Turbo-4 '89 Mustang roadrace coupe.

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

It is a luxury, no doubt. We've got 20 crew and 5 drivers. Hopefully we can get out of each others way.

My nylons will be black CarbonX... ;D

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

So Chris starts out on Sunday. He's doing pretty well, we're starting to move up the board again. As He's going down the front straight we all notice a yellow in Turn 1. Well, those of us NOT in the car. As Tom jumps on the radio to warn Chris, we all watch as he passes a car. Black flag #1.

We go to the penalty box, where they keep us for about a half hour, finally releasing Chris back to the track after extracting a promise that he'll mind his driving.

For about 4 laps!! Black flag #2.

Chris has had body contact with another car, nothing particularly bad but its another violation. Chris pulled up along another car and then had them chop down on him, hitting the right side of the car. Back to the penalty box. The Judges were incredulous. Here we were again. But, the other car didn't show up, so they released us rather quickly provide that we change drivers.

We ran back to the pit, Chris crawled out and we refueled the car. No driver is allowed in the car while refueling is underway. And we had to refuel about every hour to hour and a half because we had problems picking up all the fuel in the tank. Lee had the car cut out on him on Saturday on Turn 14, a hard right after a long straight. the combination of hard braking and then the second tightest turn on the circuit was uncovering the pick-up.

Tom jumped in and away he went. Tom is very fast, probably the fastest driver on the team. And it showed. Again we started moving up the board, after having dropped again due to our penalties. He was cutting through traffic, lowering our best lap times. Then he came over the hump past turn 2 way to wide, entering turn 3 on the worst part of its off-camber construction. No one can handle that, in fact we watched car after car spin off on Turn 3. Tom didn't beat the odds, going all 4 wheels off. He did control the car, didn't spin and brought it back on the track in a controlled manner, but Black Flag #3.

So back to the penalty box, where the folks were getting tired of seeing us. This time we had to take a test to get out. We had the choice of obscure car facts, or facts concerning the LeMons race and its participants. We had to get 5 answers correct in order to be released. Multiple choice questions such as: What was the newest car entered in a LeMons event...a 2005 Mini Cooper S that was assigned 1300 penalty laps. Or which flywheel is used on the wheel of penalties, a Porsche 911 flywheel. With 15 questions, it took us 13 to get out of the penalty box. So back to the pits.

Back to the routine, helping Tom out of the car, then fueling it for Jim, then Jim into the car and out he went.

Jim was running swiftly. But cleanly. We were on our last black flag for the event, four in a day and you're out. Nobody wanted to be that guy. But, then we heard of the radio, I'm coming in got a black flag!!! Oh crap. Our day was done.

We met Jim on the way to the penalty box, and he was a surprised. He hadn't gone off course, hadn't had contact, hadn't spun the car. In the penalty box we sat waiting for Jay Lamm to come over to talk to us. This is not a good thing. He let us cool our heels for quite a while before coming over, telling Jim to get out of the car and then discussed the fact that Jim had overdriven the car, done a tank slapper and that had caused us to be black flagged. He wanted us to settle down, drive conservatively and, if we promised not to show up again at the penalty box, would allow us to continue. Of course we promised to drive conservatively, who wouldn't in that situation.

We had been politicking the judges and Jay from the moment we got there. We brought the judges lunch both days, had started a "Jay Lamm for President" campaign, complete with posters and pin on buttons. It had clearly paid off.

Since we were clearly on our last pass, I gave up my stint for Lee. Lee had worked his butt off prepping he car, had been the first guy under the car to do the R&R on the blown clutch and was the glue for the team. Plus, he's a clean fast driver.

So back to the routine, Jim out, refuel, Lee in and away he went. And drove a stint that was remarkable only in its completion with no issues and no black flags.

So back to me.

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

Finally awake enough to post on the 25 hours of Thunderhill.

Miatas are like cockroaches, they won't die. Long story short, we qualified 6th in the E2 class, Overall start of somewhere around 50-60 in a 72 car field. Managed to get up to about 14th overall and 2nd in class before breaking and falling to third in class, 19-20th overall.

The car carnage was extreme, half the cars running at the end as at the start. All the prototypes broke early. Most of the highest class cars broke ES & ESR. A Porsche cup car won it all. Porsche certainly knows how to build customer racecars.

When it comes to converted stock cars, nobody does better than Mazda. More Mazdas took the checker than all other makes combined.

