Nugget Nationals 2016: Round 3 – Winton Raceway

With some lovely Spring weather upon us, the top running Nugget competitors we’re hoping to improve their previous lap times in the 48’s and knock out some 47’s.

As I was without a camera this track day, I’ve had to rely on others for the contents of this blog so big thanks to A very clever title, Steur Imagery  and Raamenzoku for the pictures used in today’s post.

Much to our surprise, the times tumbled and the track gods were smiling on us with Winton Raceway in prime condition.  This allowed our under powered cars to punch well above their weight and shock some of the non Nuggets running on the day.

In the most hotly contested battle of the series, Adam went out and showed the Echo drivers he meant business by setting a 1:46.7 early in the day.

With Henry and myself trading spots as fastest Echo all day, it was only in the last proper session that I ripped a number of 46’s and finally ended the day with a time that I wasn’t expecting myself and one that annoyed the hell out of Henry and Adam.

1st Place: 1:46.0
Driver: Ying “Sandbagger” Bot
Nugget: 2002 Toyota Echo Sportivo

Never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be doing 46’s in our Nuggets but with three of us finishing in this bracket, it really just goes to show what you can do with not a whole lot of car.

My Racechrono showed an optimal of 1:45.3, I know myself and the other boys are all gunning to be the first Nugget into the 45’s next time!

My PB video here:

2nd Place: 1:46.3
Driver: Adam “Millsy” Mills
Nugget: 2001 Daihatsu Sirion Red

For those of you who have never sat or driven a Sirion, this is a truly awful car. It’s a testament to Millsy’s driving ability that he managed to keep the big block Echo’s honest and do this lap time with paltry 45kw.

3rd Place: 1:46.6
Driver: Henry “I’m pretending I don’t own an Evo” Luong
Nugget: 2002 Toyota Echo Sandy

My arch nemesis Henry hasn’t competed this season as he’s been pretending to work on his other track car, but the track bug was too strong to ignore.

He was back for Round 3 in Sandy the Sportivo. The best thing is there was no prep to do. Straight from daily driving duties and into the 46’s at Winton like it ain’t no thang.

4th Place: 1:49.2
Driver: “Human” Perry Tien
Nugget: 2004 Mazda 2 Blue

Perry impressed us all in his Demio as he was able to crack into the 40’s at his first (long) track day at Winton. This is going to be a car “2” watch in the future.

5th Place: 1:50.4910
Driver: Liam Murphy
Nugget: 2003 Mitsubishi Mirage Silver

Liam’s getting close to the forties club with his lap time. You’ll noticed I posted this time into the hundredths because not far behind him was…

6th Place: 1:50.4950
Driver: Hayden Ryan
Nugget: 1998 Toyota Starlet Blue

After replacing several worn components of his 300km+ EP91, the fruits of his labour has paid off with Hayden smashing his old PB by several seconds. He also made his local footy finals so he was pretty chuffed all weekend!

7th Place: 1:52.3
Driver: Harry Toumbos
Nugget: 2004 Holden Barina

The PB train kept rolling through with the only Holden at the track claiming a new PB for it’s owner, Harry.

8th Place: 1:53.1
Driver: Douglas Eves
Nugget: 2001 Toyota Echo Blue

The triple entered small block Echo had a mammoth task ahead of it to survive being driven in 3 different sessions and delivered a new PB for Doug.

9th Place: 1:54.2
Driver: Matthew Doyle
Nugget: 1995 Mazda 121 Black/White

The most kawaii nugget on the day also delivered a new PB for Matt.

10th Place: 1:54.8
Driver: David Donnoli
Nugget: 2001 Toyota Echo Blue

11th Place: 1:55.1
Driver: James Donnoli
Nugget: 2001 Toyota Echo Blue

More PB’s for a Nugget that was entered 3 times and picked up for a initial purchase price of $150. Well done to the Donnoli brothers on their PB’s.

12th Place: 1:55.7
Driver: Tommy Chan
Nugget: 1995 Toyota Paseo

A car I have long hoped to see at Nugget Nationals, Tommy has recently purchased very clean series 2 Paseo.

Unfortunately no photos of this green machine but it was completely stock and set a great base time for the 5efe powered car.

