Category: General

Hill Climb Sunday (Again)

Jake and I went out to Ringwood Park for the MG Car Club Newcastle hill climb the other day and had a ball as always. I took the BRZ and Jacob gave his H6 Liberty a squirt.

I left the traction control on like an idiot which is why the car died at the start, and if you listen closely, you can hear it pulling power from me on corner exit, and as i round the right hander heading for the penultimate corner, you can see the car bauk as the traction control pulls on some rear brake. Rookie error. Full second slower when I was aiming to go faster.

Good still. Going to the next one for sure.

Brakes !

Service Time

The brakes on the BRZ are fantastic. I run the factory Brembo`s with DBA T3 4000 rotors and Project Mu Club Racer pads, but like everything, from time to time you need to carry out maintenance or repair, and the brakes are no different.

So with that in mind, I stripped everything down, cleaned it, put a kit through the calipers, fitted new pads and then replaced all the brake fluid.

All good for now for the rest of the season, will need Rotors next time though.

Repairs

Unsurprisingly, taking a production car and flogging it to death on a racetrack can lead to a few issues from time to time. Having said that though, this car has been remarkably robust.

Engine wise the car has been bullet proof. Do not let anyone tell you these Boxer engines are not reliable. If you keep up the maintenance, you will not have a problem. It should be noted though that I do run an oil cooler and I change the oil after each event. I also run an oil surge baffle in the sump.

Outside of normal maintenance, the only thing I have had to replace are the wheel bearings on the driver’s side. This side is usually the loaded side at the tracks I frequent the most, and even though the car only has 29000 Km`s on it, they were basically Catus.

It`s The Little Things

Can Make the Difference

I have Jacobs mighty Exel in the shed for some post racing maintenance, and to corner weight it, when I noticed, these ugly rusty bonnet pins, so I decided to do something about it.

When I looked closer, I noticed the backing plate was screwed in, not Tech Screws surely!

Yep, Tech Screws it is. I am a little surprised by this frankly because the rest of the car has been built to a high standard. It`s not perfect by any means but its well-built and well set up.

Outside of corner weighting and treating it to a new set of tyres, we are not changing anything at this point.

I cleaned it up and put it back together but I just couldn`t deal with the Tech Screws, so the only other thing I had to hand were Rivets.

I know it’s a racing car, not a show car but hey….