Karting again in Chiba 09/04/26

I still haven't found my way to TC2000 since the last race. I haven't been avoiding it... just worked out that way. I was supposed to go on the 25th but it was a very wet day so I canceled and ended up going karting on the 26th instead.

Karting is such a blast particularly when you get a nice handling kart which just does what you want it do do. Even it wild oversteer moments if you are quick enough it comes right back although you do lose speed that way :-)

Anyway, thought this was a decent photo and it does show my new helmet paint job which I haven't blogged about yet. I'll take another photo of it when I put the darker visor on.

The good news is weather for the rest of the week and the beginning of next week is looking fine as I'm due to hit TC2000 on the 2nd, 4th and 5th :-)

Adding an RPM input to TraqMate

The TraqMate unit provides a wire whose sole purpose in life is to hook into a tachometer feed and tell you how many RPMs you are doing. By hooking in RPMs, tire sizes, gear ratios etc you also get some other info like what gear you are in, what HP/Torque your car is producing. It also makes for more entertaining videos as the rpm needle should finally move!

After asking around and gathering the required info on how to connect that wire to the car, I finally got together with my good friend The FeatherKing and hooked it in.


Traqmate Display Unit showing the live RPM feed.

It all turned out to be quite easy after we had TraqMate hooked up to the cars power/ground. The key is the following diagram which shows where to connect the TraqMate wire to. The target wire is marked TA and is color coded Yellow/Black.


The PCM is on the roadster is located under the airbox and once you get the airbox off (and disconnect the battery etc), you see something like the following. The red arrow shows the 2nd wire from the left on the top row where we hooked into.


Once we'd tapped the wire and tested it to the TraqMate unit by setting the car as a 1 cylinder car in the TraqMate car setup, it all worked and we needed to find a way through the firewall from the engine bay into the cabin where the TraqMate unit is kept. This also turned out to be quite easy and we found a nice path using the same access hole which my gauges were using. The arrow below shows the place.


Finding where this hole came out in the cabin was another thing... I forgot to take a photo of this part but its basically deep in the passenger footwell and higher up than you expect.

The following photo shows where I have both the TraqMate Sensor Unit and ChaseCam stored under the passengers seat. It works out quite well with some heavy duty velcro sticking them both down.


I'm getting really fond of the ChaseCam unit even though I am officially still testing it. The camera mounts nice and low and the units mic is out of the wind unlike when I had my conventional handy-cam up there on the rollbar.


All I have to do now is hit the track and get some proper footage! Next track day is May 2nd and of course the Party Race is coming up on May 5th. Wish me luck!

Creating a video with TraqMate

I've been wanting to upload a TraqMate video of March 10th at Fuji for sometime now but I thought it would be fun to show a little demo of how easy it is using the TraqMate/Chasecam combination to pull out a video of your best lap of a certain session. So here it is...



Two things wrong with this video of course... One is that the video capture program that I used to capture the video from my desktop doesn't actually show the video that the TraqMate software actually shows for some reason. It does show the other videos though which is a bit wierd. But anyway... The second thing is that I was too lazy to do sound :-)

So - once you do all that, you basically end up with your video file... It's so easy. No more editing or not much anyway depending on what you want to do. The video I made in that video is this one... Its not actually my fastest lap but it's not so slow either :-) I'm quite the happy camper with my purchase!



Enjoy!

Tsukuba TC1000 - 09/03/01

I'm rather late about posting an update on TC1000. Needless to say I had a great time and it was great to be back in the car again and to put it through its paces. Before going though, my tires were in bad condition from the last endurance race last year. The front tires were pretty badly worn so I decided to try using 2 rear tires from my spare set on the front and to see how that went. The rear tires don't wear so much on the roadster compared to the front so it seemed like a good idea to save some money.

So as well as needing to wear in new front tires, it was also my first time with the Chasecam and TrackMate setup. I was looking forward to trying that out. Tires proved to be quite a challenge for the first 2 sessions with lots of under-steer followed by some over-steer. TC1000 is not a bad place to enjoy a little over-steer though as its quite safe and I was soon having a lot of fun.

