My best lap at SMSP from the latest round of the NSW super sprint this past weekend. Not my finest work but the day was always intended to be used as a test day. I had said previously that by the end of session 1 I'd be able to tell if the day was going to be great, or be a flop. Unfortunately it was a bit of the latter.
1 week before the event I had swapped diffs with my newly acquired OEM AP1 diff with 4.77 final drive. In theory the shorter gears should give better acceleration out of corners and maybe even put my gear shift positions in a better location on track.
The acceleration portion was true as the car was definitely more lively exiting some tighter corners but the shift positions actually became much worse. Not to mention the overall increase in shifting. I was using gears I had never touched before and was having to downshift and upshift much more than usual. Overall the 4.77 gearing isn't ideal for SMSP in my car.
I'll be doing a blog post on this going into much more detail at some point so keep an eye out for that.
I'll also be out testing the 4.77 again at Luddenham and Pheasant Wood over the next two months. Both these tracks should see the 4.77 used to it's full potential being much shorter and tighter. Hopefully some improvements to come!
Thanks for watching.
Modifications are:
2001 AP1 S2000 (94,000km) W/
- OEM F20C
- Js racing intake
- BYP 70mm titanium exhaust w/ test pipe
- OEM transmission
- Toda lightened flywheel
- OEM differential with 4.77 FD
- Amuse S tyre spec coilovers, 12kg springs
- MX5 rear sway bar swap
- OEM brakes
- Winmax W5 brake pads
- 17x9 +40 CE28N
- 255/40 RE71RS
- Voltex street front bumper
- Voltex type 7.5 1700mm GT wing
- Mugen hardtop
- Sparco circuit driver's seat
- Sparco 6pt harness
- Momo mod88 suede steering wheel
- Defi advance ZD gauge screen
- Custom weld in roll bar
- 200kg of weight reduction