Catching Up

Let’s do a little review, shall we? The past years have been typical in their atypicality; no two years quite the same.

If you need a refresher, see: An Abbreviated Pickle History

 

In late 2023, we said, “Let’s be ready for Speedweek ’24”

• Improvements: We abandoned the fancy split-collar axle sprocket mounts and cut a keyway in the solid front axle instead, changed from a set of independent GoPros to a simpler 4-camera setup, made the steering wheel removable, and did some tiny tuning to avoid loading up during our long warm-up idling
• Maintenance: Pickle got some body ‘freshening’ and paint, a new ECU Battery, an automatic thermo-switch, and some new brake lines
• Safety: belts, helmets, fire extinguishers, clothing… all items are up-to-date and certified
• Schedule: Our list was down to the ‘nice to haves’ by four weeks out — probably a record for our deadline performance

This Is The (Speed)Week That Was

It was so very, very, very hot. 110+ hot. Other teams’ engines–that had never been troublesome before–were melting during their runs. We were melting ourselves; the staging lines were desert-caravan long. A partial cause of the long lines was that recent years had seen bad salt conditions, so this year brought out all the pent-up racers.

Sat Aug 3 – At 3:10pm, there were still 55 vehicles in line for the short course. We did not join the queue that day, and instead went looking for lodging. Wendover was FULL. Found a hotel in Wells, and made the 60 mile transit that night and the following morning.

Sun Aug 4 – Final prep, got in line. The short course was cursed with Instagram influencers, 50mph mopeds, rookies, and folks whose cars and/or drivers weren’t yet qualified for the long course. It moved at the speed of a glacier. We waited about 5 hours, didn’t reach the starting line, and  parked on the side of the lane in a queue for the following morning.

Mon Aug 5 – Next morning, after the Record Runs, we got our first run at 8:58am. Only three miles on the short course, and we ran 178mph in Mile 3, but missed the 175mph “in the quarter” which could have promoted us the to the long course. Questions about the car’s performance and checking the chain took the rest of the day. We planned to get in line early for Tuesday.

Tue Aug 6 – Made a run at 12:24pm, and qualified for a record (back-up) run with a 192mph in Mile 3. Okay! That’d be more than 12mph over the record if we could back it up. We took the record-run-same-day-at-4pm option – but when we reached the head of the line, the car would not start. We pushed it off, and the Hayabusa roared … for a second or two, then Pickle coasted off the course before the first quarter-mile marker.

Back in the pits, we started diagnosis, but turned up nothing conclusive. Review of data later that evening showed a curious trace on the VBAT value, which suggested that the Pectel was powered-on continuously — but the injectors and coils were not.

Wed Aug 7 – We hit the salt early to correct the non-starting. We found a broken wire, probably caused the previous afternoon in impound, as we were draining the intercooler.  The long (nightmare-long) waits in the staging lanes, made more hellish by the heat, convinced us to switch drivers and we moved to the long course.

The long course is run by both fast cars (less time on course) and by experienced teams (less time spent at the starting line). It moved more quickly than the short course line, and we made a run at 13:26pm. Over 190mph in both Mile 3 & Mile 4, hellya; but later we were disqualified and kicked out of Impound for a procedural error during the run.

In the pits, we found a split CV boot and … we were hearing some CV Joint noises. It’s probably worth saying that the drive chain, so far, was looking very good after every run.

Thu Aug 8 – Some shrinkage of the staging lines. On the long course, we made a run at 10:03am, and again qualified for a back-up (record) run by going  over 194mph in Mile 3 and Mile 4.

We took the record-run-the-same-day-at-4pm option, and pushed off the starting line at 16:47pm. But Pickle broke the chain almost immediately off the line, and again we failed to “back up the qualifier”.

In the pits, we found a tooth broken off the primary sprocket. That’s new; the primary sprocket is hardened steel, and has never caused a problem before. But our best guess is that the loose tooth got lodged in the next sprocket valley and that popped the chain. We had no spare primary sprocket, and we had a bit of damage to the clutch pushrod, so our week was finished.

