Dog III - Interior and Brakes

Interior and dashboard pix from the Dog III. Anything even remotely contributing to weight has been removed. This includes carpeting, sound deadening, ICE and even the stock dashboard itself. Pedals and steering wheel are from Sparco. Boost gauge is from Auto Meter and boost controller a TBC-1 unit from Chris Rado's World Electronics. A GPS track mapping system is also used.

For those safety freaks there's unfortunately there are no airbags. Racecars depend on the roll cage, multi-point harness and driver safety helmet for safety and combined these offer much more protection and safety than any airbag!

Digital dash and data logger are from Racepak Data Systems. The dash model to the top left of the steering wheel is a G2X dash. The dash display tells you your lap time, the overall elapsed time and what lap you are on. The data logger utilizes it's own display unit. There is a shift light on top of the display unit to indicate when to shift gears. The data logger is likely a LDX Logger. TheLDX combines data acquisition with our advanced instrumentation! The LDX Logger also takes full advantage of the capabilities of the V-Net technology. In addition to the wiring harness that imports the signals from the engine RPM, drive-shaft RPM, water temperature, oil pressure, and battery voltage, up to 32 optional sensors modules can be attached to the single V-Net network cable. This yields a total recording capability of 37 channels of data. The LDX Logger can record and upload to a PC the data from all of the monitored sensors, while at the same time displaying the input from up to 21 of those functions on the dash screen. Data loggers are a most valuable and indispensable tool for a driver and race team to playback and analyze the performance of the car to indentify areas for improvement that will contribute to better future laps.

From Mike - Shown below is the Sparco Circuit seat and the Sweet Steering column. The Sweet column saves a bunch of weight and cleans the area under the dash up. The Sparco wheel is covered in foil to avoid greasy finger prints on it. There are a few weird things about the Circuit. The padding in the butt is about 4" thick forcing you to sit very high. I have concerns about the safety of this as well. In a severe crash the foam could compress, causing you to fly out of the harnesses. I am going to be cutting this foam down or beadseating it. Even with the extremly lowered rails, you sit sort of high. We may modify the seat rails more to get the seat as low as possible.

This is the mounting bracket for the Sparco seat. The mounting bracket is fabricated and then directly welded into the stock chassis sheetmetal.

From Mike - The Sweet collapsable steering column. This is made for domestic race cars where the steering box is well forward of the firewall. A bad wreck could drive the column through your chest. On this car the steering rack is on the firewall so if the car crushed that far, the steering column might be the least of your worries. However the 6" of collapsing section is still a big plus for safety.

Gear shifter and brake bias adjustment assembly. From Mike - To fine tune our front-to-rear brake bias, we installed a Tilton Brake proportioning valve from Bits n Pieces Motorsports. This valve allows us to decrease or increase the amount of rear braking power from inside the cabin instantly to compensate for fuel load or driver style.

Pix below of the front brake caliper and rotor assembly

The Dog III is fitted with Stoptech ST40 4 pot calipers and 13" 2-piece (330mm) slotted rotors with an aluminium centre hat up front. The centre hat reduces unsprung weight. The front brakes uses a Performance Friction 01 compound brake pad. I've previously contemplated Stoptech calipers for the SP but boy are they huge in size and won't fit my 16X7" SSR Type Cs. Mike uses lightweight, forged and very expensive Rays Engineering Volk Racing TE37 wheels, sized 17x8 inches with a 38mm offset and the TE37s easily clear the caliper. From Mike - Although the Stoptech brakes are big, they are actually about 6 pounds (2.73kg) lighter than the stock brakes due to the aluminum alloy construction. Per Mike the rear brakes make do with a slotted rotor and Carbotech XP10 compound brake pads. The calipers are stock. Motul RBF600 brake fluid is used. And no, your eyes are not deceiving you. The wheel hubs on the Dog III have been converted to a 5 lug PCD 114.3 bolt pattern.

Stay tuned as I talk about the serious hardcore aero stuff next!