First Trackday Impressions

RCZ

Here's some cool pics from the Photographer, but he is insane as far as prices go.

PhotoReflect - Juha Lievonen - PhotosByJuha.com

StackTrack

Great write up RCZ ... but I gotta ask, since I didn't see it mentioned (surprisingly) anywhere:

Did you have VDC and other aides turned off?

If not, does that affect your write up in anyway?

-Stacy King
Asphalt Ventures

spiderman

Best write up to date RCZ ... thanks! Lots of opinions out there but I value your feedback based on what I've been reading (along with a couple others). When my Z comes in, I'm going to break it in for the first 1,000, then do an oil/filter change. Getting different feedback on using the Ester oil. I was thinking of K&N (or Wix) oil filter and changing to 5W-30 Castrol Edge synthetic. I'm not going to track the car. Thoughts?

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grateful to be alive ... grateful to drive!

RCZ

It crossed my mind to mention it, but I guess I must have forgotten. VDC was off ALL the time. I had it on for 3 corners on the first lap of the first session and then I had to turn it off because it was getting in the way.

I would say that it does affect it quite a bit. You can't possibly drive the car the way it is meant to be driven with the VDC on. It is waaay too limiting and cuts in too early.

I appreciate that you value my opinion. That sounds like a good plan. Just to be on the safe side, I would definitely use the Ester oil Nissan recommends, or at least something with lots of ester additives. (Nissan oil is just oil with ester additives). I would stick with the factory filter. As far as your oil change. I would drive on the Nissan Oil until at least 5k, specially since you aren't going to track the car and therefore you wont need high heat/ high stress oils.


ANOTHER POINT ON OVERHEATING:

Now this one may seem a little crazy for most, but it does have some logical foundations and it worked in practice. So my friend had his TT built race 350Z there and as ALWAYS it was overheating. One of the guys there suggested turning the heater on full blast because that fixed his old car's overheating issues. The logic behind the suggestion was that the car uses engine heat to warm up the air that comes out of the vents when you turn the heat on. To do that, it runs the air through a separate radiator that is designed to warm up the air. Now, through that heat exchange, the energy used to heat up air has to have been lost somewhere else. He argued that the heater actually helps cool down the engine. So having tried just about everything else other than removing the front bumper of the TT350Z, we ran it with the heat blaring. No more overheating....at all.

So the next logical step was to try it on my car. The results were questionable...I don't know whether it was wishful thinking or not, but it seemed like it took a few extra laps to overheat than it had with the heat off. Don't take my word for it, but I think this might help a little bit. Someone who is getting on the track soon should check...

m4a1mustang

That's not crazy. One of the old 1/4 mile tricks was to blast the heater in between runs.

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- Steve

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