Mike wins Event 10, leads Class Points

M

Mike's Competition

Mike had a pretty good day Sunday. The rest of us were struggling.

Gary was having just about as much difficulty as I was, but showing less irritation about it.

Mike was in my run group, so I couldn't watch much except for the big grin and hand gestures as he went by in the pits, indicating he was stretching his lead with each run.

In the morning, I was nailing the front left cone on the first gate in Corner Station 1, because I was trying to continue accelerating from the start, instead of slowing to turn.
At the end of Corner Station 2, I was having trouble keeping control in the hard right turn.
And directly following that, at the beginning of the hard left turnaround at the far end of the lot in Corner Station 3, I was fishtailing and/or spinning on every single run. I had the camera set up and for my single clean run, had it shooting down the left side of he car. The angle shows some really wicked rear wheel drive looking counter steer to recover the tail.
I turned the rear dampers down 1 1/2 turns and the fronts up one click, even dropped the front tires 5 pounds, nothing helped.
I was running 52s with fishtails, and 56-58 with full 180 spins and having to turn around. I should have been below 50 easily.
I drove back over to the far end of the lot and ran through the video while walking the turn, and finally determined that I was swinging to the right after the gate to set up for the left hand turnaround. Just outside the chalked line. And unless you reached down with your hand and felt the blacktop surface, you wouldn't know that there was a thin layer of tiny gravel and grit in that exact spot. Left foot braking does not like transitioning from clean pavement, onto pebble covered pavement. Lesson: When at Family Arena, drive within the lines.

Blytheville is concrete, and should be clean since it's an airport. The good news is there shouldn't be any gravel to foul up cornering. The bad news is that Mike will be able to stand on the gas pedal more between the corners.
 
Run looked good Mike. I take it that you've worked most of the bugs out from the motor change. I haven't had time to see your car since you got it back on the road. Out of town this weekend and then hopefully it will slow down some. Going to try to make next weeks meeting maybe we can get together and drive out to the meeting, I know your busy too.

Congrats on the points lead, put it to them.

Rick:)
 
OK, here's something no one thought of. There are five entries in XP for the Blytheville event already. Driver's from other regions. Four of them competed in the national tour events this year, though several in other classes. The four scored 89XX, 92XX, 94XX, and 94XX on index points (converted to our scale).

I keep bringing my worst when I need to bring the best. Mike is having less problems with that, but has not pushed past a 9200 yet this year. And event points are awarded based on finish position, including non-region participants.

Class points might depend on if those non-first-place finishes earlier in the year, are better than the non-first-place finishes at Blytheville.

There is a test-and-tune day on Friday, I have asked if it is open to people outside the Mid-South region.
 
Got a reply from Mid South Region:

My name is Ken Park. I’m our Local Solo Chair. We are having a TnT course running from about 11 to 4 on that Friday.

As long as you are an SCCA member, and car passes tech, it doesn’t matter what region you are from. The prices are $3 per run OR 4 runs for $10.
Click to expand...


Not quite the bargain that our region's test-and-tune was, but probably worth testing the pavement and getting warmed up for Saturday and Sunday.
 
Good points Bill. From the looks of it I will be at least 5th place. Jason's carbon fiber S2000 is super fast and there are 2 drivers in it. I ran against him last year in Nashville. The 2 driver 280Z did very well at nationals. Both of those cars are up there with Dave W's Mustang or maybe slightly better. This puts us toward the bottom of the pack.

I only need 9021 points (assuming you can't better your 7th best score) to take XP, but what happens to the points if Jason beats everyone else by 7 seconds. Yes he is that fast! I am not sure what happens to the points if 1 guy shows up that is many seconds faster that the rest.
 
mmarshall said:
I only need 9021 points (assuming you can't better your 7th best score) to take XP, but what happens to the points if Jason beats everyone else by 7 seconds. Yes he is that fast! I am not sure what happens to the points if 1 guy shows up that is many seconds faster that the rest.
Click to expand...

5 1/2 seconds behind first was 8955 points for Event 10.
3 3/4 seconds behind first was 9153 points for Event 9.
It's going to depend on course length, but it looks like somewhere around 4-5 seconds back is the limit, if and only if you also finish ahead of me.
 
The econobox may have figured out how important the next events are, because it decided to remind me about Murphy's Law today.

For about a month prior to Event 10, I had been chasing a electrical gremlin. Every once in a while, the engine would stop running and the main symptom was the tach would flatline while I frantically looked for the cause and the car coasted to a stop. A few days before Event 10, the very expensive, 36 1/2 month old, 36 month warrantied, gel cell battery died. And I took that to be the source of the electrical gremlin (the bad cell intermittently dropped out and the ignition would not run on six volts).

Today I decided to fill the tank all the way up with gas. For five months, I have kept the car below half a tank for racing. And I drove down into the Meramec valley. I turn around and head back up the long hill. Get halfway up, and the engine cuts out. This time, the tach is still wiggling and the smell from the exhaust is not of gasoline puddling from lack of ignition spark. However, I have coasted to a stop pointing up hill where there is no shoulder, and a shear drop. I wait for traffic to clear, roll back down the hill into a driveway on the left (posted with a half dozen "no trespassing" signs), wait for traffic to clear again, shove the car out onto the rod pointed down hill, and coast a mile down the hill and into a gas station parking lot, punctuated by a reminder of how dead the brakes are without any vacuum to assist.

Fifteen minutes of poking around, and a little reflection on the point of if-it-weren't-for-bad-luck-i'd-have-no-luck-at-all, and I determine that it has to be the fuel pump. Because dropping the tank to get to the fuel pump is an easy, four bolt and four hose task, as long as the tank is empty. But I have just finished pouring 9.6 gallons into the tank, and it's so full that some splashes out the fill spout if I take a right hand turn too fast. So it's the fuel pump, no doubt about it.

