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stickered up and ready for race, testing went great. The 10 year old knock off gv lip damn near shattered with a little off, some drift stitches and away we go.
180* thermostat is maintaining 188-192, oil temps are 220-230, all on the hottest day of the weekend.
Sure looks purdy! A quick coat of krylon plastic fusion spraypaint would go a long way to cleaning up that lip. Just mask it off and dust it on, just did mine and I should have done it a long time ago.
Was very sendy. Completed 350 laps over 15 hours of racing, plus ~10 laps in qualifying/warm up and at least 40-50 more in Friday testing, all relatively flawless.
I’ll get some in car footage soon, go pros suck. We definitely need a camera that charges off the car, and auto start/stops with GPS speed and engine RPM, along with having data overlay. Next time!
finished 9th in class Saturday after one driver beached it in the gravel for 20 minutes, and 6th in class today after running 2nd in class all day, but spent 10 minutes diagnosing a burnt up main relay, which I believe was Laz’s original, so not too surprising. Our battery moved around and shorted out Friday. Fixed it, but the relay presented with similar symptoms and we spent too long figuring that out.
I managed to be the fastest driver both days, with a couple of 1:59s, spec Miata lap record is 1:57.9, so I’m happy with that on RS-4s.
video soon, hopefully some pro photos too! Car was on rails all weekend.
Sounds like it was running pretty darn solid there!
Originally Posted by curly
...I’ll get some in car footage soon, go pros suck. We definitely need a camera that charges off the car, and auto start/stops with GPS speed and engine RPM, along with having data overlay...
If you're using a GoPro 5 through 11 then this software can extract the GPS data from the video (assuming you had GPS on) to allow for some really impressive data analysis AND it does overlays! https://www.race-technology.com/gb/gopro
Not sure on the gopro model. We had two batteries for it, one constantly charging, replaced it every pit stop. We sadly forgot to replace it for my Sunday stint, so here's some from Saturday. I cleaned my driving up and had some epic battles Sunday, so it sucks we missed it.
Dunno what camera we'll end up with. We have this one for filming our IMSA pitstops, the wheel changers wear it on their chests for analysis and safety reasons. So it worked, but we'll change to something else eventually. Just ended up with a lot of videos of us sitting during black flag all, ~15 minute of me sitting in the car before the race started, etc.
Lots of these shinanagins:
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Vid looks very sedate. If you watch it at x1.5, that's more like what it felt like.
Post race report: Chassis is great. No play in ball joints or whiteline bushings, leaking shocks or calipers. Diff, axles, and trans are bone dry.
Engine, not great. Running on 3.5 cylinders, and despite still reaching v-max of ~110-112mph at the end of Sunday, compression on cyl 4 is ~60psi, leaking out the intake valves. Using a boroscope, I inspected the valves, and they appear cupped in the wrong direction. So this weekend, I'll rip the head off and send it off to be fixed. This is not the first time we've had issues with eating valves, not sure what the answer is. My current theory is stock springs are too soft, slowly vibrating against seats. So depending on what the head shop says, we may go with some supertech single springs to increase seat pressure a bit.
Shifter is pretty floppy in the video above and in person, so I'll take that apart and find out what's up.
Ignition is also really struggling to engage the starter, and we have to remove the key to open the trunk. So current plan is safety wire the key to the trunk so it's always there, or something similar, and eliminate the factory ignition and replace with race car toggle switches and buttons. We had to open the trunk to inspect the battery, which we found was shorting out. So a better battery mount is in order too. Currently a vise jaw from the trailer's vise is holding it place, along with a number of zip ties and duct tape.
Brakes were also extremely touchy. It was really weird because the right pedal you could mash all you want without too much drama, the BP just isn't a torque monster. But the brake pedal required a delicate foot, and with a little mistake led to our disaster in the sand trap Saturday. Our tallest driver touched the gas with his brake foot, missed a shift, and off he went. Turns out the fire retardant crew shoes were just too wide, was much better with proper racing shoes Sunday. Lesson learned. Regardless, we're going to change from XR3 front, XR5 rear, to 4/6. This is the compound Spec Miatas run in the rain, so similar to our RS4's grip level in the dry. We have brake duct backing plates, just need to add hoses. We put on a new set of pads Sunday, our first set of pads lasted through our test day, Friday practice, and Saturday race. But that first set of pads should have lasted all weekend.
Gotta figure out our brake hydraulic setup too. It's currently a NB booster, 1.8 front brakes, 1.6 rears, with a 1.6 master cylinder and gutted prop valve. We've got access to a NB parts car, we may grab the un-gutted prop valve, NB master cylinder, and 1.8 rear brakes. However the PO may have upgraded to sport rears, which we don't want, so that "upgrade" is pending inspection of it. At the very least, a pair of non leaking OE calipers are always good to have as spares. Still have the NB ABS unit we could install to, and/or Teves mk60e5 for ***** and giggles.
