#$2012

9/27/12 Day Before the Competition

Just because we had the car actually driving before the competition this year doesn't mean we didn't leave things to the last minute.  Before getting the car on the trailer we still had to finish fitting the rear bumper cover which did not fit at all because it's supposed to go on an E36.  Making it look half way decent (from 10ft) required a lot of trimming. Fortunately I had Skitter and my dad (who flew in to come to the competition) there to help.  Unfortunately Skitter decided that this would be a good time to stab himself in the thigh with a utility knife.  After discussing stitching it up himself (which sounded like a terrible idea to me) he managed to drive himself to a clinic, get the cut stitched and make it back before we left for Florida.

Once we arrived in Gainsville and checked into our hotel we had one last item on the to do list before we called it a day.  Nick and I had cut some vinyl decals a few days before at Georgia Tech and it was time to apply them.  Nothing too fancy just a little something to get an extra half a point from the concourse judges.

  9/28/12 Day 1 Autocross & Concourse

Day 1 started early, we got to the track early, unpacked the truck, torqued our lug nuts, and finished up a couple last minute things.  For autocross we were just going to run boost control using the wastegate spring only, which was good because we still had not gotten the EBC working properly. This arrangement gave us a peak boost of about 15psi which gives us more than enough power for autocrossing.  

While getting ready Steve Hoelscher, one of the pro drivers GRM makes available for the autocross event, came over to chat about driving our car.  Steve is a 6 time SCCA Solo National Champion, 25+ time SCCA Solo Divisional Champion, and the 1989 Solo Nationals Rookie of the Year making him more than capable of ringing out all that our car had to offer.  So, with that and the fact that I’m pretty sure no one wanted to drive our car at last year’s competition so we considered this a great start to the day.

After walking the track and watching the first few cars run we decided to get the concourse judging out of the way so we made our way over to that area with the car.  Concourse is not exactly where we spent much time working on while building the car to this point but it’s nice to share with other car guys what we did and why. There was a small crowd, a few judges from GRM, and a few guys from ebay motors.  They seemed to like the car, but obviously there is nothing flashy or overly nice about the bodywork/finish of the car so we didn’t expect much from the scoring in this department.

     After concourse we prepared for our autocross runs.  I would drive the first two runs as a shakedown to ensure the car was running well and that all the wheels stayed on and then we would hand over the keys to Steve… The challenge rules allow each entrant to have five runs and only the best of those runs counts towards your challenge score.  This would give Steve three runs to get comfortable and get the most out of the car.  Unfortunately, in my first two runs a transmission problem became painfully apparent.  Due to what is likely failed/failing synchro, shifting from third down into second proved to be extremely difficult.

After our second run we had a decent middle of the pack time but had definitely not gotten everything out of the car due to the transmission problems.  We then found Steve, explained the issue, which he was confident he could deal with, and away he went for our third run.  The following 20 minutes would prove to be the most exciting of the weekend for us.  Watching the car run around the course spitting flames out the exhaust and making all sorts of fun noises finally gave us all a sense of accomplishment.  It didn’t hurt either that Steve was able to get the car from third into second without much fuss and put the car solidly in second place after his second run.  His third and final run didn’t quite go as planned and he ended up wiping out most of the cones at the end of the course when he attempted to shift into third instead of riding the rev limiter.  Looking back on it, we should have just bumped the rev limiter up a few hundred rpms and he might have been able to squeeze out a couple tenths… oh well, next time.

   After that last run the car was on the verge of overheating so we had to do a couple slow passes up and down the road to get it to cool back down before parking it for the day and watching the rest of the autocross action.  Our second place standing stuck until the last run of an unexpected competitor. A turbocharged Jeep Cherokee surprised everyone by claiming the fastest time of the day, pushing us down to third. It’s interesting to note that the only other car to best ours in the autocross was another Chrysler product, the “Scaries” a 1987 Dodge Aries!

So, at the end of the first day things were looking pretty good.  We packed up the car and headed to Applebees for a much deserved meal and then back to the hotel for some rest.

9/29/12 Day 2 Drags

Coming off of our good performance the previous day we we’re hopeful we would at least be able to put down a decent drag time despite having more than a few hurdles to overcome.  This would be my first time drag racing, as last year’s drags were rained out and it’s just not something I had done before.  On top of that, we had an untested electronic boost control system, autocross tires (which have a much too stiff sidewall),  transmission problems, and probably worst of all we left the soft rear springs at home so getting off the line was going to be challenging.

My first run didn’t go so well.  I started in first gear, but thanks to our failing transmission I had to almost come to stop a few hundred feet down the track to get it into second.  Needless to say, the et wasn’t too great but the trap speed (over 100mph) showed that there was some potential there.  A few more runs starting in second and we had some decent 14 second passes that we were happy with.  With these out of the way it was time to start trying to raise the boost and see what we could do.  Unfortunately our untested EBC system was not functioning as planned and we couldn’t get our programming changes to make any difference in the boost numbers we were seeing.

That’s when we started to improvise; we pulled the boost control solenoid and hosing out and instead started poking holes in the vacuum/boost reference line that fed the wastegate.  This is essentially the way a manual boost controller works, by introducing a controlled leak in this line it fakes the wastegate into opening at a higher manifold air pressure.  Poking holes in a hose wasn’t the most controlled way to hit our target boost of 21 psi.  At one point we blew the line open causing uncontrolled boost and luckily the megasquirt stepped in (as programmed) and cut spark.  To have more control over this leak we had Nick and Mike run to a hardware store and pick up a small needle valve that we added in line so we could dial in the boost.  This worked great, although the extra boost didn’t get us much more in terms of et. We ended up with a best run of 13.82 seconds which was good enough to put us in the top 10 drag times.  With more grip off the line and some more practice the car should be able to easily get into the 12s.  

At the end of the day we were all happy with how the car did and we had a lot of fun.  Most of my time was spent focusing on our car and trying to get it to go faster but there was some exciting runs going on throughout the day.  The Scaries ended up running an 11.69 after breaking and repairing a half shaft, putting them solidly in the lead.  The Jeep Cherokee’s best time wasn’t far off of ours with a 14.04!

After packing up for the day and heading back to the hotel for some rest and a shower we headed over to the host hotel for the awards banquet.  The banquet was a lot of fun, we had some great food and had time to meet and talk with other competitors and GRM staff.  When it came time for the results we were very anxious to see how we placed overall.  It turned out we placed fifth overall and considering how things went last year we were pretty darn happy with that.  Overall, we had a great time at the competition and look forward to the next time we can compete!  

  Special Thanks

A lot of people helped with car over the past year and there is no way the car would have made it to the competition and done as well as it did without their help.  I’d like to say thanks for all the help…

Christian Yeager (aka Skitter)

Nick Ginga

Valve Cover 

Electronic Boost Control

Now that we had an adequate external waste gate it was time to fine tune and control the boost we could run.  On just the wastegate spring, boost was peaking at around 15psi which was actually quite decent for autocross.  However, by adding boost control we will be able to obtain more overall boost and achieve it earlier in the rev range by actively controlling the wastegate.  

Bumper Covers