A couple hours of waiting for a tow truck, nearly dropping the car while loading it, hauling it back home, unloading it up the hill from the house, moving cars, and coasting it into the driveway. Now for the fun part, where to put 9.6 gallons of gasoline. 2 1/2 hours of siphoning later, and I have managed to remove 8 gallons from the car, and the hose will not reach any more liquid in the bottom of the tank. I start yanking hoses off the tank, and get to the fuel return line, apparently at the lowest point in the tank, because it fires a geyser of gasoline out from under the front of the car, covering the underside of the car. I connect a hose to it and run the other end into the little gas can I have been using, and now it trickles, slowly, for another half hour.

And the sun goes down, too dark to work, and I haven't even gotten to those four bolts.

And I would like to get the pump out of the car before I even go to the parts store, to verify that a new one will actually fit this odd car that nothing fits, instead of the usual A-Team, post apocalypse inspired claim that the generic part can be made to fit anything as long as you have sufficient motivation from the horde of zombies coming down the street or the invading enemy army coming over the horizon...
 
Bill sorry to hear you are having problems. Fortunately you have 2 weeks to get it sorted out. The good news is after running some numbers I think the only way I will collect enough points in Blytheville is for me to run better than I ever have before. In Nashville I was 86% of Jason's time and I will have to be within 90% of his time to collect enough points. This means I will have to run within 2 seconds of Dave W's time which is really tough. For you to sway the outcome you would have to pickup 15 seconds from event 10. I doubt anyone has ever improved 15 seconds per lap in one race. For me to sway the outcome I will need to improve by 1-2 seconds from event 10....difficult but not impossible.

Good luck sorting your fuel issues.
 
So far, lots of green copper wire and the pump seems to be intermittent when connected directly to the battery with test leads. And how long it will take for a replacement to arrive from Indiana. It will go back in with new wire, gold terminals, and a weatherpack plug.

The car burned out at least three catalytic converters. The original was empty when I bought the car, and it burned out two that I put on it. Cleaned injectors, switched regulator, checked the fuel pressure at idle and with no vacuum on the diaphragm, several O2 sensors. Still ate cats. I finally gave up. But i never checked the pressure or O2 reading at 6,000-7,000 RPM. The pump might not have been able to keep up with the engine. I wonder if it will pick up or loose power by fixing it.

I went over the results from the year. The first half of the year, most events were at Gateway. The last half, most events were at Family Arena. My times are several percent better at Gateway. The pavement is not sticky, but better, and more importantly, consistent. The only times I have been able to throttle/brake steer the car were at gateway. The test-and-tune and left-foot-braking practice was at Gateway. And all my fishtail and spin problems are at Family Arena. I'm thinking of buying gravel tires to run at Family Arena.

The airport is supposed to be good and sticky when dry. If it sticks, and I can keep from backing out of the gas and braking too soon, I should be able to put together some of the times I was supposed to run all along.

Somebody also pointed out that the airport pavement is fuel soaked, and when it rains, the place is like an ice rink. That would flatten the field between the high power and low power cars, and as long as the grip is consistently bad and not varied between sticky and slick, the finish order might get really interesting.

I fixed the seating position and new front brake pads should arrive in time.
 
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Somebody with influence seems to be dead set on me not going to Arkansas.

I ordered the fuel pump three days ago from the website that said they had it "In Stock". I asked for a tracking number this morning and was told that they were waiting to receive it from a supplier before they could ship it.
Meanwhile, everyone else I ask says they can get it in two weeks.

Little to no luck finding gold plated terminals to rewire the fuel pump so that it will not turn all the copper wire green again.

And no tracking number or progress report on the brake pads that were ordered two weeks ago.

Maybe the wind will stop blowing tomorrow and I can weld the crack around the driver's door latch, then the door won't fall off while I wait for parts.
 
Don't worry Bill there is little you can do to sway the outcome. I have figured that if I drive better than I ever have before then I have a 50/50 shot at the points lead. That being said the Daytona felt better toward the end of event #10 than it ever has before. I can't wait for next season to start developing a neutral handling car. I think by the end of next year I will have a shot at FTD!

I hope you can get things sorted out and make it to Blythville. BTW I have a stock Mustang pump you can try if you get desperate. I think it is a 160 LPH which should be plenty.
 
The fuel pump arrived yesterday.
Over the weekend, I made the bad decision to scuff and paint the top of the tank, mostly to seal the little rust spots. The paint blistered. Stripped and repainted yesterday, no blisters.
Today, I soldered wires and plugs, reassembled, reinstalled, clamped hoses, and added gas.
I had previously worked over the wiring upstream and downstream of the fuel pump. There's a lot of disappointment to solder gold terminals on two ends of a long piece of wire, only to find that someone chopped it up in the middle, and Jerry-rigged it with twist connections and green oxidized wire.

Filled the tank and took it out to see if it was going to have any other problems. It seems like it pulls much stronger in the higher rev range and under load. I have never before been able to use the lower right hand corner of the speedometer, and this evening it pulled strongly right up to the last hash mark and I decided that was good enough.

Tomorrow is running to gather up tires and snacks, ask Dave where my brake pads are, readjust the harness to fit the new seat position, and pack.
Friday morning drive.
Saturday and Sunday morning, see if I can shove the car hard enough to make things difficult for all you in faster cars.
 
Bill I am glad you got it all together in time. Yesterday was a nice day so I went for a cruise to Illinois and back. I guess it is time for me to prep for this weekend and stop the joy riding.

Off I go to finish my secret weapon.
 
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