Oh, and some pro-photos got posted. Not too shabby looking! Ducted taped bottle was supposed to provide the drivers some fresh air, it didn't. We need one of those vented quarter windows, I was sticking my hand out the window to draw in some fresh air every chance I got!
The air duct is a good thing but it also can kick rocks and tire clag at the driver's face. So visor down and a little screen are not a bad idea.
Sorry the engine nosed over. Yeah mushy valve springs likely. BPO5 a bit higher rate than BP4W/6D. We always considered them wear items to a motor came out to be refreshed we would put new BPO5 springs in it, or more typically ST singles. We experimented with narrower high flow valve seats but experienced pretty rapid valve wear so we went back to an oem valve seat width.
Not surprised your drivers struggled with balance with the gutted prop valve. Not something we've ever done. We always ran an adjustable prop valve. I generally aimed for a brake balance that allowed the drivers to run with the valve nearly full open on a clean track with fresh tires. The car works very differently when you first apply the brakes versus a second later after weight has been transferred. The knee point in a prop valve sort of compensates for that delta in weight transfer.
Still sounds like a solid outing. That's always gratifying after the mountain of work that goes into running an Enduro.
The air duct is a good thing but it also can kick rocks and tire clag at the driver's face. So visor down and a little screen are not a bad idea.
Sorry the engine nosed over. Yeah mushy valve springs likely. BPO5 a bit higher rate than BP4W/6D. We always considered them wear items to a motor came out to be refreshed we would put new BPO5 springs in it, or more typically ST singles. We experimented with narrower high flow valve seats but experienced pretty rapid valve wear so we went back to an oem valve seat width.
Not surprised your drivers struggled with balance with the gutted prop valve. Not something we've ever done. We always ran an adjustable prop valve. I generally aimed for a brake balance that allowed the drivers to run with the valve nearly full open on a clean track with fresh tires. The car works very differently when you first apply the brakes versus a second later after weight has been transferred. The knee point in a prop valve sort of compensates for that delta in weight transfer.
Still sounds like a solid outing. That's always gratifying after the mountain of work that goes into running an Enduro.
Very good point on the windows. We're planning on something like this so we can open/close at will:
So we can open and close it at will. I have seen NACA ducts in doors to feed drivers legs/bodies fresh air, but I've always felt like that's just a **** ton of brake dust, just a foot or two behind the front wheels...
Glad to hear valve springs sounds like a good possibility. It's been my suspicion, just never attacked it with $400 in valve springs.
Your point on the weight transfer is spot on. In many cars I've driven, the harder you hit the brakes, the more braking force you had, since the weight transfer gave the front end so much grip. But with our setup, you definitely had to sneak up on the break pressure, or suffer little lock ups front and/or rear. All amazingly easy to catch/control/modulate, but definitely something to improve. I'll grab that NB master/prop valve off the parts car and put it on our parts shelf, and keep a cockpit adjustable valve in the back of my head, but that'll happen once all the other stuff is taken care of. It's definitely livable for now, especially if we back the pad compounds down front and rear.
It was extremely satisfying to have a relatively issue free weekend. Had a blast, hung out at a lake, drank some beer, ate some good food, replaced a relay, and did 4+ hours of racing. Can't complain.
Well, I ordered the Volvo springs from Midwest Miata parts. Both my car and Laz got new springs and refreshed head. Laz got all new valves too of course. Lots of drama with the head shop so it took FOREVER. Really hated handing them a bag of springs they looked identical to stock, but oh well. Wanted them tested, but, drama.
While we were in there, we upgraded to a flattop, s2 throttle body, and RB header. We did minor porting on the header and we’ll be porting the upper intake manifold to the throttle body. I’m fairly convinced it won’t do anything, but dyno will be the judge of that. For now it picked up a peak of 9hp, and im very happy with that. I’d love some head porting and true VVT 10:1 pistons vs. the ‘99 9.5 we have now. Next time.
Another race, another head! This time with a podium!
Wow that photo doesn't need to be so big. Me with one of our driver's sister and our trohpy!
We really need ABS, flat spots are the real reason for the cording.
Laz finished 3rd in C class after 14 hours of racing Thunderhill's 5 mile double bypass configuration. 21st overall out of 88 cars. We were seriously outclassed in C, some cars capable of doing 3:25s, our fast driver think he could have gotten into the high 20s, but the corded tires we sent him out on only let him get down to 3:30.385.
Here's in car video of my stint, I'll eventually trim this down to just my fast lap of 3:31.740. Ran out of time to get the Smarty cam talking to the Link or Motec, so no laptime or telemetry on the video is working. But at the very least we had a camera that stayed charged while we raced, and a video car that didn't fill up, and a camera that didn't shut itself off. Big improvements over our first Ridge race.
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Had a couple offs, I'll maybe make a montage video of that, including one fast off at the bottom of the West hill, which debeaded 1.5 tires and put our steering wheel crooked. Other than that, the biggest issue on initial inspection appears to be low compression again, so we'll look into that while we plop a spare motor in.
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