Monday was Test Day...

Took Flipper on back on the Track on Monday for a Gasoline Alley Test Day. I started by driving the car slowly again, as I did on Friday, keeping the revs under 5500RPM for the first session. Drove for 20 laps on  track that was a little wet in spots. Oil pressure and engine temperature stayed good.

Took the car after lunch for another 20 laps, this time up-shifting at 5900RPM and avoiding being past 6000RPM most of the time. Again, engine oil pressure and temperature were fine.

Finished with another 20 laps, this time allowing the car to rev up to 6500RPM, never hitting the rev limiter. I noticed the oil pressure creeping ever so slightly down by 1-2 PSI, with a minimum pressure of 49PSI. Under full acceleration, oil pressure what 52-54 PSI and seemed good. Engine seemed good again.

The track was slow, or I was slow and only lapped low 1:32s/high 1:31s Temperature and humidity was very high (>90F) and this might be why.  Put 60 laps on the car and this is a very encouraging step forward.

At least I was consistent, as shown below:

I fell like the car is running. Planning to have the oil replace for this coming weekend (from breaking-in Dino oil to synthetic) and hoping that RP gets a chance to dyne the car again. It was Dyno'ed at 113.2HP before driving the car on Friday and Monday. The old engine was producing 111.1HP, so it is a small improvement.

Where is Season 2015??

MARSS 1 came and went very quickly... Practice day demonstrated how just changing the oil pump and not checking the crankcase bearing can lead to trouble...

Had the car out during the Friday Practice Session and oil pressure dropped after 10 minutes.... shut the car off but crankcase bearing had failed.

This led to yet-another-engine rebuild. MARSS 2,3 and 4 were away so MARSS 5 is the next opportunity to get the car on the track. Took the new rebuilt engine out last Friday for the FATT and engine seemed to run, although I kept the revs under 5000RPM. The front (upper and lower) tie rods were replaced and this seemed to have helped quite a bit and the car just turns in better and there is no longer any variation in the steering wheel.

Bret at RP was very supportive with this last repair and I am cusiously optimistic that the car will be fine for racing on MARSS 5, next week. There is another test day tomorrow (Gasoline Alley Test Day) and I will be going to drive the car a bit more and to clean up the inside a bit. 

Aside from this, car looks clean and ready to go! Crossing fingers!

2015 Season nearly here!

With March ending and the weather (slowly) getting warmer, MARSS 1 is coming up. Two more weeks only to get the car ready.

The car was painted over the winter and new decals were ordered. We have started getting these on the car. RP has been working on getting the car ready. Engine seems to dyne around 112-115HP which should be enough to get good laps around the track. Car is however leaking oil and might need a new oil pump. Crossing fingers that this can actually be fixed before MARRS1. I yet have to be able to take the car out this year to shake it down.

I have more decals to add to the car but the pictures below show how it looks right now. A huge step forward when you compare it to what it looked like for the last two years :-)

The end of the 2014 Season!

Saturday, 22nd of November marks the end of the year as far as track time is concerned. It was the FATT Instructor Appreciation Day and I had a chance to get Flipper on the track for a few sessions. I had my pit crew chief with me, Sam, and that really helped as I did not have to worry about tire pressure and monitoring. The cold track contributed to some front tire flat spotting in Turn 1 but the car felt good and more sorted out than earlier this season. I was able to work on specific turns to bring my time down. Harry Laptimer and the new iPhone 6+ worked out very well. The larger display really helped in keeping track of the telemetry and live timing. The displaying of constant delta time with respect to a fast lap is really useful as I could immediately see if my exit was faster. I had a really good lap near the end of the day with a 1:28.36. This is my new personal best lap record and a great way to finish the season!
I am now looking forward to getting the car painted and ready for 2015!

Body Work Time!

Season is over, engine is more or less working and car needs a reward.

It is now being treated to new body panels (hood, fenders, front bumper). It is ready to go get freshly painted in a few weeks.

Click on picture below to see photos.

2014 MARRS 7 and 8 - Labor Day Double is here!

Four full days at the track and three days of racing. That is the Labor Day Double Weekend at Summit Point and is a blast.

