July 2018
30Jul
Update
In the 3 week gap between Knockhill and Rockingham (August 19th), I'm having to power on the ECU everyday for 15 minutes, to keep the on-board ECU battery charged, otherwise the ECU will lose the logging config again, and I dont want that as I've only just got ability to generate track maps back. The ECU will be returned to Life in due course for the battery charging circuit to be replaced, which should solve the issue.After several emails back and forth between myself and FoMoCo, they have finally agreed to cooperate and relax the security in the ECU, to give me additional access to the 'Paid For' features that I so desperately need. This is great news! Or at least I hope it is, as I've had to supply Ford with a list of the areas I'd like access to, and Ford are now talking to Life to arrange for the rights to be altered to give me that level of access. Its only taken me 3 years of asking. **** have again provided assistance, and I'm sure we'll still be using them for calibration, as Ford are again saying that their IP needs to be left protected, so some areas I might want to see, will still be locked. I'll just have to wait and see what their solution is. Ideally, what I need is the ability to interrogate and change traction and launch control settings, as well as paddle shift strategies, calibration switch settings, and the ability to setup logging (incase the battery goes flat again).
One modification I was particularly pleased with at Knockhill, was the dashboard firmware upgrade. On the Saturday, the shift lights were working properly for the first time, and I now have a very large number in the centre of the dash to indicate the gear that I'm in. So useful. I had to reduce the intesity of the shift LEDs on Saturday, as they were far too bright in the daylight, and on Sunday, it paid dividends with the steady improvements of my times. I wish there was a colour option for the Dash4pro though, to be able to colour code the temperatures displayed in the corners of the dash, easier to recognise than having to try and read temperatures etc.
28Jul
Video with data
This is my fastest run from Sunday, with data and picture in picture.25Jul
Championship Standings: 9th overall
On the back of the results at Knockhill, I've now moved up to 9th overall, 1 point behind Pete Goulding in 8th place, and I'm again leading the 1600 Forced Induction Class by 5 points, and the Britannia Trophy by a similar amount, and there's still a good chance I can also win the Saxon Trophy. I'm not travelling to Ireland in two weeks time, which would have meant I'd have sewn up the Celtic Trophy, simply by turning up. I'm really focused on a Top 12 finishing position, and the 1600 class win, the other awards are nice to have, but the permanent number for 2019 is my primary goal this year.On Sunday morning I changed both wing settings, to reduce the wing flutter, and to increase my top speed, and I ended up running the front wing at 21° and the rear at 20°, and this allowed my car to reach 150mph on the approach to Duffus. Just 15mph off the top speed of the Calder's V8 Gould! I was also running the new set of Avon tyres, in first practice, to see if they'd finally start to work. I rested them for P2 & T1, and put them back on again for the second timed run and both run offs, this time the rear tyres were swapped side to side, so they ran in a totally opposite direction to what I'd used them for prior to that point, and I must say I was quite impressed with the grip levels in the first run off. However, the car was a little loose at the rear, so I jumped out of the car between the run offs, and increased the rear wing angle again to 23°. This was a bit of a gamble, as I didnt want to induce understeer. So when I set off for my final run off, barelling in to Duffus was a bit of a gamble, but it paid off, and I went the fastest I'd been all weekend.:D
Sunday evening was spent loading up, and then I drove over to Newcastle to stay at a friends house for the night, travelling in an EcoBoost convoy following Pete and Deb's in their motorhome and trailer along the A68, it was a really enjoyable experience. With the music on in the van, and the rolling Northumberland country side, and zero traffic, it was about a 3 hour drive, with a stop off in Lauder for fuel and of course, some chips. We arrived around 10:30pm, parked up on the drive, and hit the sack after a cuppa and a chat. On Monday, the journey home for me from Newcastle was around 4 1/2hrs, and Pete continued down to Essex, about another 3 1/2hrs further down south from the Midlands. Pete picked up a trailer tyre puncture on the way up to Scotland, so he was hoping for a trouble free trip home without a spare left for the trailer. Push come to shove, he could have borrowed mine had he picked up another one. Time to invest in some new rubber.
