Yarwood
New Member
Evening all 
I've been on about getting a dedicated track-car for the past couple of years.. That was put on ice for the best part of a year due to other commitments and "uncertainty", I then bought a turbo'd FN2 Type R as a new daily which is now halfway towards being full trackspec as it is now, but still wanted something I can send 100% and not have to worry about a scrape or track-day insurance each occasion.
After seeing a few 172s go up for sale spares/repairs for mere hundreds it had me and a friend considering getting one to fix up and use for trackdays, this quickly went from thinking about a £500 do-er upper MOT failure to a very clean and looked after example for almost 4x the initial budget (oops) which we bought in August.
Not a lot happened with it since then, I hadn't driven it again other than the drive home which reminded me how much I missed N/A power that rewarded the effort you put in along side a barking air intake.
I did bring it home to give it a quick go over with a DA and well, the difference in area I went over vs an untouched patch was unnoticeable so I gave up on that. Few very very minor scratches here and there but generally the exterior is in great condition.
My friend is taller at 6'3" ish so our first mod was to remove the spacers or vibration dampers from underneath the seat rails so that he can actually sit at a sensible angle without head<->roof contact. That went well, til we put the rails back in and found it wouldn't slide.. Oops. So after a bit of butchery with a stanley knife and cutting away the carpet underneath the rails, it now moves at least. Plenty of space with a helmet on too now.
Besides that, we wanted a set of track-focused tyres ready for a trackday at Bedford in October (Monday just gone).. Soon discovering we can save £20/corner if we drop down to 15" rims, so for less than the cost of a new set of 16" track-tyres we went for some used Borbet something or other 15" with part-worn NS-2Rs on.
At some point the ESP + SERV light have come on in the past few weeks, will look at that.. eventually.. but if it'll cost money then it'll get ignored seeing as the only downside is no more traction control.. Almost a Cup now, right?
Fitted the wheels and gave it a quick snowfoam and wipe down as it'd gathered dust over the past month or so.

Minimal weight saving in the wheels despite dropping down an inch, but the target was a spare set of rims with track-tyres on rather than aiming for weight saving i.e. Oz f1s or TDs, so for £220 with a set of NS2Rs with a trackday or two left in them, not bad at all.
Cue a very wet Bedford Trackday on the 15th Oct which was actually the first proper wet trackday I've done other than a small-ish glorified Go-Kart track aka Three Sisters now that I think of it.
What a heap of fun! First outting proved interesting, to the point I thought the tyres were perhaps at 40psi, but nope, just turns out the NS-2R really are that bad in the wet..
With the amount of easily-induced lift-off oversteer there was, I spent the majority of the corners practising oversteer control as the Bedford marshals didn't seem to mind or be watching at all.. There was only one yellow on the entire day for a Z4 that seemingly broke down on track.
Good day out for my friend too who self-admittedly is not a fast driver and hadn't done a trackday before other than being thrown about as passenger in my Civic(s). Definitely picked up the pace after lunch (still wet).
Will buy some pictures from the TDO soon and put them up when I have them!
A set of springs is currently top of the list.
The plan is to go one step at a time and appreciate each mods difference individually and stagger it over different trackdays so there may be quite a bit of radio silence between car-updates here as the rest of my free weekends (and £) goes towards the Jap life with my silly-bhp Civic Type R which some of you may have seen at Blyton for CSF last year


I've been on about getting a dedicated track-car for the past couple of years.. That was put on ice for the best part of a year due to other commitments and "uncertainty", I then bought a turbo'd FN2 Type R as a new daily which is now halfway towards being full trackspec as it is now, but still wanted something I can send 100% and not have to worry about a scrape or track-day insurance each occasion.
After seeing a few 172s go up for sale spares/repairs for mere hundreds it had me and a friend considering getting one to fix up and use for trackdays, this quickly went from thinking about a £500 do-er upper MOT failure to a very clean and looked after example for almost 4x the initial budget (oops) which we bought in August.
Not a lot happened with it since then, I hadn't driven it again other than the drive home which reminded me how much I missed N/A power that rewarded the effort you put in along side a barking air intake.
I did bring it home to give it a quick go over with a DA and well, the difference in area I went over vs an untouched patch was unnoticeable so I gave up on that. Few very very minor scratches here and there but generally the exterior is in great condition.
My friend is taller at 6'3" ish so our first mod was to remove the spacers or vibration dampers from underneath the seat rails so that he can actually sit at a sensible angle without head<->roof contact. That went well, til we put the rails back in and found it wouldn't slide.. Oops. So after a bit of butchery with a stanley knife and cutting away the carpet underneath the rails, it now moves at least. Plenty of space with a helmet on too now.
Besides that, we wanted a set of track-focused tyres ready for a trackday at Bedford in October (Monday just gone).. Soon discovering we can save £20/corner if we drop down to 15" rims, so for less than the cost of a new set of 16" track-tyres we went for some used Borbet something or other 15" with part-worn NS-2Rs on.
At some point the ESP + SERV light have come on in the past few weeks, will look at that.. eventually.. but if it'll cost money then it'll get ignored seeing as the only downside is no more traction control.. Almost a Cup now, right?
Fitted the wheels and gave it a quick snowfoam and wipe down as it'd gathered dust over the past month or so.

Minimal weight saving in the wheels despite dropping down an inch, but the target was a spare set of rims with track-tyres on rather than aiming for weight saving i.e. Oz f1s or TDs, so for £220 with a set of NS2Rs with a trackday or two left in them, not bad at all.
Cue a very wet Bedford Trackday on the 15th Oct which was actually the first proper wet trackday I've done other than a small-ish glorified Go-Kart track aka Three Sisters now that I think of it.
What a heap of fun! First outting proved interesting, to the point I thought the tyres were perhaps at 40psi, but nope, just turns out the NS-2R really are that bad in the wet..
With the amount of easily-induced lift-off oversteer there was, I spent the majority of the corners practising oversteer control as the Bedford marshals didn't seem to mind or be watching at all.. There was only one yellow on the entire day for a Z4 that seemingly broke down on track.
Good day out for my friend too who self-admittedly is not a fast driver and hadn't done a trackday before other than being thrown about as passenger in my Civic(s). Definitely picked up the pace after lunch (still wet).
Will buy some pictures from the TDO soon and put them up when I have them!
A set of springs is currently top of the list.
The plan is to go one step at a time and appreciate each mods difference individually and stagger it over different trackdays so there may be quite a bit of radio silence between car-updates here as the rest of my free weekends (and £) goes towards the Jap life with my silly-bhp Civic Type R which some of you may have seen at Blyton for CSF last year