Flipper got fixed. RP changed the head and re-used the race-prepped valves. The result is an increase from 103-105 HP to 113-114HP and the car felt very good. During Test Day on friday, Flipper immediately delivered 1:29's laps and I a 1:29.457 on Saturday's Qualifying Session, placing me 16th on the grid. The afternoon race was a 10 laps sprint race and went well, as I was able to keep up with the mid pack for the first time. I gained a few positions and finished 13th with a fastest lap of 1:29.863 (2.3s off the lead).

The Sunday Qualifying went even better with a 1:29.135 (2.16s off the leads) and a 15th position. The afternoon Sunday Race was really dicy as it started to rain hard. Pushing to keep with cars just as rain got stronger, staying off the throttle in turn 4 a bit too much to avoid Luis in front of me and it is all it took to unsettle the car and go into a spin. I was very very lucky and avoided the tire wall completely and was able to get back on the track, un-harmed. This happens around 10:30 in the following video. After a couple of laps to regain my concentration, I then caught up with Luis again, which was nice, but was not enough to be able to get my spot back. The video of the full race is here:

Finally, it was time for the 18 laps Monday Race. It was dry all day but started drizzling as I was belting in. Thankfully, it was not a repeat of Saturday and the track as mostly dry. I had a horrible start on the outside and ran out of track and lost 4 positions in turn 1 as I hit the dirt. I had to fight for the next 18 laps to try to gain some positions back. I kept the same (in insight) bonehead move in the inside of turn 1 and 6a and eventually came together with the car in  front of me. While it did not waste much of my time, I had to spend the rest of the race to catch up and managed an opportunistic pass just before the last turn of the last lap. Overall, a somewhat messy race that shows that there is a lot more to race craft than going fast. The video of the full race can be viewed here:

One thing I have learned for sure is that having a car that is faster does not make for a better race driver. I found myself stuck behind several cars many times during the whole weekend and really need to work on race craft. An example of boneheadedness is trying to sneak on the inside of turn 6a. This was just stupid and kept killing my speed for the whole Carousel. A perfect example is shown here, in a picture take by Mike Kelley. I should have stayed on the line and been right on Luis' bumper to pass in after turn 9. Lesson learned!

2014 MARRS 5 - Go go go!

MARRS 5 came and went. Took part of the Practice Day on Friday, waking up early and getting to the track before 8am. Worked on my cool suit electrical connection, removing many iffy electrical cables and replacing them with something cleaner. Also replaced the potentiometer in the console control panel with a proper FAST timer. The timer is nice and works nicely. It comes with a funky Handerson connector and I had to hunt one down on Thursday but found a pair so that the installation could be as clean as possible. Also mount a new RAM mount on the center console to hold my phone while driving. All of that work, including switching tires for some new (old) takeoff tires, checking oil, cleaning windshield, torquing wheels, etc... too a couple of hours. I therefore had to skip a couple of test sessions. It was a light day and we only ran two run groups on Friday so there were plenty of driving sessions, 20 minutes apart.

The car ran fine in the afternoon and the electrical glitches seem gone. Car felt somehow less responsive than I remembered the old engine did. RP did not have time to dyno the car so I have no idea how many HP the engine is producing but it seems that it is a lot less than the 115-120 that the car had last year with the old head. I am hoping that this is caused by the car not really having been tuned up but we will only find out once I can get things set up to get the car really properly checked out. Last time I saw the car being dyno-ed, during the MARRS 4 weekend, the car was making less  than 105 HP. I was told that it was because the tires were shot but I am not sure I believe that is the whole problem. During Practice Day, Flipper was hardly any faster that the RP 71 rental, which is an SSM and not an SM. I also seemed to only be able to keep up with SSM cars. But the car ran and I was rather happy about that. This was the most track time I had in over 6 months.

Saturday came and it was time for the Qualification and the Qualifying Run. My fears about the car being sluggish (or the driver) were confirmed as my times were not great, even after switching to a new set of Hossiers. The new tires gained me 0.5s or so but I was still really off the pace and qualified 18 our of 21 for Sunday's Race with a lap time of 1:30.5.

