TxBandit
06-05-2004, 11:11 AM
Well, we tried again.
You guys know how racing is, you go to the track, you break parts, get it back together and go back to the track. We did this. A few weeks ago at HMP we encountered some rear end problems. A new ring and pinion, new bearings and the rear is like new again. Time for more testing.
We got to the track in Sealy last night around 6:00, unload the car, do what's becoming ritualistic prep, go through tech and head for the lanes.
The car sounded a little trashy in the burnout and appeared that the motor just didn't want to make any RPM. Maybe it's an effect of the different gear ratio, maybe not. AJ stages the car, gets on the brake and launches. The tires spun quite a bit and mustered a measly 1.32 60', the motor never made enough RPM to make the 1-2 or the 2-3 shifts, which were taken over manually by this time, so to be easy on parts AJ(our driver) lifts about 200' out and motored down the track to run a 6.39@81. Back in the pits we yank the hood off start looking things over, download the info off of the MSD and it appears that all the defaults have been reset. I changed the required info and upload back to the MSD. Meanwhile, the plugs were pulled and it's determined that they are garbage. As you would guess, we have no spares with us. Maybe they'll clean up if we make another pass. It's worth a shot. As luck would have it, it didn't work. The car did sound better with the new data in the MSD and definitely picked up 60', but when staging AJ somehow rolled through the lights and we didn't get a time slip. This pass looked and sounded beter than the first, but still had to be aborted.
Upon discussion in the pits, we determined that the valve springs are no longer up to par. This is not surprising, and something we had all suspected, but neglected to change until we made a trip to the track. The motor will tell us if the springs are bad and it did. Time for new parts, a little bit of work and we'll be back to the track to try again.
Tyro
You guys know how racing is, you go to the track, you break parts, get it back together and go back to the track. We did this. A few weeks ago at HMP we encountered some rear end problems. A new ring and pinion, new bearings and the rear is like new again. Time for more testing.
We got to the track in Sealy last night around 6:00, unload the car, do what's becoming ritualistic prep, go through tech and head for the lanes.
The car sounded a little trashy in the burnout and appeared that the motor just didn't want to make any RPM. Maybe it's an effect of the different gear ratio, maybe not. AJ stages the car, gets on the brake and launches. The tires spun quite a bit and mustered a measly 1.32 60', the motor never made enough RPM to make the 1-2 or the 2-3 shifts, which were taken over manually by this time, so to be easy on parts AJ(our driver) lifts about 200' out and motored down the track to run a 6.39@81. Back in the pits we yank the hood off start looking things over, download the info off of the MSD and it appears that all the defaults have been reset. I changed the required info and upload back to the MSD. Meanwhile, the plugs were pulled and it's determined that they are garbage. As you would guess, we have no spares with us. Maybe they'll clean up if we make another pass. It's worth a shot. As luck would have it, it didn't work. The car did sound better with the new data in the MSD and definitely picked up 60', but when staging AJ somehow rolled through the lights and we didn't get a time slip. This pass looked and sounded beter than the first, but still had to be aborted.
Upon discussion in the pits, we determined that the valve springs are no longer up to par. This is not surprising, and something we had all suspected, but neglected to change until we made a trip to the track. The motor will tell us if the springs are bad and it did. Time for new parts, a little bit of work and we'll be back to the track to try again.
Tyro