tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50507269934279762802024-03-13T13:03:12.943-04:00The 111 ShiftA journey into the world of performance automobiles <hr>
<big><b>Lotus Elise 111R</b></big><br>111 SSM New England Region SCCA AutocrossGus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-9683276421583685112022-08-03T11:30:00.011-04:002022-08-10T13:03:22.107-04:00Unfunny<p><b>Engine 2021:</b> knock knock?</p><p><b>Me:</b> Who's there?</p><p><b>Engine 2021:</b> Your connecting rods! <br /></p><p><b>Me:</b> %@#*! $#!^!!!!!</p><p>Some car jokes are funny. Automotive "knock knock" jokes are not... But if you're gonna race a heavily modified car it's a risk. Unfortunately, in this case I was caught between the intersection of Road Racing and Autocross... </p><p>The engine had been newly built in 2020 to support 9250 rpm redline and use 14:1 compression, this had involved special valves, Ferrea roller rockers, lightened crank, Carillo rods, Cosworth pistons, and an externally driven oil pump system. This system was a half step between the traditional wet sump and a dry sump system. Basically it ran a pump off the crank that sucked oil out of the back of the pan which had had the drain plug replaced with an AN fitting. </p><p>The engine was delivered in the spring of 2020... when covid was at its worst. During this period I was not very motivated because no racing was being held for the foreseeable future, and even when the first events were opening up I didn't want to attend because I and my wife have contact with vulnerable individuals. So, once things seemed to be turning around I got motivated again, but I had to go slow and be careful because the car had been apart so long. In the end I managed to get the car running again for 2 events at the end of the 2020 season. Both events turned out to be extremely tight, low speed courses. One so much so that my co-driver decided the course just wasn't fun and didn't bother with the last run.</p><p>These events showed that re-assembly went well and there were no major issues on that front, but also failed to really stress the car. It's possible that speeds on these two courses never exceeded 55mph. So when I put the car away at the end of 2020 it seemed like all was well. Unfortunately this was not true. </p><p>The oiling solution had been supplied by Dynamic Racing Solutions who built the engine, and they claim they had used it successfully on two track cars. They are stand up folks who have a solid reputation on Lotus Talk forums, and field mid pack or better cars for professional TC Series races, so I don't doubt that this is true. But as road racers are often amusingly keen to point out autocross is not road racing. </p><p>Road racing has hard stops no doubt, and they pull plenty of sideways G's too... but the transitions between those actions are smoother and less violent most of the time. Also road racers rarely hit the rev limiter or shift as soon as they do. Autocrossers do so regularly, and may ride the limiter, because we just don't have time to be shifting up and then back down unless there's a LOT of rev limiter. For anything less than about 1.5-2 seconds of rev limiter shifting is slower for autocross.</p><p>First event 2021 had a much more typical course. It was clockwise and the run through the small runway was mostly the type of sweeping transitions my car excels at. Because of my massive tires and big wing/splitter, after the initial slalom I found I was able to just keep the pedal down, and I touched the rev limiter just before the braking zone. I stabbed the brakes bled just enough speed and had an absolutely fabulous run through the sweeper onto the main run way, exiting hard on the gas. THIS was what I had built the car for and it took off like a rocket and quickly found the rev limiter again, this time for something close to the 2 seconds that would suggest maybe shifting is profitable. I managed appropriate braking for entering the slalom after the faster section...</p><p>Up until this point I was in Nirvana. Somehow I had more or less nailed the course so far on my first run and everything felt just GREAT. I can still remember that joy. It was that good. </p><p>I entered the slalom with maybe just a tiny bit too much speed for the hard back side entry, but still basically it went well, and soon I went to add more speed... But then, the bottom fell out of my world. The car lagged and slowed rather than accelerated. I was momentarily confused. It felt like fuel starve, I wondered if I'd forgotten fuel. But soon it was clear something was wrong. </p><p>I limped back to grid with the car actually threatening to stall on me at one point but then seeming to smooth out a bit about the time I got to the finish... I coasted back gently and talked it over with my co-driver. I decided to take it back to the trailer, hook up the computer and see what I could see. As I pulled out of my grid slot I heard a "clack clack clack" sound that I had never heard before. I quickly found it to be repeatable any time I pushed the engine to 2krpm, I quickly realized that it could pretty much only be one thing. I coasted up to the trailer ramp and shut it off. Friends helped me push it onto the trailer. </p><p>My new engine had rod knock.</p><p>Data from the ECU showed that the clanking of the rods triggered the engine knock protection, and this very likely prevented me from throwing a rod through the side of the block entirely. If such a thing had happened on the exhaust side of the block, fire and total loss would have been possible. Hooray for good knock sensors and sensible ECU protection routines provided by Cohesion Motorsports!</p><p>The combination of working fine in slow courses, and failing bearings after hard brake / turn / accel / limiter pointed straight at the oiling system. Removing the pan I found that though 3/4 of the baffling had been retained there were some gaps where the 4th side had been removed probably allowing some oil to escape along the sides. Then I went back and watched one of my earlier videos and right at the end after the stop into the finish I heard a now way too familiar sound... </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="228" src="https://youtube.com/embed/mwDHo7uys4E?start=84" width="482" youtube-src-id="mwDHo7uys4E"></iframe></div><br /><p>Just a brief second of rod knock sound there and at low speed, probably nearly harmless as such aside from some minor wear acceleration, but a harbinger of the disaster to come. Not having heard it before I didn't recognize it in 2020. </p><p>As described above, I would have broke hard and then accelerated to 9250 rpm immediately, so that knock would have arrived just as I got to around 8-9krpm... no good. A track car would have been turning, but usually waiting slightly before feeding in the power exiting a turn. Plus the track car would have had a shift point in there to bring the revs back down. What we call a sweeper in Autocross is a crazy sharp hairpin on a track. The oil would have sloshed forward, and then immediately leftwards with the motor working hard/fast to redline without oil and without pause.</p><p>My brand new race engine that only lasted for about 20 minutes... not funny at all.</p>Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-80183541543673721822020-11-16T17:06:00.004-05:002020-11-16T17:30:34.864-05:00Cone Dodgy NumbersThis post is not to be taken seriously. No seriously, I mean that. This post is where I attempt to guesstimate the results of my latest power improvements, and I will be venturing into the world of comparing results from different dynamometers and no such comparison should ever be trusted, but all too often it's the best we can do, so let me make some excuses, and then we can get on with the dubious number wrangling.<div><br /></div><div>Click here to skip my rambling and just see the graph....</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7cFlGwZOdd4/X7CE3lZ6YdI/AAAAAAAACY4/m9-MaV2rYDo_5KFH-7RnpnfMaRxXQvm5gCPcBGAYYCw/s2048/dynojet-compare-13.4pct.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1456" data-original-width="2048" height="143" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7cFlGwZOdd4/X7CE3lZ6YdI/AAAAAAAACY4/m9-MaV2rYDo_5KFH-7RnpnfMaRxXQvm5gCPcBGAYYCw/w200-h143/dynojet-compare-13.4pct.png" width="200" /></a></div><div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Theory</h3><div><br /></div><div>In theory the right way to upgrade a car's power is to do a several dyno pulls on dyno A before modification and then after modification calibrate and re-measure on the same dyno A. For further modifications, one would ideally have another before/after pull on Dyno A. Dyno B which is a different dyno altogether shan't be involved and dyno C is right out! </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Excuses</h3><div><br /></div><div>I didn't do that. Not because it's a bad idea but due to a combination of time constraints, weather and cost. After all, dyno time is not free.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Weather: Modifications of major magnitude are often done in the winter, and the decision to proceed often coincides with the onset of cold weather. Once the snow is up, toting around the 20ft trailer becomes a lot less fun. The risk of loosing everything I worked on due to one ice patch or similar is daunting because I'm not maid out of money. </li><li>Time: If I would decide earlier in the season this would be less of a problem, but when engines, or major portions thereof are being replaced and the first event is early April, and one pulls the trigger after Christmas, adding a trip to the dyno into the schedule is dubious, especially since the engine builder wanted some key parts off the original to get started.</li><li>Cost, well dyno time isn't free, but the time off to visit a dyno is potentially even more expensive, and as I said, I'm not made of money.</li></ul><div>Ok them's my excuses and that's that. (Well yes it does boil down to Gus is cheap and he procrastinates... shhh!) </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Also in this case there was a necessary switch in dynos because the dyno from last time was down for service, so even though I stuck with my Emtron ECU and my tuner Nick, I had to take it to a different location. </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Funny Math</h3><div><br /></div><div>Even using the same machine, day to day atmospheric difference can cause some variation, but as a rule aside from what the operator might do inputing measured temps/humidity/pressure there's little one can do to ensure equality there so one just hopes that that source of error is not significant. </div><div><br /></div><div>Beyond that the different brand of dyno have different overall reading tendencies, much of which is fuzzy despite no end of internet discussions on the topic. Obviously, in the real world a given pull releases X amount of heat energy, and Y % of that winds up being used to accelerate the dynamometer. In theory they should all get the same result but in practice they don't, and the proprietary nature of their software and hardware is such that it's bad business for any Manufacturer to clarify how their numbers relate to this theoretical truth. All that any consumer grade dyno actually guarantees is consistency for runs on that dyno (assuming consistent atmospheric conditions of course). For tuning an engine that's what's really required, and so no shop is going to invest in a system calibrated to a real world standard. Only large OEM's have that kind of budget, and they "simplify" things by measuring the engine outside of the car anyway. ("Brake" horse power).</div><div><br /></div><div>So in the portion of the world not working with multi-million dollar test labs, we have to wing it. </div><div><br /></div><div>The dynos in question are a Dynojet (last build) and a Dyno Dynamics (this build). What we do know from the internet, and from the claims of my tuner is that Dyno Dynamics is among the "heat breaker" dynos. The readings from these dynos tend to be lower than the much more common and nearly industry standard Dynojets. Both the Nick and the world wide web say something like 10-15% lower readings for the same car on a DynoDynamics vs a Dynojet, but that's a really really huge range. For a 190hp reading that's a range of 209 to 219, and for a build that is comming off of a 193 Dynojet reading that's a 60% difference in how much power was added, and saying a range always leads the conversation into hemming and hawing in an unsatisfying way, so I want to pick a number and have some basis for it that is is only partly insane.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rather than using an internet post with little or no known basis in fact, I'm going to lean on my knowledge of what changes are being made to the car and derive a "possible" factor to convert the new dyno readings to the scale for the old dyno. </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Some Logic?</h3><div><br /></div><div>Things I know about the effects of the changes to the car that are relevant to this exercise include:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>The Compression ratio changed from 11.5:1 to 14.0:1, and according to <a href="http://victorylibrary.com/brit/compression-c.htm">this page</a>, that's supposed to give a 5.7% increase in power. This is based in hard physics including the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT) etc. so, unless something else changes, it should be fairly predictable.</li><li>The RPM limit is being raised to 9200, this means peak HP is not comparable and we can't use that number for scaling things, we should be using peak torque instead.</li><li>The new roller-rocker setup deletes the variable lift function and ignores the lower cam. The lower cam is so named because it functions in the lower RPM's, typically below 6200. Any measurement below the cam switch point in the old build has both cam and compression changes to account for, so it's hard to predict the change under 6200 rpm.</li><li>The cold air intake was increased from 2.75" to 3" and the throttle body from 65mm to 70mm, so the upper RPMs are likely benefiting from that change as well as the compression change </li></ol><div>So it sounds like there's nothing left, but that's not quite true. I *think* its reasonable to presume that the air intake is never limiting the developed torque until after the torque peak. Other factors could limit it first, but with the torque increasing, the air is not limiting, and thus below the torque peak and above the cam switch in the old tune is an area that should be valid for comparison where only the compression change should be having an effect. Conveniently torque peaks are also frequently reported on dyno sheets. That conclusion of course relies on the assumption that the port/polish jobs and valve flow are similar, but I have no reason to suspect changes there. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>One thing I'm leaving out is the effect of the lighter pistons, and the lighter crank, which probably provide a slight gain beyond the 5.7% because less energy is stored as kinetic energy in the rotating assembly, but I would also expect the belt driven external oil pump to have a little more drag than the O.E.M. internal pump, so I'm going to guess that those are both small and mostly offsetting each other.</div><div><br /></div><div>So that seems to imply that I can have a solid expectation based on a very inflexible bit of physics for the change at the old build's torque peak. The old torque peak was 142.1 ft/lbs at 6750 RPM (luckily this is solidly above the cam switch) and the expected result is 150.2 flt/bs at 6750 RPM. Since the new build's dyno graph reads 132.5 at 6750 RPM, this says that the scaling factor to convert from this particular Dyno Dynamics to that particular Dynojet is approximately (150.2 รท 132.5 = 1.134 a. k. a. 13.4% ) Thus the new torque peak of 134.6 ft/lbs @ 7000 rpm translates to a Dynojet number of 152.5 ft/lbs @ 7000 rpm. </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Result</h3><div><br /></div><div>This result is nicely reassuring since the scaling factor is nicely within both my Tuner's claims range and the range of what you find on the internet. Overlaying the new chart on the old chart, lining up the axes and scaling things to match the above 13.4% factor gets me a comparison chart like this:</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7cFlGwZOdd4/X7CE3lZ6YdI/AAAAAAAACY0/m0Xfv6g28NAJwNdvLHusUrbQn6WkKXW2ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/dynojet-compare-13.4pct.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1456" data-original-width="2048" height="456" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7cFlGwZOdd4/X7CE3lZ6YdI/AAAAAAAACY0/m0Xfv6g28NAJwNdvLHusUrbQn6WkKXW2ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h456/dynojet-compare-13.4pct.