944 Racecar - HyperFest June 2006
The web server holding my earliest postings into an uncaring universe quietly expired a while ago. Rather than replacing it, I'm posting the content so it will live on forever in the cloud, polluting my little corner of it. Enjoy.
HyperFest 2006
The crowd goes wild as the Alpine Motorsports 944 crosses the finish line, decimating the 944Cup competitors. In fact, we were so fast that we finished first overall in the sprint race before the 944 race!
A brief recap: The Saturday start was totally screwed up by the pit lane crew who let cars out of the pit out of order. A pissed off driver, (me -Crash McBrady) drives thru the field on the 1st lap to make up the "lost" spots and loses it in turn 10 at Summit. Back end of 944 comes out and we visit the gravel trap on the outside of 10. Maintaining speed through the gravel, I rejoin the field with all those gained spots lost, plus more - mumbling all the while for my error. Back into the frey, pick up some more spots. Coming up on turn 10 again, wise racer brain speaks of caution: "Let's go thru 10 a little bit slower this time". A little more brake this time, bend it into the corner and back on the power. Just past the apex and "whoa, not again!" the 944's back end rotates right out on me and spits me out again for another ride thru the gravel trap. This time however, I don't come out straight with nothing but grass in front of me. This time, it's a date with the dreaded tire wall.
I nose it into the tirewall at an angle. water shooting everywhere. I keep the engine going and slowly motor up and back to my pit. Left front fender bent up, some spoiler damage, but the worst damage is the oil cooler. It's toast. We do some quick body work and bypass the oil cooler for Sunday's race, but it's all for nought. With the 90+ temps and no oil cooler, the water temp spikes on the morning practice sesssion and I park it, done for the weekend
Post-mortem analysis leads us to suspect the coolsuit unit mounted behind the driver. The working theory is the unit, which is not watertight by any means, managed to drop a nice big slug of water right in front of my heavily loaded left rear wheel going through turn 10. Kinda like hitting a patch of oil at exactly the wrong time. Since I'm now running SP2 in PCA, I don't have to run a spare tire to make weight, so its been relocated to the spare tire well, where it can drop water behind my wheels, and onto my competitors. Time for some damage repair.
This is the corner that took the brunt of the damage. Corner bent in, oil cooler (not pictured) totally crunched, headlight bent and slightly mangled, nosed panel dented.
Pulling the bumpers and nose panels and such to get working room. You can see where we bypassed the oil cooler in the bottom right.
New oil cooler mounted - it will be in the left foglight area when the bumper and spoiler are replaced.
Oil Cooler mounted and plumbed - another view. This is a Mocal oil Cooler. The original was in a kit from Terry Morris at 944OilCooling.com (recommended). I sourced the replacement from the Mocal distributors in Florida.
Since I'm mucking about, lets see if we can improve the effeciency of the cooling systems. Here I've bent some aluminum plate and built a little ducting section to funnel all the air coming in the front foglight area through the cooler.
Here you can see the bottom of the ducting bolted to the spoiler. I also pulled the little flap in the wheel well liner to help exhaust the air after it exited the cooler. You can see my (red) transponder peeking in the background attached to the wheel well liner
Enough with the oil stuff. Lets turn our attention to water cooling - a new area for a 911 guy.
Here, we're looking down at the area between the radiator and the engine. The hose is coming from the bottom of the radiator and going to the block. The dual fan assembly has been removed. I've experienced several DNF's this year with that hose being split. It was either being rubbed against the side of the fan housing or being rubbed/sliced by the fan blades. When at rest, it looks like the hose is nowhere near any trouble area. Which is why I chalked up the 1st cut hose as a fluke. When the 2nd one went at MidOhio I investigated closer.
It's a combination of several things: the oil cooler lines slightly press against the hose forcing it a bit closer to the fans; the hose swells under heat; and the block slightly rocks. The end result is the hose receives wear. To alleviate this, I did several things. First route the oil cooler lines a little better to take some tension off the hose. Next I covered the hose with some metal plate for protection. You can see where some of the plastic coating has been frayed due to rubbing this year.
Finally, I trimmed off a portion of the offending fan blade so it doesn't come any where near the hose. Before this point I had been running with only one fan, with this side unplugged. But with the hot weather (VIR was 100 degrees) I was getting nervous with just the one fan running. It may not be running with 100% effeciency, but even 50% is better than unplugged
After spending an hour or two cleaning and straightening the fins on my radiator, I cut and installed some screening to protect it from the chunks of tire rubber and the occasional bushel of straw and grass from those rally experiences. I also wacked out most of the big dent from the tirewall in the nose
I spent some time making sure all the OEM little plastic pieces that duct all the air to the radiator were in place and functioning. With the bumper installed I'm making sure all that air gets pushed throught the proper place. The test was the end of July at VIR where we saw temps of 100 degrees. In spite of that, the temp on the gauge never went over the upper mark.
