THRILL4251

thanks for the kind words steve and others..

well, i guess the best words to describe this weekend was learning experience. we tested the car at hrp saturday and sunday. saturday spent mostly on getting the cockpit to where i could drive the car. the first run we were trying to put the transbrake switch on the brake handle....bad idea, and i couldn't reach the forward/reverse shifter very well when it was all the way in forward. i did a burnout, bumped the transbrake rolling to a stop, then realized that was a bad idea and shut it off right there.

on the second shot, more problems. this go around, i really was having problems stopping the car after the burnout and backing up. keep in mind this is a lencodrive car, so there's no clutch pedal just to put in to stop the car. i got it stopped and into reverse, but i tried stopping once i got into reverse, and was having trouble. once again, feeling i was getting into an unsafe situation, i hit the kill switch.

after looking it over, we bled the brakes, it was idling high, and i didn't take it out of high gear to back up, so we figured we'd fix those problems and try again. go through the burnout, have a hard time stopping it again. i said to hell with it and took it to the first turn off...

three tries, and i hadn't even lit a stage bulb yet. i hadn't felt that beat up since i ran scout team offense against our varsity defense that was ranked no. 1 in houston area...we had nick named the car 'calamity jane' in the shop, and she was having her way with me. we looked things over some more, and realized the problem was i couldn't get enough brake pedal; my wrist was hitting the cage before i could get full pedal. we adjusted the handle out, and went to try it again.

we fired it up, put the body down, i rolled forward, yanked on the brakes, and what do ya know, it stopped. we were cooking with gravy then. so i did a burnout, backed up, got it stopped, and here we go, looks like we're going to light a bulb. it launched, but i could hear the motor going up and down, and the car really wasn't moving that hard, so i clicked it off.

the root of the problem was we had some 'issues' - we'll leave it at that - on the inlet side of the pump and it was cavitating. if you had bet me a car could leave the line without spitting the blower at .3 gallons, i would have bet a lot of money it wouldn't. luckily, i guess it was so lean it didn't build enough heat to burn it up.

sunday rolled around, and it was a whole new ballgame. the motor was happy now. first pass it went out there and was a bit lazy with a 1.03 60', and gave me my first taste of tireshake. i clicked it off from there.

we went back to the pit, it looked like it was down on wheelspeed where it shook, so we hopped her up. it left good for a 130 degree track, jumped up on the tire good, and was marching right along until about 1.4 seconds. my conservative side told me if it shook again just to plug a gear and roll on. but the more i thought about the last run, that shake wasn't that bad, and i could have drove through it more. so instead of punching a gear, i'm trying to be frank manzo and drive through it. well, after i couldn't tell which was was up, down or sideways, i clicked it off..... .996 60'

on the third try, cars had started to run for the night's street program. also, a storm was rolling in, cloud cover was out, and the air got about 200' better. we liked what it did the first second in the run, just wanted to calm it down in the top of low. we made some adjustments, but we didn't get that far. i let off the transbrake button, and it was basketballing the tires by the christmas tree. i tried to do a pedal job, and it started basketballing them again. looking back on it, evidently we were on the edge the second run, and slightly better air, and slightly worse starting line was led to it breaking the tire loose.

we made a lot of progress, learned a lot, and i'm getting my routine down in the process. our next trip out, i'll continue to work on the process, and we'll work some more on the tune-up. when we can run some decent numbers in testing, we'll show up at a race somewhere. the team is pretty pumped, we didn't hurt anything, and we're looking forward to hitting the track again in a week or two.

i'd like to say thanks to the entire hrp crew. they were very cooperative, and worked with us all weekend. i would recommend them to anyone that wants to get some testing in.

hope to see yall at the track soon...

 

we moved the button to the middle of the steering wheel under the shifters so i could use my left thumb on it. we had the kill switch there, but we moved it up on top of the wheel. that freed my right hand to shift the car from forward to reverse with my right hand. that made the shifter a lot easier to reach. i got to go work on the practice tree with my left thumb now to bring it up to speed....lol.

 

darren,

bob is right, the license procedure for an upgrade from my sc license is 1 half and 2 full runs. however we're in test mode - when the car/driver can run a decent number, then we'll go race, and the license thing will take care of itself. i think we're pretty close to getting the bugs out of this thing and running some good numbers. hopefully this weekend we'll get closer.

 

upon further review the tireshake seems to be linked to another problem in the fuel system. on the second run when it shook so hard, it went lean - appears to cavitate - two tenths before it ripped the tire loose. i mean lean. its a good thing it did shake and i lifted, or i would have had the blower in my lap.

we've torn apart the fuel system, and got an idea on what it is. we'll make a low gear shot at hrp this weekend before we go any further to make sure the problem is gone.