Had my first real run with the car yesterday in a big 60 mile loop over the Black Mountains. The weather was perfect and given my lack of any heat shielding between the engine bay and cabin, I was quite warm the whole time.
I've settled into the car's performance now and it was as I thought, I just wasn't rev-ing the nuts off it and had spent too much time in an M3. Above 3500 to 4000 rpm it does really take off and the exhaust note up at high revs is beautiful, a nice pure howl. I also managed to find the limit of the tyres on some nice mountain hair pins and the car is so smooth and predictable drifting the back end out. You can pretty much steer it on the throttle in 2nd. I had one brown trouser moment where I came over the brow of a hill to find some twit driving up the middle of a full width road more on my side than his. Forgetting I had no ABS one of the front wheels locked up on the dirt at the side of the road but the car was still very controllable.
A couple of things that I could do with some help/thoughts on:
1. My water temps were 100 most of the time creeping up a tiny bit at speed in 5th. The sensor is in the head in the original location. This was odd because they should go down with the air over the radiator and the lower revs. I'm not having much luck finding a good guide for what the operating temp should be. I had 90 in my head. It may simply be that because I have no louvres in the bonnet yet, there is no where for the air to escape thus lowering the rad's efficiency.
2. My fan comes on at too low a temp. I think it was an 85C sensor so I'd like to raise that a little. It's on pretty much the whole time the car is running. It also is on full speed so I may either move to a duel temp sensor or wire in a resistor to slow it down when activated by the sensor with my dash switch giving me full speed.
3. I have a weird non start issue when the engine is hot. Not the normal "cranking but no start". I turn the key and the lifter pump starts, volt meter reads 12.X. You press the start button, the starter clicks once then every thing dies and there is no power at all. You turn the ignition off, remove the key and switch the ignition on again and the volt meter reads 0, the lifter pump doesn't come on, nothing. You wait a five minutes and it fires up first time. My initial thought was a starter motor issue but given the other symptoms, I think it must be a fault in the ignition barrel itself. It's just odd that it has only happened twice and both times when the engine is warm. If this does prove to be the case I'll re-wire a separate ignition switch and use the key purely to control the steering lock.
4. My little Odyssey PC680 racing battery truly is dead. I've had some problems with it self discharging even when not connected down to under 11V. I've spent some time over the last week manually charging with a bench supply but although you can charge it to 12.6V, it discharges disconnected within 3 days. A new one is on order. I'm assuming that this has happened due to my bad maintenance of it (leaving it connected with a slow drain for too long) but I may still try and claim under the guarantee as it's now done just 120 miles.
5. The car puts as big a smile on other peoples faces as it does the driver's.