Vauxhall Omega track car - yes, really!
Discussion
sinbaddio said:
I'm defo booking myself on the drift track at Oulton Park, never even knew it existed!
Go for it, it is terrific fun and you won't regret it!Jimmy Recard said:
RazerSauber said:
How does it feel now it has the "G" cams all around? I have the same engine in my Calibra and am wondering if it's worth throwing some in at the next timing belt change.
I’d say stronger at the top end but a bit flat in the middle. Depending on the gearing in the Calibra, it could be worth it. It might just feel flat in the middle *because* it’s stronger at the top 
Again, our thanks to all well wishers, and I hope part 4 below will continue to live up to the standard I've set!
Mid August - Location Location Location
During all our work with the Omega since the February of 2019, there had been one annoying inconvenience - entirely of my own making...
My workshop is shared with a couple of other people, and had always been too full to get the car inside. Not a problem, as the Omega had slumbered quite happily in a carport in the yard. However, in early 2019 I frivolously purchased 6 tons of non-running
... suddenly I needed the space.The Omega was thus banished to live on top of my trailer in its storage barn a few miles away. Across 2 fields.....
Not only did it take an hour out of each working day with the performance of having to go across a farmyard and fields to fetch it, but this often brought its own unique issues
Also, the act of unloading and reloading it from the trailer meant that we had to end each day with the car fully reassembled and driveable - rather than just being able to push it back undercover in whatever state it happened to be in.
Finally, in August, I had finally negotiated for and created enough space inside for one vehicle.....at the back of the building to be blocked in by piles of stillages. Not ideal for a car that would be going out to events, so it was welcome back to the Omega outside, and in with the truck - once I'd worked out how to move the damn thing [cue A-team fabrication music]
Anyway, back to the star car...
03 Nov - Ducts, V2.0
A busy September and October of racing, holidays and work for Jimmy and I meant that it was November by the time we got around to working on the Omega again - and the race was on as we realised we were rapidly running out of year.
MasterVentris joined us once again, as we decided to sort out the brake cooling for good this time.
I'd acquired some more ducting, and another trip to Demon Tweeks yielded a pair of intake scoops, to neatly solve the question of how we'd neatly terminate the new ducting in the bumper:
Unfortunately, as the organised working day rolled around it was pouring with rain. Hastily moving enough things around to make space, the car was pulled half into the workshop door and work commenced.
As with any simple job, unforseen things soon reared their head. Wanting to avoid a repeat of the crushing on full lock, we elected this time to route the ducts down under the car, and then out along the bottom of the lower A-arm. That second half was fine, but to achieve the first half we needed to create a clear route backwards from the foglight holes.
On the driver's side, a folded corner of sheet metal was right in the way. Notching a 2in. square corner out of it soon cured that, and we were sorted for that side.
The passenger side was somewhat more complex. First for the chop (literally) were the twin horns and their bracket. Behind, however, was a curious device. A centrifugal pump of some sort, with a lot of rubber pipework leading to and from it. What the hell was that?
Some googling of part numbers told us that it was a "secondary air injection pump". Again, what the hell was that? More importantly, could we safely rip it out?
More research revealed that it is a common but little-known item, whose function is to blow fresh air into the exhaust manifold on a cold startup. This enables the catalysts to "light" the chemical reaction and warm up sooner, allowing them to begin working much more quickly that if relying on the oxygen-depleted exhaust alone. In short then, a cold start emissions device that we could safely remove, as explained by this handy picture I found online:
Remember how I mentioned unforseen things? To achieve the above removals, it quickly became apparent that the front bumper was going to have to come off, along with the crash beam behind it. To the Haynes manual! Luckily, by normal front bumper standards this was a pretty easy one to remove - and the fixing screws even co-operated on the first try!
Just remember... "reassembly is the reverse of disassembly" (and 50 other hilarious Haynes lies you can tell yourself)
The final hurdle was directing the cooling air at the discs, which would mean removing the backplates. Easy, right... just remove the discs to get at the fixings? Er....no. Removing the disc presented us with the front wheel hub and bearings, which would have to be removed before the backplate would come off.
Time for plan B - reaching for the hacksaw again, enough of each backplate was noisily and laboriously removed to produce a clear area of disc in the path of the airflow. The car, meanwhile, just casually sat there smoking a massive joint:
With that task complete, the car was all set... mostly. Over the last few months, whenever I'd moved it around the yard, the brakes had felt a little spongy. As the light faded on the day, we quickly bled the fronts and hoped this would be enough to cure the issue... because it would soon be time for the "annual November trackday"!
Postscript:
In the meantime, Jimmy thoughtfully presented me with a gift relating to our project. A genuine dealer promotional Parker pen from the 90s! I was very touched, and it now has pride of place on my desk:
_23 Nov - The Annual Track Day!
And so the day dawned! How successful would our mods and fixes be when tested in the white heat of track use? One way to find out....
MasterVentris had long expressed an interest in having a go at a track day, and I'd long known and trusted his driving skills and mechanical sympathy. So, who better than to accompany Jimmy and myself for this adventure?
As with last year, we had the advantage of a cool and slightly damp day which would minimise stress on brakes and tyres - or so we surmised, as we convened yawning and bleary-eyed at a pre-dawn Oulton Park:
Briefing concluded and a bacon sandwich consumed, the first task of the day was to swap the tyres. We were down to just 2 of the comedy ditchfinder shod twintop alloys, after we'd noticed worrying bulging on the others during a drift day previously. However, we still didn't really want to run the NS2Rs with the standard soft suspension.