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Factored comparison of dynamometer results. Note that MPH marked at RPM are only valid for a 4.8 final drive setup. The stock final drive is 4.5, so the 61mph top on the stock trace is more like 67mph in a stock vehicle. Thus I pack this power into a 7% smaller MPH range to begin with.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><br /><div><div>So the theory of this build was that the top end would gain power and revs, and the bottom end would experience competing effects with CR changes having positive effects and cam changes having negative effects. The hope was that these two would offset each other and lead to an overall faster car. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'd say it kinda, mostly worked. </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>0-4000 rpm we lack good data from the prior build but what is there suggests a definite loss, but this loss is only at launch and only poorly designed courses spend significant time under 30mph. It does seem likely that launch bogging will be a difficulty, but that is < 5% of the course...</li><li>4000-5000 RPM has smoothed out substantially for a small net improvement which is interesting because my scouring the internet for dyno graphs led me to associate that shape with the PPE Engineering exhaust header I'm using. the fact it went away without changing the header is interesting.</li><li>5000-6200 RPM has lost some oomph, to the tune of about 10 tq. This is sad, and I did notice it when driving. It's hard to say what impact this will have. 37 to 45 mph is a common acceleration range so this is a bit worrisome. I'll be pondering any ways to improve this. Moving down to a stage 2 cam might help since stage 3 tends to be a peak hp cam. </li><li>6200-9200 RPM shows gains are strong and clear and on par with expectations. My build lacks an ITB intake and is clearly running out of breath at the very top, but hits a dynojet corrected peak of around 216 whp, and the ITB setups built by DRS post 220 to 225 whp. I had dared to dream that the big bore throttle body and bigger intake might allow me to capture all of that, but that was just dreaming and I know it. I suspect I did get ~10 hp out of that switch in any case since the hp peak is still around 8k and the compression alone can only account for 205 of the 216 (dynojet) hp. The fall off is faster however so I wonder if the rising intake velocity isn't compressing the foam filter or something. The intake is sold for 400hp supercharged cars but something is up... since the torque peak moved but the hp peak didn't.</li></ul>So the net result is that my car has become a bit more course dependent, where faster courses should be much better, and slow stuff hurts slightly more. At the end of 2019 I drove 2 courses where I was riding the (then 61mph) rev limiter for 8-10 seconds on a 50 second course, raising the limiter alone is likely worth a half to a full second on such courses, and the power gains in the upper range hopefully worth .25 or .5 on faster courses. I'm hoping I only gave up a tenth or so on launch and no more than 1-2 tenths in the mid range. The only two courses I managed to run in 2020 were both pretty much a worst case scenario with very little time over 50mph (same course designer). I look forward to some faster courses in 2021 to get a real look at what it can do. </div><div><br /></div><div>The positive side of that is that most national level courses are faster courses... so it will be at its best where it counts the most. </div><div><br /></div><div>So now it's time for you to shoot holes in my assumptions in the comments section if you can :)<br /></div></div></div>Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-13408451865723284672020-09-11T22:20:00.001-04:002020-09-11T22:22:07.354-04:00The season that Never was: June-Sept<p>As June rolled around plans to re-start racing were afoot, but soon so was a second surge in COVID-19, and a lot of uncertainty. For most of June and early July I basically ignored my build. My life has me with just 1 degree of separation from some 95 and 100 year old people, and in contact with others that have reason to believe COVID-19 would be particularly hard for. So even if some folks were racing, I couldn't in good conscience go hang out with 50+ other people. </p><p>By August things seemed to have remained stable at a low level in Massachusetts with just a few hundred cases state wide for a while. Additionally several races had been held by several clubs without any of them making the national news cycle as super-spreader events. Thus I began to have some hope that racing could be done safely. I started to work towards getting things put back together. Back in April, I had had a mix-up with ordering heater hoses, and that had to be resolved, which since it involves a lotus parts order took several weeks. Also I had to figure out how to get the harmonic balancer installed. This was complicated somewhat by the extra gear pasted on the front of it to drive the new oil pump. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AVPLRpUCyUg/X1whTsFwZlI/AAAAAAAACUw/IRaOS0P0kZA80R-r9aHFyfBpw26WBw3xwCPcBGAYYCw/s2048/harmonic_bal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AVPLRpUCyUg/X1whTsFwZlI/AAAAAAAACUw/IRaOS0P0kZA80R-r9aHFyfBpw26WBw3xwCPcBGAYYCw/w400-h300/harmonic_bal.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>The fitment was just a little too tight for me to feel comfortable pushing it on by hand, even though that was supposedly how it was supposed to go. For whatever reason it felt sticky and I *just know* that if I pushed it I'd probably give it uneven pressure and cause it to dig in and gall things up. It was one of those cases where I had that all too familiar feeling that I was about to ignore my instincts and then immediately regret it (much like that feeling when the torque wrench isn't beeping, but the nut feels like its going to strip... and you trust the wrench only to later realize it was set to ft. lbs not Nm... yeah...). So I took a deep breath and... stopped before I screwed it up. </p><p>Of course, the crank has a M12 1.25 mm fine threaded bolt, which is a size that exists in exactly NONE of the harmonic balancer installation tool kits out there. In the end I made my own ordering <a href="https://www.mcmaster.com/95245A110/">threaded rod</a>, nuts, washers and a <a href="https://www.mcmaster.com/60715K11">bearing</a> from McMaster Car</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I-YijBys5NM/X1wjbAwuf9I/AAAAAAAACU4/fo7svGKS15crWIBmY2DbnkFpO5cZVXVdwCLcBGAsYHQ/s3160/blancer_tool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="995" data-original-width="3160" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I-YijBys5NM/X1wjbAwuf9I/AAAAAAAACU4/fo7svGKS15crWIBmY2DbnkFpO5cZVXVdwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/blancer_tool.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Clearly not a solution for tight spaces, but when the engine is dangling from a crane, it works just fine. With this and a just a fine skimmer of light oil, it went right on with no fuss. Then I discovered the bolt that had been sent with it was 8.8... and factory torque says 120Nm... nope. So order a <a href="https://www.belmetric.com/12x125-extra-fine-c-506_510_411/bh12x125x100pclz-hex-bolt-zinc-109-partial-p-13313.html">better bolt</a> from Belmetric. <div><br /></div><div>And somewhere along the line the aluminum underdrive pulley for the alternator had gotten dinged, and had to be replaced... but the alternator nut and hex drive shaft proved a challenge. I wound up ordering a Schwaben 22mm offset open end wrench allegedly specifically designed for alternator nuts. Simple, right? A wrench is a wrench, right? But when it arrived it didn't actually fit! It was 22mm per my calipers, the nut was 22mm per the same calipers, but the corners in the wrench were slightly too rounded... Really Schwaben? you only had one job to do here... only one thing to get right that actually mattered.... (No link for you!) So since I'd been going through a parade of deliveries, loosing 1-4 days each time I took a file to it and "<b><i>Made it fit damnit!</i></b>"... and that worked just fine as, if only as a 6 point rather than 12 point. </div><div><br /></div><div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T5wEbk_Rkdk/X1wpxZw5NRI/AAAAAAAACVI/l4fGXZ_dtlUw9LgfPYrraF9WVYfoZZG9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/wrench.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T5wEbk_Rkdk/X1wpxZw5NRI/AAAAAAAACVI/l4fGXZ_dtlUw9LgfPYrraF9WVYfoZZG9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/wrench.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div><p>So at that point my heater hose finally arrived, and suddenly there was nothing blocking any re-assembly of the front of the car, and also I installed the new Stack Oil pressure gauge, and unblocked the re-assembly of the interior... The number of pieces of my car in the garage was now back ahead of the number in my basement!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YF9QcNv6kZE/X1wr3cTwmlI/AAAAAAAACVU/Q6LHqDQPoScJGhMHitUE39LNz14-FAsnwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/front_assembled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YF9QcNv6kZE/X1wr3cTwmlI/AAAAAAAACVU/Q6LHqDQPoScJGhMHitUE39LNz14-FAsnwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/front_assembled.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Visible Progress! In the forward direction no less!... but then... I found a reason to take the intake manifold off the engine... That's the subject of the next post... </p><p><br /></p></div>Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-26453791849932791732020-09-07T15:08:00.001-04:002020-09-11T22:21:04.391-04:00The Season that Never Was: Feb - MayIn addition to its other more horrific effects, the pandemic also makes for really boring racing blogs. This year was originally supposed to be THE year. as in THE YEAR.... I finally went all in, got the built motor I've wanted for this car since about 2012 .... <div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Brand new OEM block (finally ditching the one my former mechanic nearly destroyed)</li><li>14:1 Cosworth pistons</li><li>Carillo rods</li><li>Custom DRS spec Supertech valves</li><li>Supertech springs</li><li>Supertech Ti Retainers</li><li>Micropolished timing gears</li><li>ARP head/main bolts</li><li>Daily Engineering external wet sump oil pump</li><li>Ferrea roller rockers</li><li>Piper Stage 3 cams (retained from previous)</li><li>built by <a href="https://drspower.com/">Dynamic Racing Solutions</a> a shop with a strong history of successful high RPM normally aspirated 2zz race motors.</li></ul><div>This should be sufficient to allow my car to run at 9200 rpm safely, restoring (and slightly enhancing) the top speed in 2nd gear which had been lost with the move to a 4.8 final drive.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>It arrived in early February, seemingly with enough time to swap it in and get it tuned. By Mid-March it was clear that the realities of the world at large were going to completely prevent racing for the near term. All events were canceled until further notice. This was a real downer, and I found myself unmotivated to continue for a while. By May things were still in a state shown in this video my wife shot:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wVrYXXEkyaU" width="500" youtube-src-id="wVrYXXEkyaU"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Things in progress at the time were:
<div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Swap in full race motor built by DRS Motorsport</li><li>Refresh as many coolant hoses as possible, including heater hoses</li><li>Remove evaporator, dryer etc remnants of AC system</li><li>Upgrade to all aluminum radiator</li><li>Refresh the steering rack. (it had developed some clunking, usually a symptom of nylon bushings wearing out.</li><li>Add Oil Pressure gauge</li></ol><div>I've started making progress again, so in the next post I'll bring things up to date with the current state of affairs.</div></div></div></div></div>Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-41065457325407783232020-03-15T11:46:00.000-04:002020-03-16T12:24:20.470-04:00CAR-VID '19Pardon the irresistible pun of questionable taste... ๐ While we're all sitting home looking for ways to entertain ourselves, here's 2 minutes of entertainment from the last race in which I drove the car (in 2019 hence the title)<br />
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First up, me in my 3rd run of the morning... In the afternoon I fooled around with shifting to third with results not really worth watching, so this wound up being my best time of the day.<br />
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Sadly it was not actually clean, still not clear what cone I hit, but probably the slalom (where I was getting late, and I hit cones on other runs). Overall, not that great of a drive. There are also several points where I turn in early and have to correct. I'll blame the tires getting warm and sticking better... yeah that's it... riiiightt... (of course that doesn't excuse being chronically late through most of the course) Also, I count 8 seconds of rev-limiter in a 45 second course... so that's limiting me as well.<br />
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Next Up, Justin and Melissa in the car, Justin went on to grab a top-10 pax later that day. Best part of this are the comments at the end which entirely capture how much fun this car is and why I love to drive it. It never wears thin, it's always that much fun.<br />
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<br />Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-952954300364309262019-12-16T14:03:00.000-05:002019-12-16T14:03:31.069-05:00Ultimate Air StationIn racing, tires are the single most important part of the car. If your tires aren't cooperating, none of the power, none of the suspension and none of the driver's inputs will be of much value. Finding the optimum inflation and keeping it consistent run after run is key. Learning a course within 3-6 runs, sometimes in changing temperatures or drying conditions is complicated enough. Throwing in variation due to tire pressures rising with tire heat or becoming un-even from tires baking in the sun during lunch only adds to the complexity.<br />
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Obviously having a good pressure gauge is key, but in my opinion, so is having a good tire inflation system. Many are the times when one finds oneself gridded up and in finding the sprayer, helmet, gopro battery etc, and swapping tires, cleaning out the car putting on driving shoes, going through tech and trying to remember the course you just walked (or that you drove in the morning), one discovers... "oh crap I didn't air up the tires!" If you have one of the rinky-dink consumer inflators you now have to choose which tires to inflate how much and maybe take your first run under inflated. We don't get many runs to begin with, it really sucks to have a throw-away run.<br />
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The problem is that most inflators have been designed to a task and the cost of parts minimized. The task they are designed for is road side and parking lot or driveway tire inflation, usually of a single tire that has gone flat to facilitate limping to a service station, or for topping up your tires. In either case spending 20-40 seconds to add 1lb of pressure is perfectly fine. The under inflated tire will be good to go in 5 min...<br />
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At an autocross one wants to NOT spend time on airing, but rather spend time mentally preparing for the run. Typically 4 tires need to be inflated 2-4lbs each. so 8-16 lbs at 30sec/lb becomes 4-8 minutes... which is an eternity when the grid chief is already sending cars at the head of the line. Or in the morning when you want to get to the tech line, or when course is already open and you need to get out and walk it...etc. Time is valuable.<br />
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I realized this long ago when I went to my one and only track day and nearly missed the start of my session because I was adding air to my tires with a commodity inflator. The following winter (2008-2009) I cobbled together this unit:<br />
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What that is is a Viair 300p compressor and an autozone whatever battery pack bolted and tied to a piece of plywood. It's heavy, the cord tangles on nearly everything, it takes forever to charge, and has a couple of sharp screws sticking out where they can gouge apolstery and leggs, but adding 2-4 lbs of air to the tires on my car is about 15-30 seconds. each.<br />
