T350 races for the first time!! oh joy!! and thanks!
Discussion
Hi all fellow T350ers .. our race car was out for the first time at Rockingham over the weekend after a long traumatic battle to get out on track all season .. finally we made it (big thanks to engine builder John Castle for pulling off a miracle to build us an engine out of secondhand bits to get us out, it didnt miss a beat all weekend!) ..
Hopefully some of you got along to Rockingham to see a small step in TVR racing history unfold .. at the end we felt like we'd won the whole championship such was our joy at getting the car to the end of the day.
The car hadn't so much as turned a wheel when it arrived at The Rock and after a couple of very minor mishaps involving a loose tow strap and faulty brakes lights the car sailed through two qualifyings and two races showing great corner speed and putting in lap after lap of consistent pace. Once we get to grips with our aero package and maybe find a bit more power (we're giving away 100bhp to some of the cars in class b at the moment..) we should have a very effective race tool on our hands
(thanks to Greg of newlun performance for his help in the pits too, top fella!)
I hope the T350 owners at the Rock enjoyed seeing the car out on track and coming to meet us in the pits .. what a fantastic day
cheers all
Hopefully some of you got along to Rockingham to see a small step in TVR racing history unfold .. at the end we felt like we'd won the whole championship such was our joy at getting the car to the end of the day.
The car hadn't so much as turned a wheel when it arrived at The Rock and after a couple of very minor mishaps involving a loose tow strap and faulty brakes lights the car sailed through two qualifyings and two races showing great corner speed and putting in lap after lap of consistent pace. Once we get to grips with our aero package and maybe find a bit more power (we're giving away 100bhp to some of the cars in class b at the moment..) we should have a very effective race tool on our hands
(thanks to Greg of newlun performance for his help in the pits too, top fella!)I hope the T350 owners at the Rock enjoyed seeing the car out on track and coming to meet us in the pits .. what a fantastic day
cheers all
Edited by trackcar on Monday 6th August 09:03
Cheers John. Cliff got the biggest hug after the end of race 2 .. it was one of the greatest days ever, just so thrilled to finally get out on track. I agree, he drove it well considering he'd not even driven the car down down my industrial estate before the Rock and hadn't raced for a year! and what a place/event for it all to unfold at, was truly a memory to savour for life Catch up with you at Brands i hope
Catch up with you at Brands i hope trackcar said:
Hi all fellow T350ers .. our race car was out for the first time at Rockingham over the weekend after a long traumatic battle to get out on track all season .. finally we made it (big thanks to engine builder John Castle for pulling off a miracle to build us an engine out of secondhand bits to get us out, it didnt miss a beat all weekend!) ..
Hopefully some of you got along to Rockingham to see a small step in TVR racing history unfold .. at the end we felt like we'd won the whole championship such was our joy at getting the car to the end of the day.
The car hadn't so much as turned a wheel when it arrived at The Rock and after a couple of very minor mishaps involving a loose tow strap and faulty brakes lights the car sailed through two qualifyings and two races showing great corner speed and putting in lap after lap of consistent pace. Once we get to grips with our aero package and maybe find a bit more power (we're giving away 100bhp to some of the cars in class b at the moment..) we should have a very effective race tool on our hands (thanks to Greg of newlun performance for his help in the pits too, top fella!)
I hope the T350 owners at the Rock enjoyed seeing the car out on track and coming to meet us in the pits .. what a fantastic day
cheers all
Congratulations Joolz. I remember you were looking around for a T350 to go racing in a year or so ago and wondered what happened to the project. Is this likely to lead to some enhancements for our road cars (lets hope so) or is it too early to tell yet ?.Hopefully some of you got along to Rockingham to see a small step in TVR racing history unfold .. at the end we felt like we'd won the whole championship such was our joy at getting the car to the end of the day.
