Drakan Cars East - Our Partners on the East Coast!

Developing, building, selling and servicing a car takes a real team of like-minded people/companies.  Much like Palatov Motorsports, Drakan Cars East (DCE) is another key partner for us with the Drakan Spyder.  Bill Thomas and Kurt Nehlig are partners in this venture and support the NorthEast region for us.  Not only will they sell and service the Drakans, they are fully capable of installing the powertrains.  DCE have proven to be more than just a dealer and have helped to make the Drakan more complete.  I've worked with Bill for nearly ten years on Lotus and knew that they would become a great asset for us.

powertrain installation at DCE

A key feature of the Drakan is that it is available as a Rolling Chassis without an engine or trans.  The engine that we recommend is the eRod LS3 from GM Performance Parts.  This is a 50 state emissions compliant engine that is availalble from your local GM dealer.  Clients can select this engine or other LS variants that may suit their needs/desires.  The transaxle choices are various Getrag gearboxes but others are available as well.  In fact sequential solutions have been run on the Palatov D2 and will be tested on our car as well.  DCE have full capability to conduct powertrain installations.






DCE took delivery of their Drakan Spyder as a Rolling Chassis for their client, Adrian.  This was the second Drakan that has been built.  They completed the full powertrain installation at their facility.  Their extensive experience with boutique cars helped us finish some incomplete features (windshield wiper).  Additionally they also suggested improvements like a rubber cap that finishes off the rear of the headlight housing (see below).  I attended their Drakan unveiling and was pleased at how well they had finished the car.  These improvements will be incorporated into all future cars.

See rubber cap on backside of headlight housing - a DCE innovation!

DCE & Adrian went to the track to put it through its paces.  The Drakan is a powerful car but the handling is predictable as the car communicates clearly.  The guys had some fun playing around with the suspension to tune it to their liking.  They have also been testing out a new paint protection coating that is working well on high impingement areas - which is an important consideration on an open wheel car with sticky tires.  They have had the car out for 2 or 3 track days so far and have been suitably impressed.  Needless to say, they can't wait for their track season next Spring!

Bill and Adrian making tweaks to the Triple Adj Fox Racing Shocks

Power to spare!

  DCE are a great partner for us and I'm confident that our collective clients will be well served by them.  

Drakan Spyder (Project Dragon) Update #13: Street Testing

Dave and Joe heading out

 We are long overdue with an update, sorry as we have been overly busy!  We helped finish assembling the first production Drakan up at Palatov.  Joe and I have made Portland our second hometown with the ramp up of this car.  Luckily Portland is a cool town to visit - shame we are usually too busy working!  Since the car arrived to our shop in Temecula, several items were finished including side view mirrors, lights, venting, exhaust testing, suspension tuning and heat management.  We'll cover some of these in this blog.

Dave working on his tan

Dave is a happy engineer

David Thilenius came out to run the car along a street test loop that he had used while doing Ride & Handling work at Hyundai.  Dave now has his own consulting company, you can visit his website: Thilenius Group.  

This test loop is a great place to tune ride quality as it has many different conditions and road surfaces that challenge a car.  Most people believe that CA roads are smooth - in fact they can be very rough.  They can be pretty unforgiving to many cars that were not tuned for these conditions.  Dave and Joe drove together with some tools in hand and made adjustments to the Fox Racing shocks and even a slight tweak to front toe.  Street testing is done at civil speeds and lots of boring steady-state speeds.  This allows Dave to really feel what is going on with the car.  After several hours, they landed on settings that I would then get to try out. 

Some of Dave's comments about the car included that the car was not as 'buzzy' on the road as he thought it might be.  The LS3 is not hard mounted to this chassis so the car remains smooth.  He also commented about how flat the car handled as it sways very minimally with almost no perceived squat or dive.  The suspension compliance is really remarkable and makes the car very comfortable.  It does not have the stiffness you might expect in a car that is designed to be so elemental and pure.  We think this along with the flat cornering will be very much appreciated by our clients.

Naturally I needed to test out Dave's work.  So I decided to drive the car up one of my favorite mountain roads: Mt.Palomar.  This road is frequented by sport bikers and has plenty of tight turns and elevation change.  You may recall the humorous video we made years ago at Palomar.

Gas cap is in the center!

I drove the Drakan down the 15 freeway and was immediately happy with the ride quality.  The car is quiet and smooth at freeway speeds and holding a conversation with a passenger is easy.  I exited at 76 and went east to Mt.Palomar.  I filled her up at Pala and enjoyed the fact that I can park the car on either side of the pump thanks to the center mounted gas cap.

