The Road to ChumpcarThe home of "Apex of Failure" a crap-can racing team.

I took a couple hours today to do a little check up on the car.  Looks like we have a full team formed and ready for the next race (Laguna again!) in February.  This time around we have Chris and plus Matt and Doug from Free Range Racing.  This time around we are going to make a few slight changes that should make big changes to our results .

First up, how did the tires fare?

These are both of the fronts.  They have a pretty decent amount of tread left.  The outside edge definitely got the most wear.  We should probably get them flipped and try to get some more negative camber in the front suspension.

Brake pads look okay too.  At least for the next 7 hour race.  I’m a bit worried about the rotors.  We did have some major pulsation at the end of the last race.  They are grooved slightly.  I tried putting a gauge on it to measure any warping but I couldn’t hold them straight enough to get a reliable measurement.  I’m not sure what to do here.  Getting new ones is probably about as much as getting them turned.  Maybe its time to step up to a name brand with fancy slots or something?

I pulled the drain plug.  It sure looks okay to me.  I went ahead and cleaned up the threads a bit and got a measurement for the threads (M14x1.5).

I got the tap ready and cleaned up the threads in the oil pan as well.  They were a little worse off than the bolt.  I got a new crush washer and tightened it up.  Felt normal and snugged up good.

I also drained a gallon or so of water out so we could get some glycol in the car.  I’m going to start parking it outside again and I don’t want that water freezing.  Boy does the car hate being cold.  Runs great warm though.

I gave her a good oil change too.

I did a little R and R on steering wheel adapter.

The threads on everything look good.  The bolts must have just backed out a little.  One of our readers suggested drilling through it and getting hardware hard enough to go all the way through and putting nuts on the other end.  It might just get some fresh lock tight for now.

The wheels stepan got us are looking mightly nice right now too.  Maybe its time for another tire upgrade .

Our air filter is getting a little tired too.  It came with one of our previous donor cars.  We recharged it once but the metal mesh and filter element is getting a little frayed.  It’s probably time to do some service on this too.

Were thinking of putting an exhaust manifold on the car (now that we have our AIV down).  It’s going to make the exhaust louder, we might want to make a laguna seca elbow.

All in all, looking pretty good!

We’re heading back from our awesome day at Laguna Seca. Lots has already been posted on the Facebook page about the race this week but to sum it up in a word: AWESOME! The whole trip has gone about as well as it could.

The morning started out early. Our hotel was close to the track but due to the size of the parking lot we had to unhitch the trailer on a street a few blocks from the hotel and then drive the truck back to the hotel. The mechanics of the whole operation was pretty simple but it meant we had to leave more time to get to the track. The race track did not allow us on the premises until after 7am and the race started at 9am. As a result we had a very limited amount of time to unload the trailer, setup the pits, and last minute prep the race car.

Arrival at the track was pretty hectic. With only 3 drivers and no crew we had a lot to do and not a lot of time. Most of the pits had been claimed when we arrived and the pits were busy.  Luckily Greg with Racey Diva saved us a spot! (Thanks greg!)

Thankfully the new trailer is stupid easy to use. No hefting boxes out of the pickup, we can leave most everything in the trailer, roll the car out, fill the back with the pit equipment, and drive to the pits.

I think we had the whole pits setup in about 25 minutes, and then we set to work with the car. We were pretty close on all of the prep, only a few last minute things to check. I had already spent a bunch of time working out the bugs with the video setup.  On the trip down I tested out the camera run times and micro SD card capacities. I found out two quirks with the ContourHD and the memory cards we use, the mic gain is a little high on the recording side to get good sound quality in our videos. I dialed it back and found a good compromise that eliminated distortion. The other quirk was that micro SD cards of the types we use come formatted FAT-16 which means that they will never allow more than 4GB of recorded data. I discovered this as I transferred video that I had taken of the pre-race tech which you can view here. Once I re-formatted them as FAT-32 we were in business and able to record way more than 4GB per driver stint.

The rest of race prep was pretty simple, we went through the normal pre-race checklist, oil, tires, windshield. Chris added his beta telemetry kit to the vehicle, and I checked out our pesky oil leak that had cropped up since PIR. This is what I found:

I wasn’t terribly amused but there was nothing we could do at this point. The plug got cross-threaded somewhere along the way as we were fiddling with the temperature sender and while I’m sure we made note of it at the time, we never got around to fixing it and had totally forgotten about it on the way to the track. Instead of fiddling with it any more (and maybe making it worse!), we just left it.

I was up first to drive. I don’t know how this was decided (ahaha executive decision! -leo) but I was simply informed. I usually don’t like going first on the track, even though this wasn’t my first race, I still get the jitters before I get in the car. Given the rapid pace of the morning there wasn’t a lot of time to prepare, I had enough time to get the prep done, then wander over to the drivers meeting, quickly change into the race gear, and then get out in the car to hit the pace laps.

