Free racing tip: Don't lock your cat in the garage. He will respond to this indignity by pissing in your race car's seat.
Free racing tip: Don't lock your cat in the garage. He will respond to this indignity by pissing in your race car's seat.
Burke was last weekend. Another great event. Weather was perfect and everyone was going fast.
I finished 3rd overall. Sherman and Joey were ahead of me but not by much. If you notice in the results my last run was really slow. I had a great start and I was trying to catch Sherm but about at check 4 the car suddenly bogged. 99% sure it wasn't getting fuel since that is just what it sounded and felt like. A second or two later and it was fine. But the run was a throw away at that point so I just drove to the top at what felt like a moderate speed.
Still my fastest time was a personal best at Burke so I have nothing to complain about. Here are the results and a video clip put together by Jesse O'Brien. Thanks Jesse!
I had two problems at Burke with the car. The most worrying is the running out of fuel. I checked the cell and it still has 11 gallons it in. So it wasn't low fuel in the cell. My plan is to change the fuel filter and take apart the fuel pump to make sure the inlet screen isn't plugged.
The second problem is I suddenly have acquired a steering vibration. It only happens at certain fairly slow speeds so it doesn't bother on a run. I've had this before but I never really did track it down. Right now I am thinking it is probably time to replace the heim joints in the steering and to check the ball joints.
KG sorry about the issues....easily fixed. Any more events left in the season?
No super chicken?
KevinGale wrote: Burke was last weekend. Another great event. Weather was perfect and everyone was going fast. ... Still my fastest time was a personal best at Burke so I have nothing to complain about. Here are the results and a video clip put together by Jesse O'Brien. Thanks Jesse!
You're more than welcome! Putting those little videos together is kind of a lot of fun, I just wish I had more footage to tie together.
See you at Ascutney, right?
759NRNG wrote: KG sorry about the issues....easily fixed. Any more events left in the season?
Two events. Fall Ascutney and Philo.
The Super Chicken apparently had some serious engine problems at the end of the first Burke. I knew it didn't finish the last run it made but I didn't find out until this Burke that it was major.
drivendaily wrote: ... See you at Ascutney, right?
Trying to get to 25 years without missing an event so yes!
No C392 at Burke this time?.....super chicken..like KABLOOEY!! Do you have the time to address the steering shimmy?
759NRNG wrote: No C392 at Burke this time?.....super chicken..like KABLOOEY!! Do you have the time to address the steering shimmy?
I should have time. I'm hoping to start working on it and the fuel issues tomorrow. Worst case I can live with the steering problem. It doesn't bother if I go really fast. :-)
Yesterday got eaten up by new house stuff. One of those things was order lights for the garage. I did some research on this to calculate the foot candles I wanted. I wanted somewhere between 50 - 100 foot candles. I ended up with 6 of these. They are Metalux LED High bay lights each is 11,000 lumens. I'm hoping my years of working in the dark are finally over.
Today I did get started on the car. First job was to pull the fuel pump apart to see if the screen might be plugged. It had a couple little bits of fuel cell foam on the screen but nothing that would plug it up.
The interior of the pump looked fine also.
So I buttoned that back up and moved on to the fuel filter.
The fuel filter was a lot more suspect. For one I know I haven't changed the filter in a while. The filter itself looks dirty and is overdue for replacement. But more troubling was how rusty the inside of the fuel canister was.
It must have got some water in it at some point. Not all of this is new. It wasn't great last time I changed the filter. It wasn't great when it came with the car. Anyway I decided it is time to replace it. So a new FRAM HPG1 is on order.
I did have to order on ebay. Speedway and Jegs didn't have one listed and Summit said it's not available. All of which leads me to believe it has been discontinued. I went to Fram's website an that part number doesn't turn up anything. The filter elements are still available everywhere. The unit I am taking out came with the car so a new one will shouldn't need to be replaced anytime soon.
