944 Heat Wave Update

While we in the East Coast have been baking in a heat wave, I haven't been idle. I've been toiling away in the garage, giant fan blowing and beer fridge just steps away. First some 44 updates.

Did I tell you how much I hate the paddock at VIR? I'm sure I did, but just in case, it can't hurt to repeat: I hate the paddock at VIR! There, I feel better. I think I would rather bake in the reflector oven in the summer than deal wilth the sand. Case in point, my race tires:

As much as I tried to avoid the paddock sand, parked on the asphalt, waited for my tires to cool, they still picked up lbs of sand and embedded into my race tires. 15 minutes per tire of scraping and brushing got much of the sand and pebbles off, but they still will be like skating on glass the first couple of laps I use them.

Speaking of tires, I added a new gizmo to the cockpit: a tire pressure monitor system for racecars. While F1 cars have gazillon dollar thermal systems for analyzing the pressure and tire temps, my budget is a tad constrained. This was a 100 bucks system and gives me pressures every 5 seconds. It's accurate to 1/10ths so more accurate than my hand gauge.

Cockpit monitor

sensors take the place of stem caps.

Whether it gives me any competitive advantage remains to be seen. But if you don't try you'll never know.

Speaking of competitive advantages leads me to another segue way. Way back in the beginning of the season I had my motor dyno'd and broken in after the rebuild. One of the comments from John was it looked like my valves were floating a bit at the top end of the curve as my hp was dropping off pretty good. He said this is typically due to worn tappets or followers in the cam tower. Since list price of the tappets were $120 each and I needed 8 of them - not including any labor, I decided to wait and see how the season goes.

Well after watching Bob and Al walk me up the esses at VIR and seeing Steve motor on past on the long straight, I decided now is the time.

Camtower and tappets. You can see the worn area on the crowns.

A couple of hours in the garage, my mastercard groaning a bit more, and the new tappets were installed.

I finished my tech inspection - replacing a stuck rear caliper - and the car was ready for the next race at NJMP at the end of July. Time to turn my attention back to the 2002.

Bring on the Fat Boys

An hour or so of detective work led me to the cause of the dropped cylinder. One of the fuel injectors was bad. The interesting thing about this, the injector was one of the batch I had sent out to be refurbished and tested. It tested as good. Luckily I didn't let that influence my working of the problem or I'll still be in the garage. Lesson to learn here is trust your own judgement or as Ronald Reagan put it, "Trust but Verify".

So with the motor now running smoothly, its time to start getting ready for the upcoming racing season. I have a good sized punch list and need to start ticking things off.

Last year I planned on moving up on my rear tire sizes. I had sent out my phone dials and got them widened to 9 inches. The fast guys in Cup are running Hoosier 275/35/15's on 9 inch rims and I needed to do the same to keep up. Well the 2010 season didn't go as I planned so I never got the chance to try the wider wheels. It's time to rectify that.

With the wider tires and wheels, the first order of business was replacing the wheel studs with longer ones. On the fronts that was pretty easy. Detach the brake caliper, pull off the rotor, and bang on the studs with a 2 lb sledge. They are a press-fit on the hub and they pound right out. Insert the new ones, add an amount of giant washers and screw on an open ended lug nut. As it tightens, it will draw the lug nice and snug. Easy, peasy.

The rear ones were more of a challenge. Up front its just naked hub on display. In the rear, the trailing arm and parking brakes were in the way. Well, more like parking brake assembly - single - in the way. When I crashed at the Glen 2 years ago, I mangled the parking brake on the right rear. To get the car ready for the next race in an hour, I just pulled the whole assembly and threw it in the trash. Who needs a parking brake on a race car!

Rear corner tastefully modified by the guardrail. Car is lighter with no parking brake!

So on that side, I just treated it like the fronts: suspended the caliper with a bungie cord, pulled the rotor. And with no brake assembly in the way, had just enough room to pound out the studs. The other side added the additional step of removing the parking brake shoes and assembly and then repeat. Put everything back together again and we were styling.

new wheel studs, sponsored by Viagra

A look from the rear:

Here's the difference between the 245's I have been running and the 275's.

Can't wait to try these fat boys out!