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This has been my solution for 10 years and it's been very durable, very reliable if somewhat heavy and unwieldy. But alas I've found that the battery pack is now not holding very much charge at all. Other drawbacks include an on-going risk that the clamps that connect the compressor and the battery pack are live 12v leads exposed where short circuit could be a problem. This poses an on-going risk during transport if the battery master switch is not attended to, and is just downright risky at rain events. It's been good, but now I've found better.<br />
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As the trend toward more and more powerful battery operated tools continues, small cordless air compressors have come out and currently there are 3 on the market, One by Dewalt, one by Rigid, and one by Royobi. They all feature a small tank, lithum batteries and standard 1/4 air hose couplings. The Dewalt unit sells for $300 with one 60v 2ah battery (6ah printed on the battery is only if it's in 20v mode). It's bigger more capable, and too heavy. Overkill for my use case. The Rigid unit is a 1gal tank and correspondingly smaller, but it sells for $250 with <b><i>NO BATTERY</i></b>. However, the Royobi unit without battery and <b>with and included air nailer, hose and <i><u>tire chuck</u></i></b> is $129, or $99 by itself. With battery and charger, it's $179. It's also the smallest and as shown above comes with a very convenient storage for the hose.<br />
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It fills itself in 1-2 minutes and then stands ready. How fast is it at filling tires? When I got it I checked the inflation on my F150, and realized that the cold weather had me down almost 5lbs. Also the newly installed snow tires on my wife's camry were down a similar amount from sitting in storage. I topped up all 8 tires on about a half a 4ah battery. So one battery appears to easily provide 80lbs of pressure going into a 25-30 psi tire standard size vehicle tire. I set the output pressure to 90psi and the time to put 5lbs into my truck tire was 18 sec.<br />
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The pump comes on after about 2.5-3lbs added to the truck tire, so I suspect adding more than 5lbs at a time would get a lot slower. I suspect the pump on it is somewhat less than the Viair pump, but it has the opportunity to do work while you are moving between tires, so it's a very efficient design for topping up tires, which is exactly my use case.<br />
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The Dewalt unit is probably the winner for contractors with the larger tank, and better price than Rigid. The winner for autocross however is clearly Royobi on cost, size and accessories.<br />
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<i>Note: I am not sponsored by any of these companies, and all of them are about to be completely blindsided by my review :). Prices for Rigid/Dewalt taken from Amazon on 12/16/2019, Price for Royobi from Home Depot (actual purchase: $129 kit with nailer/chuck and 2 4ah batteries on sale almost 2 for 1 price = $208 total before tax). I did not purchase or test the other units, analysis (and my buying decision) was based on features listed on the above mentioned sites. Royobi unit also was in stock at my local store, and available same day vs ~ 1-2 wk shipping for other units.</i>Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-12575710673860860022019-11-29T15:45:00.001-05:002019-11-29T15:45:42.478-05:00EMtronThe guy who tunes my car was at SEMA recently, promoting the ECU's I use. Looks like EMtron's been making a splash in time attack. Here's the video:<div>
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Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-54965273092507606472019-09-19T21:04:00.000-04:002019-09-19T21:04:13.642-04:00Just for FunI remembered these videos again and suddenly wanted to watch them. I had to spend several minutes searching the series of inter tubes until I found them. They are classics (in my mind at least) so to avoid having to searching for them again I'll share them with all of you. (I did not make these, <u>credit goes to the owners</u> on YouTube!) Please go like/subscribe there!<br />
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And I'm sure you can guess how that turned out... but wait you don't have to! Here's part 2<br />
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He said drive flat out? That sounds familliar... Ah now I understand! his dad is into track days... he's famous too!<br />
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<br />Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-57896944833630289782019-08-19T17:29:00.000-04:002019-08-19T17:29:10.835-04:002019 RebootTotally shirked the blog last year and most of this year. Last season (2018) was actually a winning season though! That's 2 jackets now, and this time I had some more serious competition. My end of season however was less inspiring than some others... I clinched the title in August, and then proceeded to not win again, and for whatever reason I couldn't seem to stop hitting mystery cones in the Moss... so I wound up standing on a stupid slow run and didn't even try to match it in the afternoon, but rather just drove faster (I found 2 seconds vs the morning time which tells you how bad my morning was)... Although that catapulted me into last place in the moss with an epic bad consistency score, it turned out to be a good call since it was fun and 2018's moss featured the single most epic battle of moss competition I have ever seen. Nothing I could have done aside from repeating my times to the thousandth would have even come close.<br />
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First and second place were on an entirely different planet from the rest of the field. They both scored over 199 points out of 200 and were separated by some crazy small fraction of a point. The winner, Brian Kuehl put up a top pax time, and then duplicated it 3 more times in the afternoon to within 0.1s... absolutely nuts! for the speed/consistency challenge that is the moss that is AMAZING... and it almost wasn't good enough, because second place was just as consistent, but 2nd in pax by 0.088 seconds! On *ANY* other year Ryan Field would have been a champion with his 199.3 points... (winners normally have 196-198 points). If there were ever a case for co-champions this would be it, but that just isn't how it works.<br />
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So then winter set in, and as usual, not much happened with the car other than an oil change until after Christmas. Then in January, the prep for 2019 began...<br />
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<li>Oil Change</li>
<li>Pads and rotors</li>
<li>Transmission Oil change</li>
<li>Front ball joints</li>
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<li>Upper changed to pre-load adjustables</li>
<li>Lower changed to drop joints to enable lowering</li>
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<li>Front wishbone bushings - apply the other half of the set of monoballs </li>
<li>Penske double adjustable shocks</li>
<li>Custom carbon fiber wind splitter</li>
<li>Carbon fiber front lip.</li>
<li>Fabricated carbon fiber spats for the splitter </li>
<li>Design/build detachable mounting system for splitter/lip combo</li>
<li>Check Alignment</li>
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<li>Toe: front 0mm rear 2mm</li>
<li>Camber: just check for more than 0.2 degrees diff side to side, max otherwise</li>
<li>Caster: TBD, but so long as it's stockish and not wildly diff side to side I won't touch it because it's a royal pain to adjust.</li>
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<li>Shorter Rear springs to prevent clash with body when lowering</li>
<li>Lower to 105mm rear 92mm front</li>
<li>Corner Balance</li>
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I got all that done, and after a little on-site fender modification during the test/tune, First event went well, and I managed a 0.95 pax Ratio vs a Billy Davis top pax and .96 vs the rest of the field. Event 2 however didn't go as well...</div>
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My ring and pinion was wrung and piรฑata-ed.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Thus events 3-7 and the NY tour featured me in a variety of fun STS and ASP cars, which were excellent cars, but definitely required some adjustment in style... Many thanks to Matt, Jake and Brian for their support during the repair period!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So the transmission went on vacation for a spa at Blackwatch Racing, where it ditched it's old and busted parts and </span>acquired<span style="font-family: inherit;"> some new hotness... a 4.8:1 final drive ring/pinion set by Kaz. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">No point in not upgrading once it's all apart and the old part failed anyway... So hopefully the higher quality of the Kaz part will allow for some enhanced durability, and the shorter gearing will bring me up to speed a bit faster.</span><br />
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Got the transmission back and I had taken the clutch off to check it (since the trans was off and it was exposed), and when I initially re-assembled it, I put it on backwards. Unfortunately attempting to screw down the pressure plate then bent the clutch, so new clutch... and new friction surface for the flywheel. This mistake may have been a boon however since the friction surface though still thick seemed to have some dodgy looking warping and heat marks after I removed it from the flywheel...</div>
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So, waiting for new clutch and new flywheel surface delayed install and Friday afternoon before the race on Sunday I was still re-installing my fly wheel. A 4pm Friday through midnight Saturday effort got the fly/clutch/transmission all re-installed and all the parts put back on the car... which included starter, clutch slave, 3 out of 4 motor mounts, both axels, the entire left rear suspension, left rear brake, a couple bits of the right rear suspension that had been detached to facilitate axle removal, the exhaust header, the CAI (removed for access reasons), the gear shift linkage, the muffler, the rear clam, etc. </div>
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Somehow I hadn't lost anything during the intervening 3 months and nothing went wrong other than tearing the oil pan heat sensor wire out due to motor sway while torquing flywheel bolts. That only attaches to an aftermarket gauge in the cabin, so not a show stopper. </div>
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Shower and bed by 1am, up at 5am, to load the truck and on site by 7:45 am... And to my utter amazement, nothing actually fell apart or broke. The car had survived and performed well. My driving... well... I'm going to have to get used to driving an SSM lotus again. I had no clean runs but I did give Nik the opportunity to snap this awesome shot:</div>
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Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-10700275247898745732019-03-27T13:18:00.001-04:002019-03-27T14:37:35.957-04:00Cone School - the Full StoryA new season is upon us, what better way to anticipate it than with a post for folks new to the sport.<br />
<br />
I've always felt that all web page based attempts to teach the meaning, use and care of cones during an event (that I've seen) have been anywhere from sloppy and misleading to almost good.... but not quite complete. Mostly the authors are a bit lazy and try to compress things too much. I'm going to try to take a systematic approach and give full detail. This will be slightly long winded, but if you absorb what I write you can approach your first (or next) autocross with confidence that you know what to do with a cone.<br />
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Please note that this discussion is tailored to match the New England Region SCCA events, other clubs may have variations in interpretation and details. Please be alert in drivers meetings for things that don't sound like what I say here, and respectfully seek clarification so you <u style="font-weight: bold;">do it the right way for that club.</u> Do not tell the event staff at another club they are wrong! It's their club, they do it their way. If you feel they aren't conducting a safe event, just tell them so (politely) and leave. Do not expect them to change to suit your demands. If <b><u>you choose</u></b> to stay, you also choose to follow their rules.<br />
<h3>
The Cones</h3>
There are several types of cones you will encounter. Failing to explain this baseline information is the most common thing that other authors omit in this type of post. However, I'm a pedantic bastard and I've been doing this for a decade, so I'm here to tell you all the stuff other authors are assuming you know (but you probably don't or you wouldn't be reading this in the first place).<br />
<ol>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Grid, and Paddock cones</span></b>: These cones are not very important. You should try to follow the traffic flow they indicate, don't move them of course (until cleanup at the end of the day) and don't sweat it if they move an inch or you accidentally flatten one. So long as they don't go far and get put back within a minute or two nobody cares much. Note that grid cones sometimes have other people's equipment piled against them, and people DO care if you run over their equipment (may folks have tire gauges that cost from $30 to as much as $150 for example).</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Staging cones</span></b>: These are the cones right around the point where you launch at the start of the course. They aren't much different than Grid cones, but are often more carefully placed to ensure a traffic flow that allows Timing and Scoring to read your numbers and keeps safe pathways for instructors, workers and spectators. You should try very hard to respect these. You may see advanced drivers get within an inch or less to one side trying to get the maximum advantage on launch, but until you're within 3-4 seconds of the fastest time of the day, don't even worry about that. Just stay comfortably within the designated area.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Start Area cones</span></b>: This is a small selection of <b><i><u>upright</u> </i></b>cones starting right at or just past where the starter is standing. <u>THESE CONES ARE PART OF THE COURSE</u>. Do not hit them or you will receive a 2 second penalty to your time. Sometimes there are zero or only 2 "start area cones." Sometimes there are a dozen such cones forcing you too drive a tightly constrained right angle.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Timing Start cones</span>:</b> These are a pair or of <b><u><i>upright</i></u></b> double cones right at the point where the beam of light detecting cars starts the timed portion of the course. No time is recorded for scoring purposes until you pass between these doubled cones. <u>THESE CONES ARE PART OF THE COURSE</u>. Do not hit them or you will receive a 2 second penalty to your time.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Gate cones</span></b>: These are pairs of <b><u><i>upright</i></u></b> cones that you must pass between. If you have both of them standing upright in the original position on one side of your car as you pass them, you are OFF COURSE, and will get a DNF. Your time will not count no matter how good it is. <u>THESE CONES ARE PART OF THE COURSE</u>. Do not hit them or you will receive a 2 second penalty to your time. Note that if you hit/displace one (or both) cones for a gate, you cannot be off course. (The basic idea is if you were close enough to hit it, your path of travel still bears some resemblance to the intended course, and you can keep your time, once a penalty is applied for each cone hit)</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Slalom cones</span></b>: This is potentially confusing when you first start. When you find yourself driving to a row of 3 or more <b><i><u>upright</u></i></b> cones that are all in a line and such cones are more than 45 feet apart (often much more), this constitutes a special element called a slalom. If there is no pointer cone (I'll tell you about those soon) then you must pick either the right or left side of the first cone in the sequence and then alternate sides until the end of the slalom. Thus, if the first cone passes to the left side of your car, the second should be on the right, third on the left, fourth on the right, etc. <u>THESE CONES ARE PART OF THE COURSE</u>. Do not hit them or you will receive a 2 second penalty to your time.