Everything was going quite well to this point, but of course, something always has to go wrong right? We went through the normal driver change stuff and right at the end before I was to go out, the radio didn’t transmit from the car. Looking down on the button we found the wires had pulled out of the button on the wheel completely. Somewhere along the way we had pulled the wheel too far from the mount and the button had suffered dearly.

(Leo Narrating at this point)  You can still run a race with one way radios so we quickly unplugged the PTT button and sent micah out on track.  We gave him updates as the green flag dropped and by his ability to keep turning laps, we assumed everything was ok.  Chris and I then started working on the button. Stripping some of the wires back, we were able to resolder the leads and reenforced it with some 5 min (that took an hour) epoxy.

Micah had a good stint pulling out a 1:57:674 as his best lap time.  We picked up a couple of positions from the low 30s (of 37) up to 25th.  Turns out we didn’t need the radio anyway.  We look a long pit stop (at least 8 minutes, 3 minutes + beyond the minimum).  We were concerned about the oil (we were still full), tire pressures, PTT button, and general driver fitment changes.  Everything went well, it just took time.  We could really feel the affect of only have 3 people on the team for this race.  Another crew would be made a big difference.

Micah reported he was concerned about temperatures.  Mainly oil temps and brake temps.  The water temps were solid though.  He was shifting a bit early to try to help manage the load.

I was next up to go out.  I decided to give it a shot uncorking it and watching.  Everything was fine and I got to really push it.  Even opening it up I only managed 1:58:601.  I think my biggest issue was the two up hill left hand turns.  They are super pucker corners.  I don’t think I was brave enough to take them at the proper speed.  Since they are up hill, you enter at a higher speed than you would ever expect to take a flat turn out.  Since you naturally decelerate a little due to the grade, you can really push it a lot harder.  The second left up hill was even worse as there was a nice comfy wall near by to keep you honest.

The cork screw was surprising.  I didn’t feel it was all that challenging, blind sure, but not that hard, or that important.  The turns leading up to it and after were much more important and challenging.  It’s almost that its just a “show” corner.

Awesome facility and I quickly found my confidence enough to start passing and moving up field.  I got us to 22nd even with the pit stop after my stint.  Our second pit stop was much better, getting closer to our 5 minute mark.  Chris was up next.

He managed a 1:57:434 and picked us up another couple of places up to 19th.

Temperatures running solid.  We were starting to pick up a vibration under braking.  Another sign that we aren’t cooling the brakes properly.

Micah took his second stint, pulled a 1:56:890.  I then took my second stint, I noticed that the wheel was starting to get a little loose.  Like there was play in our quick release adapter.  Was it starting to wear out?  Our two stints combined got us up to 15th.  We went to put chris in the car to finish us out for the race and I discovered the source of the issue.  The bolts on the quick release adapter were backing out!  A quick snug up got them put back in place.

Turns out the race was finishing a lot sooner than we had expected, which ended up cutting chris’s stint short.  The good news was that we were in solid for 15th!  A solid stint secured it for us!  Our best finish to date in a really competitive field.

The triumphant team and our steed!

Once again the trailer was awesome.  Packing up was so easy that we had time to party and make the awards ceremony with time to spare.

 Awesome race!  Flawless, it was one of the good ones.  Smooth, easy, fun, no (bad) drama!  I think with this race we have really solidified our platform and now have a good car that can finish races.  It’s time to start dialing in our stints, pit spots, and time to make the car a bit faster.  This winter, we have built up a pretty healthy project list.  Stay tuned for updates as I hope to get back in the swing up updating this here web-log.

ToDo, Winter 2011-2012:

Brake cooling
Fix the stripped oil pan plug
Fix the pin in our seat brace (it kept falling out in the position for chris/micah)
Build a charger box that has all the cradles for the radios and cables for phones and laptops.  To try to avoid the chrager mess that happens in the pits.
Micah’s balacalva isn’t fitting him so great and gets uncomfortable after an hour or so, so does leo’s helmet.  Gear upgrade time?
See if there is a permanent fix for the steering wheel adapter bolts.
Get our AIV down a little more (maybe an exhaust manifold?)
See if we can get our modified throttle body to work.
Another upgrade in tire width.
Time for a theme!
Work on our second motor, get it more ready… just in case.
… and many more I’m sure.

After 10 hours of towing through the night last night we arrived in Monterey, CA early this morning at 1am. As we pulled into the hotel we quickly realized that there wasn’t any parking for a truck with a 24′ trailer in the tiny little hotel parking lot. Some creative driving brought us to some surface streets nearby where we could park.

This morning the weather was beautiful. We hit up a little breakfast place this morning called “The Breakfast Club” and they had decent food. None of you care about this. We arrived at the race track for tech right at Noon. I think we’re all in awe of this place.

