I have booked myself for my first official trackday this weekend. Something I have been meaning to do for years. Any other takers?:-
http://www.trackdays.co.uk/tracks/bedford.htm
Open pitlane and a whole day of circuit driving sounds immense to me.
Tips or otherwise appreciated.
Cheers
James
There is a track not far from me that is open on Wednesday evenings all summer that I often visit.
My experience is the our cars do quite well on trackdays unless the tracks have too tight corners. However the wear on the tires and brakes should not be underestimated.
I use EBC slotted discs and EBC Red Stuff brake pads but it’s not uncommon for the discs to get really hot after a few hard laps.
I’ve even managed to melt and partially burn the dust boots on my calipers during a trackday on a hot summer day.
This photo was shot after I had driven a cool down lap to let the brakes cool down a bit so I don’t even want to guess how hot the brakes get during heavy use!
I got all excited then…I thought brilliant i can take my Bedford on a track day… what a hoot i thought
Then i got disappointed 
we should arrange a club track day at some point.
Brakes are my biggest worry. I have about 8 mm of meat left on the front and hope they last the day. On the plus side it is only going to be around 3 C.
Rob you can take one of these as I think they are within the size limits, might be a bit too tasty for you though!:-
James
make sure you use 5.1 brake fluid, normal brake fluid will boil,i done silverstone last year,at the end of my track time my brakes pedal went to the floor,there was nothing luckily i was just finnished,i have now got 5.1 have a grate day 
Very damn cold. It rained all morning with some snow thrown in for good measure. The organisation was fine and the facilities pretty good. The nearly 4 mile GT circuit is excellent and seems to go on for ever.
I was static sound tested on entry and measured 98 dBA at “3/4” full rpm. Although the guy just asked for 4500 rpm which is not my 3/4 rev limit. I was advised I might be close the 87.5 dBA drive by limit - measured at four points around the circuit at 20 metres.
Anyhow in the morning I was trying to learn the circuit and the wet track was keeping me off the revs too much. Even so my brakes got damn hot - as expected. I could see one microphone on the track so was giving it a wide berth and keeping off the gas - I have no idea where the other ones were.
Lots of people spinning out left right and centre! I even had a moment when a Porsche span out in front of me but other than that our AWD is pretty damn awesome.
After lunch the rain had stopped. The track was still wet but I could use more throttle. Five laps and I was black flagged for exceeding the drive-by noise limit. Apparently I was measured at 88.8 dBA on a least two mics. So that was the end of my trackday driving.
For this reason I would not recommend any 3000GT/GTO to go to Bedford Autodrome. The noise restrictions are the harshest in the country and any high powered car is going to struggle. It is just not worth the time, money and effort.
Snetterton has a 105 dBA static and a 92 dBA drive-by so if I go again that is where I shall head too.
I do need better brakes though. I was barely on the brakes and they were still cooking after a few laps. As a result I didn’t get to exploit the full potential of the back straight and only managed 105 mph (GPS logger speed).
I used my GTech Pro Fanatic for the first time in circuit mode and it was damn excellent. You basically just press one button once. Then it automatically detects when you are on circuit and starts recording laps. You can review data with G and speeds etc - brilliant. I highly recommend it for any track enthusiasts:-
http://www.gtechpro.com/rr_fanatic.html
Cheers
James
Shame you got black flagged James , sounds like it was going well .
At least its given you more of an idea of what to do and expect if you decide to go again 8)
Craig 
Its a pity James as its an excellent thing to do. I loved my track days but TBH I got the bug until the car went bang.
Anyone who takes this seriously should concider uprated brakes and deffo a baffled sump.
Steve
An in car lap of the excellent 4 mile GT Circuit:-
James
LIKE
DOUBLE LIKE.
Not exactly the best line into a left hander by the white car shortly after he went past you
Nice pics!
That is a really exotic intercooler setup you got there, what type of cores are you using?
Superb action pics
[quote]Nice pics!
That is a really exotic intercooler setup you got there, what type of cores are you using?[/quote]
Up front are Toyota MR2 uprated intercoolers. Each core is 250 x 200 x 100 mm with 63 mm inlets and outlets.
Cheers
James
Their almost identical in size to the Gene/Bell SMIC I have yet to mount on my car.
How are they working out for you? Did you notice a big difference compared to the stock ones?
[quote]Their almost identical in size to the Gene/Bell SMIC I have yet to mount on my car.
How are they working out for you? Did you notice a big difference compared to the stock ones?[/quote]
They work fine up to a point. Some previous info I posted:-
*My uprated sidemounts are supposed to to be able to flow up to 450 HP each and have 2.5 inch inlets and outlets. At 1.8 bar they are still pretty efficient but my turbos are chucking out 165 C air and the intercooler outlet temp is 56 C. At 1.6 bar it is 140 C and 46 C and at 1.2 bar it is 120 C and 38 C.
So doing the maths my sidemounts are around 66% efficient at all those boost levels. 66% is an acceptable efficiency.
In my case though I will be adding some extra cooling in the form of a charge cooler so I can get my “high” boost inlet temps down.*
So I did add a chargecooler system - just for hell of it!:-
http://www.gtouk.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=53996
James
Awesome info!
Thanks very much for posting it.
Unfortunately I’m not a full member here being a foreign so I can’t access the thread you linked to.
This is the first time I’ve heard of 3000GT with a working chargecooler setup.
We had a guy on the Swedish forum who started work on installing a chargecooler but he abandoned the project before he was finished and installed a front mounted intercooler instead.
I did post my chargecooler info on some other forums.
James
