The wife and I snagged a few pics. here is a favorite:
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=d...HUzUjVCN1lPVWc

Yeah, thanks again Luke. Though I have major blue balls from preparing the meat then having to leave early without tasting it.

PIT STOP - That's Seefo in the black OMP suit, my cousin in the red A* suit, myself in the Mobil 1 suit and our main fueler in the black and white suit on the left. He's checking and adding oil...

Attachment 234860



Car on track, crappy cell phone pic. The weather looks really nice...it wasn't, it was cold as balls. That integra was one of the few cars we were able to drag down the straight...

Attachment 234861



Here are all the awesome trophies...none of which we won. We were ONE LAP short of winning one of the small "Minion" trophies. All of the trophies are hand made out of car parts.

Attachment 234862




The car POST RACE. Front left damage is from me being too aggressive during the last few laps. Passenger side door is from Seefo getting hit...the dent mostly popped out and the rest of it literally will "buff out".

Attachment 234863

Attachment 234864

Attachment 234865

Attachment 234866

Attachment 234867

Attachment 234868

Those trophies are awesome.

Yea...the pictures don't really do them justice. They truly are works of art.

I want one so hard right now...

Artsy photo of the car done post race. By my wife...pas moi.
Attachment 234859

How fun! Does this car get recycled or retired?

Recycled or retired? I'm not sure what that means?


Hopefully recycled...as in I just built it and we just did the first race. I'm hoping many more enduro races to come from this FWD fail boat!

love the thread. I'm hoping to find some people to do chumpcar with soon. pretty successful first outing imo.

Finally got around to doing a leak down test on the motor in the race car last night. The back story is the car felt down on power, and ate lots of oil. Lots. The motor in the car is the original, 150k+ mile engine that supposedly had a recent timing belt and water pump.

So...results:








~25% leak down. Eeep!

Most of the leakage is from spark plug hole to spark plug hole meaning a blown head gasket. There's also some leakage through the intake valves which isn't that surprising considering the mileage. There was very little leakage past the rings so that's a happy result. I should be able to get away with refreshing the head and replacing the head gasket, hoping not to have to pull the pistons. This motor will get refreshed and then will be the spare.

The current spare is getting a full rebuild with new pistons/rings and it will be the primary race motor.

Next race is one month from today at Daytona. Need to build two motors and do a bunch of other stuff in the meantime...


Now I don't feel so bad about getting spanked on the straights at VIR...we were losing a quarter of the compression. Also...we did an entire 12 hour race with a blown head gasket... Wow


Will post some more pics later

How does the coolant look? With how much oil we added at VIR I would expect there to be at least some in the coolant, if it is truly the head gasket.

Coolant looks pretty good to me...the car didn't seem to burn any water or have overheating issues.

Apparently the head gaskets on these can fail in between the cylinders and leak oil but the coolant ports will be unaffected. I dunno, that's just what I was told.

I guess I'll find out for sure after I pull the head.

The valve stem seals are also notorious for going bad and causing oil consumption on these motors. So between the head gasket and the (likely) bad intake valve stem seals, maybe that's enough to account for the amount of oil we were going through each hour.

The main race motor will have new pistons and rings...if the spare motor still burns a little oil then that's still better than not having a spare motor...

Go to 1:03 inthe clip and that is the first thing I thought about when you start talking about building the race motor.

Next race is this Sunday at Daytona.

Many things have been happening...no time for pictures and posting.

Re-did the leak down test on the engine we ran at VIR. Actually put the pistons at TDC for each cylinder. Results were: Cyl 1: 25%, Cyl 2: 40%, Cyl 3: 40%, Cyl 4: 8%. The majority of the leakage was past the cylinder rings.

So 40% leak down past the rings better explains the colossal oil consumption.

So I built the spare motor, which had worse looking cylinder walls then the engine that was originally in the car. New OEM pistons and rings, new clevite bearings all around. Just finished assembling the motor late last week.

Started up the motor for the first time Saturday afternoon. Amazingly the engine started up almost immediately with no leaks or issues. Did an initial break-in and a couple oil changed, everything looks good so far. I'm going to put a little more time on the motor and then will do a leak down test. I'm not super confident in this motor, just because the walls didn't look great and you can't really hone the cylinders. As long as it lasts ~30 race hours I will be happy.

I have a ton of race prep to do the next couple days. Finally have a running driving car so I can get started on all the other race prep items including trying to make the car more competitive.

~110 cars registered for the Daytona race. No racing line, just racing through traffic...