While we went through tech Toyota/Subaru were at that track testing and photographing their new joint venture:

We completed a few last minute tasks at the track in the trailer. The water level sender acted up and that was a three second fix, we also mounted the transponder. Everything is ready for tomorrow morning’s 9am start. We will have to partially unload the trailer to setup the pits, but this should only take 30 minutes or so.

I have also been working on our recording setup for the car. I have been doing some testing and if everything pans out tomorrow we’ll have recordings of all driver stints on the track. Tonight we’re heading to a chump dinner at 6pm and then probably an early bed time for our early start tomorrow.

Wish us luck on the track tomorrow. We’ll post an update when we can.

Before we head off to Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, CA this week it seemed reasonable to post results of our Fall Portland International Raceway October 2011 event participation. Prior to the PIR event Leo purchased a 1999 F250 for towing the car. The truck performed admirably and will surely come in handy for future events. No more bumming tow’s off of friends for Apex of Failure

We arrived on Friday about mid-day to participate in pre-race tech. Portland had one of the largest fields ever seen at a Chumpcar event and we spent from 11am to 5pm in a muddy paddock checking-in cars on the day before the race. All you chumps out there that show up at events without an established AIV, you really need to spend more time on it. Section 4 of the rules talks all about how to fairly and convincingly establish AIV for your car. Very few teams show up with all of this information, and many teams end up with penalty laps as a result. It’s also a giant pain in the ass to tech a car when there is no paperwork.

After tech we moved in to the pits, setup the not-so-easy-up (wrongly), offloaded the car and parked in the RV we took care of last minute prep and setup and then went to sleep for an early morning start on Saturday. Throughout most of the afternoon the rain had been coming down off and on, and as the sun went down the rain picked up in intensity. Things were looking quite wet for Saturday’s early morning start.

On Saturday we woke up at the track in the RV to a typical foggy and grey morning for the Pacific Northwest. The track was soggy and there was no sun to be found. Last minute car prep and breakfast were completed, only a few final tasks to complete. We were lucky enough to share the pits with Free Range Racing, another Portland Team. The morning was clearly going to be very wet and very slow with puddles of water across all parts of the course.

Kyle, our newbie driver for this race, was up to take the first stint in the car. As we finished the morning prep work we started to try to find the safety equipment for the car we discovered that the HANS device had been somehow forgotten in Eugene. Too late to go get it, but we couldn’t go out on course without it. Some quick work by Leo turned up a spare from the parts and safety equipment supplier in the paddock. Situated Kyle in the car and got him out on course just in time for yellow flag laps prior to the start. Everything was ready to go.

The first morning stint was slow. Really slow. Most cars were braking at pit-out to slow down in time for the front straightaway chicane. I think that’s at 800m or so on the course. Really slow. Despite the caution there were many cars out in the first hour. The back straightaway claimed at least two competitors, and many others were off on turns 10 and 11. For a while I wandered down to the chicane and observed several close calls, and if there weren’t problems going into the turn most everyone was ugly coming out of it as cars under then oversteer’d into and out of the corner. Nothing looked enjoyable about those first few laps.

Kyle kept it out of the wall and on the pavement for his whole 2 hour first stint in the car. At the end of his shift things started getting better on the course as the cars dried out the racing line and the fog started to lift a little. The car was driving great. We were running lower to mid pack and we weren’t having any mechanical problems at all. Quick laps would have to wait until later in the day.

After the first stop Chris stepped in for his first laps of the day. By the time he was in the car the line was dry but the track was wet outside the line. This made for some interesting racing as cars could easily get speed at the end of the straightaways but then things would go wrong in the braking zones. Chris also kept it together quite well and had a full two hour stint. The RX7 was having trouble making a full 2 hour stint on one tank of gas, but we were pushing as far as we felt comfortable without running out. Chris put in some fast laps with no incidents and we were starting to march our way towards the front. By the end of Chris’s shift the sun came out and the fog disappeared. The track was starting to warm and the racing was heating up as well.

My shift was next. I got in the car just after 12:30pm and had the best racing so far. The track was completely dry now and the air was cold. The car had none of the mechanical babying restrictions that we had introduced in Spokane to keep ourselves in the race. Tires were in good shape, the transmission didn’t have any shifting problems and best of all no overheating. Portland had made me nervous for awhile, more nervous than in Spokane. I still have fairly limited driving experience and the thought of a relatively small loop like Portland with 80 other cars seemed pretty intimidating. My traffic driving skills were unproven and I hadn’t driven Portland before so it was another heavy learning situation. My impressions of Portland is that it is a fairly forgiving track for newbies and it’s a lot easier to drive than Spokane. After a few slow laps I started to get the hang of it. The RX7 is so nicely balanced, even when you totally screw yourself in a corner with a late entry or just too much speed, you can really still save it without a lot of drama. I tried this out a number of times at PIR. By the end of my stint at an hour and forty minutes I was turning the fastest laps of the day for our team.

