Driving Force Japan. Performance Car Tuning - Circuit Time Attack Club

Hyper Meeting 2010 – Time Attack

drivingforcejapan — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:58:58 +0000

After all the preparation of the past couple of months the day finally arrived to see how our car measured up against Japan’s fastest SST Evo X’s, everyone was expecting the normal early April cool temperatures at Tsukuba and so it came as a bit of a shock to all entrants that the mercury had climbed to 24 degrees celsius before the midday start time rolled around.

There were a total of 16 cars entered in the time attack portion of the days program… more relevant for me was the fact that there were 5 Evo X’s, 2 manual cars and 3 SST cars including ours. Because the cars were split into two groups some of the pro drivers were driving different cars in each group… to my dismay both the other SST’s were to be driven by none other than Nob Taniguchi and one of the manual cars was to be driven by Eiji Yamada of Cyber Evo fame… damn, talk about stiff competition ! I have to admit I was a bit nervous prior to the start at the thought of mixing with big names like these on the track but once I got belted in and hit the track I began to relax and enjoy the moment.

The car felt great… thanks to the fine tuning of the ECU the midrange response was incredible… who would have guessed a standard 4B11 could feel this good ! … unfortunately after a few laps it became clear that there were some issues with the prototype brakes that still needed some work and were affecting my braking points… it was going to be very difficult to beat my previous best time even though the car was clearly faster than when that time was set.

So how did our car end up when compared to the other Evo X’s ? … it was no surprise that the fastest Evo X was the HKS SST driven by Taniguchi with a best lap off 1 min flat, second fastest was the G-Force SST again driven by Taniguchi with a best lap of 1’02.8, third was our car with a best lap of 1’03.1, fourth was Unlimited Works 5sp driven by Yamada and 5th was the Test & Service 5sp driven by Seki.

Obviously I was disappointed that I could not better my previous best lap time of 1’02.8 however on reflection to finish the day as third fastest Evo X amongst such talented drivers as these does give me some satisfaction… now back to more parts testing before the next event.

Collecting data on the new oil cooler and SST cooler

Warm up lap, thanks Chad !

Nukabe / Prodrive / Bridgestone after 30 mins track time

Catch Up !

drivingforcejapan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:22:52 +0000

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, what a crazy couple of months it has been…

It all started back in early Feb when I was asked to officially represent Bozz Speed at the Hyper Challenge Time Attack with our Evo X, not only did they want my car to carry their name but they also wanted me to drive… wow what a shock !… why so shocking… well because all the cars entered into the time attack challenge at the annual Hyper Meeting are driven by Professional time attack drivers from throughout Japan… names like Yamada, Taniguchi etc would fill the entry list and for me to be included with such talented drivers was a little unbelievable.

Making the transition from owner driver competing occasionally at small events to representing one of Japan’s top Lancer tuning shops at a high profile event such as the Hyper Meeting would require not only a step up in my driving but a lot of work to do on our car in preparation, hence the lack of posts on this blog as I have been busy talking to sponsors, fitting new parts, testing testing and more testing.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thanks to a few people that have been immensely helpful with the preparations on the car and also mental preparation for me… So a big thanks to Richard for his amazing skills and patience at re-mapping the ECU to get the absolute best performance out of the car and it’s new parts, thanks also to the guys at Greddy Japan for their dedication in developing and testing new parts for the X and for the use of their dyno so we could tune the car and thanks to Hisada-san at Bozz Speed for sharing his experience and helping me to get my head in the right place.

In addition to the above individuals I should also thank our new sponsors for their generous support…

Prodrive Japan, Bridgestone, Nukabe, Greddy, Winmax and Liqui Moly.

So enough talk, here are a few pictures showing some of the new parts on our car…

Nukabe BBK

Greddy Oil Cooler

Greddy SST Cooler

Nukabe & Greddy additions

Tokyo Auto Salon 2010

drivingforcejapan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:07:18 +0000

After all the sombre predictions around the web that this years TAS would be a washout with nothing more than dressed up hybrids and K-cars on show it was pleasing to see how wrong all the rumors had been, sure some of the big name companies were noticeably absent but in my opinion this did not matter as there was a host of smaller tuning shops filling the void.

