Brought her to work in race trim. I don't know if the Forte has me spoiled (ok, yeah it has) or the extra caster plus 215 rt615's and 4* of camber have made the steering heavy and active. She's a bit fiesty on uneven surfaces.
Brought her to work in race trim. I don't know if the Forte has me spoiled (ok, yeah it has) or the extra caster plus 215 rt615's and 4* of camber have made the steering heavy and active. She's a bit fiesty on uneven surfaces.
Alright.... update time! Took Rio out to Putnam yesterday for a pre OLoA shakedown. Glad I did even if the weather was complete trash. Brand new Walker manifold backed off the nut on one side of hte flex pipe and hte stud and nut on the other. She was very noisey and unhappy after that so I packed up and went home a little early.
What I need to figure out is the thread pitch and size of he stud thats missing. I'm thinking of running a longer bolt from the bottom side with a lock nut on the top but I need to figure out what I need without crawling under the car 14 times.
Overall a great day though. Car handled fanstastic, constantly changing track conditions made it benefical even if it was colder than balls.
Car is back to normal. quiet, no longer in limp mode. Oil change, trans fluid check and a good vacuum and she is ready for OLoA #2.
Well, I finally got her back to driver status. Oil needed changing since we got home from OL. Being broken, the idea of doing work on it and then driving a coilover'd car on crappy streets sounded terrible. Watching my Sundae Cup friends at Lime Rock made me sad so Saturday I broke down, changed the oil and swapped the muffler back on. I forgot how much I missed this little thing. The noises, the feedback, the silliness of how slow it is.
Sunday washed it, filled it up with fresh 93 and back to driving a couple days a week.
Huh... thought I'd updated this but I guess not. September drove out to Topeka to hang out with cool people. Drove at the GridLife event with nocones. Parked the Rio next to his so i could see it in pictures.
had a great Saturday, ran 3 of 4 sessions before my shoulder told me to quit. Way back from the top of the sundae cup field but I haven't drive since may and I may be a little compromised still.
Sunday comes, had my best session of the weekend first session out. Second session the car was getting slower and slower. Instead of pulling on the fits in the straights I was watching them walk away from me and my lap times were getting worse and worse even though my corner speeds were higher. I was losing 4-7mph on the straights. So I packed it in, worked the rest of the day and then drove home 9 hours.
first thing I noticed was it was hard to keep speed up small hills. Then the fuel economy was down from the 38mpg on the way out to 30-31 on the same roads headed back. As I'm almost home I realized I hadn't once had to turn the radio up to play over the sound of the exhaust. Next morning I confirmed, hardly anything is coming out the tailpipe and it just doesn't want to rev.
cars been parked now for a month. Today I pull the secondary cat.
first thing I forgot was that cat isn't a bolt on. Crap. Second thing:
that's the inlet side. I had just replaced the primary cat with a new Dorman in April before one lap. I went "name brand" so it wouldn't be an issue. Well apparently it is. The secondary car is plugged with bits and pieces of the primary and the primary is still shooting out chunks.
shoulder is starting to complain about the cold concrete so until next time....
I did stop for a bit sunday but finished up. Cleaned the second cat as well. Took for a drive.... still no power and the intake is screaming under hard acceleration. Still a restriction. Blew air backwards from the muffler this morning then started it and it was normal! Normal burbly exhaust note, revs etc. Drove great for 1.5 miles. Then back to the broken.
And fixed. OneKorean tuneup shooting out chunks at following cars and the glorious sounds of an almost uncorked gamma came screaming at me.
It's spring time. Did some maintenance and a once over on the car. Since it didn't get used much last year, Things like brakes and tires are all ready to roll. Nut and bolt the suspension change the oil and use my own service to actually run a sample.
Well, not all things can be good all the time.
Wear more than doubled in less miles. The good news on that front is the 0W40 is holding steady at a solid 30 weight oil range, and the car specs for a 20 so overall protection is decent, but the amount of oil it consumes and the down on power thing are starting to rear their ugly heads.
And yes, this is what I do on the side. I treated myself like a normal customer for an example, otherwise it would have started out with "Whew.... you be screwed man."
Some positive news today. Decided at 10pm last night to go to an autox at one of our old sites that they just got back. Ran as a test n tune with numbers and classes. By the time I left, I was sitting 5th overall and 5th in pax. Car was great. Lot was small and bumpy but she just worked today.
ended the day 8th both overall and pax. Lots of high hp cars there just couldn't get the power down.
In reply to bobzilla :
and this was all on last year's Falken 615k's? awesome job! congrats
In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :
yeah, the ones stacked in the non-heated garage on the wall all winter long. Did I mention it hit -21F last winter?