13th Place: 1:57.5
Driver: Paride Palmeri
Nugget: 2003 Toyota Echo Beige

Paride was back with even louder livery in his mum’s old car!

14th Place: 1:58.7
Driver: Nathan Au
Nugget: 2004 Toyota Echo Blue

Easily the most immaculately presented Nugget on the day, Nathan was rocking some sweet Wedsports and completed his first track event ever!

15th Place: 2:00.3
Driver: Thomas Loo
Nugget: 2004 Honda Jazz

16th Place: 2:00.9
Driver: Lawrence Ho
Nugget: 2004 Honda Jazz

Thomas and Lawrence also were out and popped their track cherry in our series first Honda Jazz.

I couldn’t be more proud of this field, not only for the lap times that are being put down but simply for being out there and having fun in cars which aren’t typically associated with being tracked.

As always big thank you to EXE crew for everything this weekend.

Hope to see you all for Round 4 @ Wakefield Park!

Project Rattlesnake: #17 The fastest Toyota at Honda Nationals

The team at H Nationals had oganised a track day at Winton and for the first time ever, were allowing an “other” class to compete. This class was to cater for the myriad of K swapped cars out there that might not have Honda chassis.

But much like the story of my entire misfit life, I was the only person not driving a Honda that had entered.

Using the Kpro for RPM and Speedo.

I also managed to lose the body moulding off my rear guard on the drive up.

As I walked back to my car after drivers briefing, I was pleased to find that Per-Win-kle smash repairs offered a drive in drive out service.

This track day would be the first time I’d be driving Tart with VTEC and with full revs available (at this stage, the limiter is set at 7600 rpm).

With that in mind, I had two objectives:

1) To achieve my life long dream of getting Tart into the 30’s at Winton.
2) To win a wager I had set with Kam. This wager involved getting within one second of his street tyre time he had set in the TT RS (1:38.2) in my car on the same brand street tyres (AD08R’s).

Muffin to see here.

Session 1: Untimed

Unfortunately, it had been raining the entire night before and the track was very cold and still wet when we started in the morning. This resulted in multiple yellow and red flags through out the day as cars became unstuck or bogged in mud.

Session 2: 1:42.4810

As I was now able to rev the car out, I had to figure out which gear I needed to be in and wasn’t quite feeling comfortable in the car yet. The AD08’s were also having trouble getting up to temperature on the cold day.

Session 3: 1:40.7220

After some discussion with Rhys and Tom , I realised that I was using a lower gear (3rd) than I should have been (4th) when going through some of the corners.

5 speed gearbox habits die hard!

Team Honed representing in group D.

I also noticed that we hadn’t quite got the cold weather tune right yet as the motor was hitting lean cut coming out of some of the corners.

Session 4: 1:38.9470 – NEW PB!

With the new gearing advice in mind I managed to PB!

As I saw the green sectors flash up, I knew I had PB’d but I also knew it was a sloppy lap. I figured I’d attempt a back to back PB and went into turn 4 a bit too hot.

My erratic lift off caused oversteer and moved into a slide that I knew I probably couldn’t correct. I decided it was a smarter idea to let it run off into the low side of the track with the only thought being that I had to save my precariously low hanging sump from destruction.

Unbeknowst to me, the rain had turned this part of the track into a full blown swamp and I spectacularly sprayed up a 3 metre wall of mud and grass which then proceeded to coat my entire car, engine bay and parts of my interior.

I was pretty thankful I hadn’t flipped the car when it dug into the mud however, I then noticed smoke rising.

Wait. No way what is happening?! It’s not on fire is it?! Have I popped the motor?

After a few seconds, I realised that the smoke was actually steam and it was caused by the hot rotors and exhaust coming into contact with the cold swamp water.

Unfortunately, I had bogged the car so deep into the mud that it required a rescue which resulted in a red flag towards the end of group D’s session.

Sorry guys!

Session 5: 1:38.9100 – NEWER PB!

Admittedly, after the off, I thought I should count my blessings and call it a day. I had got into the 1:38’s and my car was still straight and running.

But my friends are always there to offer their unwavering support and said, “Don’t be a bitch, go out again.”