During the course of the three days, most exhibitors I spoke with were pleasantly surprised at how many people were in attendance and indeed spending money… perhaps the doom and gloom from last year has passed and we can look forward to a more normal year… was the general sentiment echoing around the pavilions.

For me the most pleasing aspect of the show was in the development of real performance parts for the Evo X… as expected there was a large number of them scattered throughout the show floor and in contrast to last year most were featuring significant power upgrades instead off just body kits and wheels. Indeed the bar has finally been raised with many X’s now pushing out north of 500 HP and in a couple of cases over 600 HP, during the course of the year I predict we will see an Evo X get close to the 55 sec time at Tsukuba.

It was a little disappointing to see no real progress on pushing the power up on the SST version’s… hopefully someone will take on the task as the year goes by !

Anyway enough chatter, let’s get to some pictures… below is a selection of what I liked or found interesting or just plain weird, hope you enjoy them.

Looks as good at a show as it does on the circuit, my pick for best Evo X

My pick for best looking Racecar

My pick for the best looking Import

Just stunning

I am starting to like the look of these

Still one of the best looking X's around and It's for sale !

A little more subdued than the Toyota below

This get's my vote as the worst looking car at the show

Still one of the best Japan has ever produced

+ one for the kids

I think this will be the fastest X around Tsukuba this year

A couple more X's

Makes a change from a Hummer I guess

This owner has nailed it... looks superb

Glad Toyota had a different team work on this compared to the Prius

Time Attack Event – Revspeed Super Lap 2009

drivingforcejapan — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:51:41 +0000

Once again some of Japan’s top time attack cars headed to Tsukuba Circuit for the annual super lap battle, could the defending champ Cyber Evo hold off the competition yet again and retain the crown or would Revolution & PanSpeed finally snatch the glory.

This year there were a couple of new cars hoping to upset the top three standings… a brand new Evo X from Koyama racing running in the famous Team Orange colors and a GDB Imprezza built by Tomei Power… given these cars lack of track time it would be unlikely they could mount a serious challenge for outright honors today but it was good to see a couple of new challengers making the effort to shake things up a bit.

So lets get into some numbers with some times from the first session:

Revolution 55.915

PanSpeed 56.715

Cyber Evo 55.388

Tomei 56.905

Orange 58.695

Cyber Evo still has the lead but the margin is getting smaller with Revolution pressing them hard, a great effort by Tomei to be on the pace right from the start also.

Here are a few pics of the title contenders… final numbers after the pics !

And the top time of the day is…. 54.925 for Cyber Evo and so they do it again to remain the RevSpeed Super Lap champs for another year !

Here are the best times of the day for the other contenders… Revolution 55.915, PanSpeed 56.715, Tomei 56.667, Orange 58.368.

And to finish of, here is a pic of my vote for the best looking car at the event ( yes off course I am biased ) … thanks for reading.

Time Attack Event – HPI at Tsukuba

drivingforcejapan — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:26:15 +0000

The HPI events are always well attended and this one was no exception, over 100 cars turned up for the days sessions with the entrants split into 7 different classes to avoid to many cars on track at any one time.

There was a huge range of cars to be seen when walking around the pits… from the completely standard street cars all the way up to a couple of the fastest time attack cars in Japan doing a bit of last minute testing prior to the Super Lap battle in a couple of weeks time… do these cars look familiar ?

Cyber Evo

Panspeed RX-7

Judging by the times they were posting during the day it appears the Cyber Evo still has the edge but the Pan Speed crew is getting closer… I won’t spoil the fun by revealing any times, check back next month for the results from the Super Lap shootout.

I was interested to see that there were also a couple of other Evo X’s in attendance, both of which were 5 speed models… one GSR and one RS so it would be a good opportunity to compare lap times with our SST model. It turned out that one of them… the RS was from MK Sport and was being driven by non other than Tarzan Yamada… guess that makes any comparison to our car a little one-sided !

