Can You Track Your Beater Car?

[Music] it's often said that if you want to test yourself as a driver you have to go to the track and push yourself to your limits and the cars that we often associate with the track are some the fastest and sportiest cars you can build or buy but what if you don't have money for order and access to something like a Porsche GT car a Supra a WRX STI or an Evo this is a 2006 Mitsubishi Lancer es consider it a half of an Evo maybe a quarter of an Evo this little guy has been used and abused he has high mileage he's the definition of a beater car and our challenge today is going to be to take this guy to the track do a track day and then get him home in one piece can you track your beater car so before we go to the track we need to make sure that our car is actually able to make it to the track it needs to be mechanically sound and that's especially important in the case of a car like this that has as many miles as it does 190,000 so in this cars case it's got a lot of wheel play up front which means we're gonna have to change some tire rod ends then we're also gonna have to do some very general mechanical maintenance like an oil change so let's get you [Music] as you may have seen in the Lotus the beginning this video is sponsored by pants all that we will be using their parts whenever possible including the inner and outer tie rods that I am about to change right now consider that we have made the Lancer a little bit more mechanically sound sort of track for a little bit we are beginning the first leg of our journey which is driving to the track TMP Toronto Motorsports Park in Toronto Ontario and admittedly this is not the closest track to us that we could have picked it is about ten hours away from where we live in Virginia but it is a very fun track and more importantly it's very safe track which is exactly what a little guy like this needs considering that we don't really know how well he's gonna hold together on track so we're gonna have to try through the track he's gonna survive the track day and of course he's got to drive back from the track Dave we can complete all three of these criteria successfully well then we will scientifically proven that everyone should track the beater car and if we fail I assume no one will care I'll leave the car in Canada to the junkyard Crawley and I'll just ride back so we are here at the beautiful Toronto Motorsports Park here in Cayuga Ontario we made it here successfully a 10-hour Drive not too bad so we took all the stuff that we had in the car out of it so that we can go out on track we're about to go do some laps basically in stock form so stock all season roller tires stock brake pads for the street stock brake fluid stock rotors we're gonna see how it does and then bring them back in and make a few adjustments [Music] in our beater card we've taken to the track stock everything I mean stuck the tire stop breaks it's not power obviously as far as incredibly slow Wow we are not getting a lot of is stopping power grip or stopping predictability these brakes and brake fluid we're never intended to be used on the track so they're going to be the first thing to go sure I have no corner but that's not really the issue the issue is that I can't stop for quarters if I need to after about one lap even going as slow as I am there's a mini eating [Music] it's doing something so much rotation this thing over steers alright so let's see if I can put down a heater real quick see how fast this puppy will go [Music] for Dennis smoking one minute 47 seconds now that was I had to give a pointy ball on that lap exactly the fastest this car will go here but 147 is not exactly screaming let's take the car back in and we'll set it up a little bit better with a few mods alright so we have gone out done a couple of laps on stock everything so now we brought the car back into the pits and we're going to make a couple of modifications so we are removing these steelies with some disabilities and tires and replacing them these guys JDM wheels that I picked up for a Honda from J spec auto down in Virginia and these beautiful nan kar ones some seriously sticky hundred tread wear rubber that I got from our buddies at speed Academy we're gonna throw them on and see how things improve so even with these garbage tires and no horsepower in the little answer we have found that the braking points here at TMP are too much for the little street pads that I have on the Lancer so we are going to replace them with some better stopping power stop brake pads that we picked up from our Vance Auto and should be able to slow down more consistently and faster now we should be able to stop more quickly more predictably and we'll have a lot more grip in the corners so that will make us faster pretty much everywhere except we haven't done anything for power because because there's not so much you can do for power with this thing and we also haven't done anything to the suspension because that would kind of require in alignment we just don't have time here at the track today but with tires and brakes let's see how the car feels different all right so we're back out on our new and improved setup it's real tires real tires real brakes and let's see what this car can do she's feeling a ton better so much more grip can't can't get anything to happen as far as a slide that the things got so much grip let me see if I can keep up with this halt halt here on these AR ones and he's not losing me through the twisty bits maybe uh this Lancer is a bit of a supercar killer after all brannad I am trying to keep up with a Volvo not exactly a Lamborghini well this thing is so fun with these tires you're just flat-out and there's no there's no slippage from the front end it's got so much grip [Music] flyer this is it let's see what I can put down [Applause] there we go full throttle I just get a bunch of smoke out the back brain through the chicane [Music] Frigga and a heel let's are talking about 140 baby by simply upgrading the tires and brakes the little eater Lancer went from being a disaster on track to be an absolute riot it had so little power and so much grip you could be flat-out nearly everywhere which is very entertaining in fact the car had so much grip it started to generate a bunch of oil blow by during high G corners topping off the oil I solved that problem though and I started tossing the keys to some of our friends knock yourself out not literally [Music] holy smokes well I'm feeling very happy right now like this are I've tried [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is the best thing I've ever driven then you're on to something with this man I don't know if I had more fun in this of the forest the whole way [Music] all right so the day is pretty much over it's funny because like five days ago this car was just sitting had been sitting for two years so I just put some tie rods on it put some oil in it drove it 10 hours to TMP and we started laughing and it killed it it did amazing we were throwing our friends in here it's done probably 30 or 40 laughs here today and no issues maybe a few more clunks in the in the control arms and whatnot but I just don't see how you can have more fun than this I'm not really telling you to track a beater car but basically this car is probably crappier than anything you have so take your car and go track it it you don't need to have the fast sports car or the most mods you just need some tires and brake pads and some buddies and go turn laps [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] oh wait a laptop or stop working [Music]

Channel: Gears and Gasoline

Views: 261,868

Rating: 4.9576416 out of 5

Keywords: beater, beater car, lancer, mitsubishi, evo, 1/2 evo, tmp, trackday, track beater car, speed academy

Id: pdECRb1T1Dg

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I love gears and gasoline. I think this video will help a lot of folks get into tracking. All I did was put Hawk pads on my car and have been to the track twice. So much damn fun and addicting

[u/tannit]

I'll say it to anyone who listens: novice track drivers SHOULD be in a slow POS car. Fast cars hide poor technique, increase risk of injury, increase cost of consumables, increase cost of repairs in an accident, and (my selfish concern) scare the shit out of the instructor.