23Jul
Mygale EcoBoost achieves Top 6 place on both days at Knockhill
The Mygale was unbelievable this weekend. I took 6.19s off my 2017 PB on Saturday, despite a wobbly front wing, and I qualified 6th in the Top 12 Run Offs, finishing 8th. Launch Control worked really well, and Traction Control on the lowest setting was far less intrusive, just coming in a couple of times when the car was getting out of shape due to me pushing too hard. The weather was perfect all weekend, overcast, cool, with a breeze, perfect for the engine to allow it to reach maximum power. I struggled with the new tyres again, and tried them a few times, but the old ones were still providing plenty of grip.On Sunday, running clockwise, I raised the front suspension by one turn of the turnbuckles (~6mm increase), which cured the front wing, and I took wing angle off on the front and rear wing to raise the top speed. During the day I took 6.18s off my 2017 PB, to again out qualify Stephen Miles in 6th place again the in the Run Offs. I then recorded exactly the same time as Smiles on Run Off 1, and on Run Off 2, with Steve setting off ahead of me, I added a bit of rear wing angle, and went out again, to knock another second off my earlier PB, but I'd finished 0.1s behind Smiles to finish 7th. That for me, was a very good result, to even be close to Steve shows my true pace now.
A very big thankyou to my Family for allowing me to travel and compete, and to **** for sorting the car out last week. I smashed my PB's both days!
The new tyres finally worked on the run offs on Sunday, I ran the rears the opposite way round to the direction painted on the side walls, and they just worked. Odd, but I'll put that down to experience. Worth and a try, and boy did it work.
Saturdays quickest run, 91.94s, reaching 142mph
Sundays quickest run, 93.46s, reaching 150mph
19Jul
Launch Control restored
Launch Control is working again, after **** came around and switched it back on. I've now got GPS Lat and Long restored too, so I can get track maps from Knockhill, until the battery inside the ECU goes flat again of course. Thats a RTB and a six week wait to fix, so I'll do that at the end of the season. I'm collecting the Van again this evening, and loading up in the morning for the trip up to Scotland. I'm looking forward again to driving the car with the extra power, and working LC, we should see new class records and lots of extra points in the run off's.18Jul
Dashboard updated
I uploaded the fixed dashboard layout to the Dash4pro last night, so it should now show shiftlights and Screen 2 should appear above 10mph. **** confirmed that they turn off LC when the car was on the dyno, and may not have turned it back on again. Whoops. Anyway, preperation for Knockhill is going well, I've a few little jobs left and then the car can be loaded back on the trailer on Friday for the trip up North of the border.17Jul
Wot no launch control
The reason the launch control couldnt get 2nd gear, was because it wasnt in launch mode. When I hit the throttle to enable launch, the engine just built the revs to 6000 and when I dumped the clutch, the ECU just kept trying 2nd gear every time the revs hit the limiter. I checked the five starts at Lydden and none of them shows PIT/LAUNCH status messages. It must have been disabled when the car was on the dyno last week. How16Jul
BSC Lydden Hill
Lydden hill was a decent result. I finished 6th overall, and scored 7 points. The car was ballistic in a straight line, and I just have the ongoing issue of 2nd gear selection during launch, which **** are going to sort out for me before the trip up to Scotland this weekend. On the first practice run, the ECU tried four times to select 2nd gear off the line, and the poor engine was bouncing off the rev limiter for an eternity. Once it selected 2nd gear, woosh, the car was off like a rocket, like nothing I've ever experienced before. The 320+BHP really makes for a far quicker car than before. Pete finished one place ahead, with a 69.53s on his 2nd visit to the circuit, and on my debut I managed a 70.25s, which with a working launch control and a few more laps I would have beaten easily. At least I now have a PB to try and beat next time I go there.I am now 11th in the championship, on 24 points, which is just 4 points behind where I finished last year! Ahead in joint 9th on 25 points are Terry Holmes and Chris Jones, and Pete is in 8th on 28 points. Not insurmounatable, and if I knuckle down and focus on my driving I'm sure I can pass.
