Yeah, I had a few left over from replacing the disaster waiting to happen on the Locost a couple years ago. It's probably not strictly necessary in this application because there's no real pressure in the return line, but...

--Ian

 

Hey Aidan, check out those anodized fittings....

 

Huh, my old Locost showed up on Bring A Trailer -- looks like the current owner has cleaned it up a lot. 1967 Lotus Seven Replica | Bring a Trailer



Be interesting to see what it sells for with better aesthetics.

--Ian

 

So I went to to the Golden Gate Lotus Club track day at Laguna today.



Second session out I started smelling smoke going through 4. Down the straight towards 5 the cabin had a bunch of smoke in it -- pulled off behind the wall at 5, got out of the car. Smoke coming out of the edge of the hood. Corner worker came over with a fire extinguisher, said he thought it was steam rather than smoke. I wasn't sure so I leaned back into the car to pull the fire handle.

Turns out I lost a power steering hose and it sprayed the hot side of the engine bay with power steering fluid. I don't think there were any flames, just a coating of oil burning off the exhaust manifold and turbo. Dunno if the fire system did anything or not, but that's what it's for, right?

Towed back to paddock and winched it into the trailer. I pulled the power steering belt off so that I could get it into the garage at homewithout spraying any more fluid (not that there's any left in the reservoir, but...) and discovered that the bracket supporting the power steering hose had sheared. I'm guessing that's not a coincidence.



Winches are awesome.



--Ian

 

that sucks....

do you have to swap out the fire bottle now? Not sure how it works

 

I need to check, but I think I can just use a $50 recharge kit.

Re-Charge Kit for 2.3 ESS AFFF System

--Ian

 

ONLY use the fire system for visible flames, never smoke.

 

I think Ian is trying to beat bbundy at "what obscure **** can I break?"

Reminds me of the saying... if you make your widget idiot proof, they'll just make a bigger idiot. bbuny and Ian are the village idiots here!

 

This is the rule when driving, but by that point I was stopped and out of the car. Visible flames and I wouldn't have gone near it again.

It's perhaps unlikely that the fire system would have done anything if the car had been about to burn up, but in that case I wouldn't have lost anything by trying it.

--Ian

 

I think this is just what happens when you have a chassis with 100K miles on it that's done 70-ish track days and a hundred autocrosses. It's seen a lot of vibration.

--Ian

 

I once put out an oil fire with a fire extinguisher after exiting the track at the end of a session.
(Some goober who shall not be named left the oil cap off after topping up)
It took 2 hours to clean up the mess.

 

sorry to hear that you had a smal fire, glad it was not a major one...
how did the duel pick up repir turn out? Did you have enough track time to run the fuel to a low level?

 

Nope, I only got one session in, so I didn't get a chance to see if putting the hose on the fuel return line helped with the fuel starvation or not.

--Ian

 

How many of those 70 were full days? <ducking>

 

Pbbblt

--Ian

 

Oh man, its gettin deep

 

Pulled the pressure hose off the car. A couple people had spare used hoses, but after thinking about it a bit I decided to buy a new one from Mazda. It's on order and should be here in a couple days. $100, but given that I've already destroyed one, I think I want to go with a brand new one rather than used.



Bracket as well. I thought about welding this, but I'm not confident about welding it and avoiding a fatigue failure, and a new one is cheap.



Waiting on those parts and the recharge kit on the fire system before I sign up for another track day.

--Ian

 

What fitting is this?

 

https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...6/#post1409890


--Ian

 

A moderately productive weekend. I started by taking the S6 over to 034 Motorsports' annual open house/dyno day. I didn't run anything on the dyno this year -- ran the S6 last year and it hasn't changed since then, so there was no point. I've been meaning to re-dyno the Miata to see if the valve springs helped any and I'd like a baseline on the FD, but they have a Mustang dyno so the results aren't really useful for comparing to the dynojet numbers I usually get.

One somewhat unusual turbo setup I saw there:



Then I went home and put the power steering bits in the Miata. New hose:



New bracket.



No pictures of them installed -- it looks like a Miata power steering system. The pressure hose seals on the pump with a couple of O-rings, which apparently weren't included with the hose. I started it up and moved the wheel back and forth to bleed the air out of the system, and it doesn't seem to leak any more. I haven't actually driven the car, though, because the registration is expired. It's paid, but they won't send me a sticker until it gets smogged, and that's probably not happening until after the next track day. It goes there on a trailer, so the lack of registration isn't a huge deal.

Then I decided I was tired of having my toolbox jammed full, so I went around to Harbor Freight and picked up a new bottom chest. I transferred the tools over to it, but it didn't seem to add as much space as I'd though it would. I guess it was just really crammed in the old box.



The old bottom chest got moved into the trailer. I need to come up with a better way to restrain it than a ratchet strap, though.



--Ian