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Man your videos are sick! What are you using for the recordings? How do you out the mic outside by the exhaust? That sounds bad ***!! Is there a kit you bought? I know your plugging something into your car computer and camera all at once, I want it! Hahah
Man your videos are sick! What are you using for the recordings? How do you out the mic outside by the exhaust? That sounds bad ***!! Is there a kit you bought? I know your plugging something into your car computer and camera all at once, I want it! Hahah
Thanks again for the complement.
Here's the TDLR (too long didn't read version):
Buy an AIM solo unit and run it in conjunction with a Smarty Cam.
Dump the data in Race Render, using one of the standard templates
This will get you potentially better data than I have, but at the expense of higher upfront cost.
Now here's the story behind my setup:
First you have to understand that my videos are a true labor of love. I've refined my videos & data logging over the last year with each event I participated in. I started very simple and every now and then I use my commute to work to experiment with camera angles, mic positions, file syncing, and data overlay (no laps of course, that's what subdivision are for ). My car looks very silly when I do this but I feel the finished product is worth it. Now on to the fun stuff…
In the beginning, I used my phone’s internal GPS but it has as a resolution of about 1Hz (1 update/second). For laptimes I wanted a greater resolution so I purchased the 10Hz unit (10 updaes/second ala 0.1s level of accuracy) listed above. Originally I was using the ELM27 Bluetooth OBDii reader which worked fine but it had a limited refresh speed and the more channels of data I added the worse it performed. With the MX Bluetooth Scanner I’m running about 17 channels of data (OBDii & GPS speed, rpm, various temp sensors, knock retard, etc.) at a refresh rate of about 2.5Hz (2.5 updates/ second, ala 0.4s level of accuracy). If I ran a smaller number of channels I could run at almost 10Hz and match my GPS unit but that level of accuracy isn't really important to me right now. The screen shot of my video below displays most of the channels but there are a handful that I use for analysis and video syncing.
Final Thoughts:
I’m 30 and I’ve had my car for almost 3 years so I use the videos of my outings as kind of a digital scrap book and training materials. I think of them as a cross between an old school VHS video album and a poor man’s PDR. Know that my cameras are 3 generations behind the new stuff but they work great and I had them around. If I were to recreate my system today the only change I would make is to use 2 drift cameras because I would be able to start them simultaneously through 1 remote. Other than that my setup has been rock solid with no hardware/functionality issues.
If you made it this far through my ramblings I commend you. Don't hesitate to ask any questions about my setup or anything I've experience with my car. Good or bad. I picked my car up from the museum with 3 miles on it in Dec 2012 with a plan to drive it alot. I'm currently at 56K miles and so far I've tried Auto-X, Drag Racing, Skid-Pads, long Mountain Trips (900+ miles in 2 days), and of course track days. I'm a big believer in sharing good information and that is why I wrote this long thesis. Going to a racing school will probably be the best return on investment in becoming a better driver. The second is to simply increase your seat time and pay attention every opportunity you have to learn something no matter how insignificant. Lastly, manual Grand Sports are amazing cars and I would wager that they are probably more capable than 85% of the street cars that show up at track days. In the lower run groups where most drives are on street tires I tend to keep up with everything but Z06/ZR1's, GT3, Vipers level cars. Just my 0.02 cent
Take care and save the wave.
Picture of OBDLink MX Bluetooth Scan Tool:
Picture of DriftHD & Remote: Debut fall 2012
Still shot of my video layout: most elements are comprised of my own custom code written for Race Render 3
Wow!! I did read every last bit, thanks for taking the time to write all that, but honestly I'm not camera savy and most of what I heard was %]*\€~>}^]£!. Hahah I was hoping you were going to tell me you used a go pro along with something you plugged into the cars computer, ( looks like that might be the scan tool?) you videos are bad ***! And would love to be able to do that, but I think I can only do it if I would use my go pro and a scan tool. Is that possible? And I would want the mic by the lic plate cause that sound is awesome! I don't really need all the other angles, I would be happy with the cluster, camera view of the street and the mic to hear exhaust. I have an app on my iPhone that controls the go pro, not sure if this would work just throwing it out there. Also, how do you run the mic on lic plate? Is it wireless or you run the wire under the back hatch and close it on the wire , Or have you hard wired the mic permanently and have the wires hidden?
