Well work had been crazy for months and kept me away from Crossfire activities for a while but I managed to get out some of the Porsche guys at Cadwell Park last Sunday to blow the cobwebs off! Cadwell is a cracking track, very hilly and technical, and it had been about 8 years since I last drove there, and even then it was in thick fog and on the short circuit.
In preparation I fitted new brakes and PS2's on the front and made some long standing mods to the brake ducts. The only discs and pads I could get at short notice were EBC's so I went for some Reds despite being extremely disappointed with the Greens. (I notice they are not recommending them for track use now!)
My brake ducts had ducting from the front ports all the way to the brake backplates, but there were some clearance issues and the ducting kept crushing on full lock and I was never really happy with the setup. So I decided to just fit exit ports in the arch mouldings that direct air to the pickups scoops on the backplates instead.

EBC discs/pads


Redesigned ducts:




I was completely outgunned in this company; 400bhp GT3's and a 993RS but it was great fun, and there were a gaggle of MX5 (Miata) and MG V8 racers to have a go at. The morning started off very wet and slippery but things dried out and kept better all day! Interestingly I could stay with the 993 through long sweepers but as expected got blown away as the track straighten up.

Crossfire in good company (the Aston never ventured on track!)


Here are some videos from the day:

Cadwell 1

Chasing Butzi's 993RS

Cadwell 2

 

hey woody glad you're back.

 

Great videos, looks like a fun track!

 

Woody,
Thanks for sharing the great new videos. I love to this track with all the elevation changes. Great double pass. Looks like you're having lots of fun.

 

As always, great stuff Simon!! That's the same track where Jason Plato and Tiff Needell spent time playing on the last Series of Fifth Gear, isn't it? I recognized several sections, especially that downhill leading to the 90 degree left hander - they did some tail out cornering comparisons of the 350Z and Z4 at that corner.

 

Well spotted Mike! Yes, its the same place. I seem to remember Tiff having a contest with a bike to see how much air they could get over the yump too (might have been Oulton though) I only managed an inch under the fronts.
The section leading into the downhill lefthander is known as the 'gooseneck' and can be a bit tricky. Darren, the guy in the yellow GT3, was getting faster all day through it until he got it completely sideways at 100+, caught the slide but ran out of track and disappeared backwards down the grass hill nearly joining the circuit on the other side! Luckily he didn't hit anything as that was about the only place where there is runoff. Its a fantastic track but the barriers and tryes are all very close if you screw it up. In the morning when it was damp I nearly caught the green tyre bails with the back end exiting Barn, the 90 right before the main straight, so had to calm it down a bit until it dried out. Great fun though.

 

Great filming there woody! What muffler are you running?

Just wondering how the MS ECU is working, was it being used during the filming? Any idea if it can handle boost?

 

Excellent videos Woody!

Did you get a chance to view the last one I posted on youtube? Great to see you posting again my friend!

 

Great video too Timelord, looks like you had the place to yourself! We'll soon have a nice selection of track footage to chop a small movie together.

Thanks Maxwell. The ECU was just running in monitor mode during the vid, I should be taking the car off road in the summer to do some more extensive work on it, after I get my other project back on the road. Muffler is the stock item that has really started to get a nice rasp to it now after all the high rev running. This will also be changed when the car comes off the road. There's a lot of stuff I have waiting in the wings, including some lightweight wide body parts, but have to use the car daily so it will all have to happen when I have something else reliable to drive back on the road.

Here's what I have planned (more or less):

 

Look forward to the ECu project, any chance you can do a fender roll, would be curious to see how that turns out. I would like to mount a 9"-9.5" rim up front. I'm just not sure what's going to happen with that flat surface on the fenders, I wish there was a wrecked car to bolt on the fender flair tool. Maybe I'll see what I can find in the junk yards first.

 

Welcome back stranger... Let's catch-up via PM...