The car is ready for track:
- Changed the oil with Mobil1 5W-30EP for lower temps (from 0W-40). I did not change the filter, though, since it was changed recently.
- Bled the brakes, and put back race pads. Since they still have so much life left, I put back the ST43s up front, and Cobalt XR2s at the rear. Once they're done, I will switch to ST47/45 combo, though I might switch ST45 back to XR2 if they are noisy. For your information, 95% of the noise comes from the rears in this car per my experience, so using a quiet pad at the rear does wonders for street driveability.
- The car now has Z/28 wheels and MPSC 2 tires on.
The night was not without an incident, though. I took my TPMS learning tool with me for the test drive, so I thought I could easily configure it with the Z/28 wheels' TPMS were far away from the street wheels. This turned out to be a huge mistake. I was hearing a weird noise up front, and the suspension was also very rough on the rough surfaces. I drove about 3.2 miles to a parking lot to take pictures and setup TPMS. When I configured the car TPMS, the car was showing 6 PSI on the left front tire, and 9PSI on the right!
The rears were still at their original pressure at 32 PSI. Obviously, all the noise was coming from the tires. During my trip to the parking lot, I drove through roads between 25-40 MPH speed limits. Do you guys think that I might have damaged the tires during that 3.2 miles? Once I put the air in, I continued my test drive, and slowly increased my speed up to 60-70 MPH range, and everything felt fine. I am hoping the stiff sidewalls of the R-compound tire will survive this torture : ( I am still a bit weary, and will drive to around during the weekend, and also to the track venue to gain confidence on the tire.
The tires were mounted a few months ago at 32 PSI, and I did not touch them since until today :(