Lucky I listened to them as I managed a slightly faster PB!

Ying’s thoughts:

By now you’re probably thinking,

“Hey Ying, you must be pretty happy you got the car into the 30’s!”
On one hand, I really am happy about it. I didn’t think on it’s first proper outting I’d already able to tick of this achievement butttttttttt… that annoying PB monster that lives inside of me knows it wasn’t the best drive.

It’s time for a new target.

How about a 1:36 on street tyres? That sounds about right….right?😛

Next steps:

– Claim my free dinner from Kam.
– TJB will have another look at the tune and it might be time to unlock the redzone!
– EXE track day in September at Winton Raceway.

Unfortunately I dropped my beautiful OMD camera on this day so didn’t manage to take photos of all my friends who were driving and also PB’d on this day. Well done guys!

Shoutouts:

– Team Rattlesnake/Honed Developments (DCW and TJB) for helping me build a car that ran flawlessly on this day.
– Andrew for all the non watermarked track photos and to Folk’s photography and PT works for the others.
– The team at H Nationals for putting on a fun day despite trying conditions
– Autosphere for supply of fluids
– And last but by no means least, to all my friends who came along to support and watch me achieve my long time goal!

Older KP82 build posts:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16.

Nugget Nationals 2016 – Round 2, Dyno Day Pt. I

Round 2 of Nugget Nationals saw a flock of tiny cars congregate around Weltmeister Eastside.

As usual, we sent the invite out to our other friends to come join us for a BBQ on an unexpectedly pleasant winter day (I’ll cover this off in the Part II post).

To assist the power challenged Nuggets in the track rounds, we’ve awarded points a little differently and in reverse order.

This means that the Nuggets with the lowest kilowatts have been awarded the highest points for Round 2!

Photo: Brett

Thanks to Brett for helping me with photo coverage on the day! His full coverage here on his flicker account averyclevertitle

Notes:
* For cars with two drivers, points will be awarded to each person.
* Results may change as I will be dynoing my Echo this weekend at Weltmesiter.

(Provisional) Results are as follows!

1st place: 34.6KW
Driver: Choonga
Nugget: 1981 Toyota Corolla KE70

Choonga watermelon plushie used as a G meter.

Hoshino’s on loan from the collection of JP.

Free cars are the best cars.

2nd place: 44.1 KW
Driver: Hayden
Nugget: 1998 Toyota Starlet Life EP91

Photo: Brett

3rd place: 45.4 KW
Driver: Millsy and Viv
Nugget: 2000 Daihatsu Sirion GTVI

4th place: 48.1 KW
Driver: Thomas JB
Nugget: 1989 Honda Civic EF

5th place: 48.3 KW
Driver: Liam and Zac
Nugget: 2000 Mitsubishi Mirage CE

Photo: Brett

6th place: 50.1 KW
Driver: Jarrod and Gab
Nugget: Toyota Echo

Also sporting wild new aero!

7th place: 50.9 KW
Driver: Harry
Nugget: 2002 Holden Barina

8th place: 55.2 KW
Driver: Daniel
Nugget: 1993 Honda Civic EG

9th place: 57.5 KW
Driver: Nathan
Nugget: 2005 Toyota Echo Sportivo

Photo: Brett

Nugget photo of the day by Brett!

10th place: 59.0 KW
Driver: Human Perry
Nugget: 2002 Mazda 2 DY

Not to be confused with car Perry.

11th place: 59.4 KW
Driver: Thomas L
Nugget: 2003 Honda Jazz VTI

12th place: 60.0 KW
Driver: Ricky
Nugget: 1993 Honda Civic EG

13th place: 60.8 KW
Driver: Jase
Nugget: 2002 Toyota Echo Sportivo

See you at the next event!

Nugget Nationals 2016 – Round 2, Dyno Day Pt. II

For part 2 of the post, we’ll be checking out the less fortunate people who don’t own Nuggets but were kind enough to come along and join us at our dyno day.

Big thanks to my co-organiser TJB who helped put this day together while I was OS.

First up, my car, because I can haha.

After suffering a minor coolant leak, Tart stepped up to the rollers with working VTEC and the ability to rev.

