wow where do I start. What a day.
Last Thursday I took my car to it's first day in the spotlight. Went to a track day at Willow springs international raceway. For me it was to be my shakedown run to get my car ready for my racing school in 2 weeks.
it all started the night before as I finished fabricating a mount for my laptimer and installed my new 38mm chokes for my webers DCOE's. In addition to lots of small things!
Then I had to learn how to load the car onto my new(to me) trailer. When all was said and done it was 4am!! We decided to not sleep and beat traffic to the track. We ended up not sleeping at all!
unloaded the car, got it started and idling then decided to drive around the pits to warm it up at bit.
SURPRISE!!! The car would not rev above 3k !! Crap, what happened? Fast forward to 4 hours later......I AM A DUMB ASS. In my late light scramble I had installed one of the aux. venturies upside down!!!!! flipped it reinstalled everything got my gear on and the track marshal said the session is over and were breaking for lunch! I told him if I could go out just to see if I fixed it.....
did 1 lap! sure thing that was it. who hoo!
cleaned things up during lunch, calmed down and plugged in the Innovate lm-1 into the tailpipe.
1st session - SWEETTTTTTNNESSSS!!! car running a bit rich, but it handles awesome! Stumbling a bit here and there...maybe too rich
2nd session - leaned it out a bit - 160 mains and 180 airr corr. water temps higher....take more tape off....
3rd session - LM-1 confirmed jetting is almost perfect....about 11.9 air/fuel down the straight in 4th gear.
now during the last lap of the 3rd session the water temp climbed to 230! so I pulled in......right as I'm pulling in the tach starts bouncing like crazy then stumbling then the engine quits........
I quietly coast into the pits....
??what the F*&^k??
the car starts, idles the tach start jumping then the engine quits....
the plugs look great, the water was low in the radiator so that explained the higher temps..................
something must be up with the pertronix or distributor?
it was late and I was tired from not sleeping....so we packed it in. The car ran long enough to run up the trailer....
I had a few issues,
1-the drivers side under body was covered in tranny fluid??
2-noise in left corner from rear?
3-obvious electrical failure of some sort?
Well once I got some sleep and reviewed my cap and rotor, the rotor and a small crack in it on the black plastic area and the cap looked dirty and in need of replacement.
my tranny oil looks like it was coming from a vent I didn't know about.
my noise in the rear turned out to be dry poly bushings.....not sure how to lube them yet......
Got lots of question answered once I talked to Jeff Ireland on monday.
1-There is a tranny vent on the top left front of the transmission. Apparently in racing conditions you need to remove the pressed in breather and replace with a barb connect a hose and run it to a can. Or do what the sklidmark guys did and use AN fitting and tap the hole.
either way problem answered and soon solved.
3- Jeff quickly told me what my problem was! I wish I would have known sooner!
Apparently the stock bosh rotor has a resistor buried in that black epoxy that connects the center to the edge electrode. If you are running a big coil and a race ignition like me (crane hi-6,ps-92coil) you have to modify the rotor by taking a dremel and diggin out the black epoxy to reveal the resistor. Cut and remove the resistor and replace with a short piece of 14ga. wire. If you don't do this eventually at high rpm's the power from the upgraded coil will overload the resistor and burst it. Creating a small crack in the epoxy like mine did!
Jeff says this will make the engine shut down in short order!
this seams to be exactly what happened to me!
So if you are running upgraded ignition system please make this modification ASAP. Jeff said they might get 1 day out of a stock rotor before it fails.
So I should be getting a couple of caps and rotor tomorrow and will test and confirm that this was the source of all my issues.
SO all in all was a trying day BUT I learned a bunch and I CANNOT express how amazing it felt after all these years to blip the throttle turn into turn 1 get on the gas, hear the DCOE's gasp for air then being replaced by the sound of the rising exhaust note......as I crept up on the rear of a Porsche rs replica.......only to pass him on the exit of turn 2!!
wow.....what a feeling. Makes it all worth it.....really does.
I can't imagine what it will feel like to grid up on a grid full of other 2002's, alfa's mini's and Datsuns......ohhhh.
here some pics from that amazing day, for all the pics from that day check out this link on my page....HERE
XT laptimer mounted the night before!!
THE FIRST TOW!!!
I got a string of 1:46 laptimes. (115wrhp)
a few months ago in the VARA race held there the winner in CS class was lapping at 1:43. So ind the end 3 secs off is not bad considering I only got a few laps and I was running a heavy 15" wheel and Falken azenis street tire. Plus I was not running past 7k rpms.
I left alot of time out there, I'm sure I can run in the 1:43 or faster on race tires and after some sorting out.
not a bad start at all........