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Wall cones</span></b>: These are <b><i><u>upright</u> </i></b>cones spaced in sequences much too close to be a slalom or a gate (gates must be a minimum of 15ft wide). Wall cones are meant to constrain your movement through the course. You may not pass between them even if you are in a go-kart and you happen too fit anyway. If on any occasion, two wall cones from the same wall pass on both sides of your vehicle and remain standing in their original position, you are OFF COURSE, and will get a DNF. Your time will not count no matter how good it is. <u>THESE CONES ARE PART OF THE COURSE</u>. Do not hit them or you will receive a 2 second penalty to your time.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Lay Down cones</span></b>: These are cones that are <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">not upright</u> at the start of competition and have been placed that way on purpose. They may occur on or off course. They are typically placed such that the small (pointy) end of the cone indicates the direction you are supposed to be traveling or turning. These cones are advisory only and are NOT PART OF THE COURSE. There is no penalty for hitting them, but doing so usually means you are way off line, very slow or about to drive off course or into a restricted area. You will find that you (and other drivers) use these cones as visual cues, and so it is very important that workers (and you when you are working) put them back in the same position if they do get hit.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Pointer cones</span></b>: These are a special type of lay down cone. They are <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">not upright</u> at the start of competition and have their pointy end pointed within six inches of a gate, slalom or wall cone. These indicate that you must pass on the opposite side of the cone they point at. So if there is a pointer to the right side of the first cone on a slalom, you do not get to choose which way to start, and must start on the left side of the first cone (and therefore MUST drive on the right side of the second cone, left of the third etc.). If you drive on the wrong side of a pointer cone you are OFF COURSE, and will get a DNF. Your time will not count no matter how good it is.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Finish Line cones</span></b>: These are a pair of <b><i><u>upright</u></i></b> doubled cones closest to the beam of light that the timing equipment uses to sense your finish at the end of the course. <u>THESE CONES ARE PART OF THE COURSE</u>. Do not hit them or you will receive a 2 second penalty to your time.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Finish Area cones</span></b>: These are the dense box of <b><i><u>upright</u></i></b> cones right after the finish line. You may be surprised to learn that <u>THESE CONES ARE PART OF THE COURSE</u>. Do not hit them. You will receive a 2 second penalty to your time <b><u>FOR EACH ONE</u></b> if you do. Some clubs are even more strict and impose a DNF if you hit any finish cones. This is because it is very important for you to *safely* bring your vehicle to a stop while maintaining control (not spinning!). Loss of control at the finish can damage the timing equipment which typically costs over $1000. It's also typical for clubs to send you a bill for the replacement of the damaged equipment if you do hit it. You break it you buy it.</li>
</ol>
<div>
So that's the full list of the different types of autocross cones. It may seem like a lot now, but it's very easy to remember after the first event or two. After seeing it in action, everything will make sense. Here are some pictures to help:<br />
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Me navigating a slalom, this 3 cone slalom happens to have pointer cones on every cone, but some only have pointers on the start cone, and some have no pointers all.</div>
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Jake at the start. The lady in the blue is the starter. The two cones you see would be start area cones. If you knock them over it's a penalty.</div>
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Me at the 2016 Solo Nationals in Nebraska. In the background you can see several Grid and paddock cones.</div>
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<h3>
Working the cones</h3>
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In autocross, everyone is both a worker and a driver. Some folks have positions of responsibility such as tracking times in timing and scoring, safety steward, grid worker or starter. You won't get to do anything of the sort on your first event, because if those people mess up, bad things happen that effect everyone. It's your first time, nobody knows you, and more importantly, you don't know autocross, so 99% of the time you get given the job where you can do the least damage: Course Worker. </div>
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Here's the bad news. Even a single bad course worker can still mess up the event for everyone. The whole event is a team effort. Here's what could go wrong:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>You could <u>get hurt</u>. Don't get hurt. This is the worst thing that can happen. If you get hit by a car or pass out from heat stroke or step in a hole and break your ankle it's going to really suck for you, and none of us want that. It's also going to stop the event, and everyone will get fewer runs. Furthermore, the organizers will have lots of reports to fill out, and if your health or disability insurance company is a bunch of jerks, they might sue us just because they think they can get some money to cover the costs of what they have to pay you. If injuries are frequent it could cause enough bad publicity to cause us to loose the rights to use the site, and if that happens autocross in New England would never be the same again. Seriously... Safety first!</li>
<li>You could <u>incorrectly award a penalty</u> to a driver that doesn't deserve it. This might ruin their best run of the day, cost them a trophy or even cost them enough season points to make all their hard efforts to win the season championship fail. Wrong penalties are very bad. Some folks are spending dozens or hundreds of hours on their cars and thousands of dollars. The chance to win is a major source of fun, and it really sucks if it's all taken away by a careless corner worker. This may not be NASCAR/Indy/F1, but it's still real racing and some folks are serious about winning, especially in NER SCCA, which is where local national competitors get most of their practice.</li>
<li>You could <u>fail to award a penalty</u> deserved by a driver that earned it. This could cause the driver to gain an unfair advantage and ruin someone else's day by driving faster than is actually possible for the course. The effect of this is, similar to number 2. </li>
<li>You could <u>cause a re-run</u> which creates a minor delay by forcing a driver to stop. That driver is then given another opportunity, but this can ruin what was a good run, or unfairly give the driver a second chance if they were having a bad run. If this happens often, drivers get annoyed and it wastes time so the chances that the entire group can't get all 6 runs increases.</li>
</ol>
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Let's take a look at avoiding each of these problems.</div>
<h3>
Avoiding Getting Hurt</h3>
</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Stay alert</span>.</b> If your head is up you can avoid danger. It's really the most important thing of all. Most of your natural reactions will protect you, but only if you see danger coming. This means:</li>
<ol>
<li><b>NO CELL PHONES</b></li>
<li><b>NO TAKING PICTURES</b> (with cameras or phones)</li>
<li><b>NO SPECTATORS/FRIENDS/FAMILIES</b> accompanying you.</li>
<li>Minimal talking with other workers. Sure it's okay to communicate occasionally. Laugh and point at the driver who spun, exclaim to your neighbor about the car that just blitzed the course too fast to comprehend (your neighbor will likely in form you that said car has several national level trophies). Have fun, but DON'T stand close to each other or even worse than that, definitely don't stand in in a group, talking while cars are running.</li>
</ol>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Stay standing</span></b>. This is a lot more important than most folks realize. I've done this for 10 years, about 20 times a year, probably each event I watch 30-35 cars pass by me 8 times, so roughly 250 cars pass me while i'm working each event, or about 5000 cars a year, which makes roughly 50,000 cars in 10 years. Problems are very rare, but the consequences can be brutal. Of 50,000 cars two of them spun and passed over the location I had been standing while working. One was in the rain, and the driver tried too long and hard to save a lost run, the other was in dry weather just a plain surprise to everyone involved. I was alert and saw it coming both times and I was able to scamper out of the way. In both cases, the car never got within 20 feet of me. If I'd been sitting/squatting or looking at my phone, I might be injured or even dead. Don't let the rarity of the problems lull you. Stay vigilant, stay standing.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Safety comes first</span></b>. All the horrible things that happen to peoples seasons/runs/etc are a nothing compared to someone getting hurt. If you can't fix a cone that's been knocked down before the next car gets there, just get away from the course and let them stop for a re-run. It's OK, it happens to everyone. It even happens to folks like me with 10+ years. Sometimes it's not your fault. If the starter is sending cars in too quick a succession, that's not your fault (for example).</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Run don't walk</span></b>, but don't panic either. It's important you hustle out to get the cone so that you have ample time to place it accurately and then get out of the way LONG before the car gets close. If you are on the course fixing a cone as the driver approaches, this will be very distracting to the driver. The driver will be worried about hitting you, not driving correctly. This is very unfair to them. Even if you were in no actual risk, if you were close enough to distract the driver they may stop to request a re-run, and good corner captains will always give it to them because worker safety come first. We don't want people trying to slalom workers because they think they won't get a re-run. So hurry but DON'T PANIC. Tripping and falling or moving wildly an hurting your back as you pick up the cone is worse.</li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Listen to your corner captain</span></b>. The folks who plan the event make sure to put at least one highly experienced person on every corner. That person is given a radio and a flag, and may not be tasked with fetching cones (in some clubs they do, in NER SCCA and National level events they do not). This person is also supposed to help you find a safe place to work where you can still get to the cones quickly, and make sure you know what you should be doing. Don't be afraid to ask.</li>
</ol>
<h3>
Correctly Awarding Penalties</h3>
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<div>
As a corner worker it is your responsibility to identify penalties and communicate this to your corner captain, who will radio them in to the folks in timing and scoring to be recorded. This is the part that most folks who write these sorts of posts focus on. Often they use pictures (it takes up to a dozen to cover all the cases, and the sheer number of pictures becomes confusing IMHO), but the rules are just two and they are really simple if stated precisely. Some sites leave out details here and that just creates confusion. If you follow the following to the letter you will never make the wrong call:</div>
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<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background: black; color: yellow; padding: 15px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Penalties occur when one (or both) of two things happen to a cone on the course:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A cone that <u>was standing</u> when the driver initially approaches it is knocked over and becomes stationary, <u>and not standing</u> after the passage of the racing vehicle.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A cone that <u>was standing</u> in a marked box when the driver initially approaches is no longer in and <u>no longer touching</u> it's original box after the passage of the racing vehicle. </span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
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<div>
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That's it. You don't have to remember anything else. However, these are deceptively simple rules and people get confused because they can't believe it's really THAT simple, so let's examine the consequences of these rules:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>If the cone was down before the driver got there for any reason, it's never a penalty. It might indicate a penalty should have been awarded to a prior driver, but not for this driver.</li>
<li>It does not matter at all, what the cone does while the vehicle is passing. It only matters where the cone comes to rest after the vehicle is gone. If it flips over and lands back in the box (it happens!) it's not a penalty.</li>
<li>Likewise it doesn't matter what aspect of the car's passage caused it to leave the box or fall over. It could have been punted 50 yards by the front bumper, brutally flattened and bounced away by a steam roller size tire of sticky rubber leaving it half black and torn, tickled along the base by a tiny go cart tire such that it wobbled and walked it's way out of the box, blown over by the wind from the passing car, splashed over by a puddle the car passed through, or hit by a cone the car was dragging underneath that came free and tumbled into it. (That last one really happens I've seen it several times!). </li>
</ul>
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Note that only cones <u>standing</u> at the start of a run <u>on course</u> can cause a time penalty! Therefore:</div>
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<div>
Cones that can cost the driver a penalty:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Start Area cones</li>
<li>Timing Start cones</li>
<li>Gate Cones</li>
<li>Wall Cones</li>
<li>Slalom Cones</li>
<li>Finish Line Cones</li>
<li>Finish Area Cones (YES! don't forget it)</li>
</ol>
<div>
Cones that never cost the driver a penalty:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Lay-down cones (wasn't standing to start with)</li>
<li>Pointer cones (wasn't standing to start with)</li>
<li>Grid cones (not on course)</li>
<li>Paddock cones (not on course)</li>
<li>Staging cones (not on course)</li>
</ol>
<div>
Once you have inspected a cone that you suspect may have been displaced, you need to communicate the status of that cone to your corner captain, who may be 50 or more yards away. This must be done EVERY time so the captain doesn't have to yell at you to find out the status of the cone. Of course it's fine to shout the status, but it's best to accompany those shouts with hand signals because wind, or the noise of the radio can make it hard for your captain to hear you. </div>
</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>To indicate that the cone you just ran out to inspect or adjust is "safe" (not a penalty) make a motion like an umpire calling a runner safe at home plate. Hold your arms outstretched with hands at waist level and then cross and uncross your arms quickly.</li>
<li>Too indicate that the cone was a a penalty, raise your hand high in the air as you leave the cone pointing your index finger at the sky (or holding up two fingers if you had to replace 2 cones, etc.). This is better than holding up the cone which you may see in some videos, because you can do it while exiting the course, and so it wastes less time.</li>
<li>To indicate that a driver is OFF COURSE, hold both arms over your head and cross them to form an X with your wrists above your head. Hold that position till your captain acknowledges the call. </li>
<li>If cones are knocked over AND off course happens for the same driver, give both signals. If the off course call is successfully disputed via in car video evidence later, the cone penalties must still exist. Likewise continue to call cones even if you heard or thought that the driver was previously off course.</li>
</ol>
<div>