Our score for the week was 3/6: three times in Impound, but three failures to complete the backup run.  🙁

We were encouraged that we had multiple runs over 190mph, but still troubled by the chain, CV joints, and the boost control system. We found the boost knob at 26 clicks out from minimum, while our spec said it should be 10 clicks out: how…?. Our MAP sensor recordings showed good peaks in the lower gears, but when Pickle settled in for a long pull, the graph came down then looked like it was ‘fluttering’ in a narrow range. We surmised the fluttering was  the action of the wastegate… but why the boost control system allows larger peaks earlier is a head-scratcher.

Pickle went into the trailer and we drove home.

Just In Case We’re Going To World Finals

Though our SpeedWeek performance was not satisfying, the Salt was pretty good. We started watching the weather for the late September/early October meet “World Finals”. What must we do to improve our chances in the few weeks we have?

• We intensively reviewed our chains and sprockets; laid on plenty of spares, and there was talk of changing them every two runs?
• Through the SecretSAAbSociety, we got a stack of new-to-us CV joints, and assembled both axles with good joints, new boots, and new grease
• We disassembled the wastegate and manual boost controller, looking for answers on the inconsistent boost. As far as we could tell… all was well? But the boost controller confused us.
• In the garage, using an elegant ExtremeTurboSystems tool, we found and fixed a host of boost leaks, including a MAP sensor that had cracked its cover and failed.
• In a remarkable flurry of speed-fabrication, we built “hub adapters” for the ’59 SAAB to connect it to a modern dyno at English Racing.
  
• The dyno showed that a prime cause of boost unpredictability was our “bleed type” manual boost controller. It also showed that the Hayabusa motor could still produce serious power. We fitted a dead-simple manual boost controller and dialed in a ‘safe’ level
• Lucas (the tuner on-site at the dyno) opined that our on-power fueling might be way too rich, and costing some power… but we deferred  further tuning for a future day.
  

 

 

 

 

World Finals ’24

Surprising even ourselves, we were ready again, with no known issues. We expected to make a couple of 190mph runs right off the bat.

Sat Sep 28 – We got through a moderate staging line, in moderate temperatures, and made a run at 5pm. Top speed was barely over 180mph. We qualified for a record attempt, but what happened to the 195 mph runs we’d begun to think were normal?

In Impound, our drive chain looked like raw bread dough… after the single run. We spent most of our allotted time in Impound replacing that chain.

We got no logging out of the Pectel ECU on that run (probably from our error during a previous “let’s write new log settings” session), but the databox had its own MAP, and that MAP sensor said the maximum boost was lower than we wanted–so we gave the manual boost controller 2 1/2 turns toward the positive.

We left Pickle in Impound overnight.

Sun Sep 29 – What do you know? The Pickle (which is the current and previous record holder in Blown Gas Coupe BGC) was disqualified and got kicked out of Impound. 

The rule cited was “the radiator cannot be blocked before or behind”… and that rule, ill-suited as it is to a car whose factory radiator location is behind the engine, was now held to bar any record attempts on the Blown Gas Coupe record. If you’re wondering, the Pickle has had the exact same radiator configuration during each of its Bonneville meets since at least 2014.

Luckily, we were ready to change classes. We’d brought the body parts (including the crowd-pleasing aluminum stabilizers at the rear) required to make the Pickle into a Blown Gas Altered Coupe. Installing those parts took some time, then the car had to go through Tech Inspection again, and get the gas tank full and sealed, and get in the single staging line…

We reached the head of the staging line after 5pm. The course was overdue to close, but the SCTA stalwarts were still starting cars.  We had to make a decision: if we ran that night, we’d have only an abbreviated time in Impound (assuming we qualified and went to Impound). Normally in Impound we’d be able to work on the car for 4 hours, but the Impound area itself was set to close at 7pm. But–as the whole meet is short–we thought “Let’s run if we can”. 

So we pushed-off at 17:37, and Brandon took the Pickle faster than she’d ever run before.

Holey moley fast. Our speeds in two measured miles were well over the existing record. This gave us some ‘breathing room’ for our second run. If we couldn’t quite reproduce those high speeds the next day, even a speed around 198mph would make the two-run average safely over the 203.5mph number we needed.

