Viper VTX1

As I said last time I made the decision to sell my faithful Tekin RS Pro speedo and purchase the Viper VTX1 Speedo. Bit of a dive into the unknown as they currently don't have a distributer in the UK but I know a few guys who are getting good results with them and they are damn quick. Well I ordered the speedo, USB link and 4xCapacitor Module from A Main hobbies. A week later it turned up at my office and first impressions were..."ooooooooo preeetttyyy"! The rest of that day at work dragged like hell as I wanted to get home and wire it up!

So once I got home I was straight to the man cave and fired up the soldering iron. I first unboxed everything and check everything was looking correct. Very nice packaging from Viper, clear manuals and a very polished product.

Now onto the unit itself. First impression it is such a nice piece of kit, everything it neat and acurate. The solder posts are nicely marked and the switch/programming port are clearly marked. Very impressed. It is slightly heavier than expected but it does have an aluminium case! This will be very handy at spreading the heat generated.

I did go over the position of the speedo a hell of a lot before deciding on the final position, slightly hidden below the top deck as you can see below. Wiring a new speedo is something that fills me with dread I have to admit. The fear that if you cock it up and wire it up wrong lots of your hard earned cash goes up in a poof of smoke! I started by removing the standard two capacitor board which took a bit of work and force even though I was using a 100watt soldering iron. I alway take care with my wiring but with a new speedo I am doubly careful, there for it took me about 1 hour to solder 5 wires.






It seems such a waste of a beautiful bit of kit to hide it away like this but it should work well there. So I fired it up to calibrate it and make sure it worked. The setup proceed is very straight forward and it worked straight away. Life Jim but not as we know it! Very pleased as it is a long way to send it back!
So now onto the USB link. This is just a file you download from the Viper website. Plugged the USB link and it picked up the driver from the internet and installed happy as larry. I then put the Viper into programming mode by holding the button down for one second and connecting the USB link. Software picked up the speedo straight away and saw that the firmware needed updating. It ran through the update fairly quickly and when it completed it prompted me to redo the radio calibration. Recalibrated the radio, all working fine so plugged it back into the USB to have a play with the settings. The UI is very nice and informative, it also gives hand hints as to what each setting does. I haven't played much I just put some settings on to make sure boost was working. The answer is yes it working, I only give a bit of throttle on the bench but it sounded damn quick, probably a psychological thing but I liked it.


Viper also include a tool called the proguage, a handy credit card sized programmer that is very cool. It is very easy to hook up to the speedo and change all the settings.

Overall I am very impressed with the first impressions of this product. Obviously we will have to see how it performs on the track but I am confident that I will be as quick if not quick than before. Will be Chesterfield on the 22nd to have a play!

On another note the entry for the Autosport International GT Cup has opened up. Simple rules to start but there may bodyshell restrictions:

http://www.brca.org/sites/www.brca.org/files/library_files/gbevens/Autosports%20GT%20Cup%20Entry%20Form.pdf

Get your entry in for a chance to be at one of the greatest races of all times!!

Long time No Update!

Well sorry about that but its work/life etc has been getting in the way of stuff recently but hopefully things are settling down. Got a lot of stuff to catch up with so lets get started.

First things first, no more crap phone camera pics I have got a Nikon D5100 DSLR! It almost caused a divorce but I survived (love you CJ!). So you will now get crap DSLR pics instead, at least till I learn to use it and get a better lense :)

So things I have missed, first

BRCA GT10/F1 National Teeside. 

A low turn out at this meeting but it was nice and relaxed, super fun weekend. I was planning on going up on just the Sunday, driving there and back in the day but unfortunately my Gran has a minor stroke on the friday so I went up on saturday to see her. Stopped in at the track on the way there to drop my stuff off. Decided to run the car round the track just to make sure everything worked and the get and idea of the pace. The track at teeside is an unusual "L" shape design but it work and is a challenging drive.

Non racing I know but my gran was very fortunate and has only lost the feeling in her left thumb and is recovering well.

At the track nice and early sunday to get some practice in. It was clear local favourite Adam Walker-Catchpole was miles ahead of everyone else. Behind him is was close between two other local Mark Jewitt and Peter Craig. They were fighting with Jason for 2nd place. I ended up 6th on the grid for the A final. Car was handling well but it just didnt seem to have the pace. I finished the final in 6th Position. Congrats to Adam who was a cut above the rest that day.

I hadn't had the camera long but here are a few half decent pics I managed to take.





























Chesterfield Shootout Round2

I missed the first shootout due to being on a stag do in liverpool. Second shootout about 15 GT entries. Started the day well, or so I thought but turned out I was a lap off the pole sitter Peter Craig. The car was handling great but the speed just wasn't there. I tried various stuff with gearing and speedo, it was quick but didn't feel quick if you know what I mean. Qualified 2nd and finished second after a fairly sedate final. Here are some pics from the day.









BRCA GT10/F1 National / Chesterfield Shootout Round 3

The last round of the BRCA series had to be combined with the shootout Chesterfield as the numbers were low again. The track at Chesterfield is always super smooth and this track design was fantastic, big sweeper off the straight in a fairly quick infield. After the last round of the shootout I rebuilt the car as always but I found that the motor bearing in the sensor end was pretty much seized!! So that had been replaced and I added a small amount of timing to the motor see if I could get some extra speed out of it.  This worked!! I lowered the timing on the Tekin a bit just to make sure I didn cook the motor.The car was quick right from the first round, so I added more timing till it came off at 75degrees C. Only one man managed to get into the 31 Laps and that was Mark Jewitt. His car was a missle down the straight. I managed a 30 lapper in 367 which I was very pleased with that. It left me 5th of the grid for the A final. It was set to be an amazing race. We all lined up, Waiting for the buzzer. Now behind my was my good friend and sparring partner Rob Hall, he'd been damn close to me all day so I was determined to beat him into the first corner. Unfortunately I was so fixed on his car that when he jumped off the start I went with him!! DAMMIT ROB!!! Well I went straight into the back of Peter Craigs car infront, sorry peter. Well the start was a mess for most people I believe, both me and Rob were handed 10s penalties so I had a battle on my hands! Managed to claw my way back up the field and ended up 4th behind Jason. I had a real good race with him for about 2-3minutes. I thought about trying for the over take but I knew it would be almost impossible and I wouldn't have been able to pull a 10s gap on him. We had lapped the guy in 5th so I had enough of a gap to keep 4th. One of the best finals I have raced in, in a while. Congrats to Mark Jewitt on the win.








































So to Sum Up
Well done to Mark Jewitt for taking the series, I ended up 4th overall in the series which I am chuffed about!
Another cracking series all round although it is a shame about the low numbers but hopefully we will get those numbers up again over the winter. I will getting to as many Chesterfield club meetings as I can afford to see some of you there! The car will be remaining unchanged chassiswise but a new speed controller is on the way to me. The Viper VTX1 looks like a fantastic little unit and a few people are already using them over here with decent results. My tekin has been good but could do with something a bit smoother. Will update when I get my hands on it and get it installed.