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wae
wae PowerDork
8/7/23 10:04 a.m.

The site out in West Virginia was great.  Plenty of paddock space and the area for the course was pretty good.  The surface had a couple small undulations that bounced the car around, but in the grand scheme of things, I would rate the surface as "mostly smooth".  The drive there and back was and absolutely beautiful trip through the foothills of Appalachia but somehow it felt like a longer drive even though the drivetime was an hour less than that to Joe's Speedway.  It might be because I got up early and hit the road instead of going up the night before.  Fuel mileage wasn't as good as the trip to Joe's, though, but I think that's because there were a lot more hills along the way and the speed was a little lower.  Somehow, the Merc seems to do better at 70mph than at 60.

ZB was there with his GTI again and at lunchtime he was about 19.5 seconds ahead of Pete who was about .75 seconds ahead of me.  I had a really bad first run where I was having a hard time finding grip and stabbing at the brakes was inducing behavior that I wasn't used to since I've had the booster de-powered all these years.  To put it in context, ZB ran a 49.174 for his first run, Pete ran a 52.390, and I was at 55.682.  Over the next four runs, I clawed back .3, .8, .3, and then 2 seconds to second place, but I was nowhere near first.  ZB held that spot with a 236.773, Pete was second with a very pleasing to look at 256.256, and I trailed him with a 257.004.  In the afternoon, I was ahead of Pete after the first run, putting up a 27.432 to his 39.635 and stayed out in front of his times for the remainder of the day.  Unfortunately, ZB had an issue with the GTI cutting out on him so he was dropping at least 10 seconds each over the four afternoon runs, and it took him out of contention.  After nine runs, I had a time of 405.551 for first, Pete came in at 410.776 for second, Sid was 413.183 for third and ZB wound up down in 6th with a 430.658. 

I would have much preferred to take second than to win the class because of reliability, but since this is a build thread, I guess I should count that as a win for the car.  It is quite a bit of a shift for me to be the one benefiting from the faster car breaking since I spent so many events having to winch my broken car back on to the trailer. 

There were a couple things that I noticed, however.  First, is heat management.  I was running the passenger window down, the cooling fan, and the interior heat on full blast.  We had enough cars that the cool-down between runs was long enough that the temps came down while waiting in grid and the stock temp gauge really never budged from the "normal" position.  The auxiliary gauge, however, which is teed off the upper radiator hose was swinging up fairly high - 240ish, I think - and that should be measuring the coolant that is freshly warmed by the engine.  "In Theory", though, the stock coolant temp sender in the thermostat housing should also be reading that same coolant and that's also what Megasquirt is reading.  I didn't have my laptop with me to check what MS thought the temp was, but I did notice that if I turned the car off and then immediately clicked the key back to the "run" position so that the temp gauge was active but the engine was not running, the aux gauge dropped down to around 180-190.  And when I restart the engine, it goes right back up.  There's some sort of noise in there that's screwing up that reading, I think.  But I do know that the factory temp gauge will creep up if I'm hot-lapping and/or am a little low on coolant, so I'm not totally ignorant on temperatures.

Second, having the brake booster hooked back up is kind of a double-edged sword.  I like it, but it's going to take some getting used to.  A quick jab at the pedal is all I need now to kick the car a little sideways, but anything more than the slightest jab and I start to lose speed fast.  It's almost like the brakes are doing their job or something.  I seem to remember that I used to be able to drive the car with the accelerator mostly flat the whole time and using my left foot to modulate the brake to control the speed and it was pretty damned fast.  When I tried that approach on the morning of day 1 of the last event at Joe's, though, I was cooking the brakes and was really really slow.  When I went to an approach of using all right-foot for the afternoon, I got way faster and that technique was good this past weekend as well.  I don't know what I'm doing differently now, but I think for now I'm going to keep the booster hooked up and just see about learning how to drive.  I may look to do a hydraulic handbrake on the rear down the line to try to get a "best of both worlds", but for now I think the loose nut behind the wheel is what needs most of the improvement.