In our precious time in Impound, we downloaded data and started on the checklist. First Item: inspect chain. The drive chain was little loose, but only a little; and it was the chain type that we used for multiple runs at SpeedWeek; and besides: we had no time to change it. Guess that item’s complete…

Reviewing data, the boost values looked strange, but the fueling was spot on. We traced the strange boost values  to another blown apart MAP sensor (insert complaint about globalization and offshore manufacturing)–but that MAP failure was actually a good thing. The blown-apart MAP sensor caused the Pectel to act as if there were 10-12 PSI of boost, while there was actually 26-29 PSI of boost. The Pectel was injecting considerably less fuel than normal as a result. But our Lambda sensor reported that the Air/Fuel Ratio was perfect. 

Without the MAP sensor failure, we would never had had the courage to lower the fueling to that level ourselves. The demonstration convinced even us skeptics, and we opted to cut back on the high-boost fueling as the accident had instructed us. 

Mon Sep 30 – In Impound early in the morning, we wanted to install our spare MAP sensor, but the wiring harness connector was slightly different. We didn’t have time to hook that replacement MAP sensor up. This meant that the databox wouldn’t know what the manifold pressure was in the upcoming Record run. We reasoned, “That’s okay, because the Pectel MAP is still good, and that’s the one that  sets the fueling.” 

On the qualifying run the evening prior, before the MAP sensor cracked and failed, we could tell that the boost level rose a little higher than we thought was safe. So “to protect the motor”, we took a half-a-turn out of the boost control knob.

Pickle to Team: I’ll show you some boost, folks.

We followed the officials from the Impound area to the starting line. We were hoping that, first, our drive chain held together; second, that the rest of the drivetrain did likewise; and third, that Pickle had enough speed to back up our qualifier.

But there was a growing sense in the team that we simply did not know what we could hope for. All this year, our expectations have either been far too grand or, on the other end, pitifully too paltry. Nearly every run surprised us in some dimension. 

Fingers crossed, we pushed off the line at 08:35.

Somewhere before the start of Mile Three, the boost control hose separated from the wastegate. That hose may have burned off, melted in two, burst from internal pressure… we’re not sure. When the wastegate was divorced from the boost controller, the turbo was free to do everything that it was capable of. 

Every cylinder’s firing pumped more energy into the exhaust side of the turbo, which amplified the next cylinder’s loading cycle, which then increased the exhaust energy to the turbo, which then amplified again the next cylinder’s loading… the turbo entered a vicious upward cycle, conducting an increasing melody of boost and more boost. The unregulated turbo took boost off the top of the chart, to levels beyond our system’s ability to measure. It was at least 32 psi of boost.

More boost means more power: the power let the Hayabusa engine reach its programmed maximum RPM in fifth and six gears (each of these was a first for us on the Salt).

Then, at redline in top gear, at never-before-seen levels of power, at 220 mph, the left outer CV joint “stripped out” under the load.

At that speed, something like 500 horsepower is required just to maintain velocity; it takes 500 horsepower delivered through two front tires. When the failed left axle couldn’t deliver power to the left front wheel, the right front wheel got, suddenly, twice the power it had a moment before.  Say again?  When the left side tire couldn’t deliver power anymore, all the power spilled out to the right side tire. The tremendous dynamic forces at work uncoiled into the right-side tire, and it spun wildly, taking the wound-up drivetrain with it, dragging the engine itself up to 11293 rpm, 793 rpm above redline.

For the curious, that engine speed equates to a ground speed of 238mph (according to our gearing chart). So that’s how fast the right front tire was spinning.

The rpm excursion triggered the ECU’s rev limiter; and then either the rev limiter or some other factor cut motor power, and the car began to decelerate. This was a Good Thing, as a one-wheel-drive setup at that speed would have been devilish to control.

 

Pickle only pulled through most of Mile 4, but that was enough. The two-run average was 213.411 mph, around 10 mph over the previous record in H/Blown Gas Altered.

Izzat a RedHat? Oh yes it is.