Apologies to TJB who had to tighten the hose clamps while I was trying not to be sick (from non-Honda related reasons).

Tartlet set down a healthy 143.7KW with the K24.

Photo: Brett

This was actually more than I was expecting so it was a pleasant surprise.

Alan seemed pretty pleased with the result too!

This was 23 more kilowatts than the TD04 powered 4EFTE previously in this car but final power figures only tell half the tale. The torque and usable power curve makes the Starlet much more enjoyable to drive than the old motor.

I don’t know anyone that likes Z32’s, but I do know that everyone loves Tony’s Fairlady (myself included)!

122kw for the non turbo zee.

Bong’s DC2 dyno’d a very healthy 126.6KW.

Trung made 99.8 at all four with some power being robbed by the auto trans.

“Please don’t blow it up, it’s my family car!”

#1 Nguyen made an appearance with the PB machine.  127.3 for Peter’s S2K.

Gavin’s super cool Isuzu Bellet Rally/Race/Everything car made 44.3 KW.

He was pretty happy with this figure.

Andrew’s MKII is very easy on the eyes.

It put down 174.9 KW.

Ryan also bought down his JZX100.

Waiting on the sidelines like an anxious parent.

The Chaser made 162.5 KW.

Brett and Alex came down to take some photos. Thanks guys!

Brett’s pics here: averyclevertitle

Alex’s pics here: Happiness by the Kilowatts

Mugsee’s stock RX8 made 113.7 KW.

Not too bad, but the future will be bright for this particular little Mazda…

Winnie’s car broke the dyno.

The car was too fancy and the ECU freaked out when the front wheels weren’t spinning and refused to make any power.

Lowest reading of the day prize goes to the hybrid Crown making 5.5 watts.😛

Weltmeister specialise in European cars, but there were plenty of cool Japanese cars on the hoist too!

The other members of the grape kings showed up in the middle of the day to show some support.

Everyone wanted to check out Charlie’s new RB conversion.

Except for Tuyet, who wanted to go catch more Pokemon.

Charlie wasn’t quite ready to leave yet.

More white cars in the car park, as Johnny had also come down in his freshly painted NA.

He wasn’t dynoing either but he did enjoy smashing that sausage down.

Henry had purchased a car (or two) to try his hand at grip driving instead of drifting.

He was incredibly suprised when his B16 powered EK made 90.5 KW.

And then a wild Mines R34 GTR appeared…

…and everyone got a boner.

Yes, THE Mine’s R34 is in Melbourne.

All eyes on the screen.

It made 322 KW.

A big thanks to Alan and the crew at Weltmeister Eastside for hosting the event and running the dyno for us and thank you to my BFF Jally for taking care of BBQ duties.

All Toyota Winterfest 2016

Monday 13th June, 2016.

It was Queens Birthday long weekend which also happened to coincide with one of the two car shows I attend in the year, Toyota Winterfest.

Thanks to Brett for lending me his lens on this day.

Conveniently held in the suburbs at Sandown Raceway, I enlisted the help of Brett to drive the Echo so I could get both my cars down for a spot of hard parking.

As booze buses were out in force for the long weekend, Brett was unfortunate enough to get pulled in for a random breath test while I cruised past in Tart.

The police officer’s expression changed when he saw the cage in the back.

Officer: “Geez, there’s a bit going on back there isn’t there?”

Brett being totally chilled out and not prone to panic played it cool.

Brett: “IT’S NOT MY CAR. MY FRIEND OWNS IT, SHE TRACKS IT.”

I was about to text Brett that the engineer papers were in the glove box, when I saw him coming back up the street and smiling at me as the police officer had simply laughed and sent him on his way.

Best paint goes to this Cressida.

Mistahhh Sparkle-ooooo!

“I am disrespectful to dirt!”

I was lucky enough to park next to the only other EP82 that was there on the day!

This tidy example actually runs air con parts from Tart on it. The Starlet community is small (or maybe I just hoarded too much EP82 stuff…).

More gloss black paint envy.

For the first time in ages, Mic was out at a car event with his Beams swapped AE86.

I think I might have to paint the sump black.

