miamirice

Anybody else here stupid enough to be doing the midnight-to-midnight New Years 24 at Homestead? I mean I have done 24 before....but starting at midnight?

redzcstandardhatch

I got an invite... but family commitments will keep me in Chicago freezing my butt off most likely.

Xian

Yeah, it was awfully tempting to go drive the Tr0nsAm but that's gonna be a looooooong race. I'll stay at home and keep my fingers crossed for the Hong Norrth cars though!

miamirice

We did 654 laps, 1504 miles, 216 gallons of fuel. We ran in 1st all day and at 23.5 hours with a +4 lap lead we had the diff bolts back out (a beautiful shower of sparks for New Years). We got it going in 16 minutes but ended up 4th. This was a heartbreaker.

http://youtu.be/gCLld2zaWzk

Xian

Dang! That's a tough end to what sounds like an awesome run.

You sure you guys ended up in 4th? I saw pics of Tr0nsAm with the 4th place trophy? Or maybe different classes between the two cars?

miamirice

Yes we were 1st in EC and 4th over all. It is still sour how it went down for us.....but that endurance racing. I have nothing but respect for your guys. They know how to drive in the pack when it's dicey and they do a great job hustling those Mazdas around ( and finishing!). I think the tr0nsam car is in the end of my video. You will have to ask whoever drove at night about the Racoons on track. Added another element to the racing. This race was great. 2 of my 3 stints with 0 full course yellows. Think there was only 1 crash.

Xian

Ahhhh... didn't realize you guys were in EC. That's still a hell of an accomplishment running that fast/far and having enough lead not to fall much with that sort of failure. Sounds like a really fun race! I was still feeling conflicted over whether or not I should have gone. The small field made me feel better about skipping it but the race recaps and results make me regret it! LOL

The Hongs are awesome people and I love running the Tr0nsAm. If you know what you're doing, it's such an easy car to drive fast(ish)... I keep trying to convince Kevin to put in the V6 or a turbo but I suspect he's right that it would just lead to failures and busted chit.

boost ben

Miamirice....We were there running the EG Civic from Canada, you guys used our electric impact during some of your tire changes...

I was a great race! The little EG that could came in 5th place (6th with EC).

miamirice

That EG was fast.....and clean as sh**. I have a 95 with k20 so of course I was watching your car. We were talking about it. What motor? You guys didn't brink a Honda to Roebling road chumpcar back in 2011 or 2012 did you?

And thanks for loaning us the impact!

boost ben

Nope haven't been to Roebling.

The car's getting better and better. Were at about 12 races total with EG/EK chassis so most of the bugs are sorted and it's getting quite quick. We also have the luxury of having our shop right on a 5.05 km race track so there's loads of seat time in it.

The car is running a b18b swap. It seems to be dead nuts reliable and makes decent power. The car is very light which really helps but a further diet is coming. We went through 2 full sets of DTC-60 and were on our third set so that has to be addressed. For next year were going to take advantage of the rule change and run Koni oranges with some stiffer springs.

The car will be in Atlanta next month....


I was wondering what fell off your car! I woke up and just poured a fresh coffee when I hear this terrible noise and see an awesome shower of sparks..

Xian

For the Civic, you guys should check and see if there's a Raybestos compound that wouldn't be too aggressive for street pads. They make some great ST compound options that last and last and last as well as handle a ton of heat.

miamirice

The diff bracket bolts backed out. We got lots of "thank you's" for the New Years pyrotechnics. How long can you go on fuel? 12 gallon tank or fuel cell? Love your car. I won't make atlanta ( my favorite track). But hope to see you guys at Daytona (usually 95+ teams- pretty awesome). If you guys can get your pit numbers in order, your car is plenty fast to win. Our car will drop back out of EC next year too. We getting laps for stuff like lexan, IMO stuff we like but not go fast parts. If you have ever raced at sebring in the rain....it's just not worth trashing your electrical system.


I have had good experience with carbo techs who now have an endurance pad...just an FYI.

Xian

The Hong cars have been running the Carbotech Enduro compound for ages. It lasts but many car suffer from horrible pad deposits. I think there's a temp sweet spot where they work well, last well, and don't leave deposits *but* the MX3's have never found it. After about 8-10 hours the fronts start jack hammering and all it does it get worse.

miamirice

We have dealt with that when using xp12. Man it was violent too. But now with this (24's? Not sure what they are called). So far it's been working. It's odd because I used xp12 on an s2000 and never had issues.

Xian

They've been running the RP12 but after this last race are looking at other pads. The shuddering is bad enough that it's started to shake loose stuff off the suspension (including the axle nut).

boost ben

Hummmm, I never really though of Raybestos as a high performance company. Do you know what the compound is called? We don't see much rotor ware so I don't mind a super tough pad if it will last longer. We run the Centric high carbon rotors and they seem to hold up really well.