In the side lobby of the five-star Hotel Vincci Estrella del Mar (rates lower in the off season) is a well-equipped bar. We were sitting at a tall table, sipping resort drinks, when three women careened in from the pool room. Two young, the third less than fifty, all clinging to each other with one hand and carrying tall glasses—vases, almost—two-thirds filled with bright-colored libations.

The party temporarily foundered in the shoals near our table, but regained headway and one hailed us as they passed:

”She (indicating her mature companion) has a pencil sharpener in her bag!” “A pencil sharpener,” chorused the third. Other notes and observations came emphatically forth, and the whole reminded me of a flock of small birds on encountering a pool of fresh water.

Their route to the stairwell included several tacks and feints, as they responded to the buffeting of unseen winds.

The passage filled the side lobby with cheerful energy, and strangers smiled at each other. Into the lull the barman deposited a single, somewhat rueful word: “Tequila”

An Irish lady walking back from the bar shared, with a nod, “I have been that soldier.”

Running south and east from Seville, the road signs count down the kms to Algeciras, the teeming port city on the Mediterranean and, further along, to Malaga, the Coste del Sol vacation niche. But never listed nor hinted at is Gibraltar, “The Rock”, in British hands since way back.

Lacking the textual announcements, you might fear you’ll miss the turn; but you need not worry. Even in gray-skyed March, the drizzle and fading light can’t mask the monolith. It is its own announcement. Its undeniability clashes with the pointed refusal-to-acknowledge attitude of its human neighbors.

Algeciras is a whirl of commerce. The ships in dock, or laying close by, are pumping goods in and out of this corner of Spain (and hence, this corner of Europe) at a heavy pace. In layers out from the container cranes are warehouses, yards, distribution and breaking-down points, all manner of specialty shippers and businesses concerned with collecting enough freight to warrant a shipment, or in efficiently de-aggregating arriving pallets into a dozen or more sub streams of goods. The lights in the city burn all night.

Approaching the border with Gibraltar, on the Spanish side, condos and shops and the rest of a standard build-out for a C.d.S. beach resort town packs the landward side of the highway. Eventually, miles later, the twin portals of Spanish exit and British entrance are ten meters apart. Our Spanish agent is all business, with quick pointed questions and brisk stamps. The UK guy recognizes the US Passport from a distance, even closed, and passes us in with a wave.

Here it is, then, clinging to the side of a mountain, a compressed little slice of Britain. We saw some historic military installs, and some signs of purposeful modern stuff, but mostly it was just a discordant jutting-out of mushy peas and dinner coats and propriety in a countryside of nature and flavor and drama.

From the Referendum Steps, we can look up the hill, and see the Union Jack riding the breeze.

The billboards along the A1 north of Lisbon.

And in the crowded arrival hall in the Madrid airport, while we’re queued for passport control, the sole video screen is showing motorcycle racing. Okay!

 

Ever been in a project where, in order to do A, you must first do B; and to do B, you have to get C working; and to get C working, well: you need a lathe.

I have a lathe, classic American model, gift from a friend. Its status at my house for some years has been, “needs assembled”. And, since its original power source was a foot treadle, it also needed some fabrication and wiring to fit an electric motor as the power source. The required materiel was in the same set of boxes that held the main body of the lathe, and similarly, “needed asssembly”.

It happens that the motor expects three-phase 208V, which would have ruled it out at my house (which has only single-phase 240V), save that another box held a “variable frequency drive / inverter”.

After a lot of learning, I got this today:

Run Data Here

After 2018’s Red Hat triumph, we laid off for a year to see how our feelings vis-a-vis Bonneville racing developed. Would we be sated by that odyssey? Would we be anxious to return? Would the team take up iron-butt motorcycling instead?

Turns out that Salt Fever is not so easily cured. The team chatter about ‘trying to raise the Blown Gas Coupe record‘ started near the end of 2019. Here’s what we were thinking: this car ran 200+ on its last four outings, and nothing the motor said or did suggested that it’d been hurt by those record passes; if we just changed out some bodywork, Pickle would fit into another class, with a record just over 175mph. Shouldn’t it be easy to crank that up?Isn’t its mere existence at that level, in fact, a demand that it be raised?

