Riot in Sepang

Goddammit! After more than 3 months of waiting, the petrolheads stormed Sepang International Circuit for its not-so-regular open Track. When this happened, the track was bloody overcrowded with fast and slow cars last Sunday 24/05/2009. Where else you can get paying RM200 to race with Porsche GT MME race car and stock, daily driven Toyota Altis at the same time, on the same track? Its all here in Sepang.

It was a very meaningful day especially when I got to drive the DC5 for the first time on this track, but it was also challenging and IRRITATING as well. Especially when a track car is tailgating you or cars that are not that fast sitting on your racing line. Maybe both. Or shall I also include the drivers that were inconsiderate, and trying to show to only-god-knows-who that they can rule Sepang but failed?

As expected, LOTS of incident occured yesterday. This sort of thing is a norm when you drive with other 100 cars on the track. I saw one spanking new Civic FD2R t-boned a track car at one turn. Both were chasing for the racing line. None of them were giving up for no apparent reason and bang! Both car were totaled. There goes their championship trophy. Haha. There were also LOTS of other car spun off everywhere on the track, particularly on T7 & T8 (check out the vid below). And the best one goes to a friend's Evo7 (Bunyamin) which caught fire from the engine! Something was wrong somewhere and the fire came from the turbo and the coil if im not wrong. He acted swiftly by pulling the car over and luckily the track marshalls were ready with fire extinguishers otherwise the whole car might be burned. Each time accident happens, red flag will be waved by the marshalls and you have to return to the pit. It was kinda disappointing at times when you have to go back in after only a few minutes on the track. Hopefully SIC management will consider organizing this track day regularly and separating the track cars and other road legal cars on a different session.

Anyways, I am glad that I came back in one piece and will definitely join again next time. Enjoy the pics and video below!

Aaron's successful DIY tripod holder, but unfortunately his camera's memory card FAILED. Haha.

Type-Rs ready to rumble.

The queue was this LONG

"Pasar Ahad @ SIC"

Renault R26 was ferocious!


Mini VTEC yo!

This NEO R3 pek corner like there's no tomorrow.

Ali queing.

Desmond.

Kenny.

Me.

Gareth.

Nobody wants to be in this DC2 at this point.

EK, drifting..

...to the grass. Fail.

Check out Bunyamin's car on fire at the back! He must be very fast! Haha.

I seriously hope it was not Bun standing in front of the FE.

Federal highway at 5pm.

This FD2R was badly damaged after colliding with a Satria track car. Speedy recovery mate.

Nasty eh?

The Vid. Check out 4:20.

B vs K

It was a fun Saturday night and I have been utilizing my new camcorder very well. These boys just can't stop sprinting from 11pm till 1am. Hahaha. Love to see 2L on a hatch pull like that. John was shivering after the match before calming down and taking over the lead in the next round. LOL.

Dyno Run Part II

I had the opportunity to dynorun my car two weeks ago. Since I haven't done any reading after removing the catalyctic converter, I went to Sunway to satisfy my curiosity on any gain/loss of power. Infact, I have removed the mid box of my APEXi N1 exhaust couple of weeks ago so with full of anticipation on the new straight flow exhaust setup, I left the keys in good hands of Jacky from JC Racing for the runs.

It was 12pm in the afternoon, it was hot, 4 runs were done but the result was quite impressive. Additional 10whp and almost 1kg/m of torque were born from this setup. I grinned, but at the same time concerned on richter-scale-lookalike graph. Again, I decided NOT to fine tune the ignition and others with the Emanage Ultimate and Vmanage this time. Let's have another bolt on stuff plugged on to the engine and give it a one shot tuning. One thing that I love to see is that there's no longer a dip on power and torque during vtec engagement. The A/F ratio at 13.55 can also be considered good for daily dose of 8500rpm revving.

Still being curious over the graph, I decided to post it for a professional feedback and comment and this is the reply from Paul Hughes, the Managing Director of Buddy Club UK (they own one of the badass DC5 track car in the world) :

Hi Meor,

I have studied your graph, The very high Humidity reading in the second test could knock the power down, so you can not compare the two readings as an improvement for a specific change or addition of a product.

Your Vtec change over point looks like it needs optimising,as it might be coming from secondry to high cam too soon or too late. ,and fuel will need re doing on each cam angle.That is causing a big torque flat spot, (we had this problem last week but sorted it with a few hours on the dyno).

regards,
Paul,
BCUK

Few hours on the dyno....What more can I say? :-P

Thanks to Paul for the brilliant respond.