The car hadn't so much as turned a wheel when it arrived at The Rock and after a couple of very minor mishaps involving a loose tow strap and faulty brakes lights the car sailed through two qualifyings and two races showing great corner speed and putting in lap after lap of consistent pace. Once we get to grips with our aero package and maybe find a bit more power (we're giving away 100bhp to some of the cars in class b at the moment..) we should have a very effective race tool on our hands
(thanks to Greg of newlun performance for his help in the pits too, top fella!)I hope the T350 owners at the Rock enjoyed seeing the car out on track and coming to meet us in the pits .. what a fantastic day
cheers all
Edited by trackcar on Monday 6th August 09:03
Edited by S5TVR on Monday 6th August 09:11
Well the car has great grip so we're very pleased with the dampers even though we've not really done any back to back testing on set-ups yet ( i just best-guessed a set-up and thats what it ran with) .. but they held good control through the whole race and we had the car running very heavy in qualifying 2 and race 2 to try to cure a fuel surge issue (we were running 60 litres of fuel .. we have a big tank as the car was designed to be upgraded to britcar regs at some point in the future) so that gave the rear a bit of a work out. Cliff was very pleased with the overall balance with a slight understeer bias on the high speed stuff which is exactly what you want to be safe in an unfamiliar race car environment.
I don't know what race car development will lead on to road cars because we're effectively racing a T350 road car .. the chassis, body, suspension, wheels and engine/diff/ etc etc are all TVR road spec. Even the brakes are Cerbera road spec. We really are racing a road car (I admire andy race in his griff who's doing proper road car racing, his is taxed for road use! top banana) and taking a fight to the other cars in the series who have been out for many more races than we have so that shows you how good a modern TVR road car chassis can be when you get the right combination of parts .. and it will hopefully get better when the car develops in it's set-up and Cliff becomes more familiar with it.
The car was entered as a class A car because we originally were supposed to have 600hp (long story ..) .. but we had about 310/315hp on race day so should have been in class B .. where our qualifying time (I believe) would have made us second fastest class B car behind garaham waldens race tuscan with 60hp more than we have.
We wanted a T350 for many reasons, but it looks at the moment like a good choice
I cannot stress enough though how much of a team effort this car is, dave hillis and greg lunn have both been great with the body side of things, and always enthusiastic even when times were stressful. We love our protech dampers and the lightness of the silverstone wheels was a benefit even to me taking them on and off, plus they look fab on our car and are strong for race punishment, they really suit our T350 in their black colour. John Castle turned an engine around at short notice in 4 days from a box of bits, that's the sort of commitment that deserves genuine heartfelt praise. It was a fantastic weekend for everyone concerned. I thank them all.
I don't know what race car development will lead on to road cars because we're effectively racing a T350 road car .. the chassis, body, suspension, wheels and engine/diff/ etc etc are all TVR road spec. Even the brakes are Cerbera road spec. We really are racing a road car (I admire andy race in his griff who's doing proper road car racing, his is taxed for road use! top banana) and taking a fight to the other cars in the series who have been out for many more races than we have so that shows you how good a modern TVR road car chassis can be when you get the right combination of parts .. and it will hopefully get better when the car develops in it's set-up and Cliff becomes more familiar with it.
The car was entered as a class A car because we originally were supposed to have 600hp (long story ..) .. but we had about 310/315hp on race day so should have been in class B .. where our qualifying time (I believe) would have made us second fastest class B car behind garaham waldens race tuscan with 60hp more than we have.
We wanted a T350 for many reasons, but it looks at the moment like a good choice
I cannot stress enough though how much of a team effort this car is, dave hillis and greg lunn have both been great with the body side of things, and always enthusiastic even when times were stressful. We love our protech dampers and the lightness of the silverstone wheels was a benefit even to me taking them on and off, plus they look fab on our car and are strong for race punishment, they really suit our T350 in their black colour. John Castle turned an engine around at short notice in 4 days from a box of bits, that's the sort of commitment that deserves genuine heartfelt praise. It was a fantastic weekend for everyone concerned. I thank them all.
Well done Joo. I was there on Sat on the track day and saw the T350 out in practice. It looks so right for racing, better than a Sag in my opinion, more aerodynamic, less fussy.