Finally, I'm not entirely sure if this was actually happening, but I think it might have been cutting out a little bit on hard right turns.  I was trying a different seating position so that I had the seat a little farther back and banged my head on the roof less, so it might have just been the bumps causing my foot to come off the pedal a little.  It really felt like it was bogging a little, though.  But only in the turn.  And only in the afternoon.  Of course, I don't have a working gas gauge - because of course I don't! - and I really don't remember how much I drove the car since I put fuel in it last.  I know that it only took 3.4 gallons after the Joe's Speedway event - which was basically like doing 4 events, so under a gallon of 93 per race - but I might have driven it around town more than I recall after filling it up.

wae
wae PowerDork
11/12/23 7:18 a.m.

Last event of the year was yesterday and while I had a good time, I was really off my game, especially in the morning.  I started to pick up the pace in the afternoon, but I did way too much damage to myself by being 3 seconds/run off the pace in the morning.  There was never a chance at beating Orion, but I could have challenged for 2nd had I driven the morning course the way I drove the afternoon one.

Before heading out, however, I noticed that the radiator was getting a little close to the core support:

I pushed it back with a wedge of wood and re-made the brackets to keep it in place:

That should keep it from banging around.

On the way to the site, I stopped and made sure the fuel tank was completely topped off.  There were no cutting-out issues, so I'm assuming it must have just been fuel sloshing about that was causing the cut-out last time.

wae
wae UltimaDork
4/16/24 6:55 a.m.

Well, the first event of the year is almost upon us so it's time to go over all the things I got done on the car during the off season:

  • New street tires

Yeah, absolutely nothing done at all.  And it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to do much before PE1 other than change the oil since there's a Civic parked on the lift.

I picked those up for about $80.  They're 16s with older Direzzas on them.  I don't know if the tires are just too rock hard, the parking brake is sticking, or if I've got the chassis tuned the way I want it, but on dry pavement I was able to induce oversteer by taking a 90° turn at about 30-35 with nothing but about ⅓ throttle.  Really bizarre to have the rear end kick out on a FWD car.

Jerry
Jerry PowerDork
4/16/24 8:31 a.m.

Two other cars that start with "M" take all your time?  (Feel free to use that excuse, anyway.)

wae
wae UltimaDork
4/16/24 8:43 a.m.

In reply to Jerry :

Plus a C and an S!  (December/January was spent getting the Chevy in the motorhome back together and then Feburary was spent putting the Saab back on the road).

I just have too many damned projects going on

Pete. (l33t FS)
Pete. (l33t FS) GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
4/21/24 7:00 p.m.
wae said:

Well, the first event of the year is almost upon us

wae
wae UltimaDork
4/21/24 11:23 p.m.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

yeah....  The notification came in exactly 5 minutes after my daughter finalized arrangements to be off work that day, too.

I'd like to say that this will give me some time to do a few things on the car.  But I think we all know what's really going to happen.

wae
wae UltimaDork
5/28/24 9:49 a.m.

Well, I did actually do something with the car yesterday!

The Mazda 5's A/C wasn't working, so I took it over to the shop after diagnosing that the clutch wasn't engaging at all and the coil had infinite resistance.  Well, as it turns out, the compressor was seized up, but I forgot to check for that possibility until AFTER I had hammered the pulled off.  Since the bearing is now roached from the hammering and it's a serpentine system, there's no driving the car until I replace the compressor.  I ordered the compressor, but of course that was late Friday night and with Memorial day, nothing was getting shipped out until today.  Fine.  I'll just drive the Neon and the wife can drive der Scheißwagen until I have her car taken care of.

I was noticing that there was something a little grabby about the brakes in the Neon, but I thought I had the parking brakes mal-adjusted.  On my way over to my Mom & Dad's Sunday morning, however, I discovered that it was actually the front-right caliper seizing up.  By the time I got there, there was a bit of smoke and a lot of brake smell.  What surprised me was that there were only two stores in the metro area that had a reman caliper in stock and they were both Autozones over in Cincinnati, of course.  I picked up the new caliper on Sunday night and on Monday afternoon, I spent about a half hour putting the new caliper on along with a new soft line that I had in the spares stash.

In the process, I noticed that the brake fluid looks pretty nasty so I need to add flushing the brake fluid with my new whizbang, homemade pressure bleeder on my to-do list.

wae
wae UltimaDork
6/16/24 11:14 p.m.

