Had a fun day out this sunday.
Went hillclimbing in my faithful TP Magna with this club www.sdmahillclimb.com
Great fun!

Turned up about 7am for paperwork, money giving and scrutineering (quite a few comments re: smashed front panel and oil on engine!).
then hung around admiring the other cars for a while.
lots of intresting stuff around, 2 formula vees, many series 1 rx7s, an old, pristene and VERY black turbo'ed cortina, a 20B powered rx7 on slicks with porting so it only just idled, a mental twin mini-engined AWD special, some lotus 7s and many others.
Then a few of us walked the course (its about 1km)

Finaly after a fair bit of hanging around we got to the start line at about 9am for a drivers breifing (the usual stuff, telling us not to crash and all that)
Then all of us new to hillclimbing had a leasurely drive around to scope out the track.
Twas almost not to be mind you.
As i was queueing to drive i turned off the engine to save my tiny amount of 98 RON fuel (so i could run advanced timing, cost about $1.36 a litre)
and it failed to start again, after lots of old blokes staring at it for a while it was decided it was truely screwed, all this time i was thinking "oh **** there goes $200" then one bloke came up, unpluged the distributor plug coming from the ECU, cleaned it, and volia! it started.

Anyway, about 20mins later we started our runs, each coming out of the car park for our alotted place and queueing for 5mins or so, there were quite a few cars and it took about an hour to get a run.
First run i took it way easy, just to work out the track and got a uber slow time of 74.5
Wait more, queue again, another run this time a much harder take off (whoops, wheelspin!) and more agressive driving.
Loads of fun and started to explore the limits of the car a bit (understeer!)
has quite nice handling really, heaps of body roll but predicable understeer and nice lift-off oversteer (or lack of understeer!) the timing lady failed to write this one down but i later found out it was a 66

A few more runs resulted in 61.3 59.82 59.03 and 59.6 (taking it easy)
Really going hard on the 59.03 and found coming into the first corner into the hill why i need a limited slip diff!
the fast runs were loads of fun, quite a few hairy moments which needed a quick aplication of opposite lock, esp. over the off-camber, cresting left onto the course (through the timing split).

the magna was feeling pretty fit, the diet of 98 RON and the Advanced timing perked it up no end and finaly it would wheelspin a lot again!
although i think it might be time for a timing chain (comments were made!)

Turned out my times were not all that bad, was beating or equaling a Datsun (i dont know what) Sports Sedan on slicks which was getting high 59s
mind you some of the RX7s were getting 53s!

I was glad to find all that LFS driving had payed off, even though i dont drive on the road, all the reflexes were there from LFS and I would, without thinking back-off for understeer and take (mostly!) the right line through corners

Anyway, for $200 bucks you cant argue with that for a day out!
I plan to come back ASAP with a better prepared magna, it was great fun!

Oh, and many thanks to the great father-son team in an old celica that lent me a helmet and loads of help

Videos to come when i can be bothered to capture it

P.S I really, Really need new dampers.... oh and piston rings

hehe good to see a first gen used for its intended purpose........RACING! :D

That looks like real fun :D

Looks like a great heap of fun mate. It is good to see some real motor sport too :D

I bet you have caught the bug like i did and you will be going back and looking to expand! Im guessing that was your first real track day, mainly because of the amount of time you shaved from the first to last run, and i bet you have a whole heap more to lose too! Although on a technical tight track, i started by running 53's and then go down to the 48's in 3 meets, now a good dozen later cant get past the 48's :bowrofl:

Dont spend too much money on the magna, there is a motto i like to be guided by.. spend time, not money. Do the work yourself and enjoy racing.


1 track day makes you a 10 fold better driver do you agree. No matter how much spirited hill driving you do(think you do)http://forums.eis.net.au/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif, its really just padestrian compared to how fast you learn to go.

I wish there was places like this in perth :cry:

Looks like a great heap of fun mate. It is good to see some real motor sport too :D

I bet you have caught the bug like i did and you will be going back and looking to expand! Im guessing that was your first real track day, mainly because of the amount of time you shaved from the first to last run, and i bet you have a whole heap more to lose too! Although on a technical tight track, i started by running 53's and then go down to the 48's in 3 meets, now a good dozen later cant get past the 48's :bowrofl:

Dont spend too much money on the magna, there is a motto i like to be guided by.. spend time, not money. Do the work yourself and enjoy racing.


1 track day makes you a 10 fold better driver do you agree. No matter how much spirited hill driving you do(think you do)http://forums.eis.net.au/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif, its really just padestrian compared to how fast you learn to go.


Yep, was my first track day, and yes i do have 'The Bug' bigtime!
Yeah, I dont have much money to spend and i like working on my baby, so all work will be done by me.
mostly i dont need to spend anything on it but those dampers are beyond a joke! :D
Agreed on the skills comment, 1 track day really opens your eyes (I now know what REAL understeer is!)

and lift off oversteer :shock:

*shameless excute to plug charade video*

lift off oversteer can be seen here (http://www.pulsenq.com/files/g200t.wmv)

but its amazing how even know you thought you were pushing it on the street, you get out to the track and have a real go and just look back and realise how little you are actualy pushing. everybody says it too

nice video : )

i really want to get into this sorta thing myself, but there isnt a lot of options in wa. although i think you can use barbagalllo raceway on certain days.

ill ask a mate who lives other there for yas, i know he races fairly often. ill get back to you.

here you go


Depends what they want to do. To be honest its lagging behind the eastern states, you cant just go to barbagallo raceway and do laps and be timed.
Untimed tuning days you need a cams licence and affiliation to WASCC.

apart from that theres AHG driving center, which is basically motorkhana on a skidpan, theres either training days which are untimed, or a competition series that is timed and run over the year.

damn, i wish i could chuck my car onto a track and have a few hill runs like that. with these springs, shocks and tyres i have on, i reckon i could run some decent times

should do it, specaily if you get a new car.

thanks for the info :D
i think there is also a place down near bunbury, a small circuit track which i have seen on tv. i really want to have a thrash in my car, but i dont want to on public roads :doubt:
but the skidpan sounds cool, would love to practice some handbreak turns on tarmac :badgrin: