- While Honda are best known for their front wheel drive cars, Brett Dickie's Prelude
behind me has bucked that trend a little bit.
Now Brett, when you decided to build this car, obviously the Prelude comes from the
factory looking nothing like what we've got behind us here, and of course front
wheel drive and it's definitely not powered by an F20 so what was the impetus for this build?
- Look the main reason we went down this way was for something aerodynamic to run in
sports sedans, obviously we don't want to go the way of an Escort or something like a
house brick, we wanted to get something with a little bit of aerodynamics behind it,
something that was always a bit of a wedge to help us through the air to start with and
then obviously yeah feed some power into it and you're making a decent race car.
- So you're a Honda guy through and through as well so obviously the Honda was a sensible
option there.
Front wheel driver vs rear wheel drive and there's proponents for both, what's your
take on that?
- Oh look I definitely like rear wheel drive, it's a lot easier to drive and I like a car
that walks around so the hardest thing about it is obviously when you're wheel
spinning in a rear wheel drive car you're not moving forward, same as a front wheel drive
car so it makes it a little bit harder but yeah I do have a soft spot for rear wheel drive and it's
definitely turned a few heads having a rear wheel drive Prelude but I think for
the class that we're in with sports sedans, rear wheel drive was definitely the option to go.
- Just focusing a little bit on the driving aspect, would it be fair to say in your opinion that a
rear wheel drive car with a reasonable amount of power in a race application, the driver input is a
little bit more critical than front wheel drive?
- Yeah 100% I think in both cars you make your speed up in different areas like you've touched on
and I think it's definitely easier to get a lap time out of a rear wheel drive car and it's
probably easier and more competitive doing it for 12 laps in a row in a rear wheel drive car.
So yeah I think for the racing that we're doing and for the repeatability of what we're doing,
definitely rear wheel drive was the way to go.
- OK let's talk a little bit about the chassis because as we can see, it is heavily modified.
Essentially looks like everything's been cut off forward of the firewall.
So what was the, would you weigh up the decisions about whether you went tube frame
like you've done or work with the factory chassis and I guess there's some rules with
your sports sedan class as well around that?
- Yeah look obviously there's rules in any class but the main thing about it was
obviously converting it to rear wheel drive, it was a little bit harder than just bolting in
another sub frame so we obviously went down the tube chassis way because we could run
regularly available parts.
So we run a Skyline diff, rear uprights, so 300ZX so all that sort of stuff was in our
mind when we were building the car to have parts regularly available, the last thing you
want to do is build a car and you can't afford to buy the parts for it or you can buy it once
and you can never run the car again so we tried to incorporate as many off the
shelf parts, or parts from the wreckers if you say, so we can keep the car running.
- Yeah and that makes sense, one of the pros and cons I guess of cutting the front off and
going tube frame like this is it gives you a huge amount of flexibility in your suspension
geometry.
So you obviously get that right, great, get it wrong though and you could have
an absolute dog on your hands and what's the process you went through
there to develop that geometry and actually test and prove it was going to work?
- Yeah well back in the early days, me and my dad built the car and we had a program called
the Ross program really early, it was back in the DOS programs, we had to find a laptop
to give us that information.
But it gave us the key points of obviously where our pick up points needed to be,
give or take a little bit.
I'm not going to take all the credit for the way it is because my dad's done a hell of a lot
of work on this car but the hardest thing was like you're saying, working out where to put
the pick up points if they would work, how long they would work for, the faster you go the pick
up point needs to change so we've added in a lot of adjustability into the chassis as well.
But yeah it's one of those things we change all the time so I can't say we've definitely got it right.
- I don't think there is any black and white right and wrong, there's so much flexibility and a lot
of it of course will come down to the car and the driver and what the driver's preferences are.
Let's talk about the powertrain in the car.
So F20 as we've already talked about, can you talk us through the options available and why
you went F20?
- Yeah look at the time, back when we built the car, we were going to go down the
Peugeot WRC engine route, we had a couple of those offered to us at reasonable price.
