On May 23rd I took the coupe to Spring Mountian Motorsports Ranch for a Porsche Club track day and did my usual drive the Datsun and instruct.

The layout was the 3.4 with bus stop chicane (tons of video on the 3.4 on you tube), we hadn't run this in a while so this was the first time I've run the car with the A15 on this layout. I also upgraded the quality of rotors in effort to solve the brake chatter and I finally got the car over to a members shop to get the corner weights checked. Additionally we reset the alignment as I knew it was off before the vintage races, I went back to the specs in the suspension manual as I run bias ply tires similar to those back in the day and those work very well.

On the first session I was shocked running up the hill to turn 4 on the warm up lap it pulled 7500 rpms no sweat, then on the next lap 7700 and on lap 3 it pulled 7900 rpm in 4th. Holy Land Speed Record Batman!!!! That is 110 mph!!! To give you comparison one of our local SCCA members runs an S2000 and his car manages 113mph. Also going into turn 1 I'm seeing 106 mph to his 109 mph. Clearly the A15 has more oomph than I thought. This was during the cool morning session (62F) and it had rained overnight. In the afternoon session with the temps around 85F the revs dropped down to where I was pulling about 107-108 mph.

Note; a big portion of the top speed relative to other cars is I'm running through turns 1 & 2 at about 73 mph where as most other cars are between 65 & 70, I can watch about halfway down the straights they start reeling me in but of course they lose out again in the brake zones.

On the subject of brakes; Thank God the strumming pedal is gone, not only can I get in deep on the brakes but I can do it consistently and inch perfect lap after lap.

The handling is now bang on where I want it and I've picked up a few mph through the chicane, enter the first set of curbs at 90 mph versus a shade over 85 mph. There are also several other sections I'm now flat. Also, if I like, I can hooligan through the big sweepers hanging the back out on trailing throttle as well as power on.......it's easy to look like a hero.

I had a really tough student this time, he may be more A.D.D than me (is than even possible?). He was watching me in various places and as usual the 1200 was a great teaching tool, clearly I'm not catching/lapping all those Z06 Corvettes & BMW M series cause of the 1508cc big block and so he was more willing to listen than had I been driving something else.

The down side of all this speed is I'm now hooked on purple crack better known as new Hoosier tires and putting an A12 back ain't going to happen, meaning my spare that's an A12 will only ever get used as an act of desperation.

Over the summer I'll finally get the car on a dyno and install the air fuel meter. We also plan to lower the motor 40mm and move it back another 20 mm as this should notch the cornering speed up a bit as well. We shaved 10 seconds a lap with the A15 and a sticky new tires. With the brakes working properly, the set up changes and future upgrades the 3 seconds I need to overall in the fall vintage races should be there.

Given a little more road the car would probably get in the 113-115 mph range. I had huge fun with the car and reveled in the giant killing aspect of it more than ever. Got loads of compliments on how well it went.


Tom

Way to go!

Nice! Nothing upsets competitors more than being shown up by an A series

I've now run the car with the local PCA that its pretty much a fixture; the guys who run regular know the car is driven by someone who's instructing and anyone new to the car figure it out.

Without fail I get the "you drive the hell out of that thing" , which I do but we all know if you don't drive the wheels of our little cars you are going to be painfully slow. Modern cars will let you run around all hooked up and still be decently quick but you have to be slippery smooth in the coupe.

In the last session of the day, on my warm up lap I waved BMW M5 past only for him to wave me back past almost immediately. The look on his face when I told that it was my warm up was worth a thousand words. The reality is I'm running with less experienced and or skilled drivers, granted its still fun to pass 500hp cars.

Just this morning we discussed being at a cross roads for track days. I originally started running in the intermediate group becuase the lap times warranted it. Now that the car is going 10 seconds a lap faster and likely going to shed another big chunk of time I may well need to go back into the advanced group.

Now as for something petty and small that I shamelessly revel in; there is a fastest street car shout out run annually on this track and more than a couple of 750 hp cars turn slower laps times. One of the guys at the track once mentioned there is a guy in a 100 HP Datsun that turns faster lap times........that must have been ugly. Of course the joy of medium speed tracks is you can't use all that power.

Should I get up to 115 MPH all hell will break lose!!!

Tom

you should get a $50 camera! I'd love to see it in action.

Make it a FLY360 camera and we can watch the look on they faces as you pass them :0