The shift to third.

 

Why do you never wear your shoulder harnesses? Your upper body is getting thrown around so much seems like they would help.

 

We aren't allowed to use shoulder harnesses. We only have a two point lap belt.

 

Is this an obscure SCCA rule I've never heard of or some weird local club rule? I've never been given any grief for running 5pts down at the local level.

 

An open cockpit car cannont (and should not) use upper body restraints without GCR compliant rollover protection

 

You got that thing moving quite well these days. Have you considered adding a roll cage? I know its additional weigh but with the speed and grip you got it kinda makes sense.

 

At the same time, should a car capable of 2g's ever just use lap belts?

 

Specialty race car built to a purpose. This is like asking why Indy cars don't have fenders.

 

Here are a couple videos from the Z-Max national tour at the 4 wide drag strip in North Carolina. I got iced at the line on day one with my only chance at a clean run with any tire heat being the first car out after an unfortunate oil down of the entire course. I was a bit out of it mentally as I didn't know exactly where the oil dry was or how it would impact the car. I got out of shape on the entry into the slalom but recovered well enough to take home the 3rd podium spot in XP behind two multi time National Champions.

Day 1 Cockpit

Day 1 Outside

Day 2 Cockpit

Day 2 Outside

 

Just uploaded an external video of the car. It just seems to "jump" out of the slower elements now.

 

Just uploaded a couple videos from Spring Nationals
Day 1

Day 2

 

God that must be wild.

 

Y U No harness? I would think it would be much easier to control the car if you weren't hanging on to the steering wheel to keep from falling into the door or passenger seat, lol.

 

Your memory is short sixshooter.

 

What were we talking about again?

 

I think we were talking about how Superchargers are better than Turbos

 

So, this years Solo Nationals and the weeks leading up to it were a TOTAL cluster.

First, I broke ANOTHER crankshaft. So between the Oscoda Pro and Nationals I had to rebuild the motor and test it before leaving.

Second, due to having no choice but to slap together a short block, I ran out of time to do all the usual Nationals prep. You know....things like getting the car aligned, corner balanced, nut and bolt everything....etc etc etc.

Well. The good news is we got the motor in and made it to Nebraska.

The bad news is...for the first time in 4 years we came home without either a Pro Solo or Solo Championship.

After I got home I started reevaluating a lot of things about the car and about our operation.

I have been spending too much time, energy and effort making the car accelerate and have neglected the brakes BIG TIME(using NA ABS and getting ice mode so often we are all 4 scared of the brakes) and not doing the simple things to improve handling. (When I got to nut and bolt the car after Nationals I found 3 of the subframe bolts finger tight...(that motivated me to finally put a NB subframe in this thing...going in this week)

When we put the Keisler spindles on the car last winter we were pretty fast early on. Beating a multi time XP Champion by over a second at a national event made us think we had "guessed correctly" on the setup and we didn't test as much as we should have.

We built a great tune up for Lincoln at Spring Nationals and when we got out there for Nationals the surface had changed DRAMATICALLY. Randall, Dad and I were reluctant to make big changes for fear of upsetting the car even more at the biggest race of the year. Finally on day 2 after the race was already lost we said effit and made some changes and the car was MUCH better. Morale of that story is we need to trust ourselves more in tuning the car.

All in all it was a year that 5 years ago would have made us proud....but is just unacceptable now.

Back to the basics, fixing some MAJOR ISSUES(BRAKES) and going to test test test for next year.

Oh....and we are building a oil pan to valve cover spare motor so we don't get caught like this again.

We will be back.

#SECONDSUCKS

 

Why are you breaking crankshafts?

 

Because very many horse pressures and fastly spinnings.

 

And because the BP belongs in a tractor and not a car that fast.