5th timer

the track was still uber wet, and it was sooooo humid, i stopped checking the barometer after i saw it do a full spin, think 100% humidity, and foggy too
i mean, really foggy


so we were told to start slowly to wait for the track to dry out a bit
but of course Mr. 5th timer wasn't going to be told what to do, went all out, and crashed on his 3rd lap, which was my first (pic from my dash cam)


he spun around at the little jump, hit a pile of gravel dead on, and was stuck jacked up onto barrier tires

so we got Frank on the radio, he came back with 2 other guys, with 3 ATVs, a bunch of shovels, brooms and jacks, we all helped out and everything was cleaned within 15 minutes

of course the mazda's front bumper was scrap, and the radiator was warped, so the guy left the car sitting on idle for about an hour to see if there would be a leak, but unfortunetaly for us there wasn't so he got back on the track


because it was so humid, it didn't feel great going around a roller coaster track again and again, so we took alot of breaks between our short sessions

the instructor boyfriend called us pussies and told his GF to get back on the track, he had her pushing it totally to the limits, we counted at least 8 spin-outs (which is alot considering its a FWD),
when we checked her car nearing the end of the day, all this fun would ultimately end up costing her a new right ball joint, front brake pads, front rotors, front tires

the track was really fun tough, like i said, just like a roller-coaster with alot of elevation changes and tight corners
but with the configuration we were running, there wasn't much room for high speeds (blue part)


i was driving around the whole track in 2nd gear, making my recirc valves going crazy, tshh tshh, and then putting it in 3rd just for that blue bit to get a top speed of ~115km/h, probly could've gotten higher if the braking zone for the chicane hadn't so wet, which had us braking early






unfortunately, as the day progessed, i got more and more nauseous, probly mostly du to the high humidity, lack of sleep, exhaustion, the smell of gaz and burning brakes (mostly the ralliart's) and malnutrition (hey, all they had at the dam general store were pop-tarts)

when i started to feel like i needed to puke, it meant it was over for me, it was only 3pm, we still had an hour left, but i packed my stuff and headed back

i still had 100minutes of driving to do, AND COULD NOT stay awake, so after fighting it for 40 minutes, i stopped in st-julienne and parked behind a gas station, folded the seat back, put some MUSE on and closed my eyes (remind you of anything?)
took a 1 hour nap, woke up, went inside, picked up a redbull and a kit-kat and went straight home to bed

what a weekend !!!

**i'll start another post before i run out of caracters again**
**don't worry, vids will be in part3**

[nelsonmxmarc]

PM me, or better yet - 514-826-9736 when you go this summer! I'm soooo down.

Those pics are so motivating .. Damn.. lol

We gotta meet up this spring when our builds are finally complete! Good work man, always an interesting thread to read.. Plus you have the "in" on track days which will definitely be of value to me

[archaeic_bloke]

... marc and i are soo down to lap with you this year francois, thats an awesome story!! i love reading your thread .. it reads like an epic novel, and the subject matter is everything i find awesome!! lol

[nelsonmxmarc]

Lol
We were just talking about this like 2 days ago Josh. Can't stop thinking about how epic it's gonna be to hit the track this summer and get some nice lapping sessions in.. mannnnnnnnnnnnnnn..

Can't wait for the vid!

[archaeic_bloke]

you a late nighter too francois? (im usually up till 4am .. or 5.. ... homework woes)..lol

that track looks really neat.. but man it would be worthless on a rainey day like you had.. geez.

on a good hot day that would be a lot of fun.

[frankiman]

my classes got cancelled tomorrow.. so..

and that track would be freaking cool on a hot sticky tarmac day
check youtube real quick, alot of sick cars have been around that track since its inauguration 4 years ago
http://www.youtube.com/phat69cat

[frankiman]

Chapter 7 - 2009 track days, part3 **videos**

''Mad Track Weekend 2''

about a month after the first mad track weekend, i again made the mistake of scheduling 2 track days on the same weekend

SANAIR

went back to Sanair for the 2nd time, but since it wasn't the same person who rented the track, it was an entirely different group of people there that day
but the same amount of nice up cars!








it was even more beautiful than the last time, clear sky, hot sun... hot tarmac

a friend of mine had tagged along to ride with me for the first half of the day
he got yelled at by the track's gate-keeper because he tought my buddy was going to race his Kawa Ninja around the track, pff


the day went on and we all had alot of fun,







i was destroying everyone on the straight except for 1 car

the dam 911 turbo went by me like i was parked


so we got back into the pits and i asked him; ''you cannot seriously still be running stock 480hp?''
''no no, i swapped the turbos and upped the boost a bit..''
''and?''
''well... 600hp''
''ahhhhh''

but around corners, he wasn't much faster (probly the 20'' HRE rims not helping)

but there was 1 car going around corners like it was on rail-tracks
the ''Carbon S2K''
why carbon?
because everything body piece on that car was carbon fiber; front/rear diffuser, hood, hardtop, wing, side skirts
and he was running racing slick tires, and a stoptech BBK with race pads and had a fully built NA F20C engine
i made this little animation just to show how much better he was during hard braking and cornering





funny thing is;
i used a full tank of gaz for the whole day, and only used my extra 10L just before leaving
but that S2K was on the track so often, it had to refull at the nearest gas station 3 times !