MK Sport Evo X

I had the opportunity to chat with Morita-san during the day and it turned out that there Evo X is fairly similar as far as tuning goes when compared to our demo car, both cars are running non standard suspension with S Tires, both cars have modified intakes and aftermarket brake pads, both cars have a single 3 inch exhaust and both cars are running re-programmed factory ECU’s. Apart from those items both cars are stock so although there was a lot of similarity to the setup of the cars I was not expecting to be in the same league as their lap times given the weight advantage the RS has and the fact that their driver Yamada-san is a legend at Tsukuba.

So you can imagine my surprise after the first session, their best lap time was a 1’02.88 compared to my best of a 1’03.36… hmm not to far off and my best ever lap by far at Tsukuba… could be an interesting day !

Indeed it was a good day for us as I was running consistent laps in the 1’03 range and managed a best lap of 1’02.85 for the day, off course MK Sport managed to better that time with a best of 1’01.89 but for me to be within 1 sec of them was extremely satisfying and shows we are definitely on the right track with setting up our demo car.

I will leave you today with a short video of my best lap to date at Tsukuba…

Time Attack Event – AMKreid Ebisu West

drivingforcejapan — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:22:14 +0000

An early start this morning to make the journey up to Fukushima prefecture for my first experience on the West Course at Ebisu, the day dawned clear and cold so I was looking forward to see how this course compared to the East course that I have run a few times and really like. Although the layout of the West Course looked promising it soon became clear that the track needs some TLC… it is very bumpy in a number of areas which for me means that the East course is still my favorite of the Ebisu courses.

There was a good turnout of cars for the event and a wide variety of different makes and models, ranging from Toyota Starlets through to R35 GTR’s and off course a lot of Evo’s ‘ Imprezza’s… pleased to see another Evo X show up also.

These events are really well run and rather informal so that meant a lot of track time during the course off the day, there would be 4 sessions of 30 mins for each class followed by a free run for 2 hours later in the day.

Unfortunately perhaps due to the cold temperatures or the altitude the course is at I would be plagued by random computer failsafe slowdown codes during most of the day so I spent a lot of time with the laptop connected to the car and not running on the track… oh well a good learning experience anyway. On a brighter note from the laps I did do I managed a best time of 1’05″69 which put me in 2nd place for the day.

Instead of posting a video today I will share a few photo’s showing the outside of my car for a change, big thanks to my friend Yuki for getting the shots !

Until next time…

In the Pits

Start / Finish Line

Turn 2 Entry

Turn 2 Exit

Into the Hills...

Turn 2

Tsukuba Circuit – Testing

drivingforcejapan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:23:28 +0000

A couple of weeks back I headed out to Tsukuba Circuit to do some testing on our reprogrammed ECU and some adjustments that have been made to the suspension settings on our demo car.

Although the weather was still a little warm on the day ( 29 C ) we needed to get some data from pushing the car harder than can be done safely on the road… as it turned out the car handled the conditions very well and in addition to getting a lot of useful data I managed to set our best lap time to date at Tsukuba with a time of 1″04.06.

I was pretty happy with the way the day turned out even though I was having quite a bit of trouble with rear end grip through the last corner that was robbing valuable time… if we can get the car better set up at the rear for that last corner then I am sure there is still a fair bit of time to be gained so I am looking forward to working on that before the next time I go to Tsukuba.

Also worth mentioning is the difference in the way the car sounds now with the new exhaust… no longer does it sound like an asthmatic vacuum cleaner when hitting the higher RPM range… check out the video below compared to some of the older videos with the stock exhaust to see what I mean.

Until next time… thanks for looking.

Evo X Summer Upgrades – Part 2

drivingforcejapan — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:56:25 +0000

Moving on with our upgrade schedule for our X, next on the list is the re-programming of the cars ECU in order to get rid of the absurdly conservative settings put in place by Mitsubishi at the factory.

Although it is still early days in terms of open source tuning software being available for the Evo X, progress is being made on a daily basis in unlocking the multitude of information inside the cars brain allowing for some significant gains to be made in the areas of Timing, Fueling, Boost Control etc.

This step actually started a few months back with a data log being taken on the car in it’s standard form and converted by software into a dyno graph, that log showed the car putting out a peak of 292 HP during a 4th gear WOT run.