Four week long thrash on this car (including 28 hours of racing) is over and I'm burnt out.

Truck blew it's transmission to bits on Thursday while towing to NCM...had just at 20k miles on a rebuilt transmission.

Sorry about the luck with the tow vehicle and I saw were you had some issues at the race too. The car has some straight line speed. It also punches a nice big hole to draft in too for a little Miata. Sorry I wasn't able to come down and introduce myself. There is a reason we're changing our team name from Liars Anonymous to RPM (Rarely Prepared Motorsport). Though in all the chaos Saturday morning, we forgot to reset the tire pressures from rotating the tires and found a better setup.

:bowrofl:

"COPY FROM CHUMPCAR FORUM - WEEKEND RECAP"


3Brothers Racing and the #53 Honda Prelude had a pretty rough weekend, starting with our tow rig blowing up its transmission 2 hours into an 8 hour tow on Thursday.

We managed to procure a "back up" truck and made it to the track late Thursday night.

Had to rush to finish prepping the car for Friday's race. Despite not having the car 100% ready to go we were running ~P6 after 65 minutes and then we had two wheel studs fail. Fixing that took some time but we got back out on track (basically in dead last) just to have the master power switch get burnt up by some loosening alternator wires. Diagnosed and fixed those and ran strong the rest of Friday minus some fueling issues.

Friday evening we had time to get the car "better" prepared for the Saturday race. Put the air dam on, actually ducted the brakes, properly tied down the cool suit cooler, etc.

Started strong again on Saturday running ~ P9 after about an hour when our staring driver got sick in the car and we had to do an unplanned pit and driver change. Fueling issues continued and we could only get the car to take about a gallon a minute.

New driver got in and we fought our way back into the top twenty just for the top radiator hose to blow off and spew water all over the track. Lost 12 minutes fixing that and got back on track. Car ran strong the rest of the race but we still couldn't fill the gas tank. Pit stops were 10-12 minutes and that still wasn't enough to fill the tank. Something was preventing the tank from venting properly and needs to be fixed ASAP.

Managed to finish P13 on Saturday despite all the issues. Apparently ChumpCar noticed our fueling problems and gave us a hunsaker gift certificate, thanks for that!


Daytona and NCM basically back-to-back plus the truck trans blowing up has pretty much wiped me out for a while...not sure the next race we'll do, probably Sebring.


Cheers,

Luke
3Brothers Racing

So 24 hours at VIR? I should be there smoking some meat.

I want to find a seat for the 24h...

Truck blowing it's transmission has pretty much killed racing budget for the year. Any monies needed to properly prepare the car for a 24hr race are pretty much gone at this point. It also killed most of my motivation...

:facepalm:


Video from one of the guest drivers at NCM, race start from Saturday's race:

<p>sorry to hear luke. which truck and which tranny?</p>

The truck pictured earlier in this thread...1998.5 Dodge Ram 2500 Cummins. Trans is a 47RE with ~20k miles on a documented rebuild.

One of the main reasons I bought this particular truck was because it had paperwork for a recent transmission...

Oh well...you gotta pay to play.

PICTURES FROM DAYTONA RACE

My Cousin getting ready to start the race
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215



AMERICA!!!
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215



Honda products and Banking
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215




CHICANE
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215




MOAR BANKING
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215




At speed?
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215




Slow pit stop...
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1436402215





We had some mechanical issues and the car wouldn't take fuel worth a d@mn, ended up finishing ~40th out of 105ish cars.

Cool! Looks like you were out there with the GRM Miata project car. Love the Gulf livery 944. That color scheme never gets old.

You know, I've been following the GRM Miata project car in the magazine, and I never thought to look for them at this race. It makes total sense they would attend that race considering they are based in Daytona. Honestly, there were 105ish cars registered...I forgot to look for them specifically.

And yes, Gulf liveried car looks awesome, that's why I included that picture.



As for the car, it's been bashed up quite a bit the last two races, and used up quite a bit too. The car needs some fixing up and some wear and tear items replaced. It's kind of sad because the car was SO clean when I bought it, but ~40 hours of enduro racing later and it's showing it's battle scars.

The motor I built has lasted the 28 hours I wanted it too, but the valve stem seals I never replaced seem to be leaking more and more. The car still runs fine and seems to make decent power (by decent I mean about 50hp less than most competitive ChumpCars), but I think it's time for a change.


ENGINE SWAP COMING...

Some ChumpCar video from this last weekend.