But we don't know how long we could keep them running for and obviously the cost of
keeping them running would have been another thing so a friend of ours had an
F20C sitting on the shelf and a couple of spares for it and it made sense at the time
to go down that way because he was helping us with the R&D on that side of things.
If we had to do it again we'd probably go K series just to make it a little bit easier,
not many people carry parts for the F series.
- And from what I understand, and I am not a Honda guru but a lot of similarities between
the F20 and the K series and of course given that the F20 only came out in the S2000,
getting hold of those donor engines now is incredibly difficult and expensive vs a K series?
- Yeah it's definitely hard, I think I'm the only person on Facebook at the moment that if
one pops up I grab it straight away because there's not many times and now people know
what they're worth so back when we started this program, people were literally throwing them
outside for $1000.
Now I think it's cheaper to buy a car.
But yeah look we're happy with our decision, it's a bit of a shock when people see an F
series in there because they're expecting a K because that's what people know.
But yeah we've done a lot of R&D and we're pretty happy with where we're sitting with
the F now.
- Alright we'll talk to us about that engine combination, what have you actually got in
it in terms of componentry?
- So we've always run standard cranks in all our engines.
So we rev everything to 9000 and factory Honda warranty's 9000 so standard cranks,
in this engine we've got Eagle rods in this one, so we've done a deal with Eagle Specialty
Products in the US.
We've got Traum Pistons in this and we still run factory F20C camshafts in it so we found that
we just picked up a little bit more in the mid range with the factory camshafts over some
aftermarket camshafts but look it's all drivability and when you're doing 12 laps
in a row, you need that drivability to make it easier for yourself.
- I think it's easy for people to lose track of the fact that it's not just a peak power number,
that's always the most important thing and the drivability and the area under the torque
curve or power curve really are just as important when you want flexibility in
the rev range so I think that's sort of just as I say, very easy for people to completely
overlook and just go for that big number on the dyno.
Now in terms of the head itself, Honda are probably known for some of the best flowing
4 cylinder heads, certainly in my experience anyway on the dyno, was there a requirement
given your aims to go any further with porting on the head?
- So the head on this was hand ported by David Flood, he did all the porting on it
and it's one of those things, there's not much in there to move to start with so we didn't want
to take too much out of it, we essentially just gave it a clean.
I did look down the way of going billet cylinder heads and all those crazy contraptions
but at the end of the day, it's a circuit car, it needs to keep running.
It's all good to do one lap but we do it, we probably do 60 laps a weekend,
6 times a year so we need to keep it running and we just run a factory head with a little
bit of polishing work and they seem to make the numbers we need.
- Well let's talk about those numbers, what sort of boost pressure are you running, fuel
and what sort of power is it producing?
So it runs on ethanol and boost numbers, in race trim, we're probably running about 24 to
26 pound and pushing about 750 at the flywheel.
So it's making decent numbers, as we touched on just before we're trying to go the next step with
the car now so hopefully winding those numbers up but obviously I don't want to creep the boost
pressure up too high.
Alright well we'll talk about the new developments in a second, before we move onto that though,
another key element with any race application is good oil control.
Obviously the G forces that the car's going to be seeing out on the race track are much higher
than we'll ever see on the road so what's the oiling system?
- Yeah so we run a BDG dry sump tank and their pump that runs with it.
So custom sump, my dad made all that as well so back then like I said, no one had really
done F series so we were the pioneer and it didn't always work for us but yeah we build
our own sumps and on the setup that we run on this car, the pump isn't mounted to the actual
sump in the car like you see on a Dailey Engineering kit, so it's all separate, it runs off where the water
pump and alternator used to be so there's a lot going on down there.
It's just one of those things, we had to make the parts to make it work because
no one had them on the shelf.
- I think that's a really good point that you've just made there is that when you're
choosing a platform to work with, it is important to understand what sort of
aftermarket support is available because I mean of course you can always go and
make your own parts and develop them but that is always a more expensive and time
consuming route than something that you can buy off the shelf.
So I mean all power to you there.