I've cured (almost) the downshift issue by raising the air pressure to 7bar, I just had one missed shift, on the first Run Off run, so thats pretty much cured now. The dashboard worked well, I'd forgotten to set the RPM levels for the shift lights, so they didnt work, and the screen didnt switch to screen 2 when I reached 20mph, because I'd selected the wrong speed variable, but I have now fixed these errors, and it should be fine for Knockhill.
The car handled better since the corner weights had been adjusted, and there was practically zero understeer on the steeper front wing angle, and I could pull over 2.2G around Chessons Drift, which was a thrilling corner to take flat out. I lost most my time braking too hard for Paddock Bend for the start of the 2nd lap, but the new Avon A15's were not giving me any confidence and I didnt want to visit the kitty litter during the run offs. The tyres may improve, otherwise its as waste of £1200. Not the performance I expected from new tyres.
09Jul
Dyno results
The rolling road session on Monday went better than I expected, with large gains made in mid range torque, so the car should feel much quicker at Lydden this Saturday. The gear change worked ok, with the higher 100psi pressure. And we determined that the traction control settings were in fact just four switch positions, with 1 being the least agressive, 4 the most, and positions 5-11 being TC off. And there was me thinking we had 10 different levels, when in fact I'd been driving with it firmly in the off position. I might try it in position 1, just to see what its like. That should allow me to get on the throttle earlier. Across the four positions, there is no TC in 6th gear, and in position 1, no TC in 5th. I'll have to have a play and see which mode gives me the most speed out the corners.This video is from the final power run on Monday
07Jul
Front Wing mount
The front wing mount is back from Altiss, and two slots have been milled in the sides, to allow me to use >25° front wing flap angle, so I can hopefully now dial out the remaining understeer through the use of aero. I'm fetching the trailer and van today, ready for Mondays trip to ****, so we can get the car corner weighted ready for Lydden. A set of A15 tyres arrived yesterday, and the extra set of Force rims should be ready Thursday, so fingers crossed, with the additional grip, tyres, and power, the BSC sprint on Saturday should see me a few places higher than before.03Jul
Dash4pro upgrade
One of the jobs on the car that I've been wanting to do for such a long time, was to upgrade the firmware in the Dash4Pro to unlock the different font sizes, and also to resolve the intermittent shift light issue. The latter problem/bug was fixed years ago by Race Technology, and the advice we've had many times is not to upgrade the firmware or the display will stop working with the ECU. But after words of encouragement from various people, I bit the bullet, loaded the latest v8.5 software on the laptop after Snetterton, and flashed the firmware from v1.1.0 to v6.0.29, quite a jump! After a few minutes for the firmware to be transferred from the laptop to the device, the device rebooted, and the display made use of the smaller fonts and all looked good. However, the one thing that needed doing was the dashboard layout needed redesigning from scratch. This is because the designer files from the earlier version of the RT Configurator application, in DH4 format, are no longer compatible with the newest version, which uses .cmg format. So it wasn't a case of simply loading the previous design, because the latest software wouldnt let you. The .dh4 files were all typically smaller than 20kb, whereas the .cmg files are over 260kb, so there was quite a lot more information being stored under the new version.All was not lost though. I had previously carefully documented the variable names used by the Dash4pro to display the 14 parameters we had access to. So I just designed a new layout, programmed all the display elements to use the variables from the ECU, saved the display to the device, connected it to the car, and low and behold, everything just worked. I like it when things just work. I really don't know why I hadn't tried the upgrade sooner. I ran the engine and checked all the gears and everything checks out, so I'll be running the new display at Lydden Hill. As before, the screen changes to screen 2 automatically when the speed is above 20mph, so the simple gear display will be shown when I'm up to speed, and all I need to focus on is the gear, and the water temp if I choose to look at that.
One feature we have lost is the Max/Min screen, which is a shame, as variables could be assigned and at the end of a run, the max/min screen would show the speeds, temperatures etc. We'll just have to use the LifeView software instead. Unless you know how we can reinstate it of course....
02Jul
Top 12 analysis
These are the Top 12 positions in the BSC based on the points scored at each round so far. I'm hanging in there in 12th place, but I'm not settling for 12th. I need to #beatpete