Sprint - Pre Season 2012 - Keith Attwood

Words by Keith Attwood

Published: 17/04/2012

2012 Season Prep.

2011 was pretty much a non-event for me. I had 9 events lined up as part of the Association of South-Western Motor Clubs (ASWMC) but I had little chance of making any form of impact, due to the high calibre of machinery taking part.  However, other events transpired against me as well. I achieved 1 event all year.  Admittedly I did quite well at that event, and ended up in the Navy News, but my 30 seconds of fame cost me. 

By the time I was reading the Navy News article I was half way to the Falklands, for a 6 month trip, having been given just 4 weeks of notice, and my car sat in bits, at Essex Autosport, after I had discovered a crack in the subframe.

Post my sprint at Castle Combe in March 2011 I did a trackday during Easter leave.  A post day inspection revealed the following:

As if that wasn’t enough, I then found a crack in the exhaust manifold, caused by the extra movement the engine was allowed as the subframe had dropped.

So the car was dropped off for repair at the beginning of May and I sailed on my merry way.

During August I had a picture update of the car.

Obviously, a subframe crack did not necessitate the car being dismantled to this extent, but I had decided to have a few more modifications done to it at the same time:

Fit JDM Cams
Replace clutch
Supply and fit DC5 intake manifold
Supply and fit charge cooler assembly
Carry out full vehicle and conversion inspection
Repair exhaust manifold
Repair rear subframe and fit new brace
Replace engine cover hinge.

And it's all been done with the following bits as well.

The exhaust manifold was replace with a new one
Side indicator have been replaced with new items
Nose brace fitted to the super charger
New idler pulley
Full custom map

After picking up the car up at the end of 2011 and putting a couple of hundred miles on it something didn’t feel right with the map whilst on light throttle at about 3500rpm so I took the car back to the garage in January 2012.

After a few tweaks were made to the fuel map we conducted a power run, to make sure all the numbers matched what the car was previously producing. We weren’t ready for the surprise we were given.

After all the work was done in 2011 the car was producing 294Bhp and 205lb/ft, at the hubs, using a moderate 6.8psi from the super charger. Now though it hit 315Bhp and 220lb/ft................. at 10.5psi. Great, you may say, and they are pretty impressive figures, but nothing physically had been altered on the car to enable the boost to be this high, so there was a problem somewhere.

We weren’t sure if running at this pressure was problematic or not, but, we knew something had altered in order to give these figures. Since the intake and exhaust manifold were brand new and the decat pipe was only 18 months old (but had only covered 8,000 miles) that left the back box for us to look at.

So it would transpire that I needed to change my lovely 2bular exhaust, which, I think, was over 4 years old. Replacing the exhaust meant that I could get a newer version, which was quieter, thankfully.  However, the wait to get the pipe manufactured was problematic.  It took almost a month for the exhaust to arrive and then another month to get the car properly mapped.

At the beginning of March with the first sprint only 3 weeks away the car was mapped:

The figures were good.  304 Bhp at the wheels.

The upgrades didn’t stop there:

I've been pining after some 4 pot callipers for a while and had my heart set on some AP 4 pots. These were always just too expensive to justify though. I thought I'd tracked down a good set of used ones callipers, but as they were an early version of the kit they would require mounting brackets, which I could not find for neither love nor money.

I was talking about this mounting bracket problem, on a forum thread, in September when Dave, from Seriously Lotus, dropped me a message and asked me to give him a call to talk brakes. I was very glad I did.  I was also very glad I spoke to him about some other bits I was thinking of doing in the future... i.e. Floating bells

I had to wait a month to save the final pennies as the purchase of callipers turned into the following.

Caparo 4 pots
CL5+ Pads for above
308mm Alcon front discs
AP 290mm discs for rear
Nitron floating bells all round

Now I already had AP295/AP290, on ally bells front and rear, so it was not a massive upgrade. The rears I was buying though had been used once on track and had the floating bells attached..... All for half the price it would have cost as new. The front floating bells were misprints from the factory and so were again a bit of a steal!

After measuring the thickness of my old discs it turned out that the fronts were getting towards the end of their life (at 24.05mm) but the rears (at 24.6mm) did not need changing at all, yet. This helped to offset the cost of the new brakes as I can always sell these old parts on, although I’m not sure how much they're worth.

So the order for the brake kit was placed and they arrived the next day.

A morning under the car was the name of the game.

All that was needed, after fitting the brakes, was to sticker up the car and get to an event!

Actually that’s a lie…. I had to go and collect a trailer and see if the car fitted in to it. It did….. Just!