HyperFest 2006
The crowd goes wild as the Alpine Motorsports 944 crosses the finish line, decimating the 944Cup competitors. In fact, we were so fast that we finished first overall in the sprint race before the 944 race!
Okay maybe not. Maybe the HyperFest race
weekend didn't go quite as planned.
weekend didn't go quite as planned.
A brief recap: The Saturday start was totally screwed up by the pit lane crew who let cars out of the pit out of order. A pissed off driver, (me -Crash McBrady) drives thru the field on the 1st lap to make up the "lost" spots and loses it in turn 10 at Summit. Back end of 944 comes out and we visit the gravel trap on the outside of 10. Maintaining speed through the gravel, I rejoin the field with all those gained spots lost, plus more - mumbling all the while for my error. Back into the frey, pick up some more spots. Coming up on turn 10 again, wise racer brain speaks of caution: "Let's go thru 10 a little bit slower this time". A little more brake this time, bend it into the corner and back on the power. Just past the apex and "whoa, not again!" the 944's back end rotates right out on me and spits me out again for another ride thru the gravel trap. This time however, I don't come out straight with nothing but grass in front of me. This time, it's a date with the dreaded tire wall.
 |
| Looks innocent, right? |
I nose it into the tirewall at an angle. water shooting everywhere. I keep the engine going and slowly motor up and back to my pit. Left front fender bent up, some spoiler damage, but the worst damage is the oil cooler. It's toast. We do some quick body work and bypass the oil cooler for Sunday's race, but it's all for nought. With the 90+ temps and no oil cooler, the water temp spikes on the morning practice sesssion and I park it, done for the weekend
Post-mortem analysis leads us to suspect the coolsuit unit mounted behind the driver. The working theory is the unit, which is not watertight by any means, managed to drop a nice big slug of water right in front of my heavily loaded left rear wheel going through turn 10. Kinda like hitting a patch of oil at exactly the wrong time. Since I'm now running SP2 in PCA, I don't have to run a spare tire to make weight, so its been relocated to the spare tire well, where it can drop water behind my wheels, and onto my competitors. Time for some damage repair.
This is the corner that took the brunt of the damage. Corner bent in, oil cooler (not pictured) totally crunched, headlight bent and slightly mangled, nosed panel dented.
Pulling the bumpers and nose panels and such to get working room. You can see where we bypassed the oil cooler in the bottom right.
New oil cooler mounted - it will be in the left foglight area when the bumper and spoiler are replaced.
Oil Cooler mounted and plumbed - another view. This is a Mocal oil Cooler. The original was in a kit from Terry Morris at 944OilCooling.com (recommended). I sourced the replacement from the Mocal distributors in Florida.
Since I'm mucking about, lets see if we can improve the effeciency of the cooling systems. Here I've bent some aluminum plate and built a little ducting section to funnel all the air coming in the front foglight area through the cooler.
Here you can see the bottom of the ducting bolted to the spoiler. I also pulled the little flap in the wheel well liner to help exhaust the air after it exited the cooler. You can see my (red) transponder peeking in the background attached to the wheel well liner
Enough with the oil stuff. Lets turn our attention to water cooling - a new area for a 911 guy.
Here, we're looking down at the area between the radiator and the engine. The hose is coming from the bottom of the radiator and going to the block. The dual fan assembly has been removed. I've experienced several DNF's this year with that hose being split. It was either being rubbed against the side of the fan housing or being rubbed/sliced by the fan blades. When at rest, it looks like the hose is nowhere near any trouble area. Which is why I chalked up the 1st cut hose as a fluke. When the 2nd one went at MidOhio I investigated closer.
It's a combination of several things: the oil cooler lines slightly press against the hose forcing it a bit closer to the fans; the hose swells under heat; and the block slightly rocks. The end result is the hose receives wear. To alleviate this, I did several things. First route the oil cooler lines a little better to take some tension off the hose. Next I covered the hose with some metal plate for protection. You can see where some of the plastic coating has been frayed due to rubbing this year.
Finally, I trimmed off a portion of the offending fan blade so it doesn't come any where near the hose. Before this point I had been running with only one fan, with this side unplugged. But with the hot weather (VIR was 100 degrees) I was getting nervous with just the one fan running. It may not be running with 100% effeciency, but even 50% is better than unplugged
After spending an hour or two cleaning and straightening the fins on my radiator, I cut and installed some screening to protect it from the chunks of tire rubber and the occasional bushel of straw and grass from those rally experiences. I also wacked out most of the big dent from the tirewall in the nose
I spent some time making sure all the OEM little plastic pieces that duct all the air to the radiator were in place and functioning. With the bumper installed I'm making sure all that air gets pushed throught the proper place. The test was the end of July at VIR where we saw temps of 100 degrees. In spite of that, the temp on the gauge never went over the upper mark.
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