I managed to post my best time at TC1000 which is 0'43.847 some 700ms faster than my previous best. The weather had a lot to do with that I think as the temperatures were still quite on the cool side of things.

Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a rush to setup the camera and the footage is all sideways as I didn't check it before recording. Shame on me! However, TraqMate worked flawlessly and gave me some interesting data to look at. The most interesting thing was comparing 3 other drivers of my car against each other and seeing the differences in lines, braking etc. I've prepared a little video which I captured from TraqMate to show off this cool feature.



A note about the video. The car is my car. I was the only person in the car when I was driving where as I was in the passenger seat for the other 3 drivers. I'd estimate the car was therefore about 60kg lighter when I was driving it hence acceleration is a little better. Tyre conditions and fuel loads were also getting better with the green driver having the worst of it and the red driver having the lightest fuel load and probably the best grip as I'd wore the front tires down nicely.

You can really see where my strengths and weaknesses are. I need to work on my braking mostly. I think I'm engaging ABS too much as I take too long to slow down on the first hairpin. I also lose time under braking into the first section of the last corner. The GPS really shows how the lines differ too. So lots of ideas for what to try out next time I visit TC1000.

The Traqmate Kit

As promised in my previous post, here are some photos of the Traqmate Data Logger. I haven't got the installed photos handy right now but here is what it looks like when it arrives.

This is the pizza style box it comes in. Quite nice presentation I think.

And this is what's hiding inside! The Display Unit, Sensor Unit and a few other necessities.

New TraqMate Datalogger!

It's almost March! My first session since November's race last year will be at Tsukuba TC1000 on Sunday - March 1st. Can't wait to get back on the track.

Since I've been gone, I've been busy saving money and well decided to splurge out and get a data logger. After looking around for quite a while I decided to go with TraqMate. Some cool features are:

• High GPS sampling rate (up to 40Hz). Higher sampling means more accurate info me thinks. This is pretty high compared cheaper offerings.
• Extendability - Programmable Analog/Digital inputs for recording stuff like water temp, rpms, brake lights, ABS or anything else you care to tap a wire into.
• Integrated Video - Can view video directly with data analysis. This is great as you can see why you were slow/fast etc directly with the sector data!
• Video Creation - Save certain laps etc as video along with a virtual display for speed, g-forces etc. I do like my videos so this is a great function for me.
• Small Footprint - separate display unit takes up less front window space than a performance box for example.
• Easy to Use - I tried a friends last year and it was really easy to use. I also tried the Performance box but Traqmate wins hands down.

Anyway, I'm rather excited about my new purchase and getting some data at TC1000 this weekend. I've also got a chase cam on lend so will compare that to my usual video recorder.

Oh yeah, in case you are interested, I might as well point you in the direction of TraqMate Japan. The website is TraqMate Japan. If you get tempted, please mention that you heard about it from Tweety and you might get a discount! The website is still under construction so if you can read English you might get more info from the main website in the US.

Anyway, I'll try and take some photos later and will be sure to post some video from Sunday.

Party Race 08/11/16

The last Party Race of the year took place on Sunday. I competed in the Emblem 1 hour endurance race with a fantastic co-driver who goes by the name Kanepee. Kanepee-san wrote up a nice race report in Japanese on his blog.

Kanepee-san's first taste of Tweety was about two weeks ago when I picked him up after work and let him drive home. The next time he sat in the car was on Saturday when he drove it around Tsukuba at speed for the first time. On a light fuel load, he managed to get a 1'10.2 which beats my best time so far around Tsukuba! You are awesome Kanepee! I drove the second session after putting some more fuel in but could only get a 1'10.6. Turns out we'd only about 1.5mm of pad left on the left side pads so the brakes were a little hard to use.

After swapping the pads and washing the car, we were ready for Sunday's battle.

