Rob's RCR40 Build

[Howard]

Rob,

You definitely have a five star car and build site. Congratulations!
I have learned a lot from your build, as I am sure many others have as well.

Happy motoring!
Howard
____________________________________________________________ _____
RCR 40 in the oven
Parnelli Jone 302 garage as a mate

[Rob]

Hey guys,
Took the car out to our local track "Waterford Hill" (http://www.waterfordhills.com/info/facilitymap07.pdf) Monday for it's inaugural "shake down" at my local Shelby Club meet. I started the day off frustrating my track friends of 15+yrs. But with each passing lap, session, and review of the car I ratcheted up the speed. All went very well. Unfortunately I have an ignition gremlin that didn't present itself in the "hot laps" of my neighborhood, in that the ignition breaks up terribly if taken over 4K revs. Thinking I could be getting arc jumping terminals in the distributor cap or something of the like. So, I was forced to run below 4K revs all day. With that....by the end of the day, the only car I couldn't hang with was a new Z06. The day was a total success, being able to rev would have been icing on the cake. I have run at this track since the early 90s with multiple cars, and with a well sorted car I can run in the 1:20 range. My best laps were in my tricked out 1969 Mach I at 1:19.2. By the end of the day I was turning mid to high 121s and still with out going deep into the brake zones and w/o feeling like I was pushing the tires. I didn't plan on even checking lap times since it was a shake down day, as it turned out.....she just wanted to keep on going. Boy...it would have been fun to have the top half of the revs to play with.


Bottom line:
Chassis set up worked out excellent. Tire wear looked great. Dean, thanks for the numbers. Used them all accept bump steer....where I ran the standard RCR set up.
Brakes were awesome. At the end of the day didn't feel that I was using more than 60%-70%.
Engine ran cool as could be. Hovered right around 180º. Even forgot to turn on the fans during one session, still didn't get above 190º.
Ignition ...demon must be hunted down. Will look into it this weekend.

Oh yea.... almost forgot. For the fifth session took the 04 Mach I out (stock, street Kuhmo 712s). Holy Crap what a land yacht by comparison. Took me four laps just to get my bearings from way up there....CG felt like it was five feet off pavement. It was at this point that I realized how effortless it was to turn similar lap times in the 40. Man...what a cool car .


Sorry, but I ran out of memory card space, so only one video. It is of session three. Unfortunately not the fastest session by 2-3 seconds.

p.s. She got more attention than that Z06 or the late model Ford GT.....gotta love it.


YouTube - GT40 shake down 1

Gotta run to the day job....hopefully no typos (please forgive if there are...)

[Fran Hall RCR]

Nice vid....

Well done....but turn off that 4k rpm traction control...

[Dean Lampe]

Thats great news Rob! Now send in your money to Run & Gun Run 'N Gun here in St.Louis so we can play together in the fall. I loved your video. I am going to give you a call this week to talk about that.

[Dave]

Nice... the louder the engine gets the shakier the camera gets.. classic

[Craig White]

Thanks for the photos and video. Very cool.

Sounds like a great day. We were also hoping to use Dean's setup as a start point for our RCR-40 as well. Looks like we will owe him a few drinks for his efforts.

Good luck with the engine rev problem.

[Rob]

A buddy of mine just mailed me a ton of pics and vid..... thought I'd add some to the above. Thanks Ken

The video is a fly-by of the start/finish line. I would hit 4K revs exactly as I crossed the line. Then I'd let out for turn 1.

Fly by vid: YouTube - GT40 shakedown 2

.

[Chuck]

Rob:

It is late. Covered up with work. I am tired. But watching your video and looking at those pics makes me want to head straight for the garage and get back to work! Inspriational!

You need to take up Dean on his suggestion: Run and Gun, St. Louis, 2008! Will see you there . . . .

Chuck

[Bill D]

Gawd!! I just keep playing it over and over and over!! What a sound!!

[Pat Buckley]

Wow, that is awesome!

[frank beuker]

Great pics and film
Can't get enough of those films

Frank

[Rob]

Hey, thanks a lot guys.
Just for fun, I massaged some of my buddies clips into mine:

YouTube - GT40 shakedown 3

[EGLITOM]

Great video

HOw does the car feel in turning in ?
TOM

[Rob]

Sorry Tom...don't know how I missed your Q.
Didn't take too long for me to get dialed in with it....a bit of lift on the throttle at turn in and she rotated nicely. The car was very stable, rear end stayed planted nicely. As soon as I had the turns initiated I would throttle back on hard. Granted, I only had 4K revs to work with, so looking forward to a re-evaluation. I am planning on taking her out for one more shake down since I have now addressed the ignition issue, so will be able to give more feedback on the 6th.

[EGLITOM]

Rob

thanks for that, Go out on 6th and have fun

TOM

[MReid]

Rob, I don't know how I missed these clips before. That was awesome and looked like a ton of fun! Thanks for posting.

[Rob]

Took the car out again for its second and final shake down. It was nice having full revs....for sure! Just the sound alone got me all tingly. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy driving this car.... Man was that fun.

I have loaded some in car video on YouTube ..... that's the good news. The bad news.....you may need to take some dramamine before viewing... I tried to utilize the image stabilization function of the camera.....whoooooo bad idea. The camera clearly couldn't keep up. The result being that the camera was always hunting to find center. Baaaaddd news. Jumps around so much that it looks like the mount was loose on the roll bar (which it wasn't for all about to pounce.. ..). Anyway...if you care to endure the pain, click away... I had to split the footage into part 1 / part 2. You'll see I started the session off quite easy and spooled it up (relative term) as it progressed. However, keeping it to this side of tire squeal the whole time (with two or three exceptions). I was quite impressed that I could run this fast w/o pushing the tires. I was probably running ~ 80% by the end of the session, holding a lot in reserve at the end of the straights, not reving to red line and as mentioned pulling back a bit in corner speeds . A few times (in a different session) I went deeper into the corners just to see what the high decel braking would be like. She pulled down fantastically, but can't speak to fade performance as I didn't do it repeatedly enough. What fun...even with using a lot of self restraint.

I guess it's time to finish the little details and give her a spit polish.



07-06-08 shake down part 1

07-06-08 shake down part 2