In early 2020, a critical mass of interest formed, and work started. Pickle’d been resting in the Car Palace since it was cleaned up on our return in 2018, but now it was pulled out of hibernation and went on the lift. There was a bit of corrosion on the underbelly… then we found the frozen brake calipers… then found the immobile suspension… then noticed the funny way the turbo spun. Hmm. It doesn’t like sitting around, does it?

Another major challenge was that the engine control unit (ECU) and its complete harness had been removed. These components had been lent to Pickle for the 2018 meet, and were returned to the owners after. We got a duplicate ECU and harness, but figuring out where all the connectors and power leads went consumed several days. And one ECU output, for the tachometer, stubbornly refused to talk to the dash-mounted instrument, or at least it didn’t move the needle. We thought we’d keep trying when we had time…

Boom! It was August, and Speed Week was here. We packed a bunch of tools and the whole team, and went to the salt.

Car #8600, the Flying Pickle, arrived Saturday morning and we set up pits east of Tech Inspection. Covid has changed the workflow on the salt, and the TechInspector (1) now comes to your pit as opposed to the car going to Tech Inspection. Formerly, there were three or four inspectors focused on each car as it came through, but now (having to account for travel out to various pits), there’s only one inspector.

We made a run on Saturday afternoon, but it was quite slow – around 165mph. That was a bit puzzling because this same motor/car combination ran over 200mph on its last outing. We turned to our old friend, ‘data’, to look for clues for the slowness… but found that both data collection systems had had problems on that Saturday run. The cause of those faults? Corrosion in electrical connectors. What they did tell us was that the driver was shifting early, and he admitted as much: “Without a tach, it is really hard to tell how high you’re spinning it. You have to realize how violent the experience is when the motor hits its sweet spot.” Hmmm… guess we better make the tach work.

Sunday we’d corrected the tach issue, and fixed the data collection problems, but we still weren’t reaching speeds we expected. Pickle went around 177mph. The data said that turbo boost fell off after the shift to fifth gear, and the car barely gained speed thereafter. It looked to us like the rpms in fifth gear were just slightly below the level where the turbocharger ‘takes over’, pushing more and more air into the engine and then feeding off the exhaust from that bigger meal. Turbochargers are self-reinforcing in that way, and require pressure relief valves in the exhaust plumbing to reduce the feedback effect. Otherwise the cycle continues ‘until a mechanical limit is reached’.

Sunday’s speed was still enough to qualify for a record attempt (barely), so the car went to the impound area for a designated work period and a ‘record run’ the following morning. While we were prepping systems in Impound, though, a gaggle of Tech Inspectors came over and told us the roof rails on the car were out of specification, and disqualified our run. I suspect that the issue would have been caught had the normal Tech Inspection routine been in place.

We towed Pickle out of impound, and removed the errant roof rails in our pits. Monday morning we made a small adjustment to the fueling in the rpm band corresponding to the rpm after a gear shift, and had the driver hold fourth gear to 10,200 rpm — hoping to land high enough in fifth gear to let the turbo pull it up into the powerband.

Our speed of 176mph again qualified us for a record attempt the next morning, so we were back in impound Monday afternoon, racking our brains to figure out why we weren’t going faster. We’d also noticed that Pickle was becoming very hard to start. It would crank without firing, pop a little, then crank again. We tried various combinations of throttle opening, fuel pump on/off, … crossing our fingers … but the hard starting coupled with the lack of speed had us doubting our assumptions.

Tuesday we were at the end of the road at 6am, along with other teams whose vehicles would be making record attempts. The officials led us out to the Impound area for a brief work period, and TeamPickle had a little extra time before we had to go to the starting line. We thought we’d start the engine to warm it up (and to reduce our anxiety about it not starting at all).

Our working theory Tuesday morning was that ‘cranking speed’ (the crankshaft rotational speed that the starter motor imparts) was low, and that was the cause of the hard starting. Pickle carries a large 12V battery on-board for running pumps, and this is also used for the starter motor. To augment that, we clamped on a battery charger, and connected our push truck’s umbilical cord. We had amps and volts a’plenty.