then, a friend of the guy who rented the track arrived just after lunch, with another supercar
he got on the track just for a few laps, but ohhh what a sound

he got on when nobody else was on the track, the sound of his butterfly valves at WOT on the drag straight echoing around the track was definitely the best moment of the day


as the day went on, i felt my brakes becoming weirder and weirder, i felt the front of the car jittering and the brake pedal vibrating, wtf
so i got back in the pits, check the brake fluid level to see i was running low, o..k
so i filled it back up, and went back
like i said in part2

but this track is seriously deadly on brakes
since at the end of the straight lies the slowest corner of the track, so you have to brake from ~220km/h down to ~60km/h
that is ALOT of energy to disperse

well it seems i had forgotten to check the status of my brake pads the day prior, i had no compound left on the pads, just bare metal
i couldn't drive anymore as my front brakes were completely crapped
the reason my fluid was low is because the last thin layer of compound was quickly disintergrating which made the pistons travel further out of the calipers, sucking the fluid down with it

i just never made the connection until too late
it was only 3;15pm, and i had another track day the next morning !

while i was packing, i called up PerryAutoLaval, closed..
i called up Haig @ Autoworx, but he only had Hawk HPS in stock..
i wasn't going to drive 2 hours just to get to autoworx to grab a crappy set of pads when luckily, i had bought spare AMS pads from CobrAA just a few days earlier

but i still had to get home, so using my handbrake and the down-shifting (compression) technique, i managed to only use the front brakes 3 times on my 45 minutes drive back from the track

so i ended up working on the car late again, taking the front brakes apart, re-lubing everything just to change the darn pads


------
Riverside Speedway

before going to bed on saturday night, i sent an e-mail to the DarkSideCrew who had organized the track day at riverside to tell him i would be late, i was going to sleep this time

so i left at 9;30am for a 2 hour drive to St-Croix on the south shore of quebec city

why is it called riverside speedway you might ask, well its right beside the St-Lawrence river


but when you arrive at the track, theres no way of knowing where it is, except for a little sign off the 132 road, leading into trees
then you have to drive down a zig-zag busted old half-paved path to finally get down to sea level
yeah, theres an elevation difference of 100 feet between the road and the track, which makes for an incredible sight while going down the path

you can clearly see it here


then i had to wait a few minutes for the gate-keeper to let me cross the track since the pits are in the middle of the track

i got briefed quickly by the chief flagger and asked him who could coach me to know the track real quick
he pointed to a USDM EVO9, shweet
so i got 3 laps of shotgun in the evo, fantastic car

and since i started lapping right after lunch, it was an open lapping formula from then on (groups before lunch)

then i discovered that AMS brake pads were absolute crap, the surface of my rotors were a bit uneven because of the day before, but still

i had to brake for sooo long before corners, at least 3 times the distance i would have braked with HP+ pads
and after only 6~7 laps, the pads were already overheating and i couldn't brake at all anymore
so i spent the day doing on-track sessions or 7 laps, and then waiting 30 minutes in the pits to let the brakes cool off between each session

its a nice track, about the size of ASE, but even simpler, and with a greater average speed
i got top speeds of about 150km/h, might have gotten 160+ with better brakes

the whole day was super, met alot of great people, alot of cool cars








i was on of the last person of the day to leave and while i was packing up my stuff, the gate-keeper came round with his truck, hailed me;
''hey take this, you might be interested''
''but this is a registration sheet for a drift event..''
''yeah well i saw you drifting that hairpin all day!''
''sir, my car is AWD...''
and he left

but you can see in that last picture, that i was actually powerslide the hell out of the hairpin's exit (note how much counter-steering im doing)


----
so thats my track experience in 2009
2010 is going to be siiick ( yeah with 3 i)

----

**Videos**


click the images to see vids

took awhile to finally make this dam vid, enjoy it!!! took me 12 hours to complete, my own montage




my buddy's vid



another guy's vid

[frankiman]

all 3 parts are up, including videos

also added pictures to part 1&2

[archaeic_bloke]

francois thats amazing... im SOOO stoaked to hit the track...

im gonna get an extra set of fluids (good idea) and a different racing brakes... im gonna get brembo blanks and hawk HP+ for the fronts of my car... whats ur opinion of that setup?

keep the updates comin.. now im curious as to what your doing to ur car now.

[frankiman]

francois thats amazing... im SOOO stoaked to hit the track...

im gonna get an extra set of fluids (good idea) and a different racing brakes... im gonna get brembo blanks and hawk HP+ for the fronts of my car... whats ur opinion of that setup?

keep the updates comin.. now im curious as to what your doing to ur car now.

thats a perfect setup for street and track, just don't go to sanair lol
i'm having a hard time finding non-gtst brembo blanks, only autoworx seem to have GTR's, but what i need is a big bigger :wink:

i still have 2 more chapters before i get into what i'll be doing to the car this year, and this **** doesnt write itself
its still in storage so i haven't done anything since novembre except for stockpiling parts and planning