Not my car, I was guest driving. It's a K24 powered EK Civic with a 6 speed Civic Si transmission. Motor is bone stock internally; just intake, header, exhaust and tune. This car races in the "EC" class i.e. the Exception Class i.e. the cheater class.

Transmission ate 4th gear after about 70 minutes.



Seefo's car makes an appearance at 6:15 and hangs around for a while. We had some pretty good "racing", even though his car completely meets the rules and the one I was driving doesn't so much...

been trying to watch the video, but youtube tells me its gone!

same

Doh! Let me look into it.

I don't think the sound worked for the entire video anyway. I may have to re-upload it altogether.

Let's try this again...

An error occurred. Please try again later.





Edit-


Edit edit- fix your mirror

Why do I suck at linking YouTube vids?

Also, not my car, not my mirror. I was fixing it...three times a lap

seating position looked a bit uncomfortable, or is that just the angle of the camera?

also what happened with that pass on me in T7 (~20 minute mark) I remember being confused there. Or was that courtesy slow down on the miata to help me out ;)

Seating position is very uncomfortable. I can't remember what brand/type of seat is on the car but it's garbage. The side "bolsters" on the seat don't fit me at all and they force my elbows up quite a bit. The steering wheel isn't good either.

If you watch any other videos of my driving, I never take my hands of 9 and 3 (except to shift, wave to corner workers, make rude gestures to other drivers, adjust a mirror, get a drink, play with a lap timer,etc., etc.) and I don't do any steering wheel "shuffle". In this video I'm doing all those sorts of things and it all has to do with the driving position in this car.

I've communicated my displeasure with the driving ergonomics to the owners, but I think durability and reliability is current their top priority.

As for the pass going into T7, there was a yellow flag. A standing yellow at the corner station for the stalled BMW off the track. It was there the lap earlier and I forgot about it until I was side by side with you. I didn't want to get blacked flagged so I slowed way down to let you past ASAP. Apparently it worked as I was never black flagged...

just YT tag everything after the slash, get rid of the domain

(ignore the *, its just to null)

Hmm, I had a hard time with that one. Technically when are we past that incident? on Sunday the Integra passed me after a yellow right out of hogpen. I was playing it safe, but he didn't (and was not black flagged, not that chumpcar really blackflags that much for passing under yellow).

This one was hard to tell because technically once you turn in, you are past the incident...Any wisdom there?

This one was difficult to determine when you were technically past the incident. I'd say your interpretation of any point after turning in basically being past it. The safer assumption would be at any point past the apex of the corner maybe?

My understanding of ChumpCar rules, at least those enforced by the Eastern ChumpCar region, is that you are under yellow flag rules if you can see the flag station with the yellow shown. Basically line-of-sight, within reason. Since there's basically a straight for quite a ways before this corner station, there's a fair distance of line-of-sight. I would say well before the bridge.

Since I initiated the pass and mostly completed it all within sight of the corner station I felt, by Chumpcar Rules, I was pretty clearly passing under yellow.


SCCA rules (and IMSA and maybe NASA?) are that the yellow flag is enforced from the corner station showing/waving the yellow until you are past the incident. In this situation the yellow "area" would be really short, if not almost non-existant. Under SCCA rules, if you complete the pass before you reach the corner station showing the yellow flag, then you have not passed under yellow and you have the right to track position. In this case, if this was an SCCA race, I would probably have done the exact same thing and erred on the side of caution even though it could be argued that I completed the pass before reaching the corner station.


I've been passed under yellow countless times, and have seen the offending cars black flagged maybe a dozen times. In my experience, all of the organizations I've raced with (SCCA, NASA, ChumpCar, WRL, IMSA) have been about the same as far as enforcing PUY's. I'd guess about 10% of the time the penalty gets appropriately enforced. In IMSA we would immediately radio in any PUY's, and even with video replay available, IMSA missed them more often than not.

Still racing this.

Motor I built before Daytona last year is still chugging along. Approaching 40 race hours on that motor.


Raced at Road Atlanta a week ago today.


Looked like this:


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1455419827


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1455419827


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1455419827


Rotor shouldn't be that hot...not on street tires. Front left brake pads failed twice in a 14 hour race. I assume something was causing the left front caliper to drag leading to overheating. Still a little stumped by it all.


Big changes coming for this car...may involve a certain K20A2 that is sitting in my garage.

:eggplant:

I take it you won't be at the march race then?

Not in my car...

Have not been racing...have been doing this instead.

:burncash::burncash::burncash:


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1459132877

Is that a K24?