First event of the year is officially in the books!  The first two events, actually.  Saturday was PE2 and Sunday was PE3 - 11 runs on Sat and 9 on Sun.  But wait, there's more: my daughter co-drove the car so that was really 4 events that the car ran in 2 days and it performed great.

There are a couple ground wires that need to be replaced as they've gotten a little corroded and the rod popped out of the inside door handle on the passenger side.  Otherwise, there were no problems.  We were spraying the radiator down between runs to keep it from overheating, but I don't know that was completely necessary - the temp gauge was pretty steady.  I figured we'd want to stay ahead of it, though.

I took home the class win in MF both days.  Becca was feeling the heat pretty bad on Saturday and wasn't able to run the afternoon session, but on Sunday she had a very solid 4th place finish out of 6 cars and her times were pretty competitive.

I need to look at making sure the struts are all adjusted right to try to get some more droop out of them if I can, but the balance is pretty spot on with just enough oversteer that a quick jab of the brake can pitch the car just right for the long uphill sweeper at Joe's.

Jerry
Jerry PowerDork
6/17/24 8:30 a.m.

I saw some photos yesterday, looked a bit dusty.

wae
wae UltimaDork
6/17/24 9:06 a.m.

In reply to Jerry :

It was incredibly dusty!  We were the first to run on the track this year, so all the loose stuff hadn't been fully packed down yet.  And it's sort of in a bowl so if the wind blows just right - or, I guess, just wrong really - the dust cloud will just sort of hang there for a bit.  I really need to remember to stick a package of those leftover covid masks in my helmet bag.

wae
wae UltimaDork
6/30/24 10:21 p.m.

In the time between events, I took the time to get that fan wiring fixed, went over the car to ensure that everything was in good operating condition, and...

hahahaha, yeah, no, I did absolutely nothing.  From Joe's Speedway to the Jackson County Junior Fairgrounds, the Neon didn't touch the Earth.  It was a pretty hot event, so I had concerns about how the cooling would go but since my daughter wasn't with me this time, there was a lot of time between runs to let it cool down naturally.  I had absolutely no cooling issues whatsoever with no spraying of the radiator.  The car performed fantastically all day and the only thing it really needed was a better driver.  ZB's Rabbit had a couple teething issues, so I was about 3 seconds up on him at one point, but he had it all fixed on his 4th run and he just walked me the rest of the day, leaving me to settle for 2nd in Mod Front.  On the morning course, when his car was running well, I was losing a little better than 1.25 seconds a lap but on the afternoon course, I was a good 2.25 sec/lap slower for a final deficit of 11.456 seconds over 10 runs.  Third place in MF was a further 24.219 seconds down the road from me, but he had some car issues and had to run the afternoon in a stock front car.

Out of 23 cars, however, I finished 4th overall.  Mod Front took top honors with ZB's time being the fastest of the day, then an MR car followed by a side-by-side.  Fifth overall was Evan in his Miata just over 8 seconds behind me.  The overall results indicate to me that the car was actually pretty fast, not that the other 4 MF cars were slow.

As I was sitting in grid getting ready for my 4th afternoon run, it occured to me that I had the suspension dialed down to full soft for the rough surface at Joe's Speedway.  I got out and twisted the knobs to full hard and back-to-back difference in the handing of the car was astounding.  I think if I had left the rears full hard and kicked the front down about 2 or 3 notches soft I might have been able to squeeze out a little more time.  I also might have been able to get a little faster by taking a couple PSI out of the front tires - I was running the fronts at 26 and the rears at 28, and I don't know if I'm brave enough to try any lower pressure than that in the front.  I really don't know where I could find 2 or 3 seconds out there.  I managed to forget my gopro yet again.  I really need to remember that next time so I can try to see where I might be able to improve.

Pete. (l33t FS)
Pete. (l33t FS) GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
6/30/24 10:49 p.m.

Oh, it's more demoralizing than that, Draco's car is a PR car that he was running in Mod. 

 

And.... and.... he was running in the slower heat compared to MF.

 

It's a shame that SWVR doesn't post times including individual runs, just the final time.  I like to compare and contrast peoples' times to see if the course was slowing down or speeding up during competition.  The afternoon course was definitely getting slower by the 4th run from all the silt in the first half.

wae
wae UltimaDork
6/30/24 11:08 p.m.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

The full final results were on their facebook page with individual times.  I pumped them into Excel to look at them a bit:

 

 

wae
wae UltimaDork
7/9/24 2:28 p.m.

