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.
2017
- Our Engine Control Unit, a Pectel T6-2000, is used for the first time.
- The Hayabusa engine has been tuned to 400+ hp on an engine dyno. Our confidence is high!
- But at Bonneville, it’s way too rich for some reason. Max speed of 142mph or so. We have no data to know what we might change.
2018
- Much pre-work was done, and some strategic decisions made. For example, we decided to run Blown Fuel Altered because in a fuel class, SCTA officials don’t have to seal the gas tank. One less thing to keep track of. And what the hell, we’ll start collecting some data to reduce the mystery.
- The Pectel was been re-tuned, this time on a chassis dyno with all the actual car systems attached.
- We had some … mechanical breakages .. on the salt, which we fixed and ultimately made four runs over 200mph
2019
- Pickle rested. And, as was revealed later, rusted.
2020
- Team chatter started on “Raising the record on Blown Gas Coupe (/BGC)”; the current 176mph seemed like an easy pear to pick (given that nearly the same motor+car had gone over 200mph).
- But things had changed… the turbo shaft was not spinning freely, the brakes weren’t spinning at all, and the motor’d become hard to start. We made a whole routine about how much throttle, when to switch the fuel pump on, how high the battery voltage needed to be… nothing really helped.
- At Speed Week, we had slow runs, low compression, and weak speeds. Without the powerful turbo overcoming the lack of compression there’d have been nuttin’.
2021
- The lack of valve clearance prompted us to remove the cylinder head and have it rebuilt. The compression numbers improved, but the hard starting remained.
- We tried tweaking the starting fueling, tweaking ignition timing, different routines… but no real improvement.
- When Pickle was running, it didn’t seem to be making much power. The boost level was low… for some reason.
- We threw a chain early and busted the water pump. Our confidence in the drivetrain was pretty low.
2022
- In the off season, we were determined to fix the issues. We diagnosed and corrected the hard starting; we machined a new, solid core, front axle and mounted it in a strengthened chassis; we had another dyno session with an expert Pectel tuner.
- But Speed Week was a total rain out… we never even left the Red Garter parking lot. World Finals, also rained out.
2023
- Gotta be our year! We were ready in 2022, and we’ve only improved things in the off season
- Pickle starts very easily. Compression is good, and it seems like our boost could be back
- But Rain! Not enough to cancel the meet, but it forced everyone to a single short course.
- Chances that we could challenge the existing record are poor on a short course
- Ran out of gas trying to make two runs on one tank of fuel.
- We ran around 160mph, best of 164mph, spun the car at around 160mph, and still managed to break a chain
- The high-tech ‘clamping collars’ that mount the axle sprocket seemed to be … moving sideways?
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