K20A2

I'm converting the car to run SCCA STL class. No more Chumpcar for the car. May run some WRL races but will mostly be focusing on SCCA stuff.

Need spoon feeding...
 

So I need some suggestions from the all knowing horde here on MT.

I'm about to completely re-wire this POS (at least the chassis harness), and I need recommendations on wiring tools and supplies.

I'll be using a conversion harness from hybrid-racing as well as OEM Acura wiring harness for the engine and charging. What's left for me to wire is the chassis, but because racecar, there's not a whole lot to do. Basically brake lights, wipers, and gauges.

I have always loathed doing electrical/wiring. Like, absolutely loathed. I think part of the reason is I've always used the shittiest of tools and supplies (not to mention a basically non-functioning soldering iron). Using crappy tools and supplies has led to even te simplest wiring tasks turning into mind numbing disasters.

I need a good proper crimping tool, some baller easy to use connectors, and maybe a generic fuse box.

So what do you guys use? Amazon Prime is preferred. I don't mind spending some money, but I also don't need top of the line stuff since I don't (nor will I start) do this stuff every day.

Thanks in advance

More important then wiring, when do I get to go back to VIR with you and smoke some meat.

Well it definitely won't be until after this car is wired up and running...

But more to your question, either Aug 12-14 (VIR 24hr Classic) or potentially Dec 16-18 (eep cold!)

A case of the car becoming too nice/expensive/hard to replace, or Chump becoming not cheap enough to justify?

The car was always too nice for ChumpCar, at least at first.

Probably more of the latter. For the amount of money I was spending to do a ChumpCar race I could do like two SCCA Majors weekends, get more total seat time, much less stress (not worrying about appeasing paying renters), and actually win money and contingency.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy ChumpCar, but maybe more so as a guest driver.

Stealth gets a K20A2
 

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461955175

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461955175


First picture is from February 29th. Second picture is from a couple days ago, but let's say April 29th.

Hoping to make the Majors race at Pitt in a couple weeks. Most of the work left to do is wiring. Hoping to have that done in 7-8 days, that will leave a couple days to get the at dyno'd and tuned with the sweet 50mm restrictor required by the rules. Need to be at ~200whp to be competitive.

After that will be the Mid-Ohio majors in early June. There are currently 32 STL cars registered for that event. Planning to have an LSD and 5.08 FD installed in the spare transmission by then.

Looks great luke, but the timing belt is on the wrong side...

VTEC unicorns make more pony powers when the TB is on the passenger side...it's the only way to go!

The transmission is on the wrong side too though...

Better for shifting through six gears my dear...

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461962527

Random picture dump of some of the last two months activities. This would be in chronological order of the mobile site would let me...

Got any pics of the spoiler?

Not really, it's ghetto, you can do better.

I built it with ChumpCar rules in mind so I had to use as little materials (aluminum and Lexan) as possible.

if I get a chance I'll snap a few more pics for you. I have to change it (or remove it) because it doesn't currently meet all STL rear wing rules...

So K-swap has been done for ~ 2 months.



Did some racing:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e673e82281.jpg



First race/shakedown went okay. Had some driveshaft boot issues, and no LSD was a problem.


So I installed an LSD:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...90dc470480.jpg


OEM 8th Gen Civic Si LSD into a TSX 6-speed transmission. Then I raced again. And I was too busy fixing driveshaft problems to take pictures. Or take video. Currently working with Driveshaft Shop to try to fix driveshaft issues. Basically inner boots tearing, and driver side axle popping out of the diff housing ~30 minutes into a race. Which is annoying.


Only pics I took from SCCA Majors weekend at Mid-Ohio. I was running ~6-7th out of 35+ cars with a totally undeveloped car (no aero, laughable suspension, down 10+ hp / 15trq to top cars, no fancy LSD, etc.) before the axle would pop out. Had some awesome racing though. I really wish I would have set the gopro for Sunday's race, had some intense back and forth with a 2nd gen RX7 and 1.6L miata (both STL cars) fighting over 6th place. Proper good racing. Super clean, super fun, and at a high level. That's what I've been missing.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...fac54eef15.jpg



Car isn't really a Chumpcar anymore, probably should change thread title.

Planning on doing some track days to fix/test the axle issues, then hopefully do one or two WRL/AER enduros. Over the winter I will finish upgrading the car so that it's hopefully competitive for the Runoffs at Indy in 2017.

I made a thing...a video thing:

Wait when were you at CMP and why was I not invited?