Fuel is a major problem, we only have the stock tank in there right now so we can only manage about 1.5 hours per stint. We had laps added last year at Atlanta. Our exhaust manifold cracked before the race and we could only find a header which was way over our value limit. The header was some random b-series header of unknown origin that actually lost a few hp all around. We also had full lexan for the rear windows and hatch that we also ditched to save some money.

We were looking at the carbotechs (others on the team) but they said they couldn't find the right pad style (we're running integra callipers). I guess they released a pad that was specificity made for super long endurance racing....? I'll dig deeper into the brakes.....once the brakes can last and we can hit a full 2h on fuel I think we'll be right near the top.

Our tentative schedule for the year is:

February 7, 14hr Enduro
Road Atlanta - Braselton, GA

April 18-19, 7+7hr Enduro
CTMP/Mosport - Bowmanville, ON

May 22-24, 4+8+8hr Enduro
Watkins Glen - Watkins Glen, NY

June 21-22, 7+7hr Enduro
CMP - Calabogie, ON

August 1-2, 7+7hr Enduro
Barber - Birmingham, AL

August 7-9, 24hr Enduro
VIR - Danville, VA

August 22-23, 8+6hr Enduro
ASE - St. Eustache, PQ

September 12-13, 7+7hr Enduro
CMP - Calabogie, ON

October 10-11, Chumpionship
CTMP/Mosport, Bowmanville, ON

miamirice

I am using cobalt pads on my civic with remanufactured ITR calipers. I have had good luck so far ( many sprints and have a 70min run in an enduro until my wheel came off). I can only do 1 hour with the 10 gallon tank/k20a2 motor. Do you know if in fact I can boot up a 12 gallon tank? I want to run a 3 hour enduro in feb. It's a 1995 vx.

Xian

Gotcha. Yeah, they're fairly popular in some classes of SCCA sprint racing. Here's a rundown on their compound choices (they're mostly NASCAR compounds):

http://porterfield-brakes.com/images...6_03_19_04.pdf

Porterfield sells them for basically any Honda product as they just cut down a larger pad to fit the Honda caliper. Double check the caliper to backing plate clearance as it's sometimes on the tight side. They also cram in a TON of pad material so it's a tight fit initially. FWIW, I'd be potentially concerned about too much torque with these as they have insane coefficient of friction... they also take ALL THE HEAT. The result is that the pads never fade... they just let everything get hotter and hotter and hotter until something else melts/burns up/catches on fire. They also hardly wear... just make sure that your ducting is up to snuff.

I'd probably be looking at the ST-38 or ST-41. ST-43's on a GSR size rotor/caliper/pad combo was a little too much tq for my ITA car on 225 Hoosiers...

boost ben

I don’t think any other OEM tank will fit, that being said I’ve never tried. We were going to try and ‘maximize’ (bend) the rules and run a remote fill neck with really big tubing down to the tank. There is a rule about how much you can run but it works out to be a few liters once you calculate the volume of the line. Another thing that (apparently) has been done is plug the tank and fill it with shop air to push out some of the dents and contours from concave shapes to convex shapes. You would plug the feed and return lines, remove all the vents and fill neck, and plug them. Loosen the tank straps until the tank is very loosely held in place, start adding a bit of air until the tank pushes out and fills the new voids. The team that did it to their CRX said at about 6 psi things started to move. I haven’t tried it myself….I’m really nervous of the seam weld around the middle of the tank. I bet at 6 PSI that weld is holding thousands and thousands of pounds. We have a spare tank and lots of health and safety gear so I’m guessing we will be popping tanks soon enough! I’ll let you know if it works.

In the mean time we found a temp solution at Road America that let us use all the gas in the tank and we could add almost another liter. We removed the pump and put in a large rubber mallet head down where the pick-up sock would rest. We beat the handle of the mallet until the head made a nice big dent in the bottom of the tank to act like a ghetto sump. We then bent the fuel pump holder down so the sock was at the bottom of the new ghetto sump. We could get an easy 10 minute extension to a stint before we began starving for fuel out of corners.


I checked them out….I think that’s the ticket. I like that there’s extra pad material and the price isn’t too bad at all. We’re working on some better ducting that we hope to have done for Atlanta… The high carbon Centric rotors seem to last and ware very well so if the pads are aggressive on rotors that’s fine. The Centrics get heat cracks and they will need to be replaced often but we’ve never had one explode on us. At Atlanta last year we had the rotors glowing during the sunny afternoon…..the caliper failed shortly after fallowed by the hub but the rotors didn’t explode. We replace them every race….at ~$20 they’re dirt cheap.

turbojdmhatch

see you at Watkins!