TheTunersGroup

Hi Duncan, As we say to all our customers, getting the best lap times out of any set of adjustable shocks is a two part process ... The first part is actually installing the shocks (bolting them into the car). The second part is track testing with the assistance of an experienced suspension engineer to determine what is the best spring rate to run, and dialling in the shock settings to the ideal settings for the track and the individual driver's driving style. In many ways, getting the most out of a set of adjustable shocks is similar to the two part process of buying and tuning an aftermarket ECU / fuel injection computer. The best results with an aftermarket ECU are often gained after an experienced dyno tuner tunes the car using the new ECU to adjust the fuel and ignition settings to accurately suit the combination of parts used on that car such as the particular exhaust, intake, head work, cams etc. Duncan you mentioned E85 above. Just as with E85 where you first install the required hardware parts to run E85, the second part of running E85 is to then tune the computer with maps to run E85. If you have "ready to go" maps to run E85 in the R35 with the combination of parts that you run, that is a huge timesaver as it lets you get up and running quickly with E85. If you didn't have those maps you would have to retune your car on a dyno to run E85 well. So far you have only completed one step of the two part shocks process - installing the shocks (bolting them into the car). Marek mentioned .... "We ran baseline shock settings provided by a team overseas. The car was very balanced but there is still more time in it once we dial in the JRZ suspension." That is spot on. Track surfaces and track styles are different in different parts of the world, and it'd be very rare indeed for settings from a team developed for a particular driver on overseas tracks to be the ideal settings for a driver in another country running on different tracks. Duncan you also mentioned above "So, until i get some proper advice on setup i am just not going to say either way." With the greatest respect, while someone may be able to give you some advice about how to setup your suspension, because each driver's driving style is different, using someone else's shock settings that are ideal for their driving style is unlikely to be a set of settings that will work best for your driving style. There was an interview on TV a few weeks ago where one of the V8 Supercar drivers drove his team mate's car and he commented on how different the two cars were. Just like having an ECU tuned on a dyno by an experienced dyno tuner (to suit the unique airflow characteristics of the particular combination of parts used on your car) is the best way to get the most power out of an engine and it takes experience and skill to tune a car well, the best way to get the fastest lap times with a set of adjustable suspension is to get an experienced suspension engineer to come out to the track with you and spend the time to tune your suspension to your driving style and to the particular track. That process requires experience and specialised knowledge, and as such highly experienced suspension engineers don't tend to publish on the internet how they do what they do. There is an article on our website titled "How to get the best lap times from your adjustable shock absorbers" which has some info about the process of the second part of the process - dialling in the shocks to suit your driving style and the track conditions - here ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/susp_adjust.html - The Tuners Group

Hi All, For those of you who haven't heard yet, some absolutely amazing lap times were set at Eastern Creek today by Duncan and Marek in their R35's running in the NSW Supersprint Series. Back in February, the class 4D lap record at Eastern Creek was 1 min 42.41 sec. The old record has stood since 2005. In March Duncan broke the 5 year old class 4D record by a massive 1.3 seconds, posting a lap time of 1 min 41.087 seconds. There is an article about Duncan smashing the old record in March here with a link to the in car video from that event ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/TunerWire_Live/..._EC_record.html On 16 May the series again visited Eastern Creek with Duncan bettering his March time by a further .89 sec, posting a 1:40.195. Marek posted a 1:42.8074 that day. Today the NSW Supersprint series returned to Eastern Creek ... With Duncan's 16 May lap time of 1:40.195 set as the benchmark to beat, Marek's car was prepared with some modifications before today's event including E85 and a set of JRZ Suspension. Today Duncan posted an incredible time of 1:38.9376 (beating his 16 May time by 1.257 second). Today on his 6th timed lap of the day, Marek in the white R35 posted an incredible lap of 1 minute 38.8263 seconds, beating Marek's own 16 May lap time of 1:42.8074 by a massive 3.9811 seconds, and bettering Duncan's laptime set on 16 May by 1.369 second. So today Duncan ran a 1 minute 38.9376 second lap today and Marek ran a 1 minute 38.8263 second lap, to beat Duncan by 0.1113 of a second. These times are truly incredible and to put Marek's lap time in perspective in terms of how fast the times have improved, Marek's lap time today is a massive 3.59 seconds under the old February Class 4D lap record that had stood since 2005, and 2.26 seconds under the Class 4D record that Duncan set in March. Congratulations to both these drivers on some absolutely incredible lap times. Marek's time is particularly impressive as his car is his daily driver, and both these cars are road registered. There is an article with more info about today's event and the modifications made to Marek's car in the leadup to today's event, and some comments from Marek about his time today here ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/TunerWire_Live/...ust_8_2010.html - The Tuners Group