I didn't realise it was its first time out. Congratulations for a successful weekend and best of luck for the future, i can see that car going from strength to strength.
By the way, i am still using your Protechs and suspension settings on my Chim and apart from adjusting bump and rebound every thing else is as you set it. I can tell you that its absolutely awesome, just the right amount of understeer through the fast turns and with good grip on turn in. Nothing else got anywhere near me all day except a Tuscan race car and i kept with him for a couple of laps (albeit through traffic) and i was running std bridgestone SO2/3s. I just need another 100bhp or so, winter project coming on i think!
Well done again Joo, I'll try and get up to see you soon, i want to spend some time on your rollers at some point, doing some fine tuning of the mapping.
Cheers
Andy
I didn't realise it was its first time out. Congratulations for a successful weekend and best of luck for the future, i can see that car going from strength to strength.
By the way, i am still using your Protechs and suspension settings on my Chim and apart from adjusting bump and rebound every thing else is as you set it. I can tell you that its absolutely awesome, just the right amount of understeer through the fast turns and with good grip on turn in. Nothing else got anywhere near me all day except a Tuscan race car and i kept with him for a couple of laps (albeit through traffic) and i was running std bridgestone SO2/3s. I just need another 100bhp or so, winter project coming on i think!
Well done again Joo, I'll try and get up to see you soon, i want to spend some time on your rollers at some point, doing some fine tuning of the mapping.
Cheers
Andy
custardkid said:
Joolz,
this thread needs some pics!
are you running a spd6? i thougth you specialised in the v8 cerbs?
keep up the good work!
custard
yep it's a SP6, and therein lies a tale of frustration this thread needs some pics!
are you running a spd6? i thougth you specialised in the v8 cerbs?
keep up the good work!
custard
but we're here with a new engine building company now who have delivered the goods and made an engine that survived a track day and two qualies and two races without so much as a hiccough I know we shouldnt be pleased at that because there's plenty of other engines out there which wuld have done the same thing over and over, but John Castle got us out of the poo with an engine thats really restored our faith in the Sp6 after a year of heartache. The best bit is it's almost completely stock internally .. TVR parts are used throughout at the moment though the plan next year is to go for something slightly more exotic now that we've found some reliability and a team of good engineers who can bring what we need to the table.A T350 as with other T cars is a short cerbera Sp6 in effect so not much of a departure, the main one being getting involved with the SP6 engines really .. we almost reached the point where we wondered why we had bothered, but then there was light at the end of the tunnel and we always wanted to race a car that the general TVR public could identify with, so SP6 it really had to be
The joy of getting through the weekend was overwhelming
Well Done Guys, It was fantastic to see the T"ango"350 finally out there and running as well as it did straight out of the box..
I know exactly how hard (physically,mentally and financially) it can be to get a car together and get it through a race day. Getting an engine built, in the car and mapped in less than a week is something very few people we can achieve... especially when we all have a full time job as well...
There were a couple of cars I was really hoping I would see cross the line as the flag came down, One being the t350 and another Steve Hall a vision in yellow !!
I was totally gutted when my gearbox exploded on the second lap from the class lead, but heartend to see you guys finish and on a good pace
cheers
Graham
I know exactly how hard (physically,mentally and financially) it can be to get a car together and get it through a race day. Getting an engine built, in the car and mapped in less than a week is something very few people we can achieve... especially when we all have a full time job as well...
There were a couple of cars I was really hoping I would see cross the line as the flag came down, One being the t350 and another Steve Hall a vision in yellow !!
I was totally gutted when my gearbox exploded on the second lap from the class lead, but heartend to see you guys finish and on a good pace
cheers
Graham
A very BIG thank you to everyone who helped get the car out for Rockingham, a truly fantastic effort given that Monday morning the car still had a seized engine. John Castle at D&M Autosport pulled out all of the stops to get us running. Having removed and stripped the engine by Tuesday (it was pretty much destroyed) somehow he managed to build us a Speed 6 with totally stock components in a couple of days and was refitting it a 9pm on Thursday night. I took the car to Joo Friday for mapping and a few final bits n pieces ready for Rockingham. I couldn't believe we were going to be there.