As I exited and Leo entered the car we were sitting in the mid-twenties neck and neck with Free Range Racing. Afternoon was upon us and things were going great. Leo pulled off a full 2 hour stint with the car and despite a little contact with Squirrels of Fury, we managed to keep things pointed in the right direction and we were still gaining spots. When Leo left the car we had drifted into the lower twenties and had several teams ahead of us that we were catching.

Kyle went back in the car around 4pm and he was finally able to get quality time behind the wheel on a dry course. He maintained or improved our position and we hatched a scheme. We had a little less the 5 hours left in the race and instead of trying to get everyone two stints in the car we would run as long as possible on the gas that was in the car to minimize stops. With our strategy we would be able to make the race a two stop battle, and perhaps pull into the top 15 or so.

Chris began his stint as the first fully dark laps of the night. The new headlights seemed to be helping out a bit more than in Spokane. The apex lights have always been really solid but the front flood lights never quite seem to provide enough light on the course. His night laps progressed and I prepared for another stint in the car, this time at night. As things worked out, I would be the last driver in the car and we were still neck and neck with Free Range Racing and gaining spots in the field. Chris pulled the car into the pits at 7:30pm or so and we had a sub-five minute driver change and fuel stop. I was strapped in and ready to go when the timer went off. As I pulled away from the pit wall I immediately knew that there was something really wrong with the car. It was lugging harder than I’d ever felt and it sounded like perhaps only one rotor was firing. I tried to radio in but the car radio was off and I was merging in traffic at night. I got on the radio as soon as I could turn it on and limped it around the course under half the power. When I pulled it back in we were optimistic we could fix it. It seemed like maybe it wasn’t a compression problem, the car seemed to have more power at high revs, only had terrible lugging at low revs. The crew sprang into action and I waited in the car as we replace plug wires, ignition coils, and MAF sensors. Nothing seemed to fix the issue. Twenty minutes went by and we decided to pull it behind the wall. 40 minutes later we called it a night as none of our fixes seemed to make any difference. We had compression but it seemed like there was a problem somewhere in the fuel system.

The team had had a great day, all of us had many solid laps, and although we were disappointed with the DNF, we were satisfied with the driving that we were able to do. The crew was tired, and we were out of parts to replace, rather than bust our balls fixing the car all night we decided to bag it and head home (very unchumpworthy). We discovered the problem 2 weeks later, bad secondary injectors. This turned out to be much trickier to diagnose than we thought and probably fixable at the track, but it would have taken a lot of guessing.

In the weeks between Portland and today we have been working a bit on the car. We fixed the injector problems and Leo purchased an enclosed trailer for the car. We’re all packed up and heading down to Laguna Seca on Tuesday for a 6 hour race. We will be running a skeleton crew at the race but we’re all just happy to have the chance at driving the corkscrew.

See all you chumps at the race!

We are getting geared up to go race at Portland International Raceway this weekend! On October 29th and 30th we will be joining our friends at Free Range Racing for what is shaping up to be a huge Chump event!

This weekend we have returning drivers Chris, Leo, Micah and newbie Kyle joining us for this two day event. The even features two races, one from 9am to 9pm on Saturday and another from 9am to 3pm on Sunday.

The car is shaping up relatively problem free for this weekend. The team has been meeting weekly to checkoff our car task list. Major projects for Portland include; hood replacement, water pump pulley overhaul, rear suspension swap (hopefully fixing toe-in issue from PIR last year), windshield (too many speed holes), oil temp monitor, and a sexy new dashboard.

All-and-all the car is running like a champion (for a chump car) and we are thrilled about the upcoming race this weekend. Our plans to better record the weekend fell by the wayside for this event but we will be taking some video and refining our process for future events.

We will be packing up on Thursday night and we will hit the road on Friday morning for and early afternoon arrival. Safe travels to all the Chumps heading to Portland this weekend.

Hey there ChumpCar chumps!  This is Micah, one of the newest members of “Apex of Failure” the (in)famous pacific northwest ChumpCar team.  Let me start out by saying that my hat is off to all of you who do this on a regular basis.  As a newbie going into the Spokane 24 hour endurance event I really didn’t know what to expect.  In fact I’m really new to this driving thing, let alone racing.  My driving resume prior to the Spokane event is as follows:

1. I don’t drive a car to work, I bike (yes bicycle) and my wife uses our daily driver
2. I have raced entry-level ( go-carts exactly twice
3. I used to watch a lot of “roundy-round” NASCAR as a kid growing up
4. Gee…that looks like fun
5. I have a drivers license and low insurance rates

Okay #4 isn’t really even experience, more like “ambition”, and #5 doesn’t count either, they give those things to idiots.   You get the picture.  On the other hand I have been around a lot of car people for much of my adulthood, and I’m not exactly new to motors and working on cars, I have a $100 22R home rebuild in the garage, but racing is a whole different ballgame.

It all started when Leo asked me if I’d like to race with his team in Spokane back in May.  Big leap of faith on his part.  To be honest with my wife firmly on another continent for the summer, it really just seemed like a good way to keep busy.  Prepping a car for racing, even a $500 race car, is serious business, and a serious amount of work.  I was at least “with it” enough to realize that part.

