Gear Shift Improvements - MTEC Shift Spring Kit & Whiteline Shift Kit

The gear shifting experience in the BRZ has never been ideal. In the cold it does not go from 3rd to 2nd easily. Once warmed up and at speed on the track, it takes a moments concentration to make sure the gear is lined up before shifting it to the next gear. This was especially worse at PI going from 4th to 5th and vice versa. Even a slow car needs high gears!

The first proposed solution is a set of MTEC Shift Spring kit which helps stiffen up the feel of the shifter giving it a heavier feel and quicker return to neutral, that then allows for getting into the next gear more confidently. 

Next is the Whiteline Shift kit, fancy name for an insert between the gearbox and mount. Simple but quite effective at taking the movement in the gearbox which makes it easier to find each gear at the cost of a few notches increase in the NVH department. Because race car.

With all things said, overall the shifting finds its way into each gear more easily, or simply "snappy" as Jorge would say haha. I have yet to drive it in the cold to see if the 3rd-to-2nd gear notch has been smoothed out or had the need to go hard between 4th and 5th, and I will report back when I do!

MTEC Shift Spring Kit & Whiteline Shift Kit

Grease and insert. 

"Extreme pressure molybdenum disulphide (LM) based grease" - In case I ever need this stuff again. 

Bushing install first. It inserts itself in here.

After 1 bolt removal, some jacking of the transmission, it inserted pretty easily.

Shifter spring install. First bolt that needs to be removed is on the passenger side of the gearbox.

Specialty tool (Thanks Jorge!), and a Loctite'd hex bolt came out without too much trouble

Used a magnet to get the old spring (left) out and in went in the new spring (right)

 

Cleaned up the old Loctite before applying some new blue Loctite for reinstall

The second spring is located behind this bolt on the driver side

 

People had to unbolt the exhaust to get to the bolt. I was lucky my breaker bar could reach to crack it.

After many turns using a ratchet and uni joint, it is out.

New spring (left) vs the old one (right). Putting the bolt back into the gearbox took a few shots given the limited room, sight and angle.

Wet Winton, Oil Cooler Data Acquisition and New Camber

It was just a matter of time before I will find myself at a wet track day and it is as scary as I imagined! And it was nice to see the leader board all jumbled up with cars within a smaller than usual margin from each other.

The experience has taught me a thing or 2 about driving in the wet. The limits were very low. 

A little too much steering angle on corner entry, understeer.

A little too much throttle on corner exit, oversteer.

A little too much braking pressure, ABS! And that probably saved me going into the gravel trap more than once.

Rain aside, the other thing I was looking forward to most about this Winton was testing the newly installed oil cooler. The goal was to record the oil temps whilst on track to see how hot things would get during a session. The rain and cooler than usual ambient temps made this an easy trial for the oil cooler.

And as always a Huge thanks to Nugget Nationals for the running the event and for the photos.

Track driving in wet conditions is a good way to practice focusing!

Session video with data overlay. The GPS and speed data was collected via RaceChrono (QStar GPS), and the temp data was collected separately via Torque (OBDLink MX), so I had to splice the data together to get this. Forgot to look into extracting my Fitbit HR for heart rate data.... Next time! 😆

Oil	Penrite Racing 5 (5w30)
Session time	~10 minutes
Ambient Temp	22-23℃

This was a typical EXE/NN session which means it was run flawlessly and I got a healthy 10+ minutes on track. Shame it was raining which brought the ambient temps down making conditions easy for the oil cooler.

Oil Temp
Average		95 ℃
Maximum		103 ℃
Minimum		79 ℃
Engine RPM
Average		4754
Maximum		7337

Despite the rain, I was driving as hard as I dared for the duration of the session keeping the RPM up and in the power (or lack of ha ha...) zone, and it didn't even come close to the high 120℃ I was seeing previously! Overall very happy with the findings.

Coolant Temp
Average		89 ℃
Maximum		91 ℃
Minimum		86 ℃
Intake Temp
Average		24 ℃
Maximum		31 ℃
Minimum		22 ℃

Other bits of data I logged out of curiosity. Coolants temps are well within check and intake temps were nice and low from the weather.

Wet lap PB video with RaceChrono native temp and throttle overlay!

Track wasn't too bad after the rain cleared up, but I was too weak to try for a proper PB by then.

Aways looking surprisingly flat for stock suspension to me. WTB low & racing wheels.

Pre-Some slightly-used camber bolts that got installed pre-track. Time for some negative camber! Fitted and aligned by Ray @ Raceline. A+ service, super friendly, car drives straight, will go back again 😆

	FRONT		REAR
	LEFT	RIGHT	LEFT	RIGHT
Camber (degs)	-1°04'	-0°51'	-1°06'	-1°32'
Individual Toe (mm)	-0.5	-0.5	0.5	0.6
Total Toe-In (mm)	-1.1		1.1
Setback (degs)	0°01'		0°07'

The camber bolts gave me -1° camber in the fronts. Without them I had just under half-a-degree, so even though it didn't provide much camber, it's double what I had. Unfortunately all my focus on driving the car in the rain at a much lower pace meant I really couldn't tell how much of a difference these made on track. Next time!