180SX – Death Wish

The 180SX has had two outings in 2012, the first at Calder ARC (thanks Gwyn for the pic) then at Winton for the first round of the Vic Championships. Two things went wrong at Winton and ill show how….. Read on

The first issue was my oil cooler, just before qualifying i felt a little understeer from the front RH tyre, i never get understeer since shifting to the Federal RS-R so i took the car into the pits to find a big trail of oil behind the car, turns out the cooler had split between one of the fin plates and it pumped enough oil onto the front tyre to cause a few dramas, after a quick re-route of some lines and a top up of Motul i was back out and and into number one qualifier position.

The second issue was my bleed valve i use for boost control, its been great but the ball bearing got a little bit of dirt in it and stuck open meaning the wastage wouldn’t open meaning over 2 bar of boost, the car immediately felt far too fast and the inlet noise was incredible so i had to do back to 1 bar of boost which is spring pressure, both issues are now fixed and the cars ready to go again!

Both issues could have spelt the end for this SR20 so I’m really glad i found them in the nick of time.