On to the steering issues. I started checking things and immediately found a loose steering u-joint. The problem wasn't the joint itself but the set screw had backed off which allows a little wobble. I tightened the set screw and checked all the others on the steering column. I can't wait to get into the new garage so I can strip the car down to clean and paint everything.
Then I noticed the steering rack adjuster was a little loose on the Sweet rack so I tightened that.
The adjustment is the thing that looks like a huge screw on the rack.
Then I checked all the suspension heims by yanking on things looking for any free play. I didn't find any so for now I am not going to pull things apart and replace heims.
Since I had a ball joint loose in the taper I tightened the upper and lower tapers on both sides. I was able to make them all quite a bit tighter. So maybe they all had been working loose.
The car uses Howe adjustable ball joints. These are nice since you can replace them in pieces.
But they can in theory get out of adjustment. I backed off the set screws and adjusted them all again.
Then I went through checked all the front suspension bolts and greased everything. We will see if all this helps at Ascutney.
Testing Testing 1.2.3 No real car update just wanted to test out the new forum editor. It seems nice. I like that there is a shortcut for embedding youtube and facebook videos. I was able to do that before but I didn't figure it out right away and hopefully the shortcuts will make things easier for new people.
I do need to go pick up some fuel to get me through the rest of the season and I'm hoping to buy some tires if the secret tire dealer has any.
759NRNG said:No C392 at Burke this time?.....super chicken..like KABLOOEY!! Do you have the time to address the steering shimmy?
No C392 :-( unfortunately im building a house right now (by myself) so no more racing for me this year. The plus side is that I will have a warm place to work on the race car when im done. :-)
Out with the old 
And in with the new 
Also thanks to John Reed who was smart enough to wire the fuel pump with a plug connection. Can't even count the number of times I've used it. I can totally picture myself hard wiring it and only after cutting and crimping on new connectors a half dozen times realize it wasn't a good idea.
John is also the source of the cleverness of using a solid bit of pipe between the pump and the filter. (I think he stole the idea from someone else but I can't remember who.) By using the pipe the pump and filter can be mounted as a unit which is simpler and requires one less mounting point.
Obligatory picture of the car. :-) This time without most of the front body panels.
I mostly came in from the garage to use this build thread for documentation. When I got the pump and filter back in I of course ran the fuel pump to check for leaks and to check fuel pressure. The fuel pressure was about 6 3/4 lbs. I thought that was higher than I had originally set it and came in to check. I did find the old post where I said it was 5 3/4 lbs. So I will adjust it down to about that. I think I was shooting for 5 1/2 last time and overshot just a bit. Anyway either the regulator changed a little or it has something to do with less pressure drop with a new clean fuel filter.
After Burke I noticed quite a bit of oil in the right rear of the car. That is where the engine breather is located. There is a vent line from the right valve cover back to the dry sump tank. The vent from the dry sump tank is a line that runs to a breather and tank in the right rear of the car just forward of the rear end.
I decided to take the breather and tank out to look at it and clean it. As soon as I took it out I spotted the main problem. I must have forgotten to close the drain on the bottom when I last drained it. I check it every now and then. The tank accumulates a little oil over time. With the bottom drain open it must have been just spraying an air and oil mixture out while the car was running.
Working on wheels and tires today. Can't wait until I get into the new garage and have some more space.
Washed the wheels and getting ready from some paint touch ups.
Ran out of tire valve stems and I went looking to buy some more. The wheels use the .625" hole so a TR415 size. I found an nice pack of 10 on Amazon but in the link below Amazon showed a pack of 100. I don't really need 100 but the pack of 10 was $10 and the pack of 100 was only $24. I may never use all 100 but on the other hand as long as they work OK I'll probably never have to worry about running out again. So I ordered them.
You'd have more room if your tires weren't so dang PHATT!!!! I kill myself ....
759NRNG said:You'd have more room if your tires weren't so dang PHATT!!!! I kill myself ....
They do take up a lot of space. Need to build a tire rack when I get into the new garage.
Where the heck do you find tires for this monster?
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