Lemon's X47 track ST

Which track stickies would you run on the 15s, once you got them?

Installed some door cards from trackcardoorcards.co.uk. To save some time I paid for them to pre drill all the holes so fitting took about 45 minutes. The door control modules are now behind the door cards, which is not exactly a water tight area. Hopefully there'll be no issues with them getting wet and locking me out.

The more track days I do and the faster my lap times get, the less inclined I am to take passengers. I'm sure you all saw that Misha did the same thing a few months ago for the same reasons. I've had a few spins and a few close calls this year and I don't want the responsibility of others in my hands. For my last track day I removed the passenger seat entirely so people wouldn't ask, and I'm actually enjoying it a lot.

Those cards look great!

Small update - when I added the heater back in I replaced the entire dash and loom from a car that had auto climate control, my car originally had manual climate controls as it's an ST2. Ever since then my heated windscreen hasn't worked which is a huge pain in the arse now that England will be dark and grey for 5 months. I tried all the fuses and relays and everything was fine. Today I managed to change the climate control settings in Forscan and it's back!

I don't think the US cars got the heated windscreen, but it's standard on pretty much every Ford in the UK and it is absolutely incredible. The screen defrosts and demists in seconds.

If anyone runs into this problem in the future, change "Climate control unit" from "Air conditioning" to "Automatic Temperature Control (B-Max)".

Do you have "lines" in the windshield like the rear glass? I have seen the stick on defroster kits that you could put on a windshield, they are used in race cars sometimes for the reason you described. We do have a defrost strip at the bottom of the windshield where the wipers park.

It is similar, but much finer and denser than the rear window. When I first bought the car the lines were pretty noticeable and distracting, but eventually I stopped seeing them. I tried to take photos but it's not easy as the camera keeps trying to focus past it.

If you press the front defrost button it will clear the window in seconds, way faster than the rear, and then after 30 seconds or so it turns itself off. I believe there's an option to have it automatically enable when the outside temperatures are close to freezing.

WOW, that is really cool. I would like to have that on all of my vehicles.

AGREED!

But I also wish that we could have had a FULLY manual HVAC system as well, IF it did without the effing PITA, constantly breaking/losing plastic gear teeth, POS actuators like our USDM systems force us to suffer with, incessantly.

lemonjs; Did your manual system still use those actuators??

No, the manual system doesn’t have any actuators at all. The controls have two cables that connect to the heater box and manually move the flaps.

I wonder if the actuators are the same between USDM and EUDM models, as I’ve never heard of them failing over here.

The BBK is gone, but I think the trade offs will be worth it! Picked up some Team Dynamics 1.2 in 15x7 ET35. I wanted 8" but these came up for £400 with two sets of tyres so I went for them. The date code on the current set is for 2007, so they'll get replaced with a new set of AR1s pretty soon. Also the keen eyed will notice there's a replacement rear bumper. The plan was to remove the spare wheel well and move the exhaust up, but I gave up with that idea.





First impressions are that the ride is 100x better than it's ever been. The car doesn't bounce around on the road like it used to. But also it's sitting too high and needs some spacers. 195/50/15 is not optimal, but the cost of tyres at this size is absolutely crazy compared to 17". For reference, Nankang AR1 in 215/40/17 are £240 each, but in 195/50/15 they are £100 each. Also, a pair of front discs is £120 instead of £380 for the BBK.

The real test will be on the next track day to see if this has all been a huge mistake. The tyres are 10% narrower, and the front and rear discs are both 280mm now instead of having 330mm 4 pots up front. If nothing else I think it looks 10x better.







Also got a new wheel alignment done. Previously I had -4deg and some toe out on the front which resulted in some incredible turn it, but pretty bad grip while braking and accelerating out of corners. This time I went for a much tamer set up. -2.4deg and 0 toe.



Also the garage wrapped the wheel and gearstick in plastic and put down a paper sheet. I'm not sure if this was for my benefit or theirs, but made me laugh either way

I always like the aesthetics of the old style Pro Race 1.2s on our rides.

I still regret not buying that set of 16x7s that Ron (Whoosh) had up for sale many years ago to use as my 2 season street wheels instead of the 16x8 Konig Dekagrams on the car currently (despite the Dekas being an inch wider, and lighter than the 1.2s).

Do you feel that the 205/50-15 AR-1 would not be stretched enough on the 7" 1.2s, thus killing turn-in response?

From my experience with them on the previous wheels, they were noticeably thicker than other types of the same size, so potentially! Given tyres are less than 50% the cost for these wheels, I have a bit of room for trial and error so will potentially try both and see how I get on.

I'm also looking forward to trying Dunlop Direzzas DZ03G. These are also very affordable on 15"s and are supposed to be a step up from the usual semi slicks.

You get offered so many more models/sizes of tires than we do here, over on that side of the pond.