Hi zebra, http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/in...t&p=5119047 reads ... http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/in...t&p=5119562 reads ... http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/in...t&p=5119627 reads ... Zebra, if you want an official clarification on your question of "So that would mean factory active aero then, Eg Porka's, Audi TT's etc Only", then I'd suggest you contact the Supersprint Panel. - Waenick Pty Ltd

- The Tuners Group

Hi Mark, There is a detailed article here titled "What does "dry carbon" mean ?" about the different types of carbon fibre manufacturing, with videos of each production process ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/TunerWire_Live/dry_carbon1.html - Waenick Pty Ltd

When you say "100% dry carbon", are the parts you are talking about made from pre-preg carbon fibre ? Or are they made using resin infusion or another manufacturing method ? There is a detailed article here titled "What does "dry carbon" mean ?" about the different types of carbon fibre manufacturing, with videos of each production process ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/TunerWire_Live/dry_carbon1.html - Waenick Pty Ltd

Does anyone know if any of the photography websites have any photos online yet from Wakefield on 20 June ? - The Tuners Group

Have a look just ahead of the right rear wheel in this photo ... http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc...7_4491309_n.jpg - The Tuners Group

Hi Duncan, I spoke to a guy the other who said that he used to work at a company that made roof tiles, and that they had a huge wind tunnel in Sydney where they could build a section of roof in a big tunnel and then test the effects of wind and rain on the roof structure. Unfortunately he told me that it was dismantled a while ago - The Tuners Group

In addition to the points made by Marlin about potential improvements for Mark's R34 ... The Aeromotions rear wing on Mark's R34 was run in static mode on Saturday, without computer control of the wing angle. If you look carefully at the photo above of the rear of the car taken on Saturday, you can see that the actuator rods were replaced with solid adjusters, and there are no cables running down the uprights to the wing angle actuators like are there when the wing is run in active mode. With the active control of the rear wing angle enabled, there is quite a bit of potential there for lower drag on the straights, full downforce under brakes, and customised tuning of the wing angles in high speed and low speed corners. We can't wait to test this further on Mark's car. The lap time improvements with active wing control are well documented by the many teams who have posted up their results. The data from Aeromotion's testing of their wing in active mode and static mode is: So on that data, running the Aeromotions Wing in active mode improved the lap time set with the Aeromotions Static Wing by 0.8 second and adding the centre fence to the active wing improved the lap time set with the Aeromotions Static Wing by 1.5 seconds. In terms of Eastern Creek, as mentioned here, Duncan Forrest recently set a new Class 4D lap record at Eastern Creek running an Aeromotions R2 Wing. Duncan destroyed the old lap record by a massive 1.323 seconds, posting a time of 1 min 41.087 seconds. The old lap record had stood since 2005. So we are very excited to do further testing with active control of the Aeromotions wing on Mark's R34. Absolutely ! That's an interesting comment Via our network of contacts we have access to some of the top aerodynamicists in the world. The Aeromotions Dynamic Wing was born in the wind tunnel at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), arguably the world's leading engineering research university. MIT is a participating institution in the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, which is administered by NASA. The reputation and engineering expertise at MIT is so advanced that a large percentage of research carried out at MIT is funded by NASA, the US Department of Defence, the US Department of Energy, and the US National Science Foundation. There is more info about MIT research here ... http://web.mit.edu/facts/research.html The great thing these days is that data can be collected locally then sent to cutting edge experts overseas who can analyse the data etc ... experts who are just a phone call or email away In addition ... MEET OUR SUPERCOMPUTER CLUSTER A few key people know about this already, but as the question has been asked of "What can be done though to close the gap to the jap teams for the next superlap?", this may be very helpful ... The Tuners Group recently took delivery of our own supercomputer cluster, consisting of a number of Apple xServes, which are housed in a 45U server rack that is 2.2 metres high. Housed at a local datacenter in Sydney with reinforced concrete floors, huge cooling system etc, with secure remote access to it from our office, it will potentially be very useful in further development of Mark's R34. The xServes are clustered together into a supercomputer cluster with optic fibre networking connecting each node of the cluster to create a virtual wind tunnel setup and for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis. Here is a photo of one of NASA's xServe clusters ... http://bp.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/rio_g5_install1.jpg We can expand our cluster as required by adding additional xServe nodes to the cluster. I have already spoken to Mark Berry about potentially using our supercomputer cluster to help develop Mark's R34. The Tuners Group have also recently been speccing a scale wind tunnel and are talking to various suppliers this week about the high speed fans etc that we need to build it. USING CFD AND VIRTUAL WIND TUNNELS FOR AERO DEVELOPMENT As mentioned in a recent article in Racecar Engineering, virtual wind tunnels / CFD applications have become so advanced in the last few years that now it is a very real possibility to develop aero virtually without using a physical real world wind tunnel. An article about the Virgin VR-01 F1 car at http://www.racecar-engineering.com/article...rgin-vr-01.html reads ... AUSTRALIAN INNOVATION IN GENERAL While we don't claim in any way to be at the level of F1 aerodynamicists, as many people in Australia like Mark Berry have proven, Australians are amongst the most innovative people in the world, and there is no lack of intelligent people in Australia. You only have to look at the results and innovation that Ben Lexcen achieved in the America's Cup with Australia II to see that when a group of innovative Australians put their minds to something, Australians can indeed take on the best in the world. Combine that spirit of Australian innovation with such an exciting platform as Mark's R34, Mark's team, associated engineers and aero experts, and development in aero and other areas of the car, and you have all the ingredients for some very exciting further development. - The Tuners Group

