- Joined
- Jun 18, 2001
- Messages
- 1,479
Well Sick Week didn't go as planned.
We got there Saturday to test and had a wonderful day. The track was on point, the weather was perfect, the car was running well and we ended the day with a 1.22 sixty and 5.22@136 on a relatively mild tune.
We got back Sunday morning and the track was definitely more crowded. We made one hit early that went well but the car slowed down a little with the shock adjustment we tried and as the day progressed it just got worse. That first pass ended up being the ONLY pass we made that day that the car didn't blow the tires off. Saturday we made 4-5 passes and never spun. WTF
On the one pass we did make on Sunday we found the crankcase pressures got really high and suspected the vacuum pump was backing up. So we disconnected it and just vented the crankcase which fixed the issue. I had been messing with that vacuum pump for awhile and thought I could get it to work but it just can not keep up. Possibly a larger vacuum pump will work which I may try but with no pump I had zero crankcase pressure which was good to see. It reached 9psi with the vacuum pump and was pulling close to a quart of oil out.
We did get the car tech in on Sunday which was nice to be able to get that done early as it usually takes most of the day to get done on Tech Day.
Tech Day was a total washout, it never stopped raining the entire day. I was at the end of the life cycle for my tires and had a new set put on my Mickey Thompson at the track which worked out well. We put all the suspension settings back to what we ran on Saturday and neutered the starting line tune up and waited for Day 1.
Race Day #1. The morning was cold and wet and the track was still soaked. They didn't get the day started until almost 11:30 and decided to put the slower C&D groups down the track first with the AB Radial group going next to last. We are usually the first. We didn't get called to the lanes until almost 3pm.
When I rolled up to the line Ray said the track was a mess and had strings of glue coming off my brand new tires. I did a good burnout to clean up the new tires, staged and the car spun as soon as I let go of the button. I pedaled it some and stayed in it for a 10.32 pass and was bummed it was not going to be a one and done day and we now had to wait for the all run session. This really sucked because the drive to Bradenton was the longest one at 320+ miles and it was already close to 4pm when we completed that pass. Day light was fading and they still had a shit ton of cars in the lanes. So we waited.
I backed the starting line tune up down to softer than when we started testing but it didn't matter, They ended up calling the day around 5:30 and were finishing out the lanes so everyone got one run for the day and I had to turn in a 10.32 slip while the top guy in the class Cooper Bogetti managed a clean 8.52. That is going to screw us for the week bad but were weren't the only ones and I still mathematically had a shot since Cooper was not legal to run under 8.50. I needed to turn up my game though and unfortunately we didnt not get enough testing with the new combo to know exactly what the car was capable of. We loaded up and got on the road around 6:30 in the dark. The drive to Bradenton was pretty unremarkable. On tech day I did get the Gearvendor hooked up and working and we tested it with the Holley controlling it and it worked fantastic. Being able to blast down I75 at 75mph and 2600rpm really saved us a shit ton of time and an exhaustingly long trip. With the one check point it still took over 7 hours and we didn't get into the hotel room until alomst 2am.
The one checkpoint was pretty cool a new race track, we didn't hang out long though
We were back up at 5:30 am and at the track by 7am with a refreshing 3 hours of sleep. We got the car swapped over, on the way down we ended up running pump gas in the car and noticed the car ran really rich with the ethanol content down around 20%. We ended up putting E85 back in which brought it back up over 50% cleaned it up a lot and the car really ran a lot better. We drained the gas and were running a leaded race blend E85 from Renegade on the track.
Bradenton had a good track prep, I know SGMP is also known for being a good track with the the weather struggles they had it was difficult. Not so much in Bradenton it was actually pretty warm that day. They called AB radial as the second class that day. I staged bumped in and had to hit the bump a second time and the car just launched. I think since the track was so sticky it jerked the car some and my thumb must of come off the t-brake enough to release it. The log showed it engaged twice but IDK, it sucked as I did not set the tree or get a time slip, so once again we had to wait for all run. The car did hook and I made a full pass but the car was really lazy and seemed to really slow down. Ended up we forgot to remove the air filter on the new inlet Ray built!!
To this point we are like WTF, Drag week was almost to easy and Sick Week has been a shit show up to this point. We have a car that should be in quarantine and on top of the class and we can't even get down the track. It is now Tuesday and we haven't made a clean pass on the car since Saturday!
Finally we got a hit on the car with a very mild tune up. The car felt good but was still off a little bit from where it should have been but it was a nice A to B easy peasy 8.32 pass. We handed in the slip and got on the road. The math was easy a 10.32 and a 8.32 now gave us a 9.32 avg and moved us from 18/23 to 4th. Not bad, to date I also believe it was the fastest pass in the Street Freaks class. If we leave the car like this we have a real shot, but we also know the car has a shit ton more left it in for later in the week.