The car ran through the bumpy roads comfortably.  The suspension simply soaked up the irregularities.  This car is a torque monster and I was able to go up the 'slow' side in 3rd gear.  It had enough power to pull the car from each corner exit without necessitating a downshift.  The grip levels were very high and fully confidence inspiring.  The rear of the car could be convinced to come out under power but only if you provoke it.  Steering effort builds as the wheel is turned and provides excellent feedback.  The steering needs some effort but is so direct that you feel truly connected to the road.  We had requested that this effort get reduced and Palatov responded with a geometry change that works nicely on the road as well as track.

Dave's tuning really made for a compliant ride.  Dare I say it may be the most comfortable sports car in our stable?  This is a testament to Dave's tuning but also the basic suspension design by Palatov.  The Fox shock dampening and soft spring rates were selected by us from our track testing and I think they really work well on the street.  This chassis is essentially the same raced by Palatov this year at Pikes Peak - they took the win in the Open class.  The Palatov D2RS runs heavier springs but is basically the same chassis as our Drakan.

Sportbikers love light sports cars!

Of course, not everything went as smoothly as the ride.  We had chosen a new high temp shifter cable housing to test on the car.  The manufacturer felt it may be a better solution for us.  We had been running a good cable from them on our test mule but also used an additional insulation sheath and had great track performance.  These cables are the same construction as the ones we spec on our Lotus TRANScables.  We thought the new cables without insulation might suffice.  We were wrong.  The cables began to freeze up when I was at the top of the mountain.  So I drove home with a few less gears than normal.  We'll swap back to standard cables + insulation to insure this does not happen again.  

Other niggles that I noted included side view mirrors that vibrate a bit, the lack of a dead pedal and the need for grip tape on the clutch pedal.  The side view mirrors will soon get thicker metal on the base plate and should help stabilize the mirrors.  A dead pedal is in the works and adding grip tape is simple enough.

What's with the different spoke count on those HREs?

Overall we are happy with the car and have some additional tweaks to make to it.  Many of our clients are asking for wings.  We'll get to that later this year.  The cornering speeds of this car are already so high that we think most of our clients will be happy enough.  Slicks and wings are in our plans - but first we need to catch our breath from getting this car fine tuned...

Project Dragon (Drakan Spyder) Update #8: CFD, Tooling & More

We've kicked off production of Project Dragon - now officially named Drakan Spyder.  For 2015 we are accepting only 10 orders - 5 of which are sold as of Dec 15, 2014.  This Blog update will discuss the additional CFD work, body tooling, light housing concepts and interior switch details.  We have entered our commercialization phase so things are getting even more exciting!

Aerodynamic Characteristics: 
We asked Dennis Palatov to conduct a Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis on our completed Spyder body to determine lift/downforce, drag and radiator cooling flow.  Solidworks Flow Simulation 2012 was used using the solid models supplied by our partners Zukun.  The simulations were run with and without wings.  Test conditions were set at 100mph at sea level with a moving ground plane and rotating surface of the tires.  The Palatov D2 has undergone both simulation and observation so we have a good 'control' for comparison.

Test results:  Without wings the car creates about 138lbf of total lift and 295lbf of total drag.  This is very similar to the D2 numbers.  Radiator cooling flow also appears to behave similar to the D2.  This is especially critical as we want to ensure adequate cooling exists in hot conditions as we previously tested.  With wings the Spyder achieves 15lbf of downforce in the low rear wing position and with the rear wing raised 5" total downforce goes up to 122lbf.  Total drag is 307lbf (low) and 322 lbf (high), respectively.  The windshield clearly causes some reduction in overall effectiveness of the rear wing.  We'll eventually offer a race version of the car that would lack the windshield.    

Conclusion:  This analysis suggests that the Drakan Spyder design has benign aero characteristics in the base (no wings) configuration.  With wings, modest downforce can be achieved with enhanced high speed stability.  The drag numbers also suggests that top speed may be limited to ~155mph.  We think we may be able to achieve both downforce and reduce drag if we consider using a dual element rear wing as we had designed for the Atom2.  See it: HERE.  Because 155mph is not really enough...;^)

Bodywork: Lancair

We visited our body supplier Lancair in early Dec. to kick off the bodywork tooling.  Lancair are a composites manufacturer who specializes in carbon fiber airplanes.  They are located in beautiful Bend, OR.

We spent the day working with them to finalize our schedule.  Our plan suggests the first body will be ready in March for test fitment.  The first plugs are underway (as of this writing) and expected to be done in Jan2015.  The engine lid is shown below.

engine lid

e-glass

Lancair produce their airplanes with prepreg carbonfiber.  They also use a product called e-glass that is a prepreg fiberglass that is strong and light.  We will use this material on the majority of our body.  There may be a couple applications like our windshield base that will be done in carbon.