Sometimes your corner captain may be busy focusing on something else important (like trying to figure out if the slow car down course is going to get caught and if that situation will require a red flag for safety). They may only see you returning, and may not have seen that you didn't touch the cone, or you may need to shout to get their attention. Once you see them looking at you give the hand signal. The entire corner should work as a team, help your captain not miss any calls. If someone else is failing to notice a down cone or didn't notice a cone wiggling (see below)... yell at them (politely).</div>
<h3>
Preventing Delays</h3>
</div>
<div>
Delays to the event can occur in several ways:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li><b>Getting hurt:</b> Don't get hurt. Avoiding this is always number one priority.</li>
<li><b>Failing to show up to work on time:</b> If we don't have enough people at a corner the other workers have to run too far to pick up cones, this means they have less time to get out of the way of the next vehicle and decreases safety. We can't run if safety is compromised. Safety comes first, so if safe operation becomes questionable, the ops steward will stop the event while we look for you. This quickly irritates EVERYONE else at the event. Don't be late. If this takes very long there's a much greater chance we all get one less run before we go home. That will make you nobody's friend.</li>
<li><b>Re-runs:</b> If the cone is out of place, the driver may stop to point it out and will get a re-run. When things get hectic sometimes cones can't be set up on time. Having this happen is much better than being unsafe, but several steps can be taken to minimize the sources of re-runs:</li>
<ol>
<li><b>Inattention</b>. Watch the cone not the car. If you focus on the cones as the car goes by you'll see them move. If you're watching the car or the driver inside the car, you may not notice the cone wiggle or fall over. Your job is to watch the cones.</li>
<li><b>Lack of hustle</b>. If you don't get out there quick you're going to have less time to set the cone properly. This will lead to misplaced cones and distracted drivers</li>
<li><b>Sluggish return</b>. Hustling back from fixing a cone is important. I can't count the number of times I've seen folks nonchalantly mosey back as if pretending they weren't scared of the oncoming car. Meanwhile the driver is being unfairly distracted. This is rude and disrespectful to the driver, and slows down the event.</li>
<li><b>Not fixing wiggles</b>. Even if a cone has not caused a penalty it must be perfectly in the box at <u>all times</u>. Any time a cone wiggles even a bit, it may have moved part way out of the box. You need to fix this just as quickly as if the cone was knocked over. Our top drivers are multi national champions. They are AMAZINGLY accurate. Inches matter. Check out these images of Dave NOT hitting a cone from a 2017 video:
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If that cone were even an half inch out of place to the right, he would have hit it and he would been unfairly penalized, or he would have been forced to go slower. Many of these drivers can see that the cone is out of place by an inch even at 55mph. If competition is tight they may stop and tell you to fix it even if it's only slightly out of place. Even if they don't stop it's not fair to them or their opponent.</li>
</ol>
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A final note: At the start of the day you will be given a chance to walk the course as a preview. If you are one of the first folks to walk you will be asked to draw the boxes that help everyone remember where to put the cones if they become displaced. The above picture shows a cone that is correctly marked. The chalk is as close as possible to the cone base. When marking a cone keep the side of the chalk against the base of the cone, do not draw a random squiggly circle around it. Inches (or even fractions of an inch) matter.<br />
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If you are working and you discover that one of the cones you are responsible for is marked poorly (or tires have erased the chaulk) ask your corner captain for chaulk and fix the problem!</div>
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So that sounds like a lot, but it's really not hard once you've been to an event. This will all quickly become second nature. Most of all... don't forget to have FUN! See you out there!<br />
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Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-51229199255260649702018-07-03T17:42:00.000-04:002018-07-03T17:43:24.202-04:00New Heights, and New DIYOnce again, I've been slacking on the blogging, but as you will see on the standings page, the season has been progressing, and I've got a co-driver who's giving me some solid competition. The first few events were Freezing, Soaked and Soaked, so I pretty much lacked anything inspiring to blog about anyway. I went to the new Jersy Pro Solo, and had not really found my stride after missing most of 2017 in my car and getting almost nothing but rain events in the early season. I just wasn't getting slip angle like I should, and I was quite dirty, hitting cones or red-lighting on many of my runs as well. As will happen at the national level, if you aren't in top form you're at the bottom of the standings...<br />
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Some how I didn't feel eager to write about that either...<br />
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However, the weather improved, and satisfactory driving has finally come to pass. I've now managed to regain my prior level of driving from 2016, and in event #5, I finally found a new high point. One of the tough things about evaluating one's performance in autocross is that all measures are relative and the reference point is constantly in motion. To make a sane evaluation one has to make some assumptions. My first assumption is that the top drivers in our region are not getting slower. Given our region's consistent 6-7 national champions the last 3 years this seems reasonable.<br />
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While I'm comfortable saying that the top of the heap is still at a high altitude, there are some other things that clearly have changed. Firstly our region has had a buble of talented drivers mature in the last 2 years. I'd not want to argue that any of them have really pushed the top of the pax standings up yet in the way that Billy Davis did in 2015 and 2017, but they have definitely crowded the top. In 2016 I had 3 events where I was 1.5s off top pax, which resulted in 15th, 10th and 15th in overall pax. This year at the last 2 events, 1.5s from top pax is worth 20th and 19th... So making the top 10 or top 20 is significantly harder than it was 2 years ago.<br />
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Secondly, pax for the SSM class has been hit harder than any others besides AM, BM and CSP. BM/CSP and SSM are all almost a full percentage point harder than 2016 relative to the other classes. This translates into about .44 seconds tougher pax on a 60 second (raw) course. I've made a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uZ2XH-vEs6bHjdUlmTa5U0lm_xsPRT6la7s-uFs_r3o/edit?usp=sharing">spread sheet here</a> that shows that while all pax factors (other than AM) went down, the average pax factor went down much slower for SSM. This probably has something to do with the last 3 champions Thorne, Glagola and Wilcox all hanging out in the top of pax at far too many national events...<br />
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With that in mind, the 20th in pax result that had me 1.5 seconds off of top pax in event 5 Looks a lot like what used to get a top 10 in 2016. And my 2.3 seconds off of top pax in event 6 looks a lot like a top 20 in 2016 even though it now shows as 30th. Kudos to my co-driver Daryl, who kept the car in the top 20 at event 6 with his 19th in pax. For 2 events running my car has been 2nd fastest car with doors. Here's a video of my 2nd fastest run from event 5, which is probably faster everywhere except the start where I forget to shift like an idiot... Sadly I didn't remember to turn on the camera for the fastest run.<br />
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Additionally, I've also done some more maintenance/improvement on the car. Another factor in my bad results at the New Jersey Pro solo was epic levels of wheel hop on my launches on day 2 when the rubber was creating a lot more traction. A lot of exhaust bounce had also been noted at Devens, and the result was too much for my front motor mount to take.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vm8oD-iERg8/Wzd1VlNrUxI/AAAAAAAABpY/OeBNjDjxg9Y9BylfAgmKIqXev6RjTrWHwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/20180629_193408.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vm8oD-iERg8/Wzd1VlNrUxI/AAAAAAAABpY/OeBNjDjxg9Y9BylfAgmKIqXev6RjTrWHwCPcBGAYYCw/s320/20180629_193408.jpg" width="240" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yer3LltKDgc/WzvqGoffzHI/AAAAAAAABqA/owU2yZGnOaokSghKmFPT_ZgUQg1U1rnEwCLcBGAs/s1600/20180630_103226.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yer3LltKDgc/WzvqGoffzHI/AAAAAAAABqA/owU2yZGnOaokSghKmFPT_ZgUQg1U1rnEwCLcBGAs/s320/20180630_103226.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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The alignment was checked and it was almost 6mm toe in, probably due to bushing migration. Soft bushings, lots of toe-in and enormous race tires are a recipe for massive wheel hop. There was only one conclusion, tired old plastic/rubber A-arm bushings had to go. I replaced them with Monoball metal/teflon spherical bearings from Inokinetic. Since this seemed like an interesting job, I also made a DIY video for it:<br />
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The results? FABULOUS. Both me and my co-driver Daryl noticed improvement in the predictability of the back end when rotating it around a corner, and improvement in braking. The first was expected and the second was a nice surprise. My rear suspension had probably become so floppy that the ABS probably triggered earlier. I also suspect this slop negated all rear braking once it triggered by wagging the A-arms back and forth with the ABS pulses. The start for this course did not lend itself to hard launches, and due to the late date of it's discovery I had to continue with the above mount after Ryan welded the split for me. Next event we will be doing full launches if the course allows it and then I expect to find that the wheel hop has also improved.Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-44722710741262014432018-03-11T10:00:00.000-04:002018-03-12T01:27:48.459-04:00Transmission Oil Transmission oil is easy to forget about. This winter I realized that I probably had let mine go a little longer than I should have. It probably should be changed at least once a season on a car like mine. My car sees 20 autocross races a year at an average of 8 runs per event and almost a mile per run.<br />
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That's not an official service interval of course. There are no "official" numbers for racing since everything "depends" on the duration, level and type of racing. On a race car, nearly every bit of maintenance needs to be done a LOT more often than with street driving. So for another example I change my oil about once every 6 auto crosses, which works out to about 3-4 times a year, or in terms of mileage, about once every 40-50 miles of racing... Similar to changing it after every 1-2 track days.<br />
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Fluids are cheap the parts they lubricate are expensive! Buy good fluids often, because that's much better than buying cam shafts, engines or transmissions! Also, you never miss a race because you had to do an oil change... failed parts however frequently cause missed or aborted racing.<br />
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For something new this year, I decided to try my hand at vlogging and produced a video that might be helpful for those who want to avoid a trip to the mechanic, save some money and change their own transmission oil.<br />
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This is not a difficult job, but of course I am not a trained mechanic, and you should use your own caution and do your own research before attempting any of this on your car (especially if it's not a lotus!) If you see something I could do better, leave a comment on this page or on the video.<br />
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Some additional commentary and advice here: <a href="http://www.lotustalk.com/forums/f25/transmission-oil-change-445914/">http://www.lotustalk.com/forums/f25/transmission-oil-change-445914/</a>Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-12267979106489307032017-12-25T09:00:00.000-05:002018-03-21T08:15:01.362-04:00Return of the SoLoti<img style="display:none" border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dJBnyRV1xPU/WkBNlUKqH1I/AAAAAAAABaE/c24AwPqeA3Mw7S0_pj9TM5vCAoU3bjkQwCLcBGAs/s640/slalom-2017.jpg" width="640" />So yeah I got tired of blogging about how my car wasn't working... probably you got tired of hearing about it. Then when I finally got it working in September I spent all available weekend time driving it rather than blogging about it. I had a little bit of pent up racing to let out! Then I took on a new client and have had 1.25 people's worth of work to do...<br />
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So what's the story? Well, After waiting forever and then some for a valve tool to arrive at the shop that did the install of the head that was supposed to make it easier for him to check on the valve seals, I lost patience and took the car to <a href="http://www.mcracing80.com/">MC racing</a>, and they hooked up a compression tester and a leak tester, and whoosh... air in one piston and out the other... Clearly the head gasket was not sealing properly. Perfect proof that it is so very good that Nick my tuner at <a href="http://www.aceperformancesystems.com/">Ace Performance</a> refused to tune with the car as I delivered it the first time. Kudos to them!<br />
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With this new information I contacted the original shop and they started pointing out that I supplied the head gasket etc... basically preparing excuses to not make it right. That sucked but there is of course enough gray area for them to avoid the work if they so chose. Fighting over it was clearly not a productive route to go, so I took it back to MC racing and for 2/3 the cost of the previous shop they took it apart, machined it, provided a head gasket and re-assembled it in working order. There's still a slight bit of smokiness, but nothing like before, and unlike before, when things warm up the smoke goes away. I suspect some things are not quite perfect due to the previous install, but now it's close enough that the thermal expansion completes the seal as the engine warms up. I'll be analyzing oil and keeping an eye on it going forward. If I ever go to high compression pistons, it won't be on this block/head combo.<br />
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Speaking of oil, I've moved to red-line 40wt race oil now that the car is a full time trailer queen and never does more than idle around before it's fully warm. In theory this allows a slight hp gain and better flow when warm, at the cost of a little more flow resistance (and thus wear) during startup. It's also the case that with a trailer queen, it is a lot harder to just bop on over to get an oil change, so I'll be moving to changing my own oil and brake fluid. To make that easier, and to help combat the flow resistance at low temp, I went to a Canton Racing <a href="https://www.cantonracingproducts.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=25-264">spin on oil filter</a> which gives me about 3 times as much flow as the stock filter and 8 micron filtration.<br />
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I know what you are probably thinking... the man dumps umpteen zillion dollars into head work, ecu and tuning and he's blogging about his oil filter?? Point taken... I'll get to the good stuff now.<br />
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So with it back together and (mostly) not smoking, tuning was possible, and the results are very pleasing indeed!<br />
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I never had a chance to get a baseline, so the above plot shows the results vs a stock plot I grabbed from the web and scaled to match. These numbers are a couple HP better than any other normally aspirated plot/numbers I've been able to find for cars running stock compression. And these are with the super trap on! Based on a single test run, there's perhaps another 2 hp in it if the super trap is removed. I only have good things to say about Nick's tuning, and Baer who runs Ace Performance was straightforward and easy to work with. I'm very happy to be promoting them on my wing plates!<br />