Press the button! whirr whirr whirr pop whirr whirr whirr whirr pop whirr whirr whirr whirr… (repeats)

Now our anxiety was back twofold. What is causing this?! The deadline to leave Impound was imminent. With nothing to lose, we decided to try bump-starting Pickle during the tow to the starting line. Hey – it works on motorcycles… sometimes.

And it worked for us: the engine fired very quickly, and we let it run during the tow to the start line. (We noticed on Thursday a.m. that other teams do similar bump starts… but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

The record we were chasing was 176.393 m.p.h. Our speed on the qualifying run would be averaged with our speed on the ‘record’ run. Our qualifying speed was over the record by just a little bit, so we could set a new record if Pickle could manage 175.267 m.p.h. plus. Pah – this car can go over 200 m.p.h. Should be easy.

We didn’t make it. The top speed was 174-ish. We towed back to the pits, out of ideas and frustrated.

Luckily, we had fresh eyes in the pits, a visiting couple that we know from rally racing in the Pacific Northwest. Steve is a professional mechanic, and he was able to re-set our tangled brains into verifying the basics of internal combustion:

1. compression
2. fuel
3. spark

The compression gauge came out, and we checked all four cylinders. They read:
90# – 30# – 30# – 50#

Well, there’s your problem, Bob. This engine normally has approximately 160# across the board. That could explain the hard starting. But it also seemed really low… with those kind of numbers, how (we asked ourselves) is the car going 175m.p.h.? We kind of shrugged and pointed at the enormous turbocharger. Perhaps with enough boost, static compression matters less? This was blowing our minds, but the facts where there, right in front of us.

We went looking for the cause of the low compression. A shot of oil into the cylinders (to help the piston rings seal) didn’t change the numbers. We thought it likely we’d burned the edges off the exhaust valves, and we were losing seal there. A check of valve clearances on the exhaust, though, showed all eight in spec. The mystery deepens. Almost on a whim, we checked the valve clearances on the intake side, and then checked them again; because seven of eight were showing zero clearance. That would cause the valves to be slightly open in their ‘resting position’, and that would certainly reduce compression.

Did we bring the shims needed to set the clearance on the intake valves? No-sir-ree, we had not. That is why, if you were on Interstate 80 between Bonneville and Salt Lake City on Tuesday lunchtime, you’d have seen me around max legal speed heading to an open motorcycle shop for a shim kit.

I won’t describe in detail the hours and hours of work it required to get clearance on those intake valves, but we next made a run on Wednesday, in the late afternoon. Result: 177 m.p.h., qualifying speed, and we were back in Impound for the third time.

None of us had then an explanation for why the intake valve clearance disappeared, nor have we come up with one since. But there were other strange things happening with and strange noises emitting from the engine, and together they’re like a big red flag waving: You’ve been asking me to put out 3x normal power for many runs now, and I am… getting… tired.

We figured our chances of succeeding in our record run Thursday morning were less than 50-50 (the greater odds were on the combination of ‘running too slow’ and ‘blowing up violently’.)

So naturally… we turned up the boost.

Well, the motor will need a complete rebuild anyway; at least we’ll have a chance at setting a record. This was our rationale. And, before now, we’d always been afraid to touch the boost knob, which was still at the setting chosen by the engine tuners. So we felt both compelled and naughty when we twisted it a full turn.

At the starting line the next morning, we were part of a Spectrum Of Speed; the other lane held a 60cc moped which hoped to make 48 mph. Then the Pickle, hoping for 190 mph. And next to us, the recent king of wheel driven land speed, the Speed Demon streamliner run by Poteet & Main, which was shooting for 480 m.p.h.

All three of us set records.

• The Pickle, just by the skin of its teeth. We ran 182mph with four pounds more boost than the day before. The average speed for our qualifying and record runs was a bit over 179mph.
• The moped made 50mph.
• The Speed Demon ran 480 and made it look very, very easy. Doesn’t take long to cover the five mile course when you’re over 300 at the two-mile mark. Our driver was outside the Pickle at Mile 6 when the streamliner driver(pilot?) pulled the ‘chute on the Speed Demon. Tom said he felt a shock wave in his chest.