As the weeks went by and I was able to help out a little with the engine build and car prep, my attention shifted from, “gee I hope this thing works”; to, “holy god I’m going to drive this untested rotary motor (the apex of reliability, and a motor not-at-all famous for turning cars into fireballs) and this unfamiliar car that I can’t see out of from the drivers seat at top speed around a little narrow strip of asphalt with 40 other questionably operational cars”.  “Oh, yeah, by the way, the racing also happens at night”.  “Oh, and you’ll have to merge into live race traffic at over 100mph in a car you’ve never driven”, and best of all “if the motor dies again like it has at the last 3 races, you’ll probably end up doing your first stint in the car at night with no previous track time”.  I have never even done a lap on a track, or an autocross ride-along.  What on earth have I done?

So I went on blind faith that my long-time friend wouldn’t lead me astray.  I had heard about the history of the team, I knew that based on past race performances, we would probably end up doing a motor swap at some point during the race, and I had steeled myself for the possibility that I would simply end up wrenching with the team the whole time.  Hey that sounded less intimidating than going out on the track anyway.  At least it was something I am familiar with.  I borrowed some gear from Rob, one of the current team members that elected to sit this event out as a driver and instead help as support crew, and prepared for the weekend.

The team was prepped, the truck packed, and we departed for Spokane, WA from Eugene, OR.  The departure was exactly like this:

Only perhaps with less guitar riff building the drama and suspense…

We arrived in Spokane after a pretty epic 9 hour tow in a truck with 4 dudes and with what felt like church pews for back seats in the crew cab and with what seemed like a million pounds of stuff in the bed and on the 20 foot trailer, I looked out across the track, and at the other cars in the pits and the immensity of what we were about to do started to sink in.  Thankfully the team seemed to be pretty focused, and also low-pressure.  The goal was clear from top to bottom, across the team.  “Nothing fancy, we’re not here to win, lets just get a freaking car and engine to the finish line”.  Fair enough I can do that.

The newbie clinic had already started when we rolled, up.  I wandered over, found our other rookie driver, Chris, in the audience, and listened to the rest of the presentation by the regional director.  My spirits were buoyed by the sheer number of new drivers in the audience at the clinic.  At least I knew I wouldn’t be the only new guy out there.

After the meeting I joined the team back in our pits, we assembled our pit shelter and setup our generator and tools, and set about last minute preparations.  The light of the day began to fade, and a quick walk around the track with the team, many of whom attempted to race in Spokane in 2010, helped to familiarize me with the preferred gearing, and the racing line.   Let me just take a second to thank Leo, and Erik for their insight and assistance learning the course.  I asked a million questions as we walked and they patiently answered every one of them.  Walking around the course, that little bump at the end of the front straightaway doesn’t seem so bad, I bet I can do that flat out.  Teams, if you have new drivers, don’t hold back on the information, if your drivers aren’t asking questions, you should keep giving them information until they beg you to stop, or they start asking their own questions.

After walking the course, we headed to a nearby Econo Lodge to try to catch our last quality sleep before the long 24 hours of driving commenced.  Let me tell you, quality sleep is not what you get at a creepy Econo Lodge the night before a race in a room with three dudes while you are sleeping on a floor in the backpacking sleeping bag your brought for the next night at the track because the front desk wont let you put a cot in the room due to “fire hazards”.  Maybe they can develop a cot with a built-in fire suppression system so that next time I can get some sleep.  Also I think our teammate Rob summed up the pillows best by describing them as “sleeping on a pillowcase filled with oranges”.  I digress.

The next morning we were up early.  We packed quickly and headed back to the track.  The butterflies were already mounting. It was time to learn how to race.

–To be continued–

Our regular readers will be familiar with our past.  Our team scrappy little team, commonly known as “Apex of Failure”, has taken to the track 3 times now, and failed each time with massive engine failure(s) (that’s right, sometimes TWO in a race).  In the past months, we have been working to finally solve this problem.  A second motor was built up.  Expensive lessons learned, were applied.  So its fair to say, ChumpCar Spokane 2011 was a big race for us.  Most of the team has felt the burden of all false starts, so much so that few remain.  Rob, one of the founding members, came to crew and Stepan who joined us at our last PIR race, was here to drive.  In addition to my self, we had two fresh newbies (not even a track day between them!):  Chris and Micah.  I also called in a favor from an old friend at Free Range Racing, erik, our “ringer”.  In addition to rob’s crewing expertise my parents joined again as the Chump Chefs and Stepan’s family also came to lend some support.  Our full crew 5 drivers, and 5 crew was ready as were were ever going to be.

Spokane is the NW’s only true 24 hour endurance race.  Starting at noon saturday we would only get one 1hr safety break from 7pm to 8pm before taking the checkered at 1pm on sunday.  We really “started” the race after work Thursday packing.

