Old Mattie initial test...

This is another really late post, but since I found my self with a lot of free time lately... :P

Just another 1 more week before I can return home and since activity around here has slump, so I guess it wont hurt my productivity if I post a belated post here xD

Just before I had to return for duty back in January, I called up our mechanic Hau and took the Old Lady for a spin... she is nearing perfection now^^
Her sensitive handling issue has been addressed, new semi-slick rubbers and a powerful heart screaming beautifully past that 5000 rpm marker^^

Keisuke and I took her for a spin and had to run her through the bedding process since we had changed her brake kit... both back and up front, although her bent front member havent been addressed yet but with the proper front and rear brake balance she doesn't show her dangerous tendency to spin too much so we had the confidence to run her through her stride that night^^

With the road being a little wet, we had a hard time ensuring the brakes don't lock while doing the bedding process and since she has massive brakes... we had to resort to pumping the brake so as to not lock her up too early.... it seems we don't have the skills to apply threshold braking but I suspect the brake force will need to be tuned more if we are to fully exploit the brakes potential...

After the bedding process we went to have some snack at the local 7-E then we hit up at our normal hunting ground... Tekali Touge.

Since now it appears Bangi Touge has become too busy and crowded for us to fully appreciate the road around that area safely we had decided to move to Tekali as our home turf... so we had to get use to Tekali quickly before we can start any real benchmark test around the area :(

As usual Tekali was quite and dark, unfortunately it was foggy as well... some part of the course was covered with fog so thick we had to slow down since we still havent memorize the road yet to go full blast blind >.<

But we persevere and made several runs each... from that early test it seems the rear suspension is still too stiff... we can't properly load the rear tires to get enough traction coming out of the corners, but maybe it's still too early to make any adjustment as we would need to sharpen our skill in handling FR with huge power as the Old Mattie now possessed.
During the long hiatus of Old Mattie, I had the opportunity to test out some other cars at the touge which is mainly FF and what I found out was that our driving style still resembles that to drive an FF car.

Previously Old Mattie didnt pack too much punch (possibly around 150~200 hp), so we didnt notice much the different drive train layout except that we can drift her :P
But now she's handling way more power than what we can handle, our driving style has become an impedance to driving an FR to its limits.

So now Keisuke and I had to start from scratch on ascending the steep learning curve of car control... with the FR, most of our previous technique learnt from driving FF is quite possibly obsolete... until I can further clarify these driving issues I don't think I can dwell on it much in this post yet...

The vids below capture a glimpse of our activity that night but summed up our excitement of having Old Mattie back, so much happy we were that we had renamed her Old Mattie :P


From the test, I noticed how shattered Keisuke's confidence in driving Old Mattie, I guess the tragedy must have struck him harder than I thought... he was so slow in taking the corners there was not much fear coming from his driving :P
Anyway, hopefully Keisuke can overcome that fear and reach new heights and as for me... hopefully with my return we can start making serious test and more handling tweak to Old Mattie to make her the handling monster she is born to be ^^