Hook up with Buddy Club UK @ www.buddyclubuk.com

Monday Blues..

It was a depressing Monday as always. Posting these pics should make me happy.

Mad

The madness of a K20A motor. Says who the K-series is mild? :-P



This K-powered Rex belongs to the famous 21 years old Chase McMaster. Ballinnnnnnnnnnnnnn'

http://www.chasebaysonline.com/press/

A visit to Johor Circuit

I haven't gone back home for sometimes since I got the car. Since its a long holiday on early May, I decided to go back to JB with a moderately-planned track visit with couple of other friends..Heheh.

So on Saturday morning itself I went to get my alignment and cambers done (found out few glitches on the DC5 suspension/handling setting - will discuss about this in the next post), and headed straight to Johor Circuit, 30km away from JB town. Few friends like Ram and Siong from Tung Chun Racing tagged along to experience K20A rippin the track. Hahah. John, another DC5 owner was a bit reluctant to join, but made it there as well. Another track-hardcore kaki, Adlan who tested Sepang a day before, came with his stroked-up EP3. A very beautiful sight indeed.

Much to our suprise, the track was particularly empty when we arrived, with only a track Saga doing few runs at that time. We wasted no time to get our hands on the wheel and started off at 2.30pm. I started off a bit nervous on the first few laps. Kept on thinking of what Moorthy (another K20 friend, and an experienced racer) been saying. "Camber depan mesti mau -3.0 right side, -3.3 left side, kalau tak confirm ke dinding ko!" and all other yada-yada by people like "Track is very sempit, cannot overtake, scared if terlanggar side by side, etc etc." Creepy, but fuck it.

First 6-7 laps were done casually, with couple of wrong gear selection errors. Newbie mah? RS Sport sticked to the track like gum, and my Tein Flex was damn hard. The 25mm ARB also assisted the car during entering and exiting corners. Didn't feel the car was rolling at all. I went back to pit to cool down the engine and found out one of my hydraulic mount has broken. The oil splattered everywhere and I was a bit frustrated coz the mount was changed a week before that (Another DC5 glitch that will be posted soon). Since the car was not vibrating, so I decided to finish off what I intended to do - ripping the track apart. Hahah. Went back in with much more focus and enjoyed the DC5 stiffness for last few laps before calling it a day...

...there you go, a racer was born on a Labour Day. HAHAHAHA!

The track is quite technical and almost similar to the historical Batu-3 Speedway. Track surface is rougher than those in SIC, and the turns are much shorter and deceiving. After T1, the top speed can reach up to 200km/h followed by a long turn at 4th gear before popping 3rd into T3. There are couple of blind corners that need attention: namely before T5 and T9 (Try to remember this, or you'll end up hitting the wall). For those who ruled SIC, try this track once and you'll know what I'm saying. This 3km track ain't no kiddie playground. :-P

That's about it folks. Next round: more cambers will be done, harder front/rear shocks setup, unnecessary weight shaving, and all runs will be timed properly. Inshallah.

500whp Scooby managed to do 2-laps before the driveshaft made way..Pity him.

John's 2005 Modulo DC5 with Buddy Club M-Spec suspension and Advan RS.



The Stig and The Stick trying to look cool.

Here's me trying to catchup with Adlan's EP3. And failed.

My flying lap. Bye-bye EP3. HAHAHA. Ram was too excited to forget that its the final lap.

Visit Johor Circuit online: www.johorcircuit.com.my

K-Tuned

A good site for those who wish to shop for their K-motivated EF, EG, EK parts.

www.k-tuned.com/store

And I have always been fascinated with this little, but magical thing:

http://www.k-tuned.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=1&products_id=40

Awesomeness

No need to say more about this. If you think you can find any bigger DC5 Type-R gathering than this, let me know. I'll delete this post entirely. Haha.

This meet was held last month and out of 40 confirmed attendees, 36 turned up. Its not a normal sight seeing these Tegs terrorizing MRR2 on early Saturday morning. Some came from Penang, Kedah and even from Johor. With a bit of sponsorship and proper arrangement, everybody enjoyed the day. Wait for the full feature in the upcoming HyperTune magazine.

A visit from another brother.