Today I spent a whole day at the track, but only 20 minutes on the track. I told myself beforehand that I would just take care of business at the track (practice at 10:40), and then get some work stuff done and get a jump on next week. But one hour crept into the next, and then the next, and then it was just a couple of hours till a catered dinner for the NASPORT guys, and then it was sitting around talking about people, and then at about 8:30 I decided I couldn't blow what was left of the day, and so after a couple of errands I find myself writing on H-T again (I think I'm still blowing the day).

This was the first SCCA race of the year without the chicane. Job-1: relearn how to drive T1 from 130 instead of 90. That was complicated by an excessive 1/8 inch of rear toe out I've got (anything greater than zero being excessive for my purposes) - the car is a squirmy handful under braking over the hump just past the braking point, but at least I'm not porpoising over the thing like my GT3 friend. It's kind of funny, we have about the same terminal speed, and brake at about the same point. He's got about the same amount of power, alot less weight, alot more tire, and alot of brakes. He's got the aero of a brick though. He found a bunch of braking capacity in the porpoising episode, and it makes sense that he might be able to brake right after the hump if he's got enough "sack". Naturally that gets me thinking...."could I try that too?" Riiiight......I don't think so.......are you crazy?......

This is the kind of failure of imagination that will either save my life or keep my phone from ringing with Roger Penske on the other end.

Speaking of failure - it's becoming a way of life for me to set personal record lap times and yet feel worse about the drive. I remember remarking to Scott Zellner last year that as I developed the car it became fussier and more work and that that had transformed a day at the track from an easy pleasure into hard work. It's only gotten moreso that way. The other part of this is something Mario Andretti was quoted on recently - that if you didn't scare the **** out of yourself on your qualifying flyer you didn't go fast enough. My run thru 7-8-9 is getting to be that way, but lap after lap. I actually threw the car thru 7 so hard one lap today that I ate the inside curbing on 8 so bad that I actually rode the brakes up one side and down the other while turning just because I wanted to save my first 100 mile an hour into a wall for later.

One lap was so bad I think I screwed up every corner. After that I took a mental cool down lap and drove the lines I meant to drive, and then turned a few more back on the gas but according to plan. Unfortunately I don't know which lap was my fast one, and I'm to the point of disorientation now that if it turned out to be one of those out of control laps I wouldn't be surprised.

And damn, damn, damn, I was having a hell of a time with T3, a 3rd gear 110 degree increasing radius sweeper with NO GRIP (but only on the front of my car). No matter what I do as a driver or as a tuner, I push from entry on and I can develop no meaningful g's. Sure I've got the car setup to turn right, but you'd think I could balance the car in this relatively slow left, without destroying the magic in the fun and critical high speed left T7. It's irritating too that Ron Cramer's ITS GSR with a similar setup is actually loose thru there. But I'm not alone in this problem - many drivers HATE T3, while others merely work on it year after year. With a fresh Right Front tire I can get a couple of good laps and pick up what seems like 2 seconds, but after that it's like losing an arm wrestling match....hello gators!

I also had braking problems - something I'd kind of forgotten about over the last year. I've been running Hawk's latest HT-10 on the front with 23 mm Brembo rotors and my cooling duct/diverters. The pads have great bite, but where one braking zone is followed closely by a second, I get a soft pedal for the second and it's causing me some heartburn. The slight reduction in confidence results in a small break in the routine which inhibits the connection between my subconcious and my right foot. You may remember me mentioning fully missing the brake pedal with my right foot earlier this year? That was an extreme case, but where this stuff is concerned any case is extreme. My right foot seems to be clogging the communication channel with warnings and feedback: "this may not work"....."I can't look.....here I go"....."you know strictly speaking this isn't MY fault"......and of course "I told you so".

So, it's just more and more of what Warren and I talked about the other day: the car is becoming fussier and fussier about the track and I'm spending more and more time trying to fine tune the thing, and each part of the track seems to want something different and I wind up high centered on mutual exclusion. Compromise is not what we usually have in mind when we take the next step, but that's what I'm converging on. It kind of leaves winning and/or great racing as the more practical goal, where a great car that works well just about everywhere is a miracle (for amatuers like me).