Interior switch panel: Concepts

Our test mule had rudimentary switches that we used to run our car on the track.  Placement of the switches has been scrutinized and we've landed on a basic layout that we feel should work for the Drakan.  The switches will be very simple with back lighting.  

This switch panel will sit to the right of the steering wheel with the 'sector111' logo centered over the gear shifter.  All the switches are easily within reach of the driver.  Ergonomic considerations can be as challenging as performance targets when designing a car.  We've spent an inordinate amount of time sweating the details.  The final panel will be prototyped in January.  

Lights:

We have spec'd in Hella DOT legal lights for all areas of the car.  LED lights have been used in all instances except the headlights which are Bi-Xenon.  We have developed a housing concept that took inspiration from tactical tools like flashlights, gun scopes, etc.  

We are getting these prototyped as well to see how they look and work.  Ultimately our goal is create lights that can be removed fairly easily for track use.  Overall, I'm very happy with our design and can't wait to get them.

Project Dragon Update #7: Extreme Track Test

We headed back to Spring Mountain for two more days of track testing on Sept 5th & 6th.  We wanted to see how the Dragon would fare in extreme heat with a pro in the car.  Testing in these conditions will ensure that clients have a reliable car on the street or track.  I drove it on the first day and we had our pro, Dave, run her on the second.

I drove the car on Friday to shake it down and confirm some of the fixes from our last track day.  The car ran well with acceptable oil pressures and coolant temps.  Coolant temps hovered around 206degF while on track and creeped up to 212degF when I exited the track without a cool down lap.  The oil pressures also looked very good with the lowest #s seen at hot idle (~14psi).  The PCV was vented with a foam filter that made a big mess and ended my day after 50 miles of track time.  I rigged up a catch can in anticipation of the next day.

On the second day, we ran the Mansell course.  There are two corners at SMMR called Pahrump 1&2 that are excellent oil starvation corners.  In fact they are so good that GM modeled these same corners at their Milford Proving Grounds back in MI.   See image above.

Dave Thilenius rolled in Friday eve so we could get a start on Saturday morning.  Dave is our pro driver and IMSA champ, who many of you already know has tested many of our cars.  We experienced ambient temperatures from a low of 88degF up to 102deg F in our last session.  Ambient temps really dictate how cool a car will run and higher temps will challenge any car run on track.  Dave ran several sessions, starting with a 3 lap session to learn the car and get her warmed up.  The Mansell configuration has some straights that allow the Dragon to really stretch its legs.  

We ran 113 miles on the car over the course of several sessions.  Dave averaged about 208-209 degF Coolant temps and Oil pressures that averaged about 29psi.  Dave got her up to 149mph on a couple portions of the track.   The fastest lap that he managed was a 2min31s lap.  This came during the first hot lap in our last session.  

During that last session, Dave accidentally shut the car off - we positioned our ignition switch a bit too close to the gear lever.  The chart above is from the point that he fired the car back up until he came off the track.  This session was also the hottest ambient at 102degF.  You can see that the peak temps we experienced were about 212degF.  This was a 10 lap session so we are happy with the cooling capacity of the car.  Oil pressure also proved to be good.  The data shown below is also from the last session.  I've circled the areas that define oil pressure in turns Pahrump 1 & 2.  The lowest numbers come during heavy braking but the engine is not under load and frankly we are still above the minimum specs recommended by GM at that rpm.  The car is running Toyo R888s and has no aero.  We will test again with slicks and wings.  A Daily Dry Sump solution has already been developed for the car and will be recommended for cars running heavily on track with slicks and wings.  I believe as is, the car is suitable for occasional track days - though heat management is still an issue that caused us some headache.

We intentionally ran the car with the factory cats that come with the eRod package.  This car exists because of the smog compliant powertrain package.  We know there are clients that want to register the car in certain states that require kit cars to meet smog tests.  I felt that testing the car, in a smog compliant state, was critical.  Frankly, we will recommend that anyone that is focused on trackdays should consider a decat.

The heat generated by the exhausts system (especially the cats) created some more collateral damage.  The balljoints in the rear arms were beginning to leak,  The trans cooler was located too close and resulted in hot trans fluid.  This caused the car to shift very poorly in the last session.  We will upgrade to higher weight trans fluid to combat this issue.  Though better heat shielding is a must on this car.  We have some work to do but it is a straight forward issue to solve.