I like to be ready for anything.  This is nearly one of every part that could take us out of the race is sitting there in that shot.  Erik provided the needed rig and trailer.  We loaded up late thursday night before catching less sleep than I wanted.  Early friday morning we departed.

Stepan would be joining us at the event (after having been on a business trip).  Chris, who lives in seattle, would also be joining us there.  So the truck would haul myself, rob, micah, and erik to the event.  Micah was a bit late, so we stopped by Rob’s tire shop (BTW, eugene people, Tire Factory on 6th street is by far the best tire service center in the 60 mile radius) for a quick service.  Apparently some wheel weights had fallen off the front wheels on the truck on the way down.  I’m glad we sorted that out, we had a long long drive ahead of us.

The trip up was pretty uneventful.

We made some navigational errors and ended up taking a bit longer than we probably should have.  We showed up just in time to get the newbies to the required driver’s school.

Once we got to the track and said hi to everyone, it was time to get to work.  The pits had to be setup before we headed to our cheap hotel for some much needed rest.  The last real rest we would get until early Monday morning.

Erik does battle here with the transponder.  Always a pain in the butt.  We need to be careful, these things are $400 to replace!  They can sometimes get knocked off with contact.  With light starting to fade, we took the newbies out for a course walk around the track.  It takes a good bit longer to walk than it does to drive .  This straight seems like 15 seconds in the car.

Once back, night had fallen and we had a good opportunity to aim our headlights.

Saturday, we showed up to the track bright and early at 10.  We took care of all the final details of gear check.  My helmet is building up a decent history here.

It’s hard to believe but this will be my 9th race.  The chump chef’s did an excellent job keeping the people fueled at this event.  None of us have any energy left after driving or working on the car to even think about eating properly.  If it wasn’t for their help, I’m sure we would just be eating chips all weekend.

One of the great things that happened at this event was that Micah took up the duty of managing our cameras.  Matt (also from free range) lent us his GoPro and micah brought his Contour.  That meant that we had two cameras to swap out between stints and charge.  We have HOURS of video from this event.  As micah finds time to edit it all, he will post it here on the blog.  Some early clips are already out on our facebook page (see the link in the upper left hand corner of this blog).

We joined the rest of the chumps at the driver’s meeting in the picnic area.

I was the first driver to go out.  Everything felt good.  This track just recently got some upgrades, and they were well done.  It’s better than ever now.  I felt pretty comfortable and clearly got a good join on much of the competition in the early hand full of laps.  I made a number of good passes before our first mechanical challenge.  Around lap 8 or so, I noticed a puff and water near the front right corner of the car.  I pulled immediately into the pits to get it checked out.  I noticed that temps were going up to around 220 oil/water which I though would be the nominal point for us.  But with the incident water dropped and oil went up even higher.  That’s a sure sign of a water issue.

Sure enough the upper radiator hose had popped off.  Clearly the stock clamp was not up to the challenge.  An additional clamp was found and installed after the water was refilled.  Everyone of these overheating events is a pretty serious deal on a rotary.  If they over heat too bad, they will warp and turn nearly the entire motor to junk.  Trust us, we have seen it first hand many times.  With everything set back up, I was sent back out.

Again the car felt great.  I got another 8 laps in and had the same thing happen.  Clearly we needed to do something different.  Plans were hatched.

Additional ducting tape was installed to help force air over the radiator.  The hood was spaced up to hopefully let more air escape from the engine bay.

Right as we were about to go back out, this was discovered.  The fan was rubbing on this water line that we used to bypass the heater core.

We caught it just in time.  We suspected this was allowing air into the system and pressurizing it.  The hose was cut down and zip tied out of the way.  Erik had the bright idea of modifying the firewall to allow more of a gap out the back.

…. and then missed.

Having taken so much time in the pits, it was time to let someone else in the car.  Stepan had the 2nd most time invested in the build, so we put him out second.

He got 8 laps.  Surpise.

This time, we actually boiled the water.  The mood in the pits was pretty down.  This is exactly the kind of thing we thought we had fixed.  24 hours is a long time to battle these kinds of issues in the pits.  We were not even 2 hours in. Several theories were hatched.  Erik proposed that the water pump was cavitating and that we should shift even sooner (we had been shifting 1k early anyway).  We also decided that we need to do everything possible to improve the cooling system effective.

Fresh very wet water was procured and installed.  Radiator caps were switched out from .9 bar to 1.1 bar racing units to hopefully prevent the boiling.  An additional cooling flap was also cut.

We also relocated some relays up front to help hopefully improve air flow.

 

Super cooling pack 2.0 was finished and we were ready to send Micah out…. except the car wouldn’t start.  This is exactly what happens when you overheat a motor and warp the rotors.  Just like every other race.  I’m not going to lie, I though we were done.  I was so ready for this happening, I brought my compression tester just to help make this painful process simple if we got here.