I really hoped and prayed the car and the motor would stay in one piece and allow us to get a finish to reward the guys for all of their efforts. We tested on 3 year old used tyres on the Saturday and probably managed about 40 minutes running whilst Joo sorted some niggles. Race day found us listed in Class A (my mistake) but we should have been listed in class B with our 315bhp. We qualified really well, the car was transformed on new slix and the grip was amazing. We were the fastest non Tuscan Challenge based car on the grid and just over a second off a gaggle of TC cars. The race start was a disaster dropping from 11th on the grid to about 21st by the first corner having struggled with the clutch and new gearbox but within a few laps I'd regained all of the places and was running second in class and just 20 yards behind the class leader. Unfortunately some fuelling problems then slowed the car and we cruised to 3rd in Class, a terrific result.
Race 2, again a bad start but soon past the Cerbera of Johny Wilson and then the Tuscan of Tony Abrams for 2nd in class. The handling of the car on the tight infield section was awesome and more than made up for our slow straight line speed. Again the fuelling problem appeared towards the end but this time I managed to keep the 2nd place in Class B.
Overall and absolutely unbelievable weekend which exceeded my best hopes by miles. The car was strong and I can't wait for our new engine next season.
Thanks also to our sponsors, Newlun Performance, Silverstone Performance, Protech, Powerflex, Plasticman, Focused and of course Joo at TCS. Here's a pic of the great man in action, captions please!!!!!!
I really hoped and prayed the car and the motor would stay in one piece and allow us to get a finish to reward the guys for all of their efforts. We tested on 3 year old used tyres on the Saturday and probably managed about 40 minutes running whilst Joo sorted some niggles. Race day found us listed in Class A (my mistake) but we should have been listed in class B with our 315bhp. We qualified really well, the car was transformed on new slix and the grip was amazing. We were the fastest non Tuscan Challenge based car on the grid and just over a second off a gaggle of TC cars. The race start was a disaster dropping from 11th on the grid to about 21st by the first corner having struggled with the clutch and new gearbox but within a few laps I'd regained all of the places and was running second in class and just 20 yards behind the class leader. Unfortunately some fuelling problems then slowed the car and we cruised to 3rd in Class, a terrific result.
Race 2, again a bad start but soon past the Cerbera of Johny Wilson and then the Tuscan of Tony Abrams for 2nd in class. The handling of the car on the tight infield section was awesome and more than made up for our slow straight line speed. Again the fuelling problem appeared towards the end but this time I managed to keep the 2nd place in Class B.
Overall and absolutely unbelievable weekend which exceeded my best hopes by miles. The car was strong and I can't wait for our new engine next season.
Thanks also to our sponsors, Newlun Performance, Silverstone Performance, Protech, Powerflex, Plasticman, Focused and of course Joo at TCS. Here's a pic of the great man in action, captions please!!!!!!
Fantastic achievement - well done to all involved.
I couldnt make Rockingham, and now I'm even more gutted that the first T350 racer was there - pic looks fab.
As an earlier post said, if our road cars can benefit from anything you learn and /or develop from this, there'll be a few happy smiling faces about!
Good luck for the rest of the series - I hope you're gonna be at Oulton Park on the 18th - probably got your very own fan club all ready!!
PS Does one not have to run-in a race engine then? (built and fitted Tue/Weds/Thurs night!)
I couldnt make Rockingham, and now I'm even more gutted that the first T350 racer was there - pic looks fab.
As an earlier post said, if our road cars can benefit from anything you learn and /or develop from this, there'll be a few happy smiling faces about!
Good luck for the rest of the series - I hope you're gonna be at Oulton Park on the 18th - probably got your very own fan club all ready!!
PS Does one not have to run-in a race engine then? (built and fitted Tue/Weds/Thurs night!)
Edited by RedSpike66 on Tuesday 7th August 00:47
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