MWSCC Morgan Park 2024, 2nd year running, driving solo but cruising up in a pack. It's 4:30am with a 9.5hr drive plus stops, lets do this!

Morgan Park is in Queensland, I live in New South Wales, unfortunately it's not a simple highway drive up the coast line but an inland drive along the New England highway. A lot of it is through old towns in the middle of no where, to be fair it's actually quite a nice scenic drive. The Pajero makes it easy! Couple of podcasts later and we've arrived at the track to unpack!

For MWSCC days we roll in a 'open pit' format where thers no sessions, the pit is open all day so we can do endless laps. Perfect for when things need to be tested and fixed, as I ended up doing..

Gimme dat black wheels action!

Day 1

Forgot to do my debreif notes after each outing like at Winton, shame as there were a few things going wrong throughout both days.

Few good starting points:

• The car is driving quite well on the new tune, feels strange being able to rev it 400-500 rpm higher than before
• We already knew, but the RPM is gone, yay
• Honed shifter upgrade feels bloody awesome on the track
• No scrubbing on the new wheels, BUT full lock definitely hits the coilover external reservoir's
• Bedded in the new tyres

Some issues which occurred instantly:

• Long brake pedal
• Clutch pedal would stay half way down after changing gear

The long brake pedal was concerning, but it came on and off after quite a few hard laps, telling me the fluid might need a flush consdiering I haven't done it since the start of last year.

The clutch pedal is interesting, it seems manageable as I just need to flick it back up with my foot behind it. Not ideal, but not the end of the world

After a few sessions driving like this, I decided to look into the clutch as the brake pedal going long was on and off, some outings I didn't get it.

The clutch fluid was quite black, I only fitted the new master cylinder last year when doing the hydro conversion, but the slave on the gearbox is the original one. For now I'll bleed it and see how it goes.

The day went on, got quite hot about 28 degrees in the afternoon. Many laps, test drove a friends supercharged DC5 K series which was mental, came back to my car and the clutch issue remained, and the long brake pedal got worse.

After the car cooled off and a few beers were sunken, we did a brake bleed. All this fluid was from the brakes, yeah pretty yucky too. For the clutch, I think I'll just have to deal with it for this weekend.

End of the day, I bested a 1.29.5 with my PB last year being a 1.29.39, so we have our work cut out for us tomorrow.

Day 2

Day 2, reviewed my lap footage from the first day last night and made a game plan to improve my time for today.

Due to the afternoon being so hot yesterday, the track owner Jono allowed us to start on track at 8am instead of 9am so we'd have an extra hour in the cooler temps to lay down some PBs. As soon 8am came around, everyone rushed onto the track.

My main focus points were trying less braking on the straight for T1, carrying the speed through T1 and losing it before T2, instead of braking harder for T1. In addition, just the general brake later and accelerate earlier

The brakes were feeling perfect again, clutch pedal continuing to do its thing, I managed to do some higher 1.28s which were already PBs, ending up with a 1.28.05 to be the new PB!

As the morning went on, I noticed I was starting to push fluid out of the clutch master cap. Cleaned it up, went back out to test and it happened again (and for the rest of the day). It was only small amounts but still of concern.

Can see the fluid had started to turn black again too.

Anywho, the day went on, no further improvements on PBs. Coming up to the final hour, I decided to put on my other 6ULs with the Nakang CR-S and try slip into the 1.27s. Changed the back 2 wheels, drivers, undid 3 of the 4 nuts on passenger side then when removing the last nut with the gun it binded up instantly, I knew what had happened, the nut had magically cross threaded..

It was properly cross threaded, after a few of the boys looking at it, it was said it'll be best to snap it off than it getting stuck, because it'll then be way harder to remove. Luckily I have the big Milwaukee impact gun, so we cranked it up and snapped it off.

Checking the other studs on the front, some of them were starting to stretch and bend. When I mentioned they were Hardrace extended studs some of the others said yep thats why. I should have gotten ARP originally but oh well. Also need to get some different spacers which are hub centric, these were just to get me going.

I did notice these slight metal shavings on the barrel of the rim, maybe part of the issue..

There was also some weirdness with the ECU again, it changed the BYP tune to something different which matched what it did at Winton. The rev limit this time went from 8720 to 8484. In addition, the datalogs are all over the shop, showing like 25,000 VSS, RPM limited to 4096 (uint16) and a few other weird things. I'm gonna have to resarch this in depth once home but something is definitely up

Wrapping up

The two days are done, everything packed up and ready to head home tomorrow. All thats left to do is get a cab into town, big feed and quite a few drinks as it was indeed. Thanks once again to Jono and the Morgan Park crew for having us, our days are locked in for next year so lets go!

Here's my 1.28.05 lap from the day

And heres a special 2 fast laps of Benny from BYP Racing taking my car for a steer. He was able to align himself with the car very quickly and get close to my 1.28.05. Very smooth driving, to be honest I'd say his shifting is smoother than mine too. I'll have to make notes to reflect on next time I return, from his driving!

Some feedback from him was given on what to change and get, so stay tuned for some upcoming spicy mods!

Overall track photos

MWSCC crew!