At MOTD, Colin rode along with me for a day. He commented that the seating position with my Corbeau seats was a bit "flatter" than he would like. I hadn't really thought about it before then, but as soon as I heard it, I knew that was correct... they really did need a little more tilt to the lower cushion. So I pulled the seats and added about 7-8mm of spacer between the seat base and the slider rail, on the front bolts. Didn't impact the function of the sliders or the integrity of the seat, just pitched the seat back a bit. And OMG I can't believe the difference. Wish I had done this before I drove 2000 miles last week. In this pic, the passenger seat is "done", driver is yet to be done. Subtle in the pic, significant in person. Both took less than an hour. Yesterday, had planned to swap the auto accelerator pedal, for the one from the GP. Why? Because the auto pedal has a "kick down" detent at the bottom of travel, to activate the gear kick down function on the auto tranny control. No such thing on the manual. Everything still works fine, but the detent is vestigial. After getting the alloy pedal cover swapped, I discovered that some crafty engineers used a slightly different connector on the auto wiring harness and pedal, I assume to prevent a careless technician from accidentally doing what I'm attempting to do on purpose. :roll eyes: So, an hour wasted, as I put everything back to it's original state. I plan to disassemble the GP pedal and see if it's easy to swap the connector module between the two pedal assemblies, but this requires a 5-point tamper resistant driver bit, which I had to order from eBay. I'm traveling next week, so will be a couple of weeks before I can make another attempt.
Yeah that tilt for the bottom is everything epically on long drives. When I put in my recaros I noticed the same thing on the first test drive. I put 1 inch spacers and that gave me the perfect pitch for me.
In California! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69fPof-ZTnU"]Billy Squier - The Stroke - YouTube[/ame]
Finally received the 5-point torx security bits. Easy swap of the accelerator switch from the side of the pedal assembly. Two screws out, and the switch lifts right off. Now my manual Mini has a manual accelerator pedal with an automatic body harness... Also... RIP Blimey. Assimilated by GPness.
Yeah, those look fantastic, if I knew that finish looked that good I might have gone for that. That's going to look great on your car.
You will be needing tires again in a few months if you drive the GPness regularly. Think I got about 3-5K miles out of my old NT-01's. Given the grip I had at the Dragon (except that one time) and the fact that they are still usable, I will be sticking with the Hankook R-S3's from now on. As a bonus the Hankooks are cheaper too! One run up the Dragon... At a brisk 30 MPH pace... Post trip (2600 total miles of highway, plus all the running I did around the Dragon/Knoxville)... Driver side front...
Thanks - I thought that color was a good compromise between silver and black. Will still get dirty with track pads, but won't look immediately filthy like silver. And they're BLACK on the inside of the rim behind the spokes. So I won't have to clean that part!!!
These are for the track only. I'll keep running the 16" Star Specs for the twisties. I'll probably drive three hours each way to the track on the NT01's next week. After that, I'll have a wheel trailer. But it's possible I might have the trailer ready by next week...
Dunno man, we made it to the dragon and back on the RS3s on jans GP and it never wore the hankook lettering out of the center band neither of us drove that car easy out and back and jan was like doing more than 30 on the dragon and hellbender. I fully do not believe that you were doing only 30 to put that tyre wear on the tread.
Great choice, you will love them! I drove home from the track on them once when I was being lazy. They were crazy loud, I didn't do it again lol. Maybe the wind noise from no roof will prevent that from being an issue for you? The biggest difference you will have to adapt to compared to a starspec/rs3 etc is the longitudinal grip. You are able to brake way later and accelerate way earlier. I wouldn't skip 2 brake markers first lap out but work towards it slowly and ease into it. You can be way more aggressive without locking the wheels under-braking with the NT-01 than you can with street tires. Where is your event next week?