Sunday morning was wet but the rain fall had actually stopped by the time it came to qualification. It was very slippery and I the car was moving around a lot even when I wasn't making too many mistakes or being overly harsh. 80R saw a couple of cars spin and I can understand that as I went sideways there more than once. It was hard to string a lap together and I was pretty satisfied when I got a best of 1'18.2 on my last lap. It was only enough to get me 14th on the grid out of 17 cars though. I'm not quite sure how anyone pulled a 1'15 in those conditions. I guess I need to work on my wet lines to find more traction or something.

The race start was Le Mons style except that the driver got to belt up and wait in the car while the second driver waited across the track for the sprint to the driver. Kanepee-san outperformed my wildest hopes as he dashed towards me, touched my raised right hand which I dropped to the key to start the car and I was off. A great start too as I passed 3 cars before the first corner and grabbed the inside line. I got a 4th car down into the 1st hairpin and did my best to maintain control of my still cold tires.

As the laps rolled by 2 cars were all over me, but I was determined to not let them pass down my inside, as anyone I could delay (without blocking) might mean a better position later on. If they got along side me on the straight I'd do my best to out brake them but I'd hold my lines. I was pretty relaxed but then on the exit of the 2nd hairpin, I missed 3rd and by the time I'd grabbed it, I'd lost 1 position as one guy easily passed me with the loss of speed. The other guy was right on my ass now too. I put up a pretty good fight for another two laps or so and then I found myself on the exit of the 1st corner in 3rd gear with no torque instead of 2nd. Flustered I grabbed 2nd as the guy went past on my outside. Drat. Momentary loss of concentration I guess due to the added confusion of talking to the pits on the phone at the same time. Well that was 2 quick and harsh lessons learned. When I looked at the video later, I basically seem to just drop from 4th to 3rd and didn't even go for 2nd.

Car was handling excellently though and I was quite happy with my driving. During the first stint I actually managed to nail a 1'10.9 line and that was with a full tank of gas. The car was slow on the straights though and I don't know but that might also be my chosen line through the 2nd hairpin or it could be just that some of the other cars are faster or have lighter fuel loads and drivers.

After 20 laps, the car was still great but it was time to come in and hand Tweety over to the very capable Kanepee-san. The pit stop involved an enforced speed limit in the pit lane of 40kmph and a completely stopped car for the duration of 1 minute. This kept things safe as it gave the drivers lots of time to change, belt up, do seat adjustments etc. We had fantastic team support in the pits with the guys from D-Technique helping out on stop watch and tire pressure duty. Kanepee-san took off a minute later to start his 20 lap stint.

It's funny but I didn't think about Tweety's well being for one second while in another drivers hands. I have complete faith in his skill so that was very relaxing. I only wanted to do our best and to get back out there myself for more laps. I took the time also to grab some fluids and relax before I'd head back out. 5 laps before Kanepee-san came in I focused myself again by kitting up and preparing for action. Kanepee-san pitted coming in from 5th place.

Getting back in the car again was easy. Kanepee-san reported back that the brake feeling was bad so I was wondering how bad exactly as the minute was up and I shot out of the pit lane in front of another car. Brakes were very squishy which made them hard to read and meant that I had to brake earlier than usual and hope for the best each time. The guy behind me got by 2 laps later on the entrance to the last corner. Drat. 1 lap later, a car spun on the exit of turn 1 as I exited but I was able to maintain speed and hop down the outside without much thought. I managed to keep the white car in my sights for the remainder of the race but he was always pulling away from me.

We finished the race in 10th position but 1 car was demoted because one of the drivers did too many laps and we were promoted to a very well deserved 9th place, 5 places up from our 14th place start. At the end I was hyper and would have loved to gone on for another hour or so. I learned a lot for having so many clear laps and so many faster cars around me. I can't wait for more :-)

The other D-Technique team - Kato-san and Izumi-san drove a great race in car #123 and finished a spectacular 3rd place. Well done guys! You did a great job. RTE Team Ranman also did a great job to finish in 6th place. Well done to you too. Major thanks to all the guys at D-Technique for their support and guidance and to my awesome co-driver Kanepee for being such a hero in Tweety.

The Race Results are finally up also so be sure to check them out also.