Rob pulled the plugs, and we go started with a compression test.

Thank you jesus, budha, allah, xenu, and tom cruise.  We actually had compression in both rotors and they MATCHED!  That means it was just a normal rotary flood.  We pulled the EGI fuse, cranked it with the throttle open to pump the gas out, and she fired right up.

We were back in the race!

Oil temps were down 20F and water was down 30F.  Clearly we had done something right!  We now also saw a large difference in temperatures when we rev’d past 6k rpm.  It’s pretty clear our water pump was cavitating at the top of the rev range.  All drivers were instructed to shift early and we made it work.  Micah got his laps in and a full normal driving stint!  Chris, our other newbie was up.  We got him out there just in time to hit the first red flag of the race.

Red Flags are serious business.  They force all the cars to stop on track so they can clean up a mess.  This normally means someone was flipped or on fire.  Sure enough, our neighbors across the pits had a pretty nasty incident in their mustang.  Luckily this car was built very well.  The cage was perfect, the driver had a hans on, and the car was equiped with a fuel cell.  Everyone was 100% ok.

Not too long after we resumed racing from the red, chris had his own scare and needed to come in for a break.  Everything was fine (except for chris’s shorts).  It was time to send our last driver, erik, out to take us through to the 7pm break.

Erik has a special philosophy on track.  He puts the car where it fits and “if other people want to turn in on me, that’s their fault”.  He helped give the car a little more personality after that stint.

The covers came off the lights, it was time to do some night racing.

I was the first person to take a second stint.  There was still some light out so people were still going very fast.  During the safety break, the track was reconfigured to shorten the front straight.  This means we use a little bypass road to cut over to the back straight earlier.  We would run this configuration to the end of the race.  A real challenge was that this new turn was also directly facing the sunset.  I had planned to be out for a good bit over an hour.

Then I got a little red mist.  I felt a car was blocking and driving dangerously and made my feelings well known over the radio.  In addition, I started feeling the affects of a headache.  As light was disappearing with my patience.  I decided to end my stint early at an hour and give stephan some of the final dusk light to learn the track before depending wholly on the headlights.

On my way back into the pits, I got a talking to for speeding in the pits.  At the time, I didn’t even recognize I was due to the RPMS on the motor being low (I had the clutch in ).  I even gave the officials some lip.  If anyone knows me well, you can recognize these as things I would normally never do.  I was clearly dehydrated and tired and needed to get out of the car.

I announced as much as I excited the car and setup camp with instructions not to wake me up before 4am and even then, not after unless they really needed me.  All I wanted at that point was sleep and water, and for the head ache to go away.  I was useless to them without recharging.  I am so grateful that they put up with this primadona stunt and let me try to rest.  I spent the night in a tent 75 ft from the track tossing and turning not getting much sleep.  I eventually got a call at 4:45 that it was time for me to get up.  I didn’t want to but I could see the sky was starting to brighten and even if I didn’t feel well enough to drive, I’m sure others has been up all night racing and working and it was time for them to sleep.  I could do that much.

That’s when I started feeling better.  A lot better.  The car wasn’t there.  It was on track.  We had made it through the night!  We were over the hill, we could do this!  We could really finish this race!  Not only that, we were sitting in the low 30s of the placings, 4th from last saturday afternoon.  We had climbed in the low 20s!  We were even doing well.

Erik had clearly been driving a lot.

Micah was out and I wasn’t feeling up to it yet, so Stepan volunteered to go out.  Rob, who had been up all night grabbed some sleep in the truck.  Everyone else was asleep.

We had another Red Flag for a burning car.  Luckily this one also turned out well and no one was hurt.  Crispy tiburon.

At this point, I was feeling great and ready to get in as soon as Stepan was done.  Apparently everything was going really well as he stayed out for some time.  My stint went really well.  No over heating.  No drama.  Just some solid decent laps.  I put about an hour 20 in.  Really consistant, it felt great.  Chris was after me.  He had been complaining about traffic eariler and the track was starting to thin out.  Many cars were in the pits or retired.  I think this was a great opportunity to get him in there and comfortable with the race.

He certainly was.  A “cowboy” moment allowed him to pickup some souvenirs for the car.

Erik was next.  We serviced the tires.  It was clear that they needed them.  Plus… well its erik.

We were running out of spares.  Not enough to be an issue, but we easily went through 1.5 sets of tires in this weekend.

After Erik, might brought us home to the checked.  That’s right.  We finished the race!

Not only did we finish, we finished in 16th!!!  A great finish!  Top 1/3rd!

It was a long race, but well worth it.

Notice erik sneaking up with the water.  We also won an award for finally finishing a race.  The “Apex of Success” award.

Erik had some family obligations to take care of in Portland, so we packed up and pushed out.  Even despite all the lack of sleep and heat we managed to get home that night.  Tired, so tired… but happy.