  We’d completely exhausted ourselves during the week, and managed to raise the record in 1500cc Blown Gas Coupe by a measly 3mph. But it is the current record.

See Run Data Here

Context available here.

MPH, 2020 vs. 2018

This is the GPS signal from the databox. We collect data more frequently now, so I had to ‘expand’ the 2018 trace to fit the timescale. We should try to use the same settings to make lining things up easier. 🙂

Note that the Nano seems to have died partway through the final run… all I had were zeros after that. You see the purple line just stop in the middle of its plateau. Also! You can see the lower gearing working, at least ’til the engine runs out of power.

MAP, 2020 vs. 2018

These are absolute manifold pressure values. They come from the databox, which is using a different style of MAP sensor than the ECU does. We should use the same damn sensor. 🙂 Can you tell which line is 2018?

Our cranked-up boost knob on Thursday (green line) was looking good at the beginning. We also lost that signal from the databox when the Nano stopped. You can see the ECU’s MAP numbers in the next graph, though. Not pretty.

ECU Map Vs. RPM, 2018-Final vs. 2020-Final

We changed the RPM at which logging starts, so the 2020 run starts ‘earlier’. We should try to use the same settings to make lining things up easier. 🙂

The two top lines are MAP, the two bottom lines are RPM. You can see the shift points in the MAP values of the 2018 line, but the 2020 MAP line is just … blah.

Timeslips

Run 1: Saturday, August 8th, 4:08 p.m.

Unpacked! Tech’d! Ran! but rpms were low, for good reason.

Run 2: Sunday, August 9th, 3:40 p.m.

Tach fixed, qualified! in two miles, #4 and #5. Went straight to Impound.

Speed seemed low, though. And the roof rails seemed high, according to the TechInspectors. The rails disqualified our run, and we went back to the pits for thinkin’.

The data showed a tiny speed trend upward throughout.

Run 3: Monday, August 10th, 1:08 p.m.

Qualified again, this time without roof rails.
Review of the data showed some good boost in the lower gears, but nuthin’ much happening in fourth or fifth gear. Spent some time talking about rev limits and shift points, and made a small tweak to the fueling around 8,800 rpm to try to help the engine get on the pipe.

A disturbing pattern emerged; mile four was only slightly faster than 3, and mile five was slower than 4.

Run 4: Tuesday, August 11th, 8:58 a.m.

We were in Impound from Monday’s run. We tried to start the engine to warm it up before towing out, but barely got a ‘pop’. In desperation, we decided to bump-start the car during the tow.

That worked, thank goodness. We were far back in the line at the start, as we’d delayed getting out of impound. With the engine running since the tow, the water temp was getting a bit high. We shut off the engine, figuring that we could bump-start it again at the line if necessary. But, warm now, the engine restarted when it needed to.

The run only went through Mile 4 ’cause that was the mile in which we qualified Monday. However, it was too slow to set a record.

Run 5: Wednesday, August 12th, 4:35 p.m.

After six or so attempts to get the intake valve clearances set, we had reasonable compression in the motor. Everything else was ready, and mile #4 qualified!

The overall pattern, though, was the same as the previous days; speed peaked in mile four, then slowed down thereafter. Checked the compression in Impound, and it was about the same as before the run. Where is the speed?

Found water on the floor of the cabin, and identified a crack in the coolant water tank behind the driver. N.B. epoxy sets up quick when the outside temp is near 100F.

Run 6: Thursday, August 13th, 8:04 a.m.

We were in Impound from Wednesday’s run. The water tank patch held overnight. Just before we towed out, Tom gave the Boost Control knob one full twist in the ‘+’ direction.  Later the ECU data from the MAP said boost was approximately 4psi higher than it had been.

We didn’t have to bump-start the car (though we feared we would).

The gear ‘slip/catch’ which had been present in 2nd gear now appeared in 1st gear as well. The car had good speed at the 2 1/4 mark, but struggled so much that the driver felt it hadn’t made the record; he was surprised to hear it worked.

The run only went through Mile 4 ’cause that was the mile in which we qualified Wednesday. Record set!