Obviously, with a  car (or a driver) this uncompetitive I had to adjust my attitude for the big race on Sunday. I started on the grid being car 17 and was determined to make the best of it and see if I could at least have a race against the SSM cars running (slow) in the SM group. 

The race was a lot of fun and I had to fight like hell, made several mistakes, but ended up driving the car faster and consistently. I learned to drive a slow car faster and in a way it was more rewarding than driving a fast car slow. The race video is available here and you can see that there was quite a lot of fighting back and forth for the 18 laps of the race with two other cars. I ended up 14 out of 21 in a pretty fast group, which made me moderately happy.

What is next? I need to figure out what is going on with the car and why SSM cars can pull away from me in a straight with no drafting....

The entire video of the race, which include the driver's view from Car 17 too can be found here.

2014 MARSS 4 - Practice Day - Driving the wheel off the car!

Following the mayhem of MARRS1, this race weekend was meant to be a shakedown for  my car, Fipper. Practice day was friday and, if the car checked out, I would run MARRS4 on Saturday and Sunday.

Session 1 started well enough, using my (very) old set of Hossier tires, with very low 1:30.x lap times. The new dummy light panel, installed by RP Performance worked well and provided me with a bit of reassurance that the engine was at not point about to blow up on me. The engine still seems a bit down on power but worked well.

Session 2 was my first time using my new FAST cooling shirt with my homemade cooling box and (steampunk) plumbing. That also worked well and really kept me cool and was really a good reward for the many trips to Home Depot to get the proper bits to get all the pipes connected. The potentiometer on the central panel seems wrong and does not seem to allow for the maximum water flow rate however and this is something I will need to sort out.

However, while the car was running well enough, and as I tried to take the left hander, uphill, turn 3 with a little less braking and more speed, the front right wheel hub broke off! This caused me to immediately loose all steering as a loud banging noise was accompanied by the view of my front right tire fall off the car and carrying on on it merry way while I jumped across the gravel pit. The car slid past the gravel pit and onto the slippery grass but I somehow kept it from running into the tire wall. It could have been  worse and the only damage, aside from a lost hub, brake piston, caliper, disk and wheel, was a torn right fender (shredded by the wheel as it left he car). Watch the video here.

The car was quickly put back together but I had to skip one and a half test sessions while it was fixed and a new fender was attached to the car and the my new set of SM7 wheels were put on the car. Went out for three laps, after setting the tires to 26 pounds of pressure. Came back and measured pressures of 31 pound on all wheel except on the rear left one, which happens to be the brand new tire and the same rim where a new SM7 tire blew up during the first lap of the Quali race of MARSS1. Suspicion got the best of me and we found a leaking valve stem, likely the cause of the flat in MARSS1. 

But things happen in three... so of course the next step was to find that one of the wheel  lug nut was seized to the wheel stud and the stud was spinning in the hub itself. Unable to change the wheel, I had to skip the final test day session and call it a day and a weekend. 

The plan is to know change all wheel hubs and nuts, as it is recommended to do regularly (and probably should have been done when I bought the car).

I am now looking forward to MARRS5 to see what will happen next... Stay tuned...

Screen shot of the in-car video showing the car skidding on three wheels while the driver side wheel carries on on its own.

Broken hub and missing wheel and disc brake... :-(

Damaged fender...

It took an hour or so to find the missing wheel in the shrubs, trees, thorns and poison ivy that are outside of Turn 3. Wearing shorts and sandals was not the best way to look for this wheel and it took a close look at the in car video footage to figure out where the wheel might be. Thanks to my friend Kai for helping out!

Closeup of the broken hub, still attached to the disc brake and the wheel.

New parts and bits being installed. Thanks Brian and RP!

Fender thrown away... Thankfully, this was the bad one to start with :-)

2014 SCCA PDX May 4th

Another mixed day at the track. Instructed a couple of (unfortunately more motivated than talented) students at the SCCA PDX. Took Flipper out for a shake down and promptly found another thing to add to my pre-drive check-list: Check the hood pins!