Unfortunately now, I have the Auto with paddle shifters, when I bought my car I never planned on racing it, jus cruising with the top off and occasanly stomping on the pedal so I opted for no shifting. Eventually I wanted more and more speed and I live in LA by the beach so there's not much room to run, and when you do get some room there's cops so it's a risk every time, I started looking for places to race and tried it out and LOVE it! The only bummer with the paddle shifters is they are a little slow, they have about a 1 second delay, my wife's Mercedes paddle shifters are instant! Maybe the next Gen gets fixed that. But next time I'll def go with a Manuel. Drag racing Auti is fine, but when I was in the track indef prefure having a stick. Although I didn't play with the paddles too much because of the lag time and if you shift too late or let the engin rev over 6500 RPMs it cuts power until the RPMs go below 65 again. It seems like igneous be simple to avoid that but when the paddles lag to shift it makes it hard. I didn't want to keep stalling but next time out I'm going to use all paddle and just force myself to learn how to time it right.
Buy an AIM solo unit and run it in conjunction with a Smarty Cam.
Dump the data in Race Render, using one of the standard templates
This will get you potentially better data than I have, but at the expense of higher upfront cost.
Now here's the story behind my setup:
First you have to understand that my videos are a true labor of love. I've refined my videos & data logging over the last year with each event I participated in. I started very simple and every now and then I use my commute to work to experiment with camera angles, mic positions, file syncing, and data overlay (no laps of course, that's what subdivision are for ). My car looks very silly when I do this but I feel the finished product is worth it. Now on to the fun stuff…
In the beginning, I used my phone’s internal GPS but it has as a resolution of about 1Hz (1 update/second). For laptimes I wanted a greater resolution so I purchased the 10Hz unit (10 updaes/second ala 0.1s level of accuracy) listed above. Originally I was using the ELM27 Bluetooth OBDii reader which worked fine but it had a limited refresh speed and the more channels of data I added the worse it performed. With the MX Bluetooth Scanner I’m running about 17 channels of data (OBDii & GPS speed, rpm, various temp sensors, knock retard, etc.) at a refresh rate of about 2.5Hz (2.5 updates/ second, ala 0.4s level of accuracy). If I ran a smaller number of channels I could run at almost 10Hz and match my GPS unit but that level of accuracy isn't really important to me right now. The screen shot of my video below displays most of the channels but there are a handful that I use for analysis and video syncing.
Final Thoughts:
I’m 30 and I’ve had my car for almost 3 years so I use the videos of my outings as kind of a digital scrap book and training materials. I think of them as a cross between an old school VHS video album and a poor man’s PDR. Know that my cameras are 3 generations behind the new stuff but they work great and I had them around. If I were to recreate my system today the only change I would make is to use 2 drift cameras because I would be able to start them simultaneously through 1 remote. Other than that my setup has been rock solid with no hardware/functionality issues.
If you made it this far through my ramblings I commend you. Don't hesitate to ask any questions about my setup or anything I've experience with my car. Good or bad. I picked my car up from the museum with 3 miles on it in Dec 2012 with a plan to drive it alot. I'm currently at 56K miles and so far I've tried Auto-X, Drag Racing, Skid-Pads, long Mountain Trips (900+ miles in 2 days), and of course track days. I'm a big believer in sharing good information and that is why I wrote this long thesis. Going to a racing school will probably be the best return on investment in becoming a better driver. The second is to simply increase your seat time and pay attention every opportunity you have to learn something no matter how insignificant. Lastly, manual Grand Sports are amazing cars and I would wager that they are probably more capable than 85% of the street cars that show up at track days. In the lower run groups where most drives are on street tires I tend to keep up with everything but Z06/ZR1's, GT3, Vipers level cars. Just my 0.02 cent
Take care and save the wave.
Picture of OBDLink MX Bluetooth Scan Tool:
Picture of DriftHD & Remote: Debut fall 2012
Still shot of my video layout: most elements are comprised of my own custom code written for Race Render 3
So I juts bought the Aim Solo DL, this one plugs directly into my car. and have a Go pro, haven't received my Aim yet and wanted to know, will the AIm have an overlay or will I still need to buy a program or app for that?
So I juts bought the Aim Solo DL, this one plugs directly into my car. and have a Go pro, haven't received my Aim yet and wanted to know, will the AIm have an overlay or will I still need to buy a program or app for that?
I'm not entirely sure because I don't use SoloDL, but my educated guess is that it probably doesn't come with video overlay software (unless you're using their Smarty Cam option)
Check out RaceRender. It price is unfortunately up to $50 but I've had it for roughly 3 years and it keeps getting better with each update. If you decided to go with it and need help with syncing vid and what not let me know.
