Tristancliffe wrote about track days setups within the Tyre Physics Progress Report thread.

Quote from tristancliffe :

99% of cars are capable of being trackdayed (daied? day'd?) with no modifications at all that would affect the simulator - simply using decent brake fluid (e.g. AP600), some slightly better road legal pads (e.g. Mintex 1144) and, err, that's about it.

I was wondering if there where any tips anyone knew that would not only make your car a better road car, but also a better track day car? Everyone wins from increasing the performance of your breaks, your break fluid and your tires. Is there a silver bullet that anyone has noticed with regard to performance on their car?

I have a 2003 Hyundai Elantra (Try not to laugh to hard), and it's road performance his gradually degrading with time, I'm looking for something that will help it out over all.

I guess thats it really. You will get through crappy brake pads pretty quickly if you use them for track days.

If you wish for performance mods, I don't really think any exist for your car
Brake pads, fluid etc. is something that you can probably find though

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html? ... wering+springs&_rdc=1

lowering springs are cheap & should cure some cornering issues

Randomly lowering a car with springs of unknown stiffness is a totally pointless exercise, bound to make things worse.

Quote from ajp71 :

Randomly lowering a car with springs of unknown stiffness is a totally pointless exercise, bound to make things worse.

did u read what car he had even lighting it on fire will make it better


best thing to do is take it out urself and u should know what NEEDS to be done after that

my trackday/street car has alot done to it but its not very streetable anymore on legal sized tyres and the locked diff makes things anoying on public roads.

Quote from Dygear :

I have a 2003 Hyundai Elantra (Try not to laugh to hard), and it's road performance his gradually degrading with time, I'm looking for something that will help it out over all.

Replace the shockies with slightly heavier duty ones, replace all your suspension bushes with better quality ones and check all suspension related nuts and bolts are tightened to spec that along with the above mentioned brake fliud, pads and tyres.

Quote from Dygear :

Tristancliffe wrote about track days setups within the Tyre Physics Progress Report thread.



I was wondering if there where any tips anyone knew that would not only make your car a better road car, but also a better track day car? Everyone wins from increasing the performance of your breaks, your break fluid and your tires. Is there a silver bullet that anyone has noticed with regard to performance on their car?

I have a 2003 Hyundai Elantra (Try not to laugh to hard), and it's road performance his gradually degrading with time, I'm looking for something that will help it out over all.

Decent brake fluid is a lot more hygroscopic, so should NOT be used on the road unless you are happy bleeding your brakes every couple of weeks or so. Decent pads will be better, but the downside is they'll wear out quicker or squeal, or even glaze over if not used hard enough.

Suspension upgrades that work on a track are almost certainly going to make the car worse on the road.

Lightening the car - perhaps by removing trim or sound deadening - will make the car more annoying on the road.

Tyres - if you want more grip you have to accept more wear. They cost more, and they'll cost more more frequently.

Everything is a compromise. If you want more power you'll generally have to accept less torque (for a given rev limit). If you want better brakes you'll have to look after them a lot better. If you want less weight then you have to accept less crash safety or more road noise...

I would say leave it alone and just keep it on the road in a near standard form. It'll be worth more, it'll be more reliable, be less irritating and cost less.

It's mostly true, even if you KNEW how to set this car up, you would be gaining mere seconds around a track. This amounts to basically nothing on the roads, but will make the car a lot less reliable, higher maintenance etc.

Either that, or you go all the way. This might be a problem, considering how noone in the tuning community has even heard of your car
But with the right skills, I bet you could squeeze at least 50 hp more out of that engine, which would probably be really expensive and not at all worth it :b

Quote from ajp71 :

Randomly lowering a car with springs of unknown stiffness is a totally pointless exercise, bound to make things worse.

If his car handles like a boat now, how would stiffer springs make it worse?

True they may have negative effects on damping/rebound & such like but overall stiffening it up improves the handling.

I drive around in a bog standard Ford Focus. I took it on a track day a while back and only made a couple of modifications to it.

The first, and main one, was, like Tristan suggested, to uprate the braking system (or parts of it). We used higher temperature brake fluid and EBC GreenStuff Pads as brake fade is one of the most common problems with tracking a road car. These upgrades were enough for the brakes to last fine all day.

The only other thing we did was lighten it by taking out the rear seats.

It depends on what you mean by a "better" road car. At the end of the day everything's going to be a comprimise. If by better you mean better fuel efficiency, better handling and slightly more spritely performance then reducing weight is a good idea. Alternatively, like Tristan said lightening a car by taking out carpets / sound deadening will make it louder and less comfortable to drive.

Quote from RasmusL :

But with the right skills, I bet you could squeeze at least 50 hp more out of that engine, which would probably be really expensive and not at all worth it :b

On a car like that your talking 50+% more power - thats not likely to happen tbh.

"adding lightness" is quite easy though, in about 5 minutes I can easily remove about 40 KG (figure totally plucked out of my arse...) worth of useless trim, give me a little more time and a spanner and out come the seats etc.

Would be interesting to see what "the masters" have to say on lowering springs, though...

Quote from ajp71 :

Randomly lowering a car with springs of unknown stiffness is a totally pointless exercise, bound to make things worse.

He's not running an F1 team, he just wants extra performance. If you go around doing absolutely EVERYTHING the best way and ONLY the best way, you actually get **** all done in life.

Quote from Jakg :

On a car like that your talking 50+% more power - thats not likely to happen tbh.

Turbo/supercharging and a lot of new parts in the engine block for it to hold together And as I said, this will be a completely custom job for this car.