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The <a href="http://emtron.world/">Emtron</a> Ecu installed by Ace Performance has all kinds of super nifty logging and capability. No end of parameters to ponder! Below you can see the data, possibly even from the above photo. The slalom in the photo would correspond to somewhere around the 6000 second mark below, but I cant' be sure if it's exactly that run or not.<br />
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And I also got a beta version of CAN bus support for the stock dash, which so far seems to work great! Nick/Ace/Emtron will be coming out with new info on their products soon and when I'm allowed to share some stuff I've seen previews of, I'll post it here. Until then, we'll all just have to visit the garage, glance out the window at the snow and sigh... And comb through data logs :)Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-61694361249955758222017-06-20T11:30:00.000-04:002017-06-20T15:08:38.808-04:00Devens Tour 2017With the ongoing saga of my engine upgrades, I am in Nick's STR car again (Thanks Nick!), but this time we're on Justin's 5 year old Hoosier A6 tires (Thanks Justin!). Day 1 was cool and cloudy, but generally dry. The weather just barely misted a little bit on us for the last run. Sadly <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/11391187@N03/35410304265/in/album-72157682383752513/">Panda</a> being driven by Todd and Stephanie was not working well, and had one less piston by the end of the day. Also, though a couple tenths faster, on his best run, Nick was dirty. I managed to take advantage with what I consider my best run in his car thus far (still some spots to improve of course), and I leapt out to a 1.8 second lead going into the second day.<br />
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As is typical for cool mornings on prehistoric Hoosiers, my first run of the day was a mess, but helped me sort out what to do where. The sun came out, things began to warm up, and I dropped a second on my next run, with clear room for improvement. I was too deep on every major corner, too slow in slalom 2, and got the car out of sorts at the start of the taxiway, making that entirely too sloppy. Unfortunately, I seem to have nicked a cone, probably at the box on the taxiway.<br />
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The raw time on run two would have been plenty good to nail down the third place trophy. With warmer tires and so many easily fixable mistakes on that time, I felt quite confident that I'd have no problem fixing things up on my third run.<br />
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But this is racing, nothing is a sure thing. Yesterday Stephanie's car blew up on her, on Sunday she had a nice 59.1 run to jump into 3rd by 0.33 sec. Still easy for me to beat given my day 1 lead, warmer tires and a previous raw time 0.7s faster than I needed. None the less, the pressure was on... Here's the video of my final run. I think it speaks for itself...<br />
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And of course if I had had my actual SSM car...<br />
<br />Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-14505404089408045612017-05-27T16:30:00.000-04:002017-06-20T11:21:15.722-04:00...Gang aft agley!The start of this season hasn't gone as I had envisioned it. The vision in my head mid February went something like this:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Head swap mid-March</li>
<li>Tuning late march/early April</li>
<li>Learn the changes to car at Event 1 and in the next Renegade event. </li>
<li>Race #2 expect decent result</li>
<li>more practice events</li>
<li>Race #3 and onward... full speed ahead, chasing another top-10 & class wins to try try for a second season championship, with Leafy doing his best to make it tough (cue the stirring music, with videos of wobbling cones, and spin outs and times in red LED letters, people cheering, other people shaking their head or pounding the wheel... etc...).</li>
</ul>
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It sounded like a nice plan, but like most plans, the intersection with reality was disruptive. Actual results were more like:</div>
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<ul>
<li>Mid-march - Mechanic no space to work on car, must wait.</li>
<li>Late march - Delivered car to mechanic</li>
<li>Early April - Headwork more involved than expected due to one unreachable bolt, timing chain cover comes off to detach timing chain guide from head.</li>
<li>Prep for race 1: Drove other folks cars at test and tune (thanks Bill, Thanks Jake!)</li>
<li>Race 1: Co-driver lends me <b>his</b> car (Honda s2000 in full STR prep) wind up in 4th place, Co-Driver takes 1st with a time that (if STR pax) would be 7th in pax.</li>
<li>Cancel reg for NCR Porsche, miss Renegade event</li>
<li>Mid-April Mechanic reports head on, difficulty shimming the valves, some are too tight for shims</li>
<li>Race 2: Co-driver again lends me his car, take 3rd place, with co-driver again taking 1st.</li>
<li>Late April - difficulty getting shims.</li>
<li>Early May - one valve so tight, even 00 shim won't work, contemplate head off and shave valve stem.</li>
<li>Mid May - Consultation with machinist leads to shaving the shims instead of the valves</li>
<li>Miss 2nd Renegade event...</li>
<li>Event #3 - Co-driver at wedding, Drive Matt's ASP prep STI - take second place</li>
<li>Late May - Car Runs! Get the car back, </li>
<li>Tuners, no space for car, must wait.</li>
<li>Tuners schedule me for tuning in very early June.</li>
<li>Miss 3rd Renegade event, Cancel Track Club Event... </li>
<li>new ECU installed and starting</li>
</ul>
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So, If I'm very lucky I'll get two events worth of practice before the national tour, maybe 20 runs to settle into the new setup, and if any minor delays, only one event... if a major delay... I miss the tour, which counts as events #4 and #5. Sadly (but lucky for me points-wise) Leafy also has had a slow start to the season and his car will also make it's first appearance in the tour. Where both of us will have to contend with Todd Kean (alien) in the #99 Nissan S240 "Panda" (space ship).</div>
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As for season points... well, the good news is Leafy mostly drove cars even less SSM than I did, and I'm well ahead of him. The bad news is Nick, my Co-driver is scaring the crap out of me by posting crazy good times in his car. I certainly expect a little bit of a break when we switch to my car, due to home-car advantage, but I'm thinking once he adjusts, he's going to be pushing me pretty hard (which is good!)... </div>
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Nick's skill only adds to the fun of course. This year SSM seems to also have SML national champ in the Kuehl's SMF CRX... running in SSM for fun... sure it's SMF, but it's possibly the fastest SMF car in the nation, and she's a national champion. Next event, we get to see the long awaited result of Leafy's motor swap. He put a 2.5L engine in his NA Miata and turbo'd it... probably for 400+hp! This year, there is competition! </div>
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On the plus side, I did get to drive some interesting cars. Many thanks to the owners. Here are some pictures of the cars (only the S2000 is a picture of me driving though with Nick passenger):<br />
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Updated:<br />
<ul>
<li>Tuner refuses car for Tailpipe smoke issue... ARGHHH!</li>
<li>Drive Derek's S2000 at BMW</li>
<li>Drive Nick's S2000 at Porsche Club and National Tour</li>
<li>Still waiting for the music...</li>
</ul>
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Thanks Bill!</div>
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Thanks Jake!</div>
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Thanks Nick!</div>
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Thanks Matt!</div>
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PS. if you don't get the title of the post, it comes from a rather famous poem called <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43816">"To a Mouse" by Robert Burns</a>... the full line is:</div>
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The best laid schemes oโ Mice anโ Men </div>
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Gang aft agley, </div>
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<br />Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-81571580389902307512017-04-04T20:53:00.001-04:002017-05-24T19:36:57.877-04:00Looking forward to 2017... <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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ARP head bolts...</div>
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JCR Fab Ported Head</div>
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Piper Stage 3 Cams</div>
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Mechanical work complete - next: Tuning!</div>
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Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-62379209509010015032017-03-27T09:30:00.000-04:002017-03-27T14:55:37.985-04:00Looking Back at 20162016 was a pretty good year. It started a bit shaky, first with a spectacular spin into the grass at my first renegade event where I learned that the stuff on the edges of the runway has a lot of gravel and very little stopping friction. Next, in my first SCCA event I didn't drive well and worse yet I blew sound, and was disqualified from my afternoon runs. The result was my worst finish in many (5+) years despite the brand new set of 10.5" wheels.
For the next event I did sound testing comparing various exhaust tips and made changes to ensure I was well within sound limits going forward. In SCCA event 2 I got all my runs, but the result was a race that (other than my previous race) would have been my worst showing in 2 or 3 years. It was a very uninspiring start, but the season is long. I tweaked some sway bar settings, did some more events, and got used to the new larger wheel setup, and began to have some success.
<p>By SCCA event 4 I had it sorted, and made a 15th in pax finish (Brian Levesque took my car to 6th in pax that day as well out of 139 drivers). From there, I fiddled just a tad with suspension, Got my first FTD ever at a BMW event, and a 2FTD behind an "EM" lotus 7 with a wing and a v8 engine at an NE-SVT event... and then went off to nationals. There I got a very mediocre result (described in the last post), much of which was due to my inexperience at that level and driving that was worse than my average. The year finished out with my first ever NER top 10 finish, and another 15th in pax at the last points event. The points for SSM class for 2016 had been locked up some time ago due to some folks dropping out of the class and spotty participation by others. Not the way I wanted to win my first regional jacket, but wishes can't always come true.
<p>With the "championship" for the season being substantially participation based, I was very keen to put up a good showing in the Stirling Moss Driver of the Year competition that it qualified me for. In my mind, the season points championship would be a "real" championship if I did well there, and a "fake" participation award if I didn't do well in the Moss. The Moss was more or less the hinge for the meaning of my jacket. The question at hand... can I race with the class champions, or would I just be straggling along in the back of the pack?
<p>The format of the Moss is meant to require drivers to both drive fast, and drive consistently fast. In the morning you get points for speed, and in the afternoon you get points for consistency with respect to your morning time. NER is a Jumbo region, that takes home 6-8 national trophies every year. I did not expect to come out on top, ahead of all of our national champions, but the key idea was to do well, and be significantly nearer the top than the bottom among the 30 regional class winners participating.
<p>After 3 morning runs, rumor had it that I was the 10th fastest pax time of the 30 drivers who had earned the right to participate in the Moss... so by SCCA trophy standards for individual classes, that's the very last trophy spot. I could have been a place or two higher if I hadn't coned on my final run of the morning. It was a good, not totally embarrassing result, but nothing to brag about either. Furthermore if I didn't do well in the afternoon, It wouldn't be hard to slide back into the back half of the pack. I wanted something better than that!
<p>Because of the consistency emphasis of the afternoon, cones are death. You simply have to run clean. I figured at least a few of the 9 folks ahead of me would hit cones, so the best way to move up was to drive hard, but be ultra focused on not hitting cones. Clean runs and an awareness of whether the run was going well or not were the goal. With cold tires for the first run, I knew it was going to be a difficult first run to try to get close to my morning time on warm tires, even though the air temps and pavement temps were up. I knew I would need to push it... I did and I succeed in getting a time 0.4s slower than my morning run. -0.4 was likely to take me further from winning the whole thing, but was clean and probably good enough to keep me moving up a little bit.
<p>On the second run, I did a poor job of the first big sweeping turn and knew I was slow, and that nothing would matter unless I made up the lost time, so my only thought was "Go, GO, GO!!" I drove as hard as I knew how and I might have been close to making up the lost time (thanks to the warmer conditions), but then I had a slight problem with the angle of my approach to the tight pinch on the runway, and had to back off slightly to ensure I didn't hit a cone. The result... another almost identical time, also -0.4s off my morning time.
With two 0.4s differentials my chances for a win were thin, and would rely entirely on nailing the final run within 0.1s, and even then it would be an outside chance. On the third run, my tires were fully warm and i was having a good well sorted run through the taxiway, possibly slightly ahead of my target time, but once again, I didn't set up properly for the pinch and had to work quite hard not to hit a cone. I knew I had lost a bucket of time, but that was behind me and I did the only thing there was to do: Focus on getting back ahead of the cones, and finishing strong. The result was another run time -0.4 under my morning time, but clean again.
<p>As I finished, I figured I had likely moved up a place or two, having heard of some folks ahead of hitting cones, but unless something crazy happened, I did not suspect I had a winning result. They keep the results secret till the ceremony at the end, so I packed up and headed over. During the pack up I heard that one of our top drivers had accidentally gone a lot too fast, so that provided me with some further hope, but It's NER... and one person messing up will not get you the championship. Guaranteed there will be several folks who were fast and didn't mess up. It's just too big a region for lucky wins. Within classes lucky stuff can happen, but in cross class competition, only top drivers having a good day win at NER SCCA events. I had a pretty good day, but my driving can still improve.
<p>They announced the top 3, with Bob Davis taking the repeat win and Dave Gott almost making it with a record breaking consistency score. I was not very surprised that I wasn't on the podium, though part of me had dared to hope for 3rd. After the photos and congratulations, I got a look at the result sheet... <b><u>4th place!</u></b> I was only one spot off the podium. In relation to my previous achievements, THAT is a result I can be proud of. I eclipsed several people who normally do much better than me, even though they didn't hit cones. I will have to work very hard to do that again. Fourth of thirty is not a winner, but it's also not a bad showing. Also 22nd of 104 in season pax is fairly decent, Thus I feel that the failure of my competitors to put together a solid season is not necessarily definitional in my 2016 season championship. It's not inconceivable that I might have won anyway (except if PJ had remained to run panda all year... but he's an alien, and panda is a multi national champion car, so this doesn't bother me... Ok it does bother me, but not too much :) ).
<p>So, while there is still sort of an astrisk next to my season points championship for 2016 in my head, I also don't feel like I need to hide the jacket or mumble when it's mentioned either.
<p>What I <u>do need to do</u> is win again! And the expectation is that Leafy is back, with a new motor in his turbo'ed miata... THAT should be interesting, and fun to compete against!