Here’s a close of of the awesome fauxchure that appears in the photo above.

“FOR VIBRANT HAIRSTYLE!” – Courtesy of Brett.

Adam didn’t want to bring his Chaser, but he and the rest of the Grape Kings were also here.

+ Human Perry in his Crown.

A few hours in, we remembered again that we all didn’t really know what to do at a car show and that I was also hungry. We all left to get lunch and decided over food to all go home, swap cars and go on a mountain drive instead.

Measuring dish via cigarette packets is so passe.

Before we knew it, we were back in our spiritual home in the mountains.

Some of us were more in the mountains than others.

The thick layer of dust on the boot of Cherry is indicative of how long it has been since I’ve washed him.

Adam swapped over to the Zed and (Human) Perry swapped over to his RX7 vert.

It’s not a Grape Kings drive unless a bonnet comes up.

One (or some) of Adam’s jets were loose.

Brett looking more excited than usual because he got to ride in Adam’s car.

I was excited because after I took that last photo, I smashed down a hot jam donut.

A very clever Grape King.

In the few hours of quiet that I have after returning from holidays and starting a new job tomorrow, I’m going to smash out a few catch up blog posts.

First up a Grape Kings x Averyclevertitle collab!

Sunday 12th June, 2016

My good friend Brett had been patiently waiting for Tart to be driveable so we could go out one weekend and go take some photos.

All photos used in this post were taken by him. Check out his IG: @averyclevertitle and Flickr account.

We didn’t really have a location in mind, so naturally when we drove past a Parish Church, I thought we should stop and take some photos of Tart in a very unnatural setting.

A bit later in the morning, Tony joined us and we all went and had breakfast.

For some reason, whenever Tony is around, manual labour always seems to be involved…

As usual, we got sick of hard parking and decided to head to the mountains. Adam was away for the long weekend so we called Charlie up to come join us.

Tony/Ying: “Hey Charlie, we’re going to go for a drive, want to come?”
*5 second pause*
Charlie: “Yeah, alright.”

We later found out that that 5 second pause was because Charlie was debating whether or not he could be bothered putting pants on.

Thankfully he did.

Super sweet HKS number plate on loan from the collection of Swain.

One day, I will have gloss black paint again.

Thanks for the photos Brett!

Project Rattlesnake: #16 “Weighting” for VTEC

After the successful Winton shakedown without VTEC, we thought it might be a good time for some K Swap dentistry to get to the bottom of the teething issues.

Big thanks to Steven Le for this photo and making my car look like less ugly than it actually is in real life!

Dan was eyeballing top dead centre and everything appeared to be ok.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate how good the headers look since changing colour?

After turning it over a few times he noticed that one of the blue links was out. Looks like it jumped a tooth on our first start up.  Oops!

The cable tie pointers indicate the inlet was 5 teeth from the middle of two blue links and the exhaust cam was correct at 4 teeth.

After some man handling and clever manoeuvring of the chain, Tom and Dan managed to carefully turn the inlet back one.

The VTC error code had cleared but it was time to go on a test run to see if the VTEC gods were smiling on us.

As it was raining on the test run and wheel spin presented it self in 1st to 4th gear, it was hard to tell whether or not everything was fixed.

A check of the data logs show some peaks can only indicate one thing.

VTEC!!!!!

At the time of writing this, I have still not actually experienced VTEC in the dry.

Thanks to DCW and TJB for their help and smarts as always. This stuff is beyond my understanding.

As the problem was rectified much earlier than anyone had anticipated, there was also some time left over to weigh the car.

Passenger side front: 290kg.

Drivers side front: 280kg.

Drivers side rear: 160kg.

Passenger side rear: 170kg.

This brings the Starlet to a total of 900kg with the interior still in, a full tank of fuel and a 15×7 wheel and tyre in the boot that I forgot to take out.

That’s roughly 30kgs heavier than the 4efte set up, but a small price to pay for an infinitely better drivetrain.

At this stage the next outing for Tart will be at dyno day in July, followed by HNats at Winton where I’ve been allowed a special guest entry.

Looking forward to seeing what lap time I can get now that I’m able to rev it out and have full power!

Older Rattlesnake posts:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15.