Russman's Time Attack Build

[Ryno]

The gurney was actually mounted underneath the wing to begin with but spoke to an aero guy at WTAC and he recommended putting it above the wing so it sits higher as a result.

The Gurney Flap should always be mounted on the top side of the wing, but this is not to do with the height of the Gurney Flap, but rather maintaining a laminar flow on the underside of the wing (as this is the side of the wing that you need to avoid boundary layer separation). A gurney flap modifies the flow of air over the wing to maintain boundary layer contact and provide an increase in down force without the trade off of a proportional increase in drag. It's definitely not a case of bigger is better, like the wing itself... in the case of your gurney flap - you'd find that due to the large size of it, it would be creating a vortex at high speeds which is increasing drag to a greater amount than the downforce you are gaining.

The idea of using a gurney flap is definitely the correct one, though if you reduce the size of it, you should have more downforce for less drag, best of both worlds!

Edited August 16, 2012 by Ryno

[FST513]

So much win in this thread... Good to see you again mate and hang out and have a beer!

Will text you soon. Got lots of pics of the car so will just send them through on a disk in high res and and post them up here also

[Russman]

The Gurney Flap should always be mounted on the top side of the wing, but this is not to do with the height of the Gurney Flap, but rather maintaining a laminar flow on the underside of the wing (as this is the side of the wing that you need to avoid boundary layer separation). A gurney flap modifies the flow of air over the wing to maintain boundary layer contact and provide an increase in down force without the trade off of a proportional increase in drag. It's definitely not a case of bigger is better, like the wing itself... in the case of your gurney flap - you'd find that due to the large size of it, it would be creating a vortex at high speeds which is increasing drag to a greater amount than the downforce you are gaining.

The idea of using a gurney flap is definitely the correct one, though if you reduce the size of it, you should have more downforce for less drag, best of both worlds!

Cool. Yeah it was moved above for the low pressure flow on the underside, not for height.

So much win in this thread... Good to see you again mate and hang out and have a beer!

Will text you soon. Got lots of pics of the car so will just send them through on a disk in high res and and post them up here also

Awesome! Can't wait to see them!

[Russman]

how much for a pair of fiberglass head light?

Hey Fatz. Dunno. Well I was only going to make one set and then make some in cf. I'm not an expert with this stuff. Most of it was done by my mate Matt. Spose we could make some more.

By the way thanks for the offer of GTR rocker covers at WTAC. Didn't need them in the end but thanks anyway! Is simon on SAU forums?

[fatz]

yea no dramas i have a lot of shit spare

yea simon occasionally lurks on here( with his pedo grin)

[GTXR34]

Nice work russel. got a very nice build going on there.

Cheers

[Gts-t]

Hey russman,

Wheres the best place to get lexan windows front and rear and a plastic rear windscreen?

I was down at wtac your car looked and sounded great!

[Russman]

Hey russman,

Wheres the best place to get lexan windows front and rear and a plastic rear windscreen?

I was down at wtac your car looked and sounded great!

I wouldn't be replacing front glass!

Plastics4performance is where we got them from. Check out a thread in the motorsport section on it. They do take a long time to arrive so allow 6-8 weeks. They say less but that is what it took for ours.

[Roy]

So when are we going to see the footage from one of the WTAC laps?

[Russman]

I thought I'd already put this up. It's the only one I have done so far. Need to convert more files on my computer and try and find the faster laps.

This one was on track to be a 38 something going by sector splits but it went BANG! Love the sound of breaking metal! I've listened to it so many times haha

[N1GTR]

5th gear says no

[Roy]

I picked up the OE, std equipment, that is original factory Nissan, ie doesn't break gearboxes and allows for faster shifts shifter for you on the weekend. Irrespective of whether you need to keep the gearbox or not...you should use a std shifter !

[SimonR32]

Russ what are you revving to on the track?

[Russman]

I picked up the OE, std equipment, that is original factory Nissan, ie doesn't break gearboxes and allows for faster shifts shifter for you on the weekend. Irrespective of whether you need to keep the gearbox or not...you should use a std shifter !

I will mate

Russ what are you revving to on the track?

Dunno tacho doesn't work lol. Pretty sure RL is set to 7400?

[BOZ22N]

Very nice.

It picks up speed well, it looks to have great traction.