At the end the day, the car inexplicably stalled and would not restart.  We thought we may have locked up the engine.  We dumped the oil, checked the spark plugs, scoped the cylinders and even ran a leakdown. Everything looked fine.   No issues with the engine.  In fact she started right up after cooling down.  We suspect the starter may have overheated and refused to crank over the engine.  Heat shielding is an absolute must...Palatov have actually sent us some shields that will solve some of the issues.

Watch our quick video:

We also took the time to test out some of the various suspension settings offered by the novel bell crank set-up.  Ultimately we found that the softest settings were best and we ran the best time with that configuration.  Thorough performance tuning will come at a later date.  This was our first stab at it but not a comprehensive one.

We will continue our development.  The quotes on tooling for the Spyder body, shown above are coming in now.  We continue to press ahead...

Project Dragon Update #6: Initial Track Test - the Shakedown!

We took the Dragon to Spring Mountain Motor Resort (SMMR) this past weekend for its initial shakedown.  Our shop at SMMR makes for a convenient location for testing.  We also had a few clients with us so made this into a fun weekend.  The Dragon proved to be every bit as fast as we expected.  The weekend proved fruitful as we learned plenty about the car - good and bad.

Testing protocol:
We started with a plan to gradually run the car in and break-in various components.  We ran a total of 6 sessions that started with 2 laps and built up to 7 laps.  The guys evaluated the car after each session to document.  SMMR has dozens of configurations and we ran the Senna course.  This 2.6mile track has some high speed sections and also features some elevation change and a high g banked (bowl) turn.  This track is mostly smooth but had a few good bumps to test the suspension of the Dragon.  We ran the car on the soft setting with the adjustable bell cranks.  We had the stock Toyo R888 tires.  We ran out of time and did not have the brake bias adjuster installed.  We left the rear clam and side pod covers off.  Ambient temps ranged from low 80s to low 90s deg F.  Set the tire pressures to Palatov recommendations.

Driving impressions:
The Dragon is a monster.  The power is awesome as it accelerates ferociously!  The LS3 engine hits rev limiter at 6.5k but the car makes so much torque that I was able to run the track in 3rd and 4th gears.  Power application is something you must manage carefully as the torque is really immense.  The car accelerates smoothly and I found the pedal progression was good.  I could only use wide open throttle a few times per lap as the car is so powerful.  

The handling is excellent and was very predictable.  The car manages bumps and curbs with excellent composure.  Too much gas at the wrong time gets the rear coming out - luckily the handling is excellent and you can catch the car.  I had more than one occasion that required some opposite lock to maintain my line.  Grip is really high - I can only image how good it will feel with slicks.  One of our clients, Bob, was chasing me in his Spec:Race Atom and was impressed with the acceleration and cornering.  

Pedal position was good and heel/toe downshifts were no problem.  The steering and brakes are unassisted so the feel is excellent.  Some muscle is required to drive the car.  You get out of the car feeling like you had a workout!  The car lacked a dead pedal which is something we should add.  The clutch effort on this car was OK on track but too high on the street for regular use.  We have a new pressure plate from the 911 Turbo that should reduce effort.  The Cosworth dash worked well - the rpms were especially easy to read.  Seating position is good, though the seat is too big for me.  It should easily accommodate much larger clients than a Lotus!

Technical evaluation:

I ran the car with and without passengers and then after each session the guys evaluated the car and recorded any pertinent info.  We completed a total of 25 laps and 65 miles of track testing.  Water temps and oil pressure were two critical powertrain criteria that we wanted to monitor.  We were happy to see that both remain in check during our testing. See below:

• Coolant temps stayed under 210deg F and generally remained under 200 deg F.
• Oil pressure
• at hot idle = 18 psi
• on track = 35-55psi

Of course we came out to track test the car to find any weaknesses.  We found a couple.  After our last session, we found that the rear CV boot came loose on the passenger side.  The guys repacked it with grease and clamped it on.  A follow-up call with Palatov revealed that a better boot is on its way.  

I had been noticing that the shifting effort was going up on the car as the day progressed and finally Carlos noted it was not shifting after the last session.  The guys tore apart the shifter and disconnected the cables and found that the cross gate cable was seized.  These cables run within 5" of the ceramic coated cat.  The cat gets very hot during use - especially when run on a track at wide open throttle.  The cable housing was not shielded from the heat.  After returning, we spoke with our cable supplier and have identified a better solution.  We will place both cables into a heat shield sleeve to make sure this does not happen again.  New high temp cables should be with us by the end of the week.

 Overall it was a productive weekend.  We will return to SMMR in the next two weeks and test again.  We have some more dash and sensor calibration to do before we return.  If we can run a solid day without any issues, we will be ready for man Dave T to put the Dragon to a complete test.  I suspect he will be able to stay at WOT a bit longer than I...