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Well 5/25/05 was the Maiden voyage for my Road race '98 Sentra SE...and what an interesting day .... I was expecting major understeer, since my rear sway bar hadnt shown up yet , and my rear bar is in stock form ....Everyone said it was gona push .... well ..... The car worked perfect , very neutral , actually would drag the rear under braking entering the corner , I had almost no understeer at all .... My instructor drove the car a few laps at lunch , and he said it was perfect ... basically told me to not make any changes until I get more seat time ..... I had more fun than I have ever had on track ....
I had one instance when I was sideways off a corner ( at about 70 MPH ! ) , just entering to late and it went sideways , but it recovered very well and didnt even bother me much , actually kinda fun ... The car made good power , even with it being basically stock .. Felt really strong the whole time ....
Brakes ... well I though there was gone be problems here ... stock rotors , ( Hawk Blue front pads, Akebono Pro ACT Ceramic pads in the rear , Motul 600 fluid, removed shields ) ...... They worked flawless all day ... sessions were only 20 Min long , so I didnt get any long term use , but the rotors actually held up good , and they were easy to modulate ...
Tires .. Hankook Ventus Sport K104 , I Got these tires because they were way cheep ...and they were the only ZR rated tires I could get in town ... Thanks to dad I got a killer deal on them .... Didnt expect to much out of them ... But ... They were awesome ... didnt chunk up , really didnt wear all that bad , ran 34 psi front and 36 psi rear hot .... handles very well, they did get a tad greasy towards the end of the sessions , but it was so slight and a half lap of semi easy corners and they were like new again ... R compounds would have been better for grip , but for inexpensive track day tires ... these worked as well if not better than the Azzenis's or the Yokohama A520's I have tried ....
all in all ..I did way more than I wanted , My plan was just to run the car and make sure everything was OK ... I ended up running the car hard and really see how well it works .... and learned a ton !!!!
Big thanks to Mike K for the alignment info and just misc info , as well as the other guys in the sr20forum.com SER CUP Forum , as well as the Autocross, Rally, & Road Racing forum ....
And a huge thanks to Randy Karambelas, my instructor for the day ... The best instructor I have ever had ... had a ton of helpfull inputs and really helped me get the track figured out ... I went in being afraid of turns 11 and 12 , a fast S section off the back strait ... usually about 80 MPH ish through there .... Never got the hang of the higher speed stuff ... , but after a few laps I was going all out .... ( Thats the turn I went sideways on ) ... I still have a ton to learn , but at least now I feel I have something to work with ...and have to confidence to work harder at being faster !!
Now on to more track days !!
