February 2017

Weather finally improving

Well, to say the weather has sucked would be an understatement.  We had this a couple of weeks ago.  By the time it stopped coming down, I measured over a foot on my front walk. This is the most snow I've seen at my house since I left New York over 25 years ago.

Low Car Blues

With a little spotting help from my wife, I decided to see if I could get out of my driveway and onto the trailer.  The last time I had the car out it was still fairly high.  No surprise, the front lip wouldn't clear the hump at the end of my driveway.  Also, some angle measurements confirmed that getting into the trailer was also going to be an issue.
I fabricated some simple wood plank ramps to clear the driveway, but I went ahead and forked over for Race Ramps for the trailer loading.  It all worked wonderfully.

More of the Fine Details

In Oregon, rain can be a problem.  I've been pondering how to keep my electricals dry.  I've been especially concerned about the ABS computer since class rules require it to remain at the stock location.  For that, I attached a 12" x 12" rubber sheet held down with VHB tape above the computer and tie wrapped it down below the computer.  The dash elecricals are mostly covered by the cowl, but I wanted some spray protection.  I made a cover flap using a big piece of vinyl "pleather" my wife had laying around and grommets, also from my wife's crafting supplies.  It bolts in at the top and is tie wrapped in place at the bottom.   I have a piece of Lexan for a small 2" high windscreen to help channel rain spry over my head, but I haven't decided if I really want to install that yet.
I've got some other small stuff yet to do.  I have my new camera mount for my Replay camera to install.  I also have an Ion camera that I bought super cheap from Amazon that I want to try for some different views.  I need to wire in the USB charger for keeping cameras, phones, etc. charged up.  I also need to install the Ram mount for my phone which I need to monitor AFRs, Coolant temp, and for ECU logging using Shadow Dash MS.
For the trailer I ordered up some dedicated tools. I need to solve the problem of keeping my Jack and Jack stands in place during transport which reminds me, I never posted a picture of my awesome trailer tool box.  I bought this old maid cart at The Restore for $35 over the summer and mounted it in the front of the trailer.  It has a sliding front shutter door to close it off and keep the drawers in place.  I'll use it to carry a few tools, helmets, towels, and other not too heavy supplies.

Alignment

I figured out how to make the strings work with my hub stands.  Some L-brackets and C-clamps did the trick.  The unusually cold weather has been trying, plus I haven't been feeling well the last couple of weeks.  I got the thrust angle close, tightened everything up, and took the car into AR Auto Service for the final alignment. My numbers were surprisingly close, but the alignment did reveal that my garage floor is sloped slightly which threw out my camber numbers a bit.  Eddie and the guys at AR did an awesome dob as usual.

Next up, dyno tune. We're roughly one month away from the first event of the season.

Dyno Day

Murphy's Law caught up with me Sunday afternoon.  On startup, the wideband was working just fine. AFRs were reasonable during warmup and came up to 14:1 at full warm idle. I shut the car down and restarted the engine. Boom, AFRs are pegged at >20:1.  Obviously my wideband isn't working since the car won't run that lean. Well crap, no time to fix it. I'll have to use the in house sensor on the dyno.

Monday morning with a few random snowflakes falling, we're off to KO racing for the tune.  To say I was a bit nervous would be an understatement.  The car has never seen a hard pull since I put everything together.  I was wondering if something was going to go wrong.  For some reason I pictured oil gushing out under the dyno.  I even dreamed about the damn thing blowing up on the dyno.

We unloaded and set up.  My tuner looked a bit concerned when he found out the wideband was dead, like "what else is screwed up rookie."  We got her strapped down and here we go, pull one all the way to 7400rpm. Wow, nothing exploded. ~120hp. Made some adjustments and made a few more pulls.  By the time we were done we were at just over 140hp.  We cut the timing back just a bit for safety and tuned some more to get a final number of 139hp & 129ft-lb. Not bad for bolt ons.  We also shut the car down for 7 minutes then ran an additional pull to simulate autocross conditions. Numbers almost identical.  To say I'm pleased is an understatement.
I crawled under the car and looked for leaks, nothing.  Roughly a dozen hard pulls and it held up fine. Other than the wideband crapping out, it was a pretty good day.  Less than three weeks until event one.  I need to do some camera and phone mounts and check everything tight.  Otherwise were ready to go.