<p>And this year... the car will have more power, but more about that in the next post.Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-56806496776169013892016-09-15T09:05:00.000-04:002016-09-15T09:05:09.673-04:00Bye Bye MaybesIn several previous posts I have pondered the state of my build and the state of my driving in relation to the ultimate autocross competition, the SCCA Solo Nationals. Those speculations were a matter of finding someone who HAD been to nationals, supposing that maybe they drove as well locally as at nationals, and maybe they were on good tires, or hadn't just screwed with their setup the night before, and maybe, I could drive in 3 runs as fast as I do in 6 or 8... etc.. maybe, maybe, maybe.<br />
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But now, this year I don't need to engage in the maybe's. I finally fulfilled a dream and managed to get me and my car out to Lincoln Nebraska for SCCA Solo Nationals (with the invaluable assistance of my co-driver Bob Lang! Thanks Bob!). So now, rather than say "maybe I would have placed..." I can now say firmly that I *did* place 10th of 17 competitors in SSM and slightly over 50% in the overall PAX rankings. These are now facts, not suppositions.<br />
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Obviously, when I dreamed the dream of going to nationals I hoped to say something slightly better than that. The problem is 1305 other competitors also had a dream they were trying to fulfill too... :). But it was a first time, and firsts are always learning experiences. Things I learned include:<br />
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<li>1306 is a LOT of competitors, the sheer scale of the event is incredible. Acres of cool cars to see!</li>
<li>5 days straight of walking around on concrete in the sun poses a significant hydration challenge, which requires more attention and care than a single day of autocross. </li>
<li>Driving while dehydrated is not a good strategy. My driving on the first day was fighting a hang-over-like dehydration headache, and I didn't realize the nature of the problem until just before first runs. I sucked down a full bottle of water after each run and by my third run I started to feel better, but even so, what seemed fast to me simply wasn't fast at all.</li>
<li>One has to be careful about over-excitement... on my very first run I went off course because I had planned so carefully how to be sure to stay ahead of a turn that I had wonderful amounts of grip (and probably not quite enough speed), and so it seemed natural to use that grip... and I turned harder and cut inside of a cone I didn't need to. I made the course harder for no good reason at all!.</li>
<li>I REALLY need to solve the fuel starve problem in my car. I fuel starved on my first run on the practice course on Wed, and this then made me second guess turn after turn all weekend long. On the second day I wound up running an at elast 20lbs extra gasoline to avoid fuel starve in the huge long left handed sweepers. So remove that gas, and save 9lbs on an Aluminum tank... an easy -30lbs, and fewer distractions. </li>
<li>Concrete is grippy, but only a tenth of a G more at most (race capture showed readings in the upper 1.6G ranges a few times), and then only when you can get yourself to trust it that much further.</li>
<li>Experience matters. Bob got it done better than I did, and brought in a 7th place finish out of 17, which was more or less my best case target for the event.</li>
<li>There is certainly a capability gap in the current prep level of my car. It's happened before that some of our local Aliens have hopped in my car and shaved 2 seconds off vs my times on a 60 second course. Thus far in my car bob and I have split 2 and 2 for who drives faster, so starting from Bob's time, and giving him .5 for one spot he feels he messed up on his final run the first day, we get about an 8 second gap, shaving 4 seconds for alien level driving, this leaves about 4 seconds, across 2 60 second courses to make up. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that 2 of the top 3 PAX times for the *entire* event were in my class... the third being Billy Davis in CSP... for a second straight year.</li>
<li>Billy Davis is just amazing... he set top pax for the entire event, with a car that was running on only 3 out of 4 cylinders on the first day... This also suggests that maybe there's even more than 2 seconds/60 to be gained via driving... but probably I'll never get THAT good.</li>
<li>OPR (other people's rubber that sticks to your tires) is a huge issue. I WILL have a portable generator to run a multi tool for removing OPR next time I go to nationals. Any other method of removing it is just insanity. </li>
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All in all, it was a fabulous experience, and I want to do it again, if for no other reason than to prove I can do better than 10th of 17... I'm pretty sure I can, but you haven't done it until you've done it. The cars that took home trophies were all max built cars with excellent drivers, and 6th was a McLaren MP-12C. In it's present form I suspect my car can catch the McLaren given an "A-list" driver in my car and the same driver in the McLaren, but to trophy would take exceptional skill.<br />
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But for now... I have gained some experience and we can hope to learn from it for next time.<br />
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The car pushed a little, which I noticed on the last run of the last event before Nationals as well. Also, Bob noted that it seems like his FP TR6 had more ultimate grip, so I'm probably going to try some minor tweaks to soften the front slightly and add more camber in the rear... Even on concrete there was at least 3/4 of an inch of excess fender clearance, so I needn't worry too much about softening things slightly...<br />
<br />Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-26336240727898964102016-08-29T23:07:00.000-04:002016-08-29T23:32:46.219-04:00Busy Summer!I've had almost no time to maintain this blog lately. 50 hours has become
my easy week, with multiple recent 70 hour weeks. However, I have
manged (just barely) to sustain racing as well. The good news is that
things have been improving nicely through the season. Highlights since
the last blog entry...<br />
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TLDR; </h3>
Won Jeff Gordon Trophy, got top 10 at NER, FTD @ BMW, went to a pro solo, Did well at other events, <a href="http://www.the111shift.com/2016/08/busy-summer.html#videos">video of top ten run here.</a> <br />
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SCCA 6/19 (Points Event #4)</h3>
This event was a redux of the first event's co-drive with Brian Levesque. Every thing about this event was fabulous. The course was fun and fast, Brian's advice was helpful and the car was working well. Brian drove the car to 6th in PAX finally providing evidence that the car is solidly capable of a top 10 finish. (Ben took it to a 9th previously, but 9th and 10th are the bottom edge, and one can never know if it was a fluke or not, perhaps something only Ben can achieve...). Both Ben and Brian are fabulous drivers, but at 6th however, at least half the "regulars" in the top 10 had to have screwed up for it to be a fluke. I also had a very good result, with my best SCCA finish to date. 1.5 Seconds off of top PAX for 15th in overall PAX.<br />
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NE-SVT 7/16</h3>
Another excellent event, I managed to eventually find the 2nd fastest time of the day. The only car I couldn't catch was an E-modified Lotus 7 with a v6 engine... So I was the fastest production car of the day, but not quite able to truely say "FTD". Still, a crazy fun event. I got a second place prize shirt that says "Autocross, where the difference between winning and loosing can be 0.001." <br />
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SCCA 7/17 (Points Event #5, Racing against Leukemia)</h3>
This was a day of mixed results. My Co driver was Jeff Seeger who had driven last year, but this was his first time on the new wider tires. My results for the main competition were rather blah, a second or so off of the previous SCCA event, which punted me from 15th to 50th in PAX!! Holy stiff competition Batman! But that's just life in NER :). As nice as the previous course was, the course at this event unfortunately had one spot that really hit a weak spot in my setup. The big turn into the bus-stop 200 degree left-hander had it's braking zone on a series of bumpy cracks, and this set off my ABS on all but 2 runs. One of my worse runs was when it unexpectedly didn't ABS and I wound up stopping way too early and having to let off and re-brake (which then of course did proceed to activate the ABS and take me long anyway...). <br />
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As it turned out I was one of the top 4 fund raisers for the Race Against Leukemia again (other folks need to up their game!), so I got to race for the Jeff Gordon challenge for a second year in a row. This time I got to race first against Bob Lang, who was driving a B Modified formula car. So once again formula car vs Lotus (PAX/RTP time scoring). My run started with a big ABS and overshoot at the troublesome spot and an additional mistake on the main run way, probably with a cone or two. I knew I probably blew it, but I just kept going, stayed on course, and finished strong anyway. Always finish the race. As I began to pack up my stuff disconsolately I was amazed to learn that Bob had gone off course! ... ALWAYS finish the race. Never give up.<br />
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Next up was someone in an Street class car who's name I have unfortunately lost track of, but my vague memory is that he and his previous opponent were good fund raisers, but fairly new to the sport. None the less, I resolved that I was NOT going to screw up this run... And I did finally put down a fairly decent run, which was faster than my fastest run of the day in class competition. The result: I won! So for a year I get to keep this huge trophy on my mantle! <br />
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Wilmington Summer Pro Solo </h3>
I had originally hoped to get my car down to this event, but transport options turned out to be unavailable. So, I wound up getting my first taste of Pro Solo competition in Sam's STS Honda CRX. It was a lot of fun, but Given that it was FWD (not RWD), street tire (not Hoosier), on concrete (not asphalt), with no abs (vs abs in my car)... I had a bit of trouble getting a handle on it, so the big accomplishments were to A) actually get my butt out to a pro solo, and B) not screw up any of the starts ( I had 3 starts in the .5xx 6 starts in the .6xx range and no red lights). We won't talk about my times... You can go look those up if you feel a strong need to be underwhelmed :)<br />
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BMW club 8/6 </h3>
Having just spent a bunch of time fudging around on a totally foreign setup I figured it would be a good idea to get re-acquainted with my car. The day was fabulous, and I discovered that I really really like Hoosiers better than street tires... so much so that I scored my first ever FTD (fastest time of the day). This was the real deal. I actually went faster than everyone else, within competition runs, and no * or "but" about it. <br />
<h3>
SCCA 8/7 (points Event #6)</h3>
I went into this one with a new motto of "no slow runs." This is an exhortation to myself to not allow my self an early safety run, or "motor course walk" but to go full tilt from the start. I did my best to put up a decent time in the first 3 and wound up 2.8 off of top PAX at the half way mark. On my first run of the afternoon I found 1.5 seconds which would have been enough to replicate my 15th place finish from 6/19, except somewhere I apparently acquired a mystery cone. I never found out where, but the next run was only 1.0 second pick up, and top PAX moved by .9 sec, so I wound up 2.7 sec back from top PAX, and 24th place. This was, however, good enough to win the class. <br />
<h3>
Renegade 8/13</h3>
Had a very good day, and came very very close (again) to beating Sam Creasy on PAX, but coned it away. Sam has been hard to beat because he reliably puts up consistently decent runs. I clearly can run faster, but I have trouble doing so consistently. This time my fastest run was 69.3 seconds and my second fastest was 68.1 + 1 cone... for a net time of 70.1. Again I fell victim to a mystery cone that I probably just barely based. Without that cone, I would have been almost a second ahead of Sam and would have had a second "true" FTD ... and Renegade is a much harder club than BMW. But a cone there was. FTD there was not. Such is autocross. Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades.<br />
<h3>
SCCA 8/28 (Points Event #7)</h3>
Absolutely picture perfect day for Autox. Mid 80's not too humid, tires worked well and not too hot. Also was on sticker A7's which Alan was helping me scrub in. First run was trash, the release compound was not fully scrubbed off. Second run, I *was* looking ahead, but I picked up the wrong cone, and my line was all wrong resulting in massive Conage. Third run I was thinking about not making the same mistake, and made another mistake on the element before, not paying attention to the present, I tried to drive the taxiway exit in a similar fashion to the last 3 taxiway exits in that direction... but brake late and sweep was not the recipe for this one and I spun. 11 cones in the morning. Stupid mental mistakes.<br />
<br />
In the afternoon I finally settled in, had a mediocre first run, and then a really good second run. The third run I actually lost grip in the rear in front of the tower and drove really well thereafter. I made up the lost time and was slightly ahead of the previous run, but got slightly late in the finish, and then the car pushed under acceleration. I was headed straight for the outside row of cones in the finish, and that could damage the car if I center-punched them all. So I tried to lift just a bit to get my nose inside the cone wall, and I did, but unfortunately that was also enough to spin the car. But standing on my 2nd afternoon run I won the class by 0.1 seconds and got my first top 10 finish at NER. Granted it was on a day with 132 registrants, and panda was breaking. My comments about 9th/10th being a possible fluke apply here too, but I did beat every raw time Panda did put up before it broke, so it's still a pretty good day.<br />
<br />
Here are videos of Alan an my best runs:<br />
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<br />
Going into this event, I had a virtual lock on SSM class because none of the other competitors put in a consistent effort this year. This leaves me extremely likely to get a jacket that says NER class champion, but with the first half of the year having been a string of 2nd places, I've been feeling like it's the jacket I didn't want... one for attendance only. With that in mind, I've been pretty intent on showing some sort of improvement in my PAX rankings. In 2014 when I missed the season championship by 0.051 seconds, the competition for season PAX was not nearly as strong as this year. If I equal or exceed my 19th place finish from that year, I will feel like I have earned the jacket anyway. This result, a 96.82 (out of 100 possible) in PAX points definitely helps with that. I should now move up from 24th to something like 20th. One more really good day so I can shed my 92.80 and gain another 3-4 points will probably do the trick. Definitely looking forward to Leafy's return next year.Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-51288767128257129832016-06-01T00:13:00.000-04:002016-06-01T00:13:51.986-04:00Season Under WayAll the pent up heat from cold weather this spring apparently got unleashed on us in one blast last Saturday. The second Renegade Miata event was the polar opposite of the first. The first was 50 degrees and windy, This one was 95 degrees and sweltering. Someone apparently determined that the pavement was 130 degrees in the sun. Tires were being sprayed BEFORE the first run. It was HOT. However, my car is generally a good car to have in hot weather with it's monster tires and light weight. Cold weather is a challenge, so as uncomfortable as the heat was, it was in some ways a very welcome change. I very much was interested to see how my car performed in such heat. The result was I managed to get a nice full day of runs where the only thing I needed to worry about was spraying the tires enough and driving. Mostly the tires were ok, though the 4th run of the morning they seemed to overheat, and gave out on me in a fast section. (my liberal application of throttle was also possibly to blame, but it worked the run before more or less). But overall, it was possible to manage the heat with spray water. I had fun, and by the end of the day I began to really feel like I understood the car again and was beginning to push it. My best time of the day got me something like the 5th raw time and while still rough in spots again, looked something like real autocross...<br />
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<br />
The very next day was the 3rd SCCA event, and the weather had evidently expended all of it's pent up heat, and was now 60 degrees and cloudy all day. Still better than anything mentioned in the last post, but not exactly warm either. The day went fairly well and I feel like I made some further progress getting comfortable with the car, finishing on 2 fast clean runs. Bob, my Co driver also seems to be settling in and learning the car. Here are our fastest two runs:<br />
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<br />
The data isn't showing as high of a G forces as I had hoped I would get with the new wheels, so soon I'll be looking to suspension setup to try to find more grip. On this particular day I turned out to be the fastest driver. Comparison of our two best runs shows he was faster in some parts early, but i was even faster in the final half of the run.<br />
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Finally a comparison of my best two runs...<br />
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<br />
Sector times seem to indicate I could easily have had another 0.75 sec, and perhaps even a full second without doing anything particularly new. So my coulda-woulda-shoulda time is something like 61.3 or so, which would have been 22ish in pax, and made my car the 3rd fastest vehicle (with doors) at the event. That's the type of result I want to become "ok" for me by the end of this year, with "good" being well into the top 20. Around here "well into the top 20" means putting at least a few nationally competitive folks behind me on their off days. That's the goal at least :)... it's a tough crowd and we've been gaining young talent in the last couple years. But really, that's normal, so I just have to drive it!Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-46506058415336892732016-05-27T12:23:00.000-04:002016-05-27T12:23:37.422-04:00A chilly startThis year started with very cold early April and early may weather. The first event was so cold I had to cancel a registration for the first time in years. Thus my very first time out on the new setup was an SCCA points event. Overall the spring has been less than kind to autocrossers. My experience so far has been:<br />
<ul>
<li>NE-SVT #1: Registration <b>filled up</b>, was very cold anyway... </li>
<li>BSCC #1: 28 degrees F in morning forcasted, <b>canceled</b>. Snowed the day before </li>
<li>SCCA #1: Cool, dry, tweaking setup & trying to remember how to drive, but on a completely different feel... only 4 runs dsq due to sound </li>
<li>Renegade #1 Cool, dry, slow tight course, car felt very loose </li>
<li>SCCA #2: Cold, Rain AM, one Dry run in cool conditions afternoon, car felt better than previous (faster course? Aero helped by use of soft top?) </li>
<li>TC USA #1: Cold, Rain AM, PM drying Couple Dry runs </li>
<li>NE-SVT #2: Cool, Rain AM, Dry Afternoon, pavement warming quickly, first really good weather but only 3 dry runs b/c tires corded. </li>
<li>NCR-Porsche #1: Cool, but dry and partly cloudy. High in mid 60's. </li>
</ul>
At the first SCCA event, My co-driver Brian was helpful in spotting the first issue to crop up,
which was my front shock settings needed to soften a little. The initial
turn in had gone numb probably from the increased sway bar setting.
