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Post MSR-H "Curb Repairs" and Track Prep
We didn't have a lot of time after we got back from Houston before we had to get ready for another Time Trial type event the following weekend. So we looked at the damage on Monday, explored any potential upgrade ideas, and then bought another stock Lower Control Arm and inner and outer tie rods.
Of course we looked at the Ford Racing 302S/R front LCA with a taller ball joint and new rear bushing, but that was an expensive set of parts ($1300+) that really only made sense if we had the stock rubber rear LCA bushings still on the car. The new Ford Racing bushing is much smaller than the normal beer can sized fluid filled mush, but it is still rubber. We had already replaced both LCA bushings with the Energy Suspension polyurethane long ago. There wasn't a lot of time to evaluate other options, and we were so impressed with
how the stock arm failed (non-catostrophic, and that LCA's deformation saved the subframe and steering rack) that we ordered another stock lower arm instead.
The problem was that the new arm came with an all new hydro bushing attached to the ends, which had to be removed. Kyle and the guys spent a couple of hours burning off the old bushing and getting it off the arm, then prepping the stub for the Energy poly bushing, but they got it on and it works like before. The inner and outer tie rod were also replaced, as they were bent. We couldn't know how the $1000 Ford Racing steering rack fared until the next race weekend. One front stainless brake line was pulled a bit too far when the bent LCA was unbolted and it POPPED down (it was preloaded badly) so that line was replaced with another from stock. A couple of V-band clamps that were smashed on the curbing were also replaced, the car was inspected thoroughly by real techs (not me!) and they found nothing else wrong. Another 8 quarts of Mobil1 15W50 and a Wix filter were changed and that "junk" set of old A6 tires on the white wheels were mounted up. That set of tires had 3 race weekends on them and were long past the "good" rubber, but oh well.
SCCA Club Trials, MSR Cresson, Jan 25th, 2014
This was a new event held by the Texas Region SCCA during a normal Club Racing weekend (Double Divisional, Super School, Club Trials) that they called the Polar Grand Prix. The Club Trials event was only being held on Saturday but the low cost promoted several to enter, once the word got out. $75 for 5 sessions and $125 if you didn't have a transponder. All sessions were timed and there would be a "competition" of sorts. We didn't know much more than that, but Amy and I signed up in the first hours it was opened, 3 weeks before this event was to be run. The weather on Saturday morning started out COLD (27 degrees in the morning!) but it warmed up into the low 60s by days end. Amy and I actually towed out to Cresson the night before, got teched by the SCCA Regional Executive Bob Neff, and scored a great paddock spot early.
The SCCA is trying to court new club racers by having a PDX/Club Trials group run at their Club Race weekends. I am very much in support of this and hope they can take the extremely good turnout for this event and do it again, and not as a separate event as they are thinking of doing - to work as a ladder system you have to keep your DE and Time Trial folks running at the same track weekend as the Wheel to Wheel folks. I am going to keep reminding them how well this works in NASA every time they bring up excuses of why its "so hard" to have 30 extra people at a race weekend of 100 drivers.
The entry cap for this event was set at 30 cars so we quietly promoted this to many of our local customers. Of the 28 entries they got about a third of those were Vorshlag customers and testers. Everyone arrived with some track background (for the most part) and there were five NASA TT licensed drivers in attendance as well - me, Amy, KenO, DaveW and Eric.
The reason they kept the entries so low was to keep all of the PDX/Club Trials folks in the same run group, and running the 1.7 mile course at MSR only allows for 30 cars to fit on track at once. And with 26 out there at the same time (we had a couple of no shows - one car broke and another was stuck in an ice storm in Austin) of wildly varying speeds, it got a little crowded. The first Club Trials run session (of 5?!) was a lead-follow at 60% speed with the experience TT folks leading smaller groups to show them the line. It was 32 degrees and there wasn't much grip on the cold and dusty track anyways.
Our second CT session was a bit of a clusterfox, as there weren't any established times to grid cars in order. I went out first and KenO was behind me. We tried to bunch up the field but we caught the back of the group at the tail end of the first hot lap. We were passing 3-5 cars per lap and couldn't get any clear track. In the driver's meeting that followed we more clearly defined point by signals (some folks were confused) and it ran smoothly for the rest of the day.
Now I'm not
super familiar with the MSR 1.7 mile course, as NASA TT always runs the 3.1 mile configuration - because we have too many entries show up to fit on the 1.7. With 40-50 TT entries we need the extra course length to spread out and have enough room to drive at speed safely. But most of the 1.7 is part of the 3.1 course, so I knew the basic lines and such - just didn't have any good 1.7 mile course times to compare against from the past. I had run the 1.7 course many years back when we had the BMW E36 LS1, and I remembered some 1:20 lap times from that light, V8 powered race car. So when I saw the 1:23.103 lap from the 2nd CT session I was a little bummed. Still, that was with passing 2 cars in traffic and the car was a bit bouncy.
Stuart and Doug Maxcy from Maxcyspeed & Co were at this event to support their customers and Stuart noticed some rear suspension things on our car. Between my 2nd and 3rd track session he suggested a substantial rear shock compression change (full soft) to allow the car to put power down better. The rear was very traction limited, partially from the old worn out tires and partly from the cold.
I was being lazy and not using the shock adjustments to their best advantage, for changing conditions with the car and track. We had the rear shocks tuned well for new
sticker A6 tires being used in warm weather, plus using the full fuel load and extra rear ballast like we run in NASA TT. Since this was SCCA Club Trials we had no minimum weight to worry about that day, so we pulled the ballast and ran less fuel. In addition the used tires we brought didn't have the grip levels of the normal fresh tires we race on, and the track temps went from the high 20s to the low 60s in the span of a few hours. Stuart's calibrated eyeball spotted how the car was behaving from the side of the track, suggested that I
use the adjustments of the shocks to help fine tune the car as the track warmed up, and he was right - his tip was much appreciated. It helped us find some of the five seconds that my times dropped from the 2nd to 3rd sessions (track temps and traffic played a part as well)
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