Luckily, after selling his Astra Jimmy had retained the "summer wheels", which happened to be a set of light, strong and stylish Pentas shod with decent Avon and Kumho tyres. These looked pretty damn cool on the car, it has to be said:
All in all, the day was another roaring success! The brake cooling worked extremely well - after a cooldown lap at the end of each run, the brakes were merely tepid and didnt even smell of burning pads. The pedals were also a huge victory, with much nifty heel'n'toeing going on all day and no clutch abuse!
Along with the weather, a few other parallels could be drawn with the previous year. Last year, Synchromesh coached track virgin Jimmy from "cautious" to "not bad at all" in the space of the day, and gave me a couple of tips too. This year, Jimmy and myself, now fully fledged race drivers, had the pleasure of passing on the coaching to Ventris - who also started out with trepidation but quickly took to it like a duck to water. His comments throughout the day centred on how the Omega seemed a great car to debut in - modest enough performance to stay out of trouble, a very flexible engine, and seemingly viceless handling with excellent predictability. I think it's safe to say we have another convert and returning driver on our hands
Again, last year we were left standing by an unnaturally rapid Peugeot 205 that turned out to be running 306 GTI running gear. This year, we were stunned by a ridiculously quick Toyota Starlet that turned out to be hiding a highly tuned AE86 engine and RWD drivetrain!
There were only 2 criticisms throughout the day.
The first was the brake travel - it soon became extremely obvious that the bleeding had not fixed the problem of the long soft pedal. However, once the slack was taken up, the brakes worked very effectively and had a decent enough feel - so it wasn't like we had an airlock or leak. We could only surmise that one of the original 1999 flexi hoses was having an aneurism, which was understandable given the sudden abuse they were getting.
The brakes are the very next thing for us to tackle - even if we do not have the new calipers refurb'd in time, we are going to have some braided SS hoses manufactured. We know the new ones need to be slightly longer due to the caliper design, we just need to double check the end fitting first to make sure it is the same between calipers!
The second criticism was reserved by me for the driver of an Exige. Having let them past because they were going much faster, they proceeded to anchor up to an almost dead-stop on the next corner. Later discussion between myself and passenger Ventris, who'd spotted the passenger holding a clipboard, suggested that an instructor had told the driver to "brake. Brake! BRAKE!" and they'd obliged a bit too much. Either way, I came within 2 feet of removing his rear corner and it took a while to remove the clenched-in seat fabric from our behinds.....
I'm sure many will comment that there's 2 sides to every story, but if I can remember my Youtube login I'll post up some footage for everyone.
Anyway, that's everything up to date for now - finally! I'll sign off and leave you all with many gratuitous pictures that were taken throughout the day by Javelin's fantastic photographer. Oulton Park really is such a picturesque circuit, isnt it?
Fishy Dave said:
A good read, I was there at Oulton Park in my silver and blue RX-8. 
ChemicalChaos said:
Ah yes, I think I do remember your car - was it the one that unfortunately seemed to be having an issue with oil burning?
Ahem, yes, lesson learnt, don't fill an RX-8 to the full mark on the dipstick and then drive round a track, else it sucks oil into the inlet. Thankfully the fog cleared and it was perfect for the rest of the day. 
Love this thread. I’ve been reading it piecemeal as it’s come, and have forgotten if there’s any mention of suspension changes. The back seems to be riding especially high, obviously due to the cars diet; do you reckon there’s some lowering on the cards?
When will you be taking the fire engine on a drift day?
When will you be taking the fire engine on a drift day?
Demelitia said:
Love this thread. I’ve been reading it piecemeal as it’s come, and have forgotten if there’s any mention of suspension changes. The back seems to be riding especially high, obviously due to the cars diet; do you reckon there’s some lowering on the cards?
There will be, it just hasn't happened as we haven't got round to it. There is a plan for it, but we haven't found the time yet Fishy Dave said:
Fishy Dave said:
A good read, I was there at Oulton Park in my silver and blue RX-8.
ChemicalChaos said:
Ah yes, I think I do remember your car - was it the one that unfortunately seemed to be having an issue with oil burning?
Ahem, yes, lesson learnt, don't fill an RX-8 to the full mark on the dipstick and then drive round a track, else it sucks oil into the inlet. Thankfully the fog cleared and it was perfect for the rest of the day. Glad to hear it resolved itself.... we all thought you'd had some terminal bork!
Jimmy Recard said:
Demelitia said:
Love this thread. I’ve been reading it piecemeal as it’s come, and have forgotten if there’s any mention of suspension changes. The back seems to be riding especially high, obviously due to the cars diet; do you reckon there’s some lowering on the cards?
There will be, it just hasn't happened as we haven't got round to it. There is a plan for it, but we haven't found the time yet The ride height is actually a blessing, it makes the car easier to get on and off the trailer! What does however hamper our on-track performance is the accompanying roll in corners... as I shall demonstrate by re-linking a video from the 2018 track day:
https://youtu.be/pxCFwCO2FDU?t=74
Oh, the compliance!
It's also interesting to note the progress already achieved from that video..... Synchro, who's at the wheel there, is braking about 1/4 more distance from the corner than we were our 2019 track day with the softer and better-cooled pads
ChemicalChaos said:
Looks like there’s a good 15-20 degrees of ‘compliance’ there haha. It would be interesting to see some numbers for things like cornering G’s and brake forces. Anyone got an old iPhone you could mount in the car with one of those track apps on? Or maybe a more nautical app so you can measure the pitch and roll until you get the lowering done. 
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