"Nascar" circle track cars converted to road racing seem to never work. 4 tried this year, 3 were out within 30 laps and one made it to the end but probably didn't have a total of 100 laps under its belt.

Winning car did 760 laps, 2280 miles.

Hell truely froze over. low twenties at 3 am, 15 mph winds. I know, I'm a wimpy northern Californian, but damn. I tried handwarmers, but they really don't work well in the back pockets of my jeans. It snowed here this morning. It never snows here.

I told myself that I'm never going to do this again. But...

[RyanWalker]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

Bitchin!

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

Night time pit stop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRh4dpOmXUk

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

A two minute pit stop and you didn't get all four tires :o :P

I didn't realize there were actual pull over pits, I thought it was a pull the car behind the wall pits. Cool.

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

You're not allowed to work on the car while it is being fueled. For this class it can only be fueled with those slow ass spec containers, can only change one tire at any "hot" pitstop, and can only add 10 gallons of fuel at a time.

We always pulled the car into the paddock to do 4 tire swaps. You only change the right front tire (due to the wear caused by the counter clockwise track direction) if it warrants it, in the hotpits.

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

Back to the dyno next week with the racecar, if the stars align. First race of the season is Feb 27-28th.

Way too many things left to do.

Finish the dyno work.
Send some belts off to get recertified.
Fab the rear wing mounts and mount the wing.
Reconfigure the fuel fill so that its conducive to endurance racing (right now you have to unpin the rear trunk lid and fill the fuel cell)
Tidy up the wiring.
Send-in for my license (it expired during the stupidly long time it has taken to prepare this car)
Put the Optima in a battery box. (old battery was an odyssey and didn't need one)

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

Off to the dyno in 45 minutes. Hoping for a happy conclusion to '09.

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

WooHoo!! We have a racecar.

3+ hours of dyno time. As usual, even though I asked the operator to read the manual on the Haltech, he really didn't get the idea and we had to work through how to operate the software. Pissed me off and I had to walk away for awhile. Fortunately I had several buddies with me and they got him over the hump. Once familiar with the system, the operator pretty quickly got the car running. His biggest problem seemed to be getting the car rolling on the dyno. With a 5.5 clutch and about an 9 lb flywheel, it didn't like it when he engaged the clutch. Hopefully he didn't smoke it.

Anyhow, we worked our way up the rpm range and boost. The car was yet again making too much power, and seemed to have boost creep. Ended up having the wastegate cycling between 14 and 18 psi. We re-plumbed the wastegate to get its reference from the compressor instead of the manifold. That settled the boost down to about 15psi. Still too much. So I pulled some of the preset out of the 9lb boost spring, so boost settled down to about 11 psi. Hp and torque started to settle into the range that would make us legal for the class.

Unfortunately we started dropping random cylinders as we pushed the car above 5,000 rpm. We checked the plug wires and also tightened the gap on the plugs. Cured that issue.

With full power available now, we ran the car up to where we wanted redline, around 6500 rpm. Looks like we don't need to rev that high cause we pulled 297 rwtq at 4,200 rpm and 297 rwhp at 5700 rpm, both uncorrected for STP. More than 2hp/tq per cube at the tire. We have a freakin diesel!! Great power range for an endurance racecar. Good thing I run a 5 speed!!

It still needs some buffing, but we have a car that runs. First time we've been here in the 5 year build process.

Now its time for me to send in and beg them to give me my competition license back. With that in hand, we'll be racing this season.

What a great way to end 2009.

Bob

[mike343sharpstick]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

That's great news man, with that boost level there should also be a fair amount of reliability correct?

[horsewidower]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

That's great news man, with that boost level there should also be a fair amount of reliability correct?

Yep, should be much more reliable. Stock SVO and T-Bird Turbo coupes ran 15psi with spikes up to as much as 18. So lower than stock is really good.

[Monster]

Re: Racin in '09 or its for sale.

OK then, all is good.
Now you need to go back and rename your thread with something more appropriate.
Hail 2010 !!!
;D

[horsewidower]

Re: Turbo-4 '89 Mustang roadrace coupe.

OK then, all is good.
Now you need to go back and rename your thread with something more appropriate.
Hail 2010 !!!
;D

Changed as requested, oh mighty one.

[horsewidower]

Re: Turbo-4 '89 Mustang roadrace coupe.

Bad cell phone video. You might want to lower the volume.



I'm still learning how to transfer this stuff between devices.