Kinda thinking out loud here...

I've heard that replacing the air filter will give you a slight horsepower boost... K&N claims to give anywhere between 3 and 10 or more horsepower.

A lightweight brake system (calipers and rotors) will decrease unsprung mass, possibly making the car feel a bit better to drive, but the altered and unoptimized harmonics will probably mean you'll get squeal. Same thing with lightweight rims. If you do track days a lot and are competent and pushing hard it's probably a good idea to have a set of track tires and wheels. That way if you drop a wheel, get a flat and bash up your rims your normal "nice" ones will still be there.

Fitting a quicker ratio steering rack might be a possibility, but I don't know much about that. Might make the car feel more lively and responsive. Maybe something with the pedals too? If you could replace the pedals with adjustable ones then you could position them in a more racy fashion.

But I don't think I'd do much if any of this even to a sports car. IMO a car is a car, and a trackday isn't a race. Maybe I'd put the air filter on, if indeed it did improve the horsepower, but other than that I'd probably just drive it stock.

Have you tracked it before? Anything in particular you're unsatisfied with?

Quote from RasmusL :

Turbo/supercharging and a lot of new parts in the engine block for it to hold together And as I said, this will be a completely custom job for this car.

Ok, if I wanted to I could buy a new engine for my car from the "GTi" model, and while it's a lot of work i'd go from 84 to 135 ish BHP. I could then go and buy a (quite expensive) turbo upgrade for said engine - this would cost me a few thousand pounds and i'd be looking at a few grand and still wouldn't have anything other than more power.

Or I could just buy something with a similar amount of power, for the same price that didn't handle like a boat. Know which one i'd chose.

Exactly Jack - I've never understood why people take pretty awful (or even mediocre) cars, spend gazillions of money putting silly bodykits, silly brakes, silly engines, silly this and silly that on it, only to find that for less money they could have bought something that was better, quicker, cooler.

Obviously a certain amount of modding is done to make their car 'different' or 'unique', which you don't get by buying a better standard car, but at the end of the day, no matter how much money you throw to make your Civic unique, it's still a Civic, and everyone will know it's just a money pit that is still a Civic. I guess it takes a certain type of person (the sort of person you see at cruises - school dropouts, no future, unable to read for more than 2 seconds without getting bored etc) to go down that route. And they'll still pretend they are upgrading their car to make it better, rather than admitted it's solely to do with looks.

I DID say that it was really expensive and not worth it
But he asked for mods, so I gave it to him

And certainly the best way of improving power on a NA engine is to add some FI

If you haven't done any track driving before, a standard soft wobbly road car is one of the best things to learn in. The fact the car moves about so much means it amplifies any little mistakes you make and really portrays the weight distribution from corner to corner. Maybe best off leaving it as is for the time being then working up to certain modifications as you gain experience?

Quote from Jakg :

Or I could just buy something with a similar amount of power, for the same price that didn't handle like a boat. Know which one i'd chose.

So do I, you'd choose a Proton.

...

Which would be a bit like modifying a Hyundai Elantra for trackday use. I meen, by all meens trackday it and have a laugh, but I wouldn't bother spending money on turning it into a race legal thrilling machine, because it's not going to thrill anyone driving it...

The biggest adrenaline you could get on a track with a soft squishy car like that would be the journey between the apex and the armco having just rammed a Ferrari with a particularly burly looking driver holding an axe. The car itself isn't going to give you a great amount of joy going fast, it's going to handle like the pendulum on a grandfather clock, sure trackday it and have some fun - just don't take it too seriously.

Go RWD.

This isn't exactly what you're asking for but how about buying another car for track day use? Like an old cheap hatch something? With witch you could mess around and have fun. An old ef or eg civic, vw golf mk2, mitsu colt/lancer, nissan pulsar ... list goes on. Search a bit on the web to find out which cars are more popular so to make sure there's more info online and spare parts around where you live. Then you wouldn't have to worry about the car being good on the road too. I'm suggesting small hatchbacks because they don't need much power to go "fast" and the feel of speed is more apparent. That way you can learn doing stuff yourself without risk of ruining your everyday car.

Like tristan pointed out a civic will always be a civic. But it's a good start and quite cheap for the speed you can squeeze out of that bouncy bucket if driven well.

1. get an mx-5.
2. ???
3. PROFIT!!!

yer for a track car to mess around with RWD ALL THE WAY
personaly id susjest a old datto i was watching a old datto with 230 hp destory a ULTIMA GTR around my local track.

when choosing a track car you must consider this

budget how much are you willing to spend on the car ?
how much are you willing to spend on making it faster in a straight line?
how much are you willing to spend on its cornering?
how much are you willing to spend on its braking?
how much are you willing to spend on its repairs?
how often do you plan on using it?
do you want to compeet in a series?
how fast do you want the car? do you really think u can handle a 500 hp 1000kg RWD compertition track car at its limits?

only AFTER you have considered these things then you can aim at buying a car but then you need to consider this

do you really want to use this car on the road?

i made the worst mistake of turning my first car into a semi track car now its not even worth 1/4 of what i paid for it yet if i left it stock i would have made 3k over the price i paid for it orignaly

I would say bleed your brakes through with some fresh fluid (I just used halfords own brand 5.1 stuff and that was fine for me) and also maybe swap your front pads for something like Ferodo DS2500.

Then once you have done your first trackday see what you could do to improve the handling like fit a thicker rear arb or something. Or sell your car and buy an MX5 likeBlakjekass said or another car that has a good handling balance on its standard suspension.