I wanted to follow up with some of the changes I have made since the Run and Gun event in St.Louis MO. The car ran very well and that has been discussed other places on the forum. I did have some mechanical issues at the track Here is what happened and what I did about it.
The first problem was a loss of brakes. It was really strange. The pedal would not go down and I could not slow down. I found a piece of debris in my residual pressure valve. It totally disabled my brakes. I took the valve out and drilled it out. Now it is a coupling! and the brakes are great. I would love to remove the rear pressure valve but it is not easy to get to. Maybe a winter project.
The second issue was a loss of fuel pressure on my race tank fuel system. Easy short term fix, switch to the other tank! However, I burned up the 2 pumps on the race side because they were so jammed with aluminum debris that they no longer pumped fuel. I came home and changed all the pumps and it is working nicely. I was going to add a filter between the pump and the tank but now I am going to another style of pump that I think is probably a better choice with a built in filter and a check valve.
Then I blew out the bushings on my sway bar. I was able to push the bushings back in and I added collars on both sides of my pillow blocks. Pretty easy fix but I just didn't think I needed them on both sides.
The most annoying problem was when my friends said it looked like an electric car because it was so fast and you could hear it coming. So I took off my mufflers and installed some straight pipes. Now it sounds good like that you tube video of the GT spinning out.
I am still having some kind of wheel hop under hard acceleration. I have been playing with shock valving but haven't been able to get it fixed yet.
I want to do some kind of body ground effects that would help control the air flow under the car. I just don't really want them to be that visible. I need to create more down force on the high speed banks.
As I ended the season I was running great. Run and Gun is one of the premier track events for our hobby in the States. For me to win the overall top dog next year in the "pro/unlimited" class, I think I will need to find another 1 or 2 seconds. That might mean a bigger set of "stones" but we will see what next year brings. Here are a few pictures.
This is coming of the straight into turn 1. This is probably around 100mph turning very hard to the left. There were quite a few crashes in the this corner ranging from serious fiberglass damage to a hospitalized driver.
This is at WOT at 7000rpm's at 150+ mph
This is where you need to tap the brakes to set the nose for turn one. The car feels really stable and turns in very well, very mechanical.
The tire temps looked fantastic. Based on the temps I will say that the chassis set up is on the money. The tire pressure was around 37psi hot.
I hope this helps some of you with your set up.
Dean