After the record setting Rose Cups, the turnout this weekend is really light. Most of the Porsche guys are running in ITE and passing on the PCA classes. I may not have a reasonable chance at any good racing this weekend, and that kind of sucks. The idea of spending 3 days for 1 day of lapping is stupid. I can't bring myself to reduce my power output and run crummy tires so that I can race with Joe, and he doesn't have the time or money to develop his 240SX to run with the ITR. Many of the Porsche guys on the same second are slow in the corners and fast on the straights - no great racing to be had there. Gonna hafta solve this problem somehow - I can't become a better car racer if I'm just driving around by myself, and I strongly believe that RACING under severe pressure is the ultimate teacher - all you gotta do is use your brain, and you will, otherwise you ought to admit you shouldn't be there.

Scott, who thinks this racing stuff is the most challenging stuff in his whole life.....other than avoiding institutionalization.....and staying interested enough in his day job to keep the money going for the GFCP.......

 

Hey Scott, regarding the soft pedal thing on 2nd or third consecutive hard brake, Todd Reid seems to think that it's the brake booster, and I'm inclined to agree, since I don't think I'm actually losing any braking force, just driver confidence

It'd be nice too if I could run that master cylinder brace, or weld a plate to the firewall. Have you ever seen the amount that the MC moves? It's ridiculous.

Warren

 

hi Scott! Todd Reid here....

Warren and I discussed this a bit when at the super short Carlisle "road" course...

I didn't really experience what I thought was classic "fade"; more, I think, brake booster loss of vacuum..... the corners were super close together, almost like an auto-x, and many times I'd hit the brakes and the pedal would feel rather "funny"; not your typical brake fade to the floor feeling; instead, it was like you had to suddenly push very hard on the pedal to stop (really throwing off ones rhythm).... I think, possibly, in several close together stops, there is no time for the booster to recover vacuum from the engine..... maybe.....

always like reading your reports! keep em up!

later,
Todd

 

Would some sort of vaccum canister (much like a capacitor in a stereo system) alleviate this headache?

Ryan

 

Strange day. Qualified in the morning, raced in the afternoon. No, that's not the strange part.

Won race with lousy laptimes on greasy track while driving hard only on the two left turns because of violent shaking from the left front under load.

Conclusion: 1) carry complete spare uprights with fresh wheel bearing, hub, and ball joint, 2) replace wheel bearings every 6 races (5?!) (4?!!)

Endnote: I'm not racing the second regional tomorrow.

There, now you don't have to read any further unless you want to.

So, I qualified a little slower than my fast lap from practice yesterday. This really bothers me since I played with alignment and tire pressure, and tried to drive better. I mentioned that I had an unwanted 1/8th of rear toe out. This morning, with a full tank I carefully measured it at less than 1/32nd out. So I toe'd in just the left rear to wind up with about 1/32 in total. As a quick field adjustment, the intent was to improve stability under braking without hurting me in the slow left T3. Net effect on stability was zilch - the car is still squirmy under braking for T1 - I think that searching for improvement from the car was just an excercise in hope, braking that hard at that speed over pavement that you're essentially landing on after a launch is just going to be a dicey thing.

I took a little damping out of the left front, and went from 32F/36R cold to 34/34 and finally to 35/36 on the right side. It helped a bit....I guess.....I mean it's hard to say anything too good when your fast race lap is nearly 2 seconds slower than your qualifying time. I spent so much time at light throttle just waiting for some bite on corner exit that it's a wonder I actually won. Adding a twist was the fact that Joe's fast race lap was about the same as his qualifying time. But I take some comfort in the more widely experienced gain of a couple seconds. Whatever.

I'd qualified first in class and 14th out of 25. I was behind a bunch of Porsches, with Joe just behind me in the 2x2 grid. Same old slinky thing, but I was ready on the gas when the green came out. I was right behind the Porsches going into T1, and we'd pulled a gap over the rest of the field, but their predictable bunching in the first turn gave Joe the opportunity to make it all up under braking and he came past on the outside, we were side by side thru the next couple of turns as each of us tried to put a Porsche between us - each obviously with his own idea as to who should be in front. As we came onto the back straight Joe had not quite enough lead to close it and move over in front of me. So I stayed inside and inched my way past him 6 inches off the wall in the marbles. He couldn't really close it without risking both of us and getting run over by the rest of the pack. I didn't really want to be where I was but there was no other way, and I wasn't going to back out (even though that would have been more than a little smarter). By T7 I'd pulled it out just enough that he moved out behind me to take the good line thru 7. That was that. I pulled out a second of more lap for about 6 laps till I had about half a straight or more. Then came the pain.