We got there Saturday to test and had a wonderful day. The track was on point, the weather was perfect, the car was running well and we ended the day with a 1.22 sixty and 5.22@136 on a relatively mild tune.
We got back Sunday morning and the track was definitely more crowded. We made one hit early that went well but the car slowed down a little with the shock adjustment we tried and as the day progressed it just got worse. That first pass ended up being the ONLY pass we made that day that the car didn't blow the tires off. Saturday we made 4-5 passes and never spun. WTF
On the one pass we did make on Sunday we found the crankcase pressures got really high and suspected the vacuum pump was backing up. So we disconnected it and just vented the crankcase which fixed the issue. I had been messing with that vacuum pump for awhile and thought I could get it to work but it just can not keep up. Possibly a larger vacuum pump will work which I may try but with no pump I had zero crankcase pressure which was good to see. It reached 9psi with the vacuum pump and was pulling close to a quart of oil out.
We did get the car tech in on Sunday which was nice to be able to get that done early as it usually takes most of the day to get done on Tech Day.
Tech Day was a total washout, it never stopped raining the entire day. I was at the end of the life cycle for my tires and had a new set put on my Mickey Thompson at the track which worked out well. We put all the suspension settings back to what we ran on Saturday and neutered the starting line tune up and waited for Day 1.
Race Day #1. The morning was cold and wet and the track was still soaked. They didn't get the day started until almost 11:30 and decided to put the slower C&D groups down the track first with the AB Radial group going next to last. We are usually the first. We didn't get called to the lanes until almost 3pm.
When I rolled up to the line Ray said the track was a mess and had strings of glue coming off my brand new tires. I did a good burnout to clean up the new tires, staged and the car spun as soon as I let go of the button. I pedaled it some and stayed in it for a 10.32 pass and was bummed it was not going to be a one and done day and we now had to wait for the all run session. This really sucked because the drive to Bradenton was the longest one at 320+ miles and it was already close to 4pm when we completed that pass. Day light was fading and they still had a shit ton of cars in the lanes. So we waited.
I backed the starting line tune up down to softer than when we started testing but it didn't matter, They ended up calling the day around 5:30 and were finishing out the lanes so everyone got one run for the day and I had to turn in a 10.32 slip while the top guy in the class Cooper Bogetti managed a clean 8.52. That is going to screw us for the week bad but were weren't the only ones and I still mathematically had a shot since Cooper was not legal to run under 8.50. I needed to turn up my game though and unfortunately we didnt not get enough testing with the new combo to know exactly what the car was capable of. We loaded up and got on the road around 6:30 in the dark. The drive to Bradenton was pretty unremarkable. On tech day I did get the Gearvendor hooked up and working and we tested it with the Holley controlling it and it worked fantastic. Being able to blast down I75 at 75mph and 2600rpm really saved us a shit ton of time and an exhaustingly long trip. With the one check point it still took over 7 hours and we didn't get into the hotel room until alomst 2am.
The one checkpoint was pretty cool a new race track, we didn't hang out long though
We were back up at 5:30 am and at the track by 7am with a refreshing 3 hours of sleep. We got the car swapped over, on the way down we ended up running pump gas in the car and noticed the car ran really rich with the ethanol content down around 20%. We ended up putting E85 back in which brought it back up over 50% cleaned it up a lot and the car really ran a lot better. We drained the gas and were running a leaded race blend E85 from Renegade on the track.
Bradenton had a good track prep, I know SGMP is also known for being a good track with the the weather struggles they had it was difficult. Not so much in Bradenton it was actually pretty warm that day. They called AB radial as the second class that day. I staged bumped in and had to hit the bump a second time and the car just launched. I think since the track was so sticky it jerked the car some and my thumb must of come off the t-brake enough to release it. The log showed it engaged twice but IDK, it sucked as I did not set the tree or get a time slip, so once again we had to wait for all run. The car did hook and I made a full pass but the car was really lazy and seemed to really slow down. Ended up we forgot to remove the air filter on the new inlet Ray built!!
To this point we are like WTF, Drag week was almost to easy and Sick Week has been a shit show up to this point. We have a car that should be in quarantine and on top of the class and we can't even get down the track. It is now Tuesday and we haven't made a clean pass on the car since Saturday!
Finally we got a hit on the car with a very mild tune up. The car felt good but was still off a little bit from where it should have been but it was a nice A to B easy peasy 8.32 pass. We handed in the slip and got on the road. The math was easy a 10.32 and a 8.32 now gave us a 9.32 avg and moved us from 18/23 to 4th. Not bad, to date I also believe it was the fastest pass in the Street Freaks class. If we leave the car like this we have a real shot, but we also know the car has a shit ton more left it in for later in the week.