Hi all, An in car video of Mark Berry's R34 from Saturday is now online. Video is here ... - The Tuners Group

Yes Mark Berry ran an Aeromotions wing on the R34 at Superlap. Here is a photo of Mark's car on Saturday from Eastern Creek ... It was mounted on some monster tall uprights. Great to hear. - The Tuners Group

A few photos from Friday night, our view from the garage in the final session on Sasturday, and some shots later in the evening on Saturday night ... This is one of my favourite photos of the event, because it shows the true dedication of Mark Berry's team to get the job done. This photo was taken at 11.24PM on Friday night ... The engineer for the Cyber Evo came into Mark's pit on Friday night to check out Mark's Aussie built R34 ... He was amazed that Mark was working in the engine bay, made carbon parts for the car himself, and also drives it. When that was translated into Japanese, the engineer for the Cyber Evo said something in Japanese. The translation in English ? "Superman" The Panspeed RX-7 in the final session on Saturday (I was right up close in Mark's pit as they rolled the Panspeed out). Check out the GPS setup on the dash. Sierra Sierra during their session. Think the the Cyber Evo guys were happy about the win ? Cyber Evo engine bay - complete with the trophy. Mark in the garage. The R34 rocking the Aeromotions wing hard. To see Mark's car go from having the cylinder head off on Friday night to watching Mark pump out his fastest lap of 1:34.10 in his final lap of the whole event to deliver results when it counted was an absolute privilege. Hats off Mark Berry and his entire crew. You guys worked your butts off and congratulations on a great result. - Adam

Hi Chris, Many thanks for taking the time to post your photos and text ! It's always great to see people taking the time to share their experience of installing our products on their cars. It helps others see what is involved in install and could also be very useful for other people to refer to when installing the Works Bell paddle shifter system on their own cars. Great work and glad to hear you are so happy with the Works Bell paddle shifter system ! - The Tuners Group

Hi all, Was just checking out the latest weather forecast. The Bureau of Meteorology website's Sydney forecast at http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/forecasts/sydney.shtml currently reads ... Also figured everyone might like to see a couple of photos of one the R35's owned by an SAU member which will be running in the Clubsprint class - the R35 is looking awesome and race ready ... Just 3 sleeps til Friday ! - The Tuners Group