Mike Clements Motorsport

Welcome to Mike Clements Motorsport's little corner of TORA!

As a long time member of TORA chances are you've either seen me or raced me at some point over the years on the virtual circuits but I'm now taking things into the real world as well!

Now I did this before a few years ago which you can look at here: http://forums.theonlineracingassociation.com/t5618-slider-s15-offroad-trialler
But in the end Offroad Trials just weren't for me and with my degree ramping up I needed the time for more important things. I sold the Vitara at the beginning of the year and now I'm coming back in a new discipline.

Having learnt my lessons from the Off-roading  I realised that rather than dump a load of money into a car and then go out and compete I should make sure I actually like and enjoy it first and then spend some money. So I took the decision to compete in my daily driven SEAT Ibiza 6K2 1.4 meaning I could manage costs much more effectively than my previous motorsport programme.



Being my daily driver I'd already modified it a little bit with a K&N High-Flow Panel Filter. This is a great modification to do to any car and I can't recommend it enough, its simple to do and even on a small engine like mine you can feel the difference with an improved mid-range power delivery without the increased noise or non-factory look of a Cone filter (many of which are actually less efficient).




Having decided to compete I also decided to make the most of my setup with some supporting mods. With a High-Flow panel filter running through a stock air-box it's recommended that you build a direct cold air feed allowing as much cold air into the air-box and through the panel as possible, lowering inlet temps and increasing airflow and making the most of the High-Flow Panel Filter. So I purchased a metre of RamAir 60mm Cold Air Feed Piping and made my own. By removing the Drivers side fog light and making wire mesh to fill the hole I managed to run the pipework from the front bumper through to the air-box to create my cold air feed.






This improved things again with another noticeable increase in mid-range punch, especially above 40mph, with the power now hitting at a useful 3000rpm making fast road driving much better than before.

Having got the car I needed a discipline, this is something I'm still working on as there's a few things I'd like to try but so far I've been using it for my local Gymkhana events at Norfolk Arena. In essence Gymkhana is navigating a tight twisting course as quickly as possible whilst another driver completes a mirrored version of the track alongside you.



This was my first time out in the Ibiza at Gymkhana and I had ALOT of fun. These were just my first few runs and I got a lot better throughout the day and by the end was doing ALOT of giant killing managing to beat all of these (amongst others) in my almost stock 1.4 SEAT Ibiza!

- Honda Prelude
- BMW E36 Drift Car
- BMW E46 Drift Car
- Subaru Impreza WRX Drift Car

I will definitely be going back to Gymkhana at Norfolk Arena as I had way too much fun and for £20 entry and so many runs I lost count its very good value for money too!

In the mean time plans are afoot for further mods to my SEAT Ibiza to make it more competitive chief among which will be to sort out the handbrake which as you can see from the video was NOT working very well! I'll try and keep this thread up to date with all of my new mods and videos as much as I can but in the mean time check out my official pages to keep up to date!

Facebook Athlete Page:

https://www.facebook.com/MikeClementsMotorsport

Youtube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/MikeClementsMSport

Bloody awesome mate. Opened my eyes up a bit to the grass roots level motorsport.

A great way to start if you're looking into stage rallying!

Coolness Slider!

I did the same K&N set up in my recently departed Dodge Neon Coupe. That and the widest, softest and grippiest tire that you can fit and afford, will make a huge difference. The guys at the tire shop looked at me funny when I asked for a set of 225/15 Toyos, until they realized I still had a minimum of an inch clearance all around.

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Thanks for the advice as well Mikey it's something I'm seriously looking into for the future now!

UPDATE:

Ok so when we last saw the Ibiza it was with the mod's roughly installed to ensure they mechanically worked to get me through the Gymkhana event in February. So I've been tidying up what I'd already done and tweaking the new cold air feed to keep it in position.

So I made up another grill to fit into the opposite side of the bumper to even up the look of the front bumper, after ensuring it fits it was time to paint the grills to protect them from rust as well as look a little nicer:

I decided to paint them black to try and stop them from sticking out so much and to look as factory as possible:

Once everything was dry I put the grills back on the car to finish off:


Next up was something slightly more boring, but then as is the way with these things not all mods are in the pursuit of performance. The stock windscreen wipers finally gave up and had been giving me a streaky and obscured view for a while anyways so it was time for them to go in the bin:


I decided to try out some BOSCH Aerotwin wipers to see if spending the extra cash on some name brand wipers really did give any benefits to visibility. I've run Aero style wipers on a previous car and been impressed with how they performed so it was a no brainer to chose that style again over the more traditional wiper blade:


Simple clips hold it all in place meaning I had them installed in no time:

Typically it hasn't rained much since I changed the blade so I can't comment too much on how well they work yet, but from the little bit of rain we have had and the times I've had to use my windscreen washers (and a trip through the car wash) They work very well indeed giving a crystal clear view out of the screen and no horrible squealing in low moisture conditions. Visibility is very important in performance motoring so even though this mod won't make the car faster it'll allow me the visibility to drive it harder in adverse conditions.  

Many more mods have been planned out and some are in the process of being built and tweaked but aren't ready to go on the car yet so I'll update you guys on those as soon as I can.

I will be driving the Ibiza at Norfolk Arena Gymkhana again this weekend! With the car essentially the same spec as last time my plan is to try and experiment with tire pressures and see if I can improve things that way before doing anything more extreme to the handling of the car.

In the mean time check out this video from the Drift Practice day and Gymkhana event I attended back in February:

Norfolk Arena Drift Practice, 22nd Feb 2014 from Nick Gillott on Vimeo.