So a little has been happening with Rio. Took it up to Grid Life's Revup at gingerman. Car was good, was super close to beating my PB before the track got hot and greasey. Car drove great, used 1/2 quart of oil over the ENTIRE weekend, including the 190 mile drive each way. But had a couple new rattles.
Had a friend here at work through it on the rack to check my numbers for alignment and see if he can spot the rattles. I had figured the front camber to be around -3.5, toe close to zero and caster at around 6-6.5. Thrust angle seemed close, since its a beam. Here's what it ended up at:
The only thing off was my caster, and that may have been me not using a calculator for the maths.
While under there he found the rear sway bar bolts on the left side under the spring had backed off (nylocks, of all things) and retightened it (future check point) and swears the front rattle in the right had to be coming from the upper bearing plate or pillowball mount.
Took apart the strut last night, nothing loose. Pulled it all apart, nothing appeared to have been loose, nor an issue. Cleaned out all the grit from the gravel road and 2 years of road grime, re-lubed the bearing and pillowball with some thick oil and reassembled. Drive in was quiet. Well, there were no rattles. The intake and exhaust provided plenty of audible sounds.
So I guess that means I need to pull these to clean and lube occasionally. Normally, the suspension would come out in october, get cleaned up, lubed and put away for the winter while we drove all winter long on stock suspension. Now that it doesn't do that anymore I may need to add this to my normal maintenance.
Headed to Road America this evening after work. Decided that I didn't want to dick with changing tires, so we are One Lapping it with one extra spare (5th comp wheel and one stocker so two spares). So much more room than there is when you're packing 5 wheels and tires, your house(tent, cot, clothes) tools, cooler and food.
What a crazy weekend. Drive up one lap style, setup camp in the dark, checked in, hung out with friends until 2am, back up at 5 am to start the day with some coffee and alone time.
working bottom of false grid for the weekend we were paddocked right there. My goal was to beat my old PB of a 3:10.4. The class record going into the event was a 3:01.2. I figured dropping 5 seconds was doable, more than that greedy. Our last time here was '21, before the replace.
first session, 3:04.695. Well crap. Goals met and I know I left time on the table. Second session 3:05..x, lots of traffic and short session. Third session 3:03.36. I'm only 2 seconds off the old class record, and over 7 seconds faster than before. Although by this point the new SC record was a 2:54.
Friday night was awesome, party lights on the car were a hit. Saturday morning another early rise to another beautiful day.
Saturday is practice and qualifying for the podium sprint which is the top 5. By this point in the only car not in the 2's and hasn't broken the old record. Later sessions she was losing speed in the hotter air and Saturday she got slower trap speeds but improved another tenth.
Subday morning was the last session of the weekend for us and I knocked another tenth off but couldn't do much more. Even in the cool morning air Rio was down 3mph at 1,5 and 12, but my cornering speeds were all up 2-3mph and braking zones a lot shorter. I was losing speed going up the hill on the front straight which was a first. If I had 2021's power and my current setup/driving knowledge I would have been in the 2:58's for sure.
Saturday's deadmau5 concert was absolutely amazing. Been a listener for years and was great to feel it live.
Sunday afternoon packed up all my stuff and headed home. Car is just so much fun to drive on track. This winter will be time to yank the engine and likely rering it and put a new timing set on. Try to get back some of that power I have lost.
WEll, timing is terrible but I found a crashed NA veloster locally. less miles than the Rio, good engine/trans, rear suspension and front seats. This would give me another engine, a trans with decent ratios, 5-lug upgrade that allow me to jump to 12" front brakes later, stiffer rear beam, better seats and an ECU with no speed limiter for basically the cost of a used engine.
Problem is the truck is down with rusted fuel lines.
In reply to bobzilla :
Does all that Veloster stuff just bolt in to a Rio?
In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
most. What I don't know is if the rear beam is a bolt in or not. But the rest is.
Another great weekend with GridLife. This weekend was Autobahn south course. This was my first time driving here. 3 goals: dont finish last (flexible on that), get better every session learning your limits and drive the car home.
Put the car on the dyno this weekend. Mildly surprised. Last time it was on the dyno, we ran it in 4th and hit (unknown at the time) the speed limiter at 5900. That result was 103. This weekend we did it in 3rd:
116whp/112wtq, 100ftlbs from 3000rpm to 6000rpm with the peak at 4500. At our weight of 2820, means I need 100lbs of ballast to meet P2W. Watched the tail pipe for the runs, not a single puff of smoke (of any color) and she didn't burn a single drop of oil all weekend long. I was ready to pull the trigger on an engine donor car but now not so much....
Car was on display for the local SCCA region at the IMSA race this weekend at IMS. I was busy and never got the chance to hang out but apparently it sparked a lot of conversations on site.
Professional photo from ABCC two weekends ago.
It's amazing how good a proficient photog can make this little crap box look. Courtesy of Alex Swank Media.
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