Diagnosing 60' Issues. 12 OCT 2012 at VMP

Описание: Watch this in 1080 HD!!!

This set of passes is far from my best. In fact, I ran some of the worst times in a long time BUT this night was more productive than any other in quite some time. I purchased a Go-Pro and borrowed another from a buddy along with an incar and trackside camera to try and track down the mysterious squeal and horrible 60' times. What I found could explain it all.

The first pass goes as planned and is pretty decent. Times are not the best BUT the Go-pro on the side of the car catches some smoke leaving the front right tire. This was because the car is loading up on the rear and raising the front hindering the front wheels from doing their job. This probably has something to do with the 22 year old shocks, struts, and springs that have not YET been touched.

The second pass produced a good launch and again you can see the smoke but what happens next was not planned at all. The 1-2 shift was kinda ruff and I drug the clutch going into 2nd off of the 4500 NLTS rev limit. This is not good. I heated the clutch disk causing the slippage seen for the rest of the pass.

If this would have been a composite disk, it would have been destroyed. Composite disk will not reseat once they have been smeared and roasted. They will maintain the circular pattern making them much less effective in holding torque. Lucky me, I have a Kevlar disk. If you slip on of these it will reseat. It will fully reseat after putting a number of miles on it but letting it cool will allow the clutch to regain consciousness and put the power to the road once again.

After making sure that the clutch was not pre-loaded and everything else was in tact, I let the car cool for another round.

The third pass is simply a test pass. A quick tire squeal (not a burnout by any means) to make sure the clutch would hold that much. Then no launch, just a good 2nd, 3rd, and 4th to make sure all was well. The clutch did exactly as was suppose to and once again held the power.

The final pass is once again nothing special. It was a pass at the end of the night to basically get more seat time. I red lighted racing absolutely nobody, I fumbled the 1-2 and the pass was an overall fail BUT it was one of the most meaningful nights out in a long time.

If we learn something every time we go to the track and capitalize on that during our next outing, we will in turn go a weee bit faster. Tonight we learned that the car needs shocks and possibly springs to handle the new found power. We also learned that I once again need more seat time and most of all dragging the clutch in any manner is a very bad idea. Lastly these where just the 4 passes where I lined up with no opponent. The other passes are soon to come so stay tuned.

Robert