I was really starting to work T1 pretty good. Scary braking, with a nice hairy transition to the turn in. Then all of the sudden I had a shaking in the front end that was very disruptive to traction - which was breaking and making at the same frequency. At first I thought I'd picked up some big turds. But it was only happening in T1/2 and not in any of the other rights. As it persisted and the associated push got worse, I started worrying that I had a tire in destruct mode. After a couple of laps thinking about it, I started slowing down and only hammering the few lefts on the track. After a few laps I could see that Joe was coming back into clearer view. It all worked out and I got the finger (the one lap to go finger) and I knew it was done.

When I got to impound I really wanted to see that left front tire. There was nothing to see. No ready to explode carcass, no nothing. I mention it to Joe and he describes a similar experience, and suggests that maybe we were picking something up or maybe it was related to the greasyness of the track. Huh? So I talk to the Fred who I buy my tires from. He's not heard of such a mystery vibration and tells me to look for wheel bearing or ball joint trouble - which I haven't had time to do yet since he was my first stop after impound. There it was - a dying left front wheel bearing (after no more than 6 races).

I tried to find a bearing, but failed. I considered looking for a donor car, but considering what I'd be asking of a volunteer, and what I'd feel obligated to expend on their reconsitution, it makes no financial sense to pursue that approach.

When I told Joe I wouldn't be back tomorrow, he thought I was playing psych games on him. I wish. I'm a little uncomfortable packing it in over such a simple thing, but I'll have the right solution ready next time (which there won't be one of though).

It was in the low 90's? today, and the sun was blisteringly hot. I haven't driven such a smeary set of tires ever. It was kind of fun, but ultimately frustrating, and that was before I started having trouble.

So it wasn't a real winner of a day. Sometimes racing is more the pursuit of the ideal than the realization of it. I spent most of the race running alone. Then I stand around watching the carnage in Spec Racer Ford (also some pretty damn good racing), and Spec Miata (no carnage, but some really good racing). I'm seriously thinking that a little detuning and some Toyo RA1's might make help make RS more fun (till I can buy or build a GT3 Integra, which is just something to get me by till I take delivery of a Prodrive 550 Maranello....er, make that two).

Scott, who's reaching a breaking point with the GFCP........maybe that's a broke point......




[Modified by RR98ITR, 1:07 PM 7/7/2002]

 

I forgot to mention that I didn't have as much trouble with the brakes on Saturday. I think that's kind of funny looking back on it now, and I don't think that my other problems dominated my senses.

On Friday it wasn't what I refer to as "beating the booster" - going from full throttle to the brakes so fast that there's a hard pedal but no brakes. It was a soft pedal on the second close application. I don't yet know the structure of the booster system, but it would make sense that there would be a check valve or some method of holding a vacuum that should minimize the chances of no boost in the booster (this is borne out by experience - shut the car off and push the brakes a couple of times - there is a residual vacuum that you can deplete in a few strokes).

The other thing that was notable in qualifying was a brief snap oversteer in T9 leading onto the front straight. I may have been slightly sloppy coming off the brakes and turning in, and the rear snapped out faster than I've ever experienced before. I caught it, but countersteering with my still clubby right hand was kind of funny. I still can't really grip with my thumb, and when I jerked the wheel up I couldn't maintain my grip and so kind of threw my right hand across my body toward the drivers window. I was able to disregard that and use my left hand to resume normal control, but it was an odd thing to say the least. It must have looked really odd at the point flag station.

I failed all weekend long to get the car to work in the 3rd gear left hand more than 90 dgree increasing radius turn T3. I'm really getting frustrated by that. RWD cars have less trouble there, and I'm getting tired of hearing Joe say that I pull him on the straights with "that damn VTEC", while he makes it up in the back section. And it's not like I'm looking for loads of speed (though that accurately describes the missing amount) - I'd be beside myself if I could just acheive some measure of balance so I could feel like I was driving a car around the turn instead of a plow.

Well, I've got a month to the next Regional - another double. Joe wasn't going to be there, but with his win (I think I can safely assume) on Sunday, he may be evaluating points and time and thinking that he can still take the class championship if he can add some top end power with cams and a solution to his high rpm mixture problems. I hope he thinks that - I want him to show up and be faster. I'm dying for some good racing.

Scott, who has much work to do.....