RaceRender 3 --> Link to RaceRender Website
PS2 tires. High temp brake fluid, and decent brake pads. Nothing with higher grip than hawk HP+ or you will be constantly activating ABS. Spend your money and effort on the school. You have a very capable car already. Once you are consistent and regularly at the limit, then consider where to go next.
Only heads up, those brake pads can make a lot of noise on the street, and most any track mod you do, will have an inverse impact on street performance, comfort etc.
Welcome to the club. You will know you are addicted when you pay for dinner and mumble to yourself "darn, I could have bought a new set of rear pads instead"
Before buying tires you should check a few things to make sure the type and brand of tires is the problem with the sliding around..
The GY EMTs aren't all that bad of a track tire especially for novice and intermediate level drivers. When they are hot they stick pretty well. I ran a set of EMTs that had about half their tread life left (5/32) for 10 track days and they did very well. I pulled a few 1.3 G corners at the Glen running them. I don't bang shifts on a road course so didn't really notice any acceleration issues but for a street tire they provided great stopping and cornering grip. They didn't do badly until the rear tires started showing cords.
What were your starting tire pressures and what were your hot tire pressures? Also what were your wheel alignment settings? Make sure the tires were the problem and not the car setup. You want to avoid purchasing new tires and still having the same problem.
Changing to the PSS tires should be somewhat of an improvement over the EMTs since the Michelins have better grip. You could also do what I did and get some PS2 Run Flats. I have used those for a couple of track events where I had to drive over a thousand miles to get to the event. They did very well.
I don't know your driving level but doing things to the car's suspension before getting some seat time is probably the wrong way to go. I recommend holding off on bushings and sway bars at this time.
The first thing you should do for your brakes is increasing the amount of cooling air that gets fed to the front brakes.
The second thing to do is to use a higher temp brake fluid such as Wilwood 570 or 600 Plus. A low cost fluid that has a 500 degree dry boiling point is the Ford DOT3 fluid that is available at all Ford dealerships at a very reasonable price. Don't just think DOT4 since there are DOT3 fluids that outperform DOT4 fluids when it comes to dry boiling point and the Ford fluid is one of those.
I don't think you are ready for Hawk Blue or higher pads especially when running street tires. The Blues are an older compound that Hawk first started selling back in the mid 90s and have been surpassed by various DTC compounds. However, if you want a pad that is good at resurfacing your rotors while driving around town the Blues are the ones to use. Just be sure to thoroughly clean the iron rotor dust off your wheels when you get back.
Before jumping into race level pads I would recommend the lower cost Hawk HP+ which should suit a novice level driver. I used those for a couple of years even though I would over heat them toward the end of a session.
If you are going to continue tracking the car for a few years I would recommend going with aftermarket BBKs front and rear and the sooner the better. I spent a lot of money trying to get the stock system to hold up to the rigors of track use and that money would have been well spent paying for the BBKs I eventually installed like every body else told me to do when I first got the car. You get more money for your stock calipers and it is a lot easier to sell them if they are not all screwed up with embedded brake dust.
I have been tracking my 08Z since 2009 and have done a lot of track days with it. It is still all stock other than DRM shocks which I installed to help with corner exit on some bumpy corners at the Glen, Wilwood front and rear BBKs and CCW wheels/R compound tires.
Bill
Bill is giving you the best feedback in the whole thread, especially what I highlighted in red.
You do ONE track day SLIDE AROUND a lot, and want to start screwing around with the car setup?
Seriously? Do not take this the wrong way, but just think about it.
Get some INSTRUCTION, have fun with the video stuff, and leave the car alone, until you are doing half a dozen events a year or more. That won't take long as the Fontana track runs year round.
If you don't know what you are doing and you start changing the car's setup you are only going to be chasing your tail.
10-08-2015, 01:40 AM
). My car looks very silly when I do this but I feel the finished product is worth it. Now on to the fun stuff… 
I'm currently at 56K miles and so far I've tried Auto-X, Drag Racing, Skid-Pads, long Mountain Trips (900+ miles in 2 days), and of course track days. I'm a big believer in sharing good information and that is why I wrote this long thesis. 
but I've had it for roughly 3 years and it keeps getting better with each update. If you decided to go with it and need help with syncing vid and what not let me know. 