[Russman]

I think I'll leave it there for now. The WTAC story is a big one so I'll post that up at a later date.

So I said I’d finish the story of my WTAC later so here it is. It’s a pretty epic story and I tried to capture the excitement that we had over the weekend.

Thursday was a practice day and my only chance to get seat time at EC before the event. Very lucky we did because the crank case breathing setup I did in Melbourne didn’t work as well as I had hoped and I ended up only having 2 sessions on the track. Lucky we did all this on the Thursday rather than Friday during the event.

Friday it was all go and the car was running well. Immediately the times were faster than last year by a couple of seconds but I wasn’t getting into the 1min 30’s yet. Because of the forecast of rain we decided to put on the soft compound tyres to give it our best shot early on. Unfortunately every session we had was red flagged because of oil on the track, or car recovery’s where cars were stuck in sand traps around the circuit. Very disappointing and we thought we’d has missed out on the best track conditions of the day only getting down to a 1:40.2. The officials decided to re-run our group at the end of the day because all three sessions had been cut short with red flags. Finally we had our chance at a good clear track and we set our fastest time so far with a 1:39.6. So we’d gotten into the 30’s!!! In a way the pressure was off as that was nearly 3 secs faster than last year and enough for me to go home happy. Would Saturday bring more??

First session on Saturday and I was more confident in the car. Happy that I’d already posted a good time I wanted to push harder! Again RED FLAGS! Cars off the track within the first few laps! They lined us up for a re-run and 2 Hondas went off in the warm up laps! Idiots!! That was session 1 over…

Session 2 on Saturday defined our weekend. I had a clear track and was on a flier, all I needed to do was change gears 1 more time into 5^th and across the line on what was probably my best lap of the weekend to that point. When I loaded up 5^th gear… bang! 5^th gear broke about 200m short of the finish line.

I came into the pits and thought that was the weekend over and we’d be telling stories of what could have been. Instead the guys were listening to the pit intercom to find out how much time we had. A good friend Troy Brisby had a spare gearbox and within 10 minutes it was on the ground next to the car and the challenge was set. 5 of my good mates were crawling under the car stripping things off all over the place. Others were running around the pits looking for a trade stand that sold gearbox oil. The car was still pretty hot and one of the guys burnt his hand getting the starter motor off.

Fortunately for us Tarzan Yamada had coated the track with oil in the Cyber Evo and that bought us valuable time. As our session was getting closer I was in the car filling the gearbox through the shifter and putting on my race suit. Working to the time frame the car was put back on the ground with 1 bolt in the starter, no exhaust gaskets, a few other missing mounts and a cold engine. I went to select a gear and it didn’t go into gear! Something was wrong with the clutch or spigot bearing

The guys pushed me down pit lane until I could engage a gear and I did the first half of the lap rev matching gears. I was thinking I’d have to come back into the pits coz I wasn’t going to do a fast lap without a clutch! Somehow the clutch came unstuck and started working at about turn 3 or 4 and then I had to get the tyres/brakes etc up to temp. As I came past the start/finish lap the chequered flag was waved at the car behind me which meant if I was only 10 seconds later I wouldn’t have even had a lap!

The lap was wild and a bit messy in parts but it was fast, the changes we did to wing angles was noticeable and I think I was driving more aggressively because I felt like I had nothing to lose! I crossed the line and was pretty amazed by the time I saw. 1:38.571. Over a second quicker than Friday and about 4 seconds quicker than last year. It was good enough for 20^th in Open class and 7^th fastest RWD.

It was such an epic event and I’m so happy with how it turned out. In a way it brought everyone together more as it’s a team sport at this level. It really was a fairy tale ending. I couldn’t have done it without the support and help from my mates Matt, Johnny, Campbell, Ryan, Mark, Bobby and Troy.

Thanks to my sponsors. Ace Workshop, Import monster, Snap-on Tools Clayton, Advan and Fulcrum suspensions.

[Russman]

Here are a few photos of the guys doing the gearbox swap!

[Roy]

Good write up man. Enjoy your success because I am going to kick your ass at the SAU Nationals!

[paulR32gtr]

Yeah what a story to tell the grand kids ey - inspiring effort

[No Crust Racing]

Good write up man. Enjoy your success because I am going to kick your ass at the SAU Nationals!