After a lot of experimenting and changing of the various data within the ECU and logging the results we have arrived at what for the time being is as much power as we are comfortable running through the SST transmission, we have reached the torque level generally believed to be around the limit for a standard SST transmission to handle so at this point we will continue to monitor everything for a while before pushing any further.

So what are the numbers like ?… using the same software to log and convert to a dyno graph as the base run a few months back the latest log showed a peak of 374 HP during a 4th gear WOT run. In fairness not all of that gain has come from the ECU tune as we now have the single outlet free flowing exhaust fitted which obviously helps the numbers but regardless it is a very satisfying gain and really makes the car feel worthy of being called an Evo.

For anyone that wants some visual reinforcement of what tuning the standard ECU can accomplish take a look at the graph below that shows what kind of difference can be had in the case of boost control … who needs a external boost controller !

Evo X SST Boost Graph

Evo X Summer Upgrades

drivingforcejapan — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:51:58 +0000

With the rainy season in full swing here and the humidity off the charts it is not the best time of year to be pushing the car hard on a track, it is however a great time to be doing a few upgrades on the car.

Our focus over the summer is to improve on 3 different aspects of the cars performance…

- Better cooling for the SST transmission.

- Re-programing the ECU for better response.

- Replacement of factory exhaust system.

First up is the exhaust, the choice of a replacement system is always a difficult decision as it inevitably involves some degree of compromise… with the Evo X there is additional confusion by having to decide between a dual exit setup for aesthetics or a single exit for less weight, add to this the usual dilemma’s of what piping size and to keep the catalyzer or not and it becomes a bit of a nightmare trying to decide.

After much debate it became clear, the whole point of changing the system is to provide the most efficient removal of hot gasses from the turbo… when all other factors are dismissed and this reason alone is considered the choice becomes clear, single system with at least a 3 inch pipe with no catalyzer and a muffler with as little restriction as possible. Guess that is the end of not drawing to much attention to myself when driving down to the supermarket !

Great with that cleared up it is time to go shopping… unfortunately due to the local db restrictions none of our preferred local parts companies offer this type of exhaust for the X yet ! After some lengthy negotiations we finally got our hands on a system made here in Japan by one of those companies but not for sale on the domestic market.

So let the install begin, could not be simpler… the only tricky part is getting access to the bolts on the turbo housing for the downpipe other than that it was all done in about 15 minutes and we were off for a test drive.

Amazing is the best word to describe the difference, turbo spool up is insane now and no longer does the car feel like it is held back as the revs climb through the 5,000 – 7,000 range. This will definitely make re-programing the ECU a little easier. Off course the downside is the noise… it is loud, so loud in fact that all the annoying rattles and squeaks from the so well put together interior on the X have magically disappeared, … oh wait that is a good thing ! … I will have to be a little careful with throttle application when encountering any local law enforcement on the street though.

So that’s about it for the exhaust, the true potential will be explored once we start adjusting the ECU, in the meantime here are a few pictures showing the new system installed.

Evo X Downpipe

Evo X Midpipe

Evo X Single Muffler

Evo X Single 3 inch exhaust system

Time Attack Event – AMKreid Ebisu Circuit

drivingforcejapan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:51:21 +0000

Despite less than ideal weather last weekends event on the east course at Ebisu was a great success. About 45 cars made the journey from various locations around Japan into the mountains of Fukishima prefecture to try there skills on the undulating mountain circuit, the east course is very similar in length to TC 2000 at Tsukuba but with some pretty steep inclines so it is a totally different experience.

For me it was my first time at Ebisu and I have to say it won’t be my last… absolutely love this track as it combines many different challenges, mostly due to the elevation changes but also because of some very interesting corners, the standouts in my opinion are the downhill chicane and the slight right hand kink prior to the last corner that is also going downhill… brilliant !

Given it was my first time at this course I was reasonably pleased to finish the day with the 4th fastest lap time of 1’06.11 however after reviewing the video footage from the day there is a lot of room for improvement in that time so I am really looking forward to getting back there soon for another try.

Here is some footage from the driest session of the day… hope you enjoy it.