The hood came up open on the front straight at 100mph. It did not get ripped off completely and did not result in a broken windshield but the hood now needs some fix in'. :-(

2014 MARSS 1 - A lesson in keeping one's cool...

This was the first event of the season. Flipper was prepped, new engine (heads replaced, see earlier post), and importunity, SpaceMonkeyRacing logo and banners attached to the car. This car is starting to feel like mine and I like it.

Lesson learned: Something will always go wrong..
Case in point: Friday practice day, the car started loosing power and engine was hesitating in the straight. The car also felt a bit sluggish and underpowered. The tachometer was going nuts and jumping several 1000 rpms at once and was useless. When the car started cutting out, I pulled into the pits. That was a total of 5 laps maybe. It took several hours on the dyno to reproduce the problem. The wiring harness was inspected and fixed, as it had been patched by the previous owner and looked rather dodgy. The cam shaft angle sensor was swapped. The ECU was swapped. Nothing helped. Eventually, the Induction module was replaced and the car seemed to run, so I took the car out for the last session of the day. The car ran, the tachometer was still going crazy. After a few laps, I noticed the temperature gauge displaying 265 degrees. I pulled in, afraid that I have just managed to fry my new heads. The problem was  a broken alternator belt. That belt also drive the water pump so the engine was running with no cooling.

The belt was replaced, the engine was left to cool and was checked. No obvious damage to the head gasket as it came up to temp normally. You know the feeling you get when you think you just dodged a bullet: yes, that is the feeling I had. Took the car out for Saturday Qualifying. The car felt a bit slow, tachometer seemed to fix itself and worked again. I ran a relatively so so 1:30.1 lap. Harry Laptimer was reporting 1:28.9. So much for the reliability of Harry Laptimer. As soon as I drove into Impound, the car stalled. It stalled over and over again and eventually failed to restart and had to be pushed in my slot at RP. What followed was two hours of having the engine being looked at. The camshaft sensor was replaced again, so was the ECU, and the fuel pump. Engine still would not start. About 20 minutes before the Saturday Qualifying Race, Bret took a look and diagnosed it as another failed Induction Module. Module was replaced, and car sounded good. My brand new (and expensive at $200 a tire) SM7 tires were put onto the car to both cure these new tires and get a good qualifying time. These tires should have allowed me to be a second faster per lap (if the driver could keep the car on the track).

What happened instead is that as soon as the Qualifying Race started and I tried to take a right turn in Turn 1, the car pushed to the outside. It happened badly again at Turn 6, before the esses. Continued on as I as being passed between Turns 9 and 10 an then before Turn 1. Car felt powerless. By the time I made it to Turn 5, the left front tire started making some real noises and I barely could control the car: race over, after one lap. Brand new tire was flat and shredded. Inspection of the tire showed no punctures. Hossiers guys said they never saw this happen before. Yeah, thanks guys...

Good night of sleep, put old tired on the car and decided to take Hardship Lap on Sunday morning. The car felt good. TJ dynoed it for me and tuned it the night before and it seems fine, finally. I started the Sunday Race in 16th positions, had a decent race, especially considering the tires with 16 heat cycles (at least...). I moved up a few positions to 16th and ran my fastest lap ever with a 1:29.58. I will credit Bryan Price for giving me some good driving pointers on Saturday night, and on the RP team for having labored on the car until it finally ran.

In the end, this weekend was an interested weekend and a combination of one part frustration, two parts throwing money out of the window, and one part of good driving.

Because the weekend was not eventful enough, Harry Laptimer mis-functioned pretty much all weekend long. Besides reported inaccurate lap times (using a 10Hz XGPS bluetooth module), it also completely failed to control my GoPro Hero 3 Black. So I have next to no video for this weekend, except for the last few laps of Sunday's Race (Video here). By then, being off the pace by more than one second from the pack (old tires...?), it looks like I am doing test laps all by myself. I was actually under pressure from Josh and had to concentrate and push a bit so that he would not catch up. He made a mistake at the bottom of Turn 5 and that released the pressure and the last two laps were much simpler.

Having finished a race, getting credit for the event with SCCA, and having beat my lap record, I am surprisingly happy. It is now time to pay the huge bill and see when I will next be able to race.