Well...
Probably too soon to tell but I can at least assure you that the windscreen mount doesn't fall off if you follow the instructions. It's been stuck there for 2 weeks now & has endured 20 laps, 2 spins & over 1000km touring.
The 0-100km, standing 1/4 & 1/8 function is straight forward & works fine. My current record is 7.0 secs for the 0-100km.
The HP measurement is a bit more problematic. When I got up to the Taupo track on the 21st I tried to use the HP meter function to fine tune the timing. For some reason my motor doesn't have any timing marks so it had been set by ear & felt a bit sluggish so I felt it needed some adjustment. Using a stretch of quiet road next to where the track is I set about finding the best HP reading by doing a run then turning the distributor left or right. I managed to get another 4HP from this process but it was very difficult to be consistant with the runs on one direction tending to get better results than the other. The road looked flat but probably had a slight incline judging by the results.
What was hardest to understand was that the best reading was just 102HP. My last dyno was in September and it was 137. Now, the meter suffers from having to contend with wind resistance while a rolling road dyno doesn't so there is a calculation that uses speed, drag & frontal area to account for that but I could only account for about 12HP lost to aerodynamic influence. Somewhere 23HP was not being measured & this left me a bit confused because my lap times on that day were 2 seconds faster than they were last year. The better times were mostly due to tyres but there is no way I was down 23HP. I need to get an explanation from the makers regarding the HP measurement because that function was a major motivation in buying the GTech.
So finally there is the road race mode. I think this worked really well because I have several sets of data that I can look at & overlay. I have worked out how to mark the lap times within the graph but not how to split off each lap so I can overlay them. Overlaying data sets is easy so I just need to create a separate data set from each lap rather than for the whole session. I've been too pre-occupied with other stuff to master this bit as yet but it wasn't looking like it was something the software wanted you to do.
This kind of analysis would be great but to use it to test modifications would require a lot of organisation & is too complicated to do at the track unless you have someone to do it for you. The last thing I want to do when I come off the track is to fire up the laptop & start thinking deeply. I would need to prepare a test schedule, take all the session readings & have a look at when I got home so for a one-off track day situation it was not of great value.
I like the toy though so I will persevere & use it with the club sprint series at the Manfeild track this year so I can build up a mess of data to show my progress at this one particular track. To be honest, I doubt whether I have the ability to make proper use of all the data but it will come down to how much time I'm willing to put into it.
The main problem I had in using the GTech was that it pushed me over my gadget comprehension threshold (GCT). I had a GPS (to get true speed data), a camera & the GTech in the car & I found that turning everything on at the right time & making sure they were all working while trying to start the race session was too much. Several times I couldn't remember what I had already turned on & so I turned them off again by mistake. I only managed to get one session videoed & GTeched simultaneously. [xx(]
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To do list:
Upholstery/Motor/Gearbox/Suspension/Brakes/Carb/Tyres../Gearbox/Paint/Cam+Motor
Done......./done./done....../done......../done../done/done/redone.../done/under way
Blog:
http://www.forum.triumphtr7.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8548 