The rest of the team has been given accounts.  Hopefully some of the other stories from out adventure will get told.  There are many more.  Stay tuned for them!

May this be a warning to you all you chump “hopefuls”,  crap-can’s self replicate.  Unchecked all your garage space may soon look like this.

That’s a bit better now.  Should last a week or two before the chaos creeps in again.

My primary goal was to sort out the parts we would be bringing to Spokane and what we would be leaving.  We won’t be short of alternator belts.

I replaced the warning light panel and found out that I hooked up the oil pressure sender wrong.

Last time I tested the headlights and night, I noticed that removing the stock headlight switch also prevented the gauge cluster lighting and the running lights from coming on.  So I reinstalled the stock switch (and figured out I messed up some of the plugs).

I also found the missing 4th bolt for the seat brace and got it installed.

I got started making a new “dash as well”.  As you can see the glare is pretty bad.

Well color me flat black.

I added a little tape for the gauges.  It’s still a bit shiny but better than before.  Maybe I can get some spray adhesive and some cloth to put on top?

My oil pressure gauge fix was unsuccessful .

Figured the oil drain plug was on pretty loose too.

Under tray is back on now.  I also taped up all the space around the radiator to help duct the air through the radiator.  Spokane last year was pretty near 100F.  The forecast so far is a bit cooler, but it could be a real issue during the race.

 

I replaced the speedo cable.  It works great now (not that it does any good for us).

I added a second strap to the coolshirt box.   At least two straps have to fail now.

Tanner hooked us up with a 4th spare wheel (to replace the one we damaged in portland).  So now we have a lucky white wheel!  I’ll get a tire on order and that means we should have a full set of tires to spare.

Next week, were going to work on the spare motor.  It doesn’t need too much work (hopefully).

The todo list is getting really small.  We’re actually ready to race now, all of this is just extra prep at this point.  The car runs great.  Pulls pretty good, drives straight.  Feels solid.  Shifts smoothly and cleanly.  Starts really easily.  It think we might have even gotten it to idle right now.  Brakes feel amazing like the first car.  I really enjoy the “making the car better” thing.  It seems like its been ages since we have been able to do that.

I have a couple leads on a 5th driver.  Maybe big news next week!

Stepan came over today and we took some time to wrech on the race car. The biggest priority was to deal with the brakes. If read our last Portland write up, you will remember that we were have all sorts of issues with the brakes. Eventually we got them working, but never feeling quite right. The pedal was very light until it engaged and then it was very stiff. It stopped the car fine but the feeling wasn’t there. It was difficult to judge. We tried multiple master cylinders and fluid changes. Nothing would change the feel. Now that we have this new parts car, we have a new brake booster to try. Off came the old part (this is the one that was in the wreck in late 2010).

The unit out of the parts car (which was just rebuilt recently!) came out without a hitch.

Then went into our car.

During the bleeding, we accidentally let it suck air.  That made the job 3x longer.  Eventually it was finished and felt great.  Feels like it the first car did!  Job done.

Stepan replaced the cracked rear view mirror as well.  While he did that I fixed the shifter bushings.  We keep loosing the lower white bushing.  I found another one and installed it.  I also stole the boot and shift nob off the parts car as they are in better condition than ours ever were.

The “todo” list is getting pretty small.  Only two of these absolutely has to be done before we race, and that’s the fuel filter mount (which we can probably steal off the parts car!) and plugging in the stock headlight switch.

I’ll leave you with some parting beauty shots.

Sorry I haven’t been better about keeping this here web log up to date.  It’s been a very busy summer so far.  Last weekend I found some time in between things to get some projects finished.  I have continued driving the car.  It’s been driven around the block a dozen times or so as well as getting a full heat cycle each time.  So far no more leaks and starts great every time.

First off, I got the coolshirt cooler and pump remounted and wired.  Works great once you get the air out of the system.  I wish it flowed a little faster, but It worked great last time we race at spokane.  Most of the driver’s will have shirts this time around.  I think the only person without a shirt is going to try to make their own.  I might try to get another strap on it somehow for redundancy’s sake.

I also ordered our new headlights.  I broke down and got some name brand stuff, Hella 500′s.  The mounting is well designed and the install was pretty simple with the provided harnesses and relays.

I ran the wiring through the hood so it should be pretty well protected.  It’s just a single 13mm-ish nut to reaim them as well.  They came with nice covers for day driving and transportation.  They work ok.  It’s definitely a spot light.  I would have liked more lateral spread from it.  The original plan was to put hids in these housings but I would have had to manufacture a mount for the bulb.   They are also very very annoying to other drivers with hids in them.  Here is a little video of me driving it around the loop. Eyes have been night vision than my camera. So its a bit better than this video makes it seem.

It needs more testing.  They need to be aimed better and try some more long distance stuff.  I also need to reinstall the stock headlight switch so we can get the dash lights and tail lights on.  I’ll probably just turn it off and tuck it back under the dash or something and leave that stuff on all the time.