Next event is on the 20th back at Joe's.  I should really get that ground wiring sorted by that time, but we'll see if that happens.  I did, however, buy two pairs of SFI arm restraints so that I can run with the windows down again.  It was mostly tolerable in summer heat with the passenger window down but now that I'm a two-driver car more often than not, both windows up means we're on the verge of heat exhaustion.  And speaking of being a two-driver car, I ordered up some vinyl and some magnetic material so that Becca can run her own numbers that will just slap right on top of my more permanent ones.

wae
wae UltimaDork
7/21/24 8:22 a.m.

Well, this happened:

Indy - Guy
Indy - Guy UltimaDork
7/21/24 8:40 a.m.

In reply to wae :

Oops.

Did the windshield survive?

eastsideTim
eastsideTim UltimaDork
7/21/24 9:27 a.m.

Eek

84FSP
84FSP PowerDork
7/21/24 9:28 a.m.

oopsy

Pete. (l33t FS)
Pete. (l33t FS) GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
7/21/24 2:34 p.m.

This is how you get really OCD over checking latches and hood pins.

 

- the guy who had the hood fly open on his Subaru.  And then ten years later, his VW. Guess I needed a refresher lesson.

wae
wae UltimaDork
7/21/24 2:44 p.m.

Yesterday's event at Joe's wasn't my best.  We went to start the parade lap, the car stalled, and had zero electric power.  Even though it was a new terminal cranked down as tight as it could get, it was loose on the battery terminal until you turned it just right.  In the process of discovering that, I pulled the hood off the car and something snapped in my back.  We made the connection, got the jumpbox, started the car, and since my back hurts so bad, I asked my daughter to put the hood on.  By this time it was time to take the first run so I very painfully got myself into my seat and got my straps and arm restraints on.  I was having a hard time with the course anyway and at about the halfway mark, I hit a decent bump and the hood dislodged, caught air, and went flying over the car, banging a dent into the roof on its way to the ground.

The good news is that while she didn't put the hood pins back with the hood, she did put them in the car, so we were able to pop the hood back on and secure it.

The rest of the morning, though, I was way off the pace and just couldn't get the car under me.  Even though I had done well at Joe's in the past with the suspension set fairly soft, as soon as I clicked all four adjusters all the way to "H", it got way more predictable and started to rotate instead of wallowing through turns.  It helped a little, but I was still a couple seconds off the pace.

Other than the electrical issue with the battery connection, the car performed great again with absolutely no cooling problems using nothing but the regular radiator and the cooling fans.  Didn't need to spray it and didn't need to run the heater.

Right before we hit the road, I set my daughter on getting all the tire pressures set for the Merc, trailer, car, and extra tires while I fixed the ground connections.  Turns out the loose wires were the main ground strap from the engine to the chassis as well as the ground for the cooling fans.  I put new terminals on, sanded the paint and rust off, covered it in some dielectric grease, and bolted them down.

wae
wae UltimaDork
7/23/24 7:14 a.m.

 

I've got to work with this new camera I got off of Amazon.  I'm not completely displeased with the video, but the audio is hot garbage.  I was trying to use a round-bar mounting bracket to mount to the rear view mirror post, but it wasn't tight enough and the camera kept creeping upwards.  I suspect that was also was was causing the rattling noise.  The waterproof case - which I was using because it's also dust-proof! - limits the sound quality as well.  The next attempt may just be with the mounting frame and some compressed air after the event to clean it out.  The upside, however, is that you can absolutely watch the hood dislodge and then take flight during the first run, followed by Becca and I laughing our butts off about it, and then capped by seeing the course worker collecting the hood from the middle of the course on our way back to grid.

Something else that happened at the event is that Steve let me take his UTV for a trip around the course at speed.  That thing was unreal - it's a go kart that runs in the dirt.  I'm starting to seriously think that might be my future.  What makes that a really hard decision is that I feel like I finally have this car sorted out from a reliability standpoint, but maybe I can find someone that wants a turnkey solution to being pretty competitive in MF....

Jerry
Jerry PowerDork
7/23/24 10:00 a.m.

In reply to wae :

Cough cough, your kiddo, cough cough...

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