This was then followed by mid corner over steer. The net effect was that
one turned in and began to compensate for under steer and just as you
started to get that under control the car quickly went into mid-corner
over steer. This wasn't actually disastrous, and could be caught, but it
generally cost speed and distracted one from focusing on the line.
With changes we got it to the point where the oversteer was consistent
and predictable, and thus more driveable. Then we got Disqualified for violating sound.<br />
<br />
Subsequent testing with a sound meter in the following week (Thanks Jeff!) led to the belief that putting the closed end on the super trap would solve what appeared to be a highly directional exhaust sound problem. So far there have been no subsequent violations, but as noted above, the events have been less than ideal and rarely allowed me to fully utilize the car.<br />
<br />
At the first Renegade event the weather was cold, and the course was very tight, rarely allowing speeds much above 45mph. In these conditions with no soft-top, the car was very loose and not very confidence inspiring. Ben drove my car and although he managed to shave over 4 seconds off my times, he concluded that the car was "just too loose" and lacked the "balanced feel" that it had last year.<br />
<br />
After that things went wet on me. The next 3 events all rained for at least half the event. There were dry moments however, and interestingly the car felt more predictable than at the renegade event, perhaps this is because the rain had caused me to put the soft top on, and this decreased the turbulence, and improved the performance of the wing. The best conditions thus far came at the end of the SVT event, whereupon my tires promptly corded... (big sigh).<br />
<br />
Luckily I had already ordered replacements and so I showed up at NCR
porsche with brand new sticker Hoosier A7 tires. It took a couple runs
to get them scrubbed in, and I started to get a feel for it by the final
morning run but all runs were still dirty. Finally in the afternoon, I
got what I had been waiting so long for a full afternoon on consistent
tires with consistent conditions. First I equaled my fastest run with a
clean time, then improved with cones then got a clean time a couple
seconds faster and finally on my last run set a GOOD time, that would
have been FTD for production automobiles, except I slightly clipped a
cone with my left tire. It wasn't dramatic, but I did hear it and it
totally counts, but it's also probably worth no more than a tenth or
two, so while I had to settle for 5th raw time, 3rd among cars with
doors. <br />
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Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-48715938002661259672016-03-31T23:34:00.000-04:002016-04-07T08:21:26.918-04:00Ready for 2016Changed (+17lbs):<br />
<ul>
<li>Front: 275/35/15 on 10.5" wheels from 205/45/16 on 6.5" wheels</li>
<li>Rear: 275/35/17 on 10.5" wheels from 245/45/17 on 7.5" wheels</li>
<li>800 lb/inch rear springs from 650 lb/inch</li>
<li>8mm higher rear height to prevent spring rattle (need tenders) </li>
<li>Stiffer front sway bar setting to compensate for spring change</li>
</ul>
Maintained:<br />
<ul>
<li>Front pads/rotors </li>
</ul>
Removed (-9lbs):<br />
<ul>
<li>Mudflaps, </li>
<li>Front fender liners, </li>
<li>Fiberglass around wheel well to prevent rub.</li>
<li>Wheel spacers</li>
<li>Side verticals on splitter (comply with new rules)</li>
</ul>
Photos:<br />
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Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-12655221449830858312016-02-03T18:00:00.000-05:002016-02-03T18:00:03.317-05:00Onward and outwardOk so I've been lazy about posting here again. A quick recap and on to next year...<br />
<br />
2015 was a sub-optimal year. At the start of the year the new LSD forced me to spend some time learning how to control my overly binary right foot. This is the sort of thing that was good for me but not good for my times. The best part of the year came right around the Evolution Performance Driving school, where I seemed to drive particularly well. I also did well at the Renegade Miata event mentioned in my last post. At SCCA events through out the year, I was having new co-drivers every event, and while all of them were excellent, nice helpful people, my own internal psychology left me self conscious, and there were some badly handled first runs, including one with the e-brake partly engaged. Generally, I calmed down by 2nd or 3rd run, but my times suffered since the first run or two didn't really give me a feel for the course.<br />
<br />
Even worse, by the end of July and middle of August, the adhesive capsulitis of my shoulder that had started with an injury in March progressed to the point where it was interfered with my race prep and possibly my driving. By September, I could hardly lift my arm to 45 degrees to the side and I was getting cortisone shots instead of lap times. I had to miss my first SCCA event in 5 years. With several weeks off and the start of PT, I managed to come back for the Stirling Moss Finale event, and an NCR porsche event before parking it for the winter.<br />
<br />
In the last couple events at the end of the year there were some rays of hope. I started softening up my front sway bar, and discovered that that helped greatly with turn in at high speed. At the Moss event I was relieved to be back racing and with the perspective of having missed some driving, I really just wanted to drive. As a result I finally didn't give a crap about what my co-driver might think, and I was really pleased to be able to post a faster official time and a faster raw (+1) time than my very skilled co driver who has many more years of experience (but no prior seat time in my car).<br />
<br />
And so for next year... <br />
<br />
I'll be moving outward... well my tires will be at least. Next year I will have 10.5" rims with 275 wide Hoosiers. These should be the last major non-power change to my car. For the previous seasons, I have been running 205 fronts on 6.5" rims and 245 rears on 7.5" rims. This is the setup that the super-stock elises use, which is limited by their inability to change the wheel width. The result is a fairly pinched setup, and 20% less rubber on the road than is allowable in SSM. I'm hoping that the new tires will make the car at least 1s faster... maybe more.<br />
<br />
To offset weight gain from the wheels and stave off fuel starve I hope to add a lightweight Aluminum gas tank, sometime early in the season. Between the 9lbs savings there and fiberglass, mudflaps and fender liners that will disappear or be reduced with the new wheels, I hope to keep the weight close to what it was last year, perhaps even make progress if I find the time to install a rear-oil cooler setup (eliminating all the piping that runs from the front to the back and 2 heavy oil coolers (and the oil they hold). Most of the lotus community sees these oil coolers as an over-design by lotus, and some replace them because they are not happy with the low oil temperatures they cause.<br />
<br />
There are a few more mods around the chassis, but not much significant after this. There is probably some tuning to do, and at some point it's likely I'll need new shocks which will be a big ticket item, but hopefully next year it will be time to start on adding power to the engine via head work and tuning. Since this is a minimum weight focused build, I feel the car should be nearing a competitive form in the class, and a trip to nationals or national events will be worthwhile. I wouldn't be expecting the car to win at nationals yet, but if me or my co driver can nab trophies that would be a nice start. I think a really top driver might threaten the podium in my car in the coming year, but that will probably take more talent than I am likely to show just yet.<br />
<br />
The primary obstacle to this plan is transport since I don't have a trailer or tow vehicle. Therefore, any co-driver that can provide transport to national events, can drive for free at SCCA events (local and national) through the full 2016 season.Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-3375527118745290542015-07-11T10:42:00.000-04:002015-07-11T15:07:27.229-04:00CompetitionThe worst thing in racing is to be the only person racing. Without competition, it's just not much fun to win. This year, I don't lack for competition. Practically everyone in the class (who has showed up for more than one day) has a season championship. I'm pretty much the only one without a local jacket, and <a href="http://www.scca.com/events/1967548-2015-tire-rack-toledo-prosolo">just recently</a>, Johnathan Leith (Leafy) made me the only regular driver in the class to not have a trophy at a national event outside NER. (Congratulations to him!!). There's a danger that come September he'll also make me the only regular competitor to not have a trophy at nationals.<br />
<br />
I have a wealth of good competitors this year which is excellent. So far this season, I've been pretty lazy about updates here and I finally took some time to update my standings page. Not surprisingly, with the improved competition, my results are not as good at this point in the year as last year. That said, my times simply haven't been as good as last year either. I ended my streak of hot season starts, and this time I had pretty crappy days for my first few events. <br />
<br />
Things are beginning to look up however, I fell short at our national tour, but I was in the hunt until the middle run of the second day, and in fun runs at the last Renegade Miata event I posted my first ever FTD (fastest time of the day). There is one really fast person (Grant Reeve) who didn't show up to that normally does, but I've had that opportunity at least half a dozen times in the last few years and not been able to take advantage. Next goal is to do it when Grant is there, and BEFORE fun runs :).<br />
<br />
The other likely significant thing about the last event was that it was the 3rd weekend in a row, and 4th day Autocrossing in 14 day span. Seat time helps! So tomorrow, I'll be at the Evolution Performance Driving school challenge school to work on the seat time and get feedback from their excellent instructors. Lets hope that helps me take it up a notch. With this crowd I'll need it!<br />
<br />
<br />Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5050726993427976280.post-45353728592867320482015-06-10T21:59:00.000-04:002015-06-10T22:00:01.704-04:00Like LSD man...Ok sorry for the goofy title, I couldn't resist. So after doing all the work of pulling out the transmission, it became very clear that I want to minimize the number of times I do this. It's sort of fun in a way, but it really does take a lot of time and effort. So besides replacing the tattered, clutch that was probably a hairs breadth from grendading like this one:<br />
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<br />
The flywheel, and the Limited Slip Differential (LSD) were also installed. Basically, as a consultant, my time can be converted to money fairly readily and long term it's cheaper to do it all at once.<br />
<br />
The flywheel is the Fidanza Aluminum flywheel, which shaves 6.8lbs off (about 45%) the stock. The clutch plate itself is only an ounce or two lighter, but it has less mass near the edges, and the clutch plate cover and pressure plate is a pound less, so the total weight savings should be about 8lbs of rotational weight. <br />
<br />
The LSD will offset that somewhat, adding back a couple pounds or so, but the diameter of the added rotational parts will be small, so perhaps 5-6 lbs off the car, and even more reduction in rotational inertia. PLUS power will now be available in the corners!<br />
<br />
Only one problem... with great power comes great responsibility. It turns out that a lot of the time I've not been very gentle with the throttle. The LSD exposes this flaw in my driving in 2 ways. First, if lateral grip is not at maximum, but the car is turning, when the LSD locks up, this results in power only on the outside wheel (since the axel has become solid the inside wheel with less weight and traveling a different radius must slip). That tends to torque steer the car into the turn. This is potentially useful, but also throws you off if you are not used to it. Second, if you are at the limit of lateral grip, adding power now causes the OUTSIDE rear wheel to slip... and that will tend to make the car want to spin.<br />
<br />
So while the LSD unlocks a new level of potential speed, the open diff will tend to save you from yourself, and is slightly easier to drive. My first event on the new LSD was quite disappointing because I was discovering that my throttle work needed work. After about 5 events, now I'm getting used to it and learning to ease onto the throttle and not be on/off the throttle as violently, and may just be beginning to reap the benefits of the additional speed in the corners.<br />
<br />
Other notes on the changes I made... the lighter flywheel seems to make it slightly harder to get the car to actually turn over, which puts my present battery solution right on the very hairy edge... I probably need to think about setting up a cold weather jump system to ease the wear and tear on my starter when I have to leave for a race in the early AM. Mostly I just need an easy way to get jumper pack clamps on the battery.... without risking a short. The present space is pretty tight.Gus Heckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17335051366883822322noreply@blogger.com0