You just mentioned about the dry sump pump not being mounted to the sump so I just
want to touch on that just for those who may be aren't understanding, a lot of the dry sump
setups we see like Dailey Engineering you mentioned, the dry sump pump is integrated
with the sump which means that we don't need any external lines whereas you've mounted the
pump off the engine block so the scavenge lines have to run from the sump to the pump?
- Yeah it looks like a bowl of spaghetti under there, there's a lot of lines running around and
that's probably the downside, like you're saying, it's for neatness of an engine bay, you probably
don't notice them as much standing here but yeah there's a lot of lines and definitely if I
had my way again I'd do it differently but it's yeah, at the time that's what we had.
- Alright let's move backwards from the engine, what's the transmission you've got behind it?
- Yeah so we've got the 6 speed TTI from New Zealand so we haven't had any problems.
Obviously your normal day to day running costs but it's been good.
We're probably at the limit of what it can do so we've just got to be careful when we're
doing standing starts and launching at 6000 RPM with a 300 rear tyre on it, we've just got to be a
little bit careful on that but yeah touch wood, I don't want to jinx it but it's been pretty good.
- So you've manually shifted with that box and are you using a gear change cut or anything?
- So we're using the Motorsport Services strain gauge.
Look it's made the car so much easier.
It takes out, I'll put my hand up, takes out the driver error of it, you just pull the lever and
off you go and yeah it's a credit to those guys to make something so compact and have
everything in the one gear knob, it just makes my life heaps easier.
- We use the same gear knob on one of our own cars and I mean that's a controlled gear knob,
or I'd assume it's a controlled gear knob, you see it through every super car here in Australia
and for those who maybe again aren't familiar with what we're talking about, that just sends
a signal to the ECU when you pull on that lever and that requests a gear shift and then
the ECU can induce a cut, either fuel, spark or both in order to unload the dogs in the
gearbox and allow that shift to complete.
All the while you're flat on the throttle so much faster shifts than if you needed to dip
the clutch or even back off the throttle.
Now in terms of the rear end, you've already mentioned there you've got that Skyline
differential and I'm guessing that that's pretty bullet proof at the power levels you're
producing?
- Yeah look we haven't had any issues, obviously temperature's an issue when you're
getting towards the end of a race but we try to have as much ventilation going to it as possible
so yeah like we said it's R200 diff centre, KAAZ LSDs in all our diffs that we run,
300ZX uprights, so obviously a few little lugs cut off and moved to a different spot
for our double wishbone suspension that we've made and yeah as you'll see it's all
custom, it's all custom fab and it's good and it's bad because if something happens we
need to remake it all again.
- So just touching on that, you're running essentially sprint races, you've sort of said
12 laps or thereabouts so no need to go to the extra complexity and weight of a diff cooler
or a gearbox cooler for such short runs compared to if you were doing longer endurance style events?
- Oh look we run obviously a gearbox cooler just because we thought that was getting up near the
range where we didn't really want it and obviously the gearbox is hugged via the exhaust
so that makes that a bit warmer but the diff isn't really at that point yet.
I reckon when we start lining some more power into it, I reckon we're going to get there but
right at the moment I think we're just at the comfortable stage.
- Alright let's talk about the electronics package in the car.
So what have you got controlling the engine and what are you using for logging, driver
displays etc?
- So we run an EMtron KV8 ECU that's running obviously all the engine management side
of things with a CDL MoTeC dash with full logging GPS logging and all the kit and
caboodle those guys designed so it's a bit of a mix of both worlds in there but it's
one of those things we tried to give the car as much as we could in electronics package
without spending a gazillion dollars.
- I'm just interested there, you've got the ability with the EMtron to log into the ECU,
obviously you can log all of the ECU parameters in the MoTeC dash as well and you've got the
ability to add additional sensors as you see fit so are you using the logging in both or
are you using one as a central hub essentially?
- Obviously we're using both but for 2 different things.
So obviously personally I'll use the MoTeC for the driving side of things and the boys that take care
of my engines and obviously the EMtron guys will worry about the logging from the
EMtron so we try to keep them separate, we keep them on two separate laptops in case something
happens but yeah the MoTeC's sort of my thing and then we leave the EMtron to the propeller
heads down the end there.
- That makes total sense.
Alright let's talk a little bit about the changes that you've made, and unfortunately we're sort
of talking to you maybe a week too soon.
You've changed turbo and you've made some other changes so can you tell us what has changed?
- So from last year's car we've obviously got a fresh engine which always makes things nice.
We've done a bit of a deal with Garrett in the US so we're now running a new G35-900.
So it's a step up from the 3076 that we were running.
So we had a Gen 2 3076 so yeah really excited to see what the differences are there,
I've heard great reviews and obviously Garrett stand behind their products so that
should be really cool.
We've gone to a drive by wire blow off valve just to help with some, bit of our
torque management programs that we're running through the EMtron, we're now running
our new Turbosmart e gate so that's pretty cool, that's a new product, I think you've done
some reviews on as well, it's a new product on the market and hopefully it works the way
we want it to and obviously we're now running exhaust pressure and we've now got MAP
sensors pre and post throttle body so we're just trying to give the ECU as much information
as possible so we can get the most out of it.
- So in terms of that, obviously the more data we have, in a way that's great but it can also
become overwhelming.
You've mentioned torque management there which has become a bit of a hot topic around World Time
Attack, particularly over the last few years and Scott from EMtron's been working really hard
on that aspect.
Talk to us as a driver, what does that actually mean and what are you wanting the ECU to do
for you to make your job easier and be able to get better lap times?
- Yeah look from a lot of cars and a lot of ECUs that I've driven in the past is the traction
control, people either get it amazing or it's really aggressive and I don't think I've actually
had an ECU that I thought the traction control was really super smooth so we're running the
torque management in the Elusive car this weekend and to be honest, I actually thought
that the boys turned the boost down on me because I couldn't actually work out what
was going on in the car but it's a crazy feeling, didn't know what was going on and
for an ECU to be controlling that all for you, I can't wait to put into this because this car
just fries tyres and about 6 laps into a 12 lap race I'm already thinking about what I'm
going to get the next set of tyres from so yeah I think it's going to be beneficial for not just
this car but everyone in the future as well.
- Now just talking about that e gate as well, the flexibility of course there is you don't
need to change wastegate springs and you've got a lot more control over the range of boost
pressure so can I assume from that that you're relying pretty heavily on gear or speed dependent
boost control?
- Yes correct so in this car we run our gear dependent boost control.
It may change when we get it into the window where we can start doing speed but it's just a
little bit hard because if it breaks into wheel spin your speeds are a little bit different,
you lock it, brake, it might freak out so right at the moment we're just doing it by gear
position and obviously being a 6 speed, there's a lot of different strategies that can
go into that but yeah hopefully like you're saying with the e gate it knocks out a few things that
we don't need to worry about with boost solenoids and things like that and hopefully
everything's a little bit more streamlined.
- One other aspect I'm interested in, with turbochargers, they're really really good
at making boost so once you get to 100% throttle and you're at 24 psi of boost or
whatever it happens to be, as you back off the throttle to maybe reduce the engine
torque, quite often you actually have to back a long way out of the throttle before
the boost will actually drop enough to make too much difference.
Are you incorporating throttle position based boost targets as well or is it just purely gear?
- No so it's definitely throttle based as well so there's I think from memory, off the top of
my head, don't quote me, I think it's 3 calculations that we'll work into our boost
strategy per, so I think it's RPM, throttle position and also, it'd be in gear as well
so there's a lot going on there.
I won't comment too much onto that because I know I'll probably get it wrong.
- Fair enough, look Brett it's been great to get some insight into the car.
Unfortunately again maybe a week too soon, I'd really be interested, given that we also run
the GTX3076 Gen 2 on our own car back home, be really interested to hear how that G35-900
compares but maybe we'll have to touch base once it's been on the dyno and see, thanks for
your time.
- No problems, thanks.
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