Chronicles of a Lemons Daytona (Page 8 of 9)

Needless to say I am perplexed. In New Hampshire he suggested we get a second Rover and run a two Rover team...

I don't believe him for a second.

No worries at all. It's all part of racing. I'm glad you guys didn't lose a ton of time either.

Always amazed at the knowledge base that is Lemons.

Coolant sensor wires are fine, at least by the actual sensor. I don't even have to look, I've stared at that section of the wiring harness enough to know.

But I do believe we have a short somewhere causing this. I just haven't found it yet. The whole wiring harness is coming out shortly so I can go through it wire by wire, pulling the wires to things I don't need, and looking for shorts. Then the interior harness goes through the same thing.

Fleming95, yes it's a SMEC that was in the original air path. Plenty of people have removed these from the air path. I don't believe this is related. The issue existed before we diverged from the stock air routing.

Is the output from your alternator clean? I had a car that right before the alternator went it would make the tach go nuts and completely freak out the ecu. It would show 20k+ rpms in the logs and make terrible engine noises when it did it.

Other thing to check is how clean the engine timing sensor signals are. If coil wires, injectors, or relays are too close they can inject noise into those wires or the system.

Could also be a sensor wire that's flakey and the ecu is seeing for example 180° coolant temp then -40 as the wire / connector bounces.

So the car did not sense how hep you cats were and would not deliver it's full potential?

Better late than never right?

Part 21: Wait, the car can do that?

Prep for this race was fairly standard for us. Pull engine, replace bearings, reinstall. Yawn, boring. What's exciting is what happened when we got to thompson. Friday we did our usual thing, last minute finishing touches on the car, sit around, a few more things to the car, etc. We also applied the graphics for our quite excellent new theme. The Hellkitten, for when 707hp is just too much.

We finally rolled to tech, hit the starter, and nothing. Car spins over but will not start. yay........ Swapped out ECUs, swapped distributor sensors, kicked it, cursed at it, finally found the bit inside the distributor that gives the Hall Effect Pickup it's signal was loose and probably giving screwy readings causing no spark. Replaced it, car started, through tech we go. Class C, zero laps, just the way I like it.

Saturday, I suit up, jump in the car, roll onto the staging grid and roll onto the track about 4th car out. Well, when I say roll I really mean buck because for some reason the car decided it was not going to move under load. What in the actual hell. We swapped ECUs again, tested fuel pressure, messed with HEP sensors, checked timing. When It would run I drove it around the garages standing on the brakes and flooring it to see what it would do with load (while not breaking pit speed limits), and it would do fine, then stumble and die at random. Finally I noticed that shaking a certain part of the wiring harness would cause a clicking in the engine bay, similar to the relays coming on with the ignition. I kept shaking the harness trying to find the source of the issue, until it just stopped happening. Car would now start and run, so we said screw it, try it. An hour late we joined the madness, and oh what a machine to be driving.

Since about the Monticello race the daytona has not really run right. Various issues have plagued us but finally, they were all gone. Well all but one, our brakes are complete shit. I have replaced every component from the master cylinder to the rotors, and they just suck. Which gets really exciting when the car is finally running perfectly and pulling to an indicated 110 on the straight. I think my self commentary the first time into turn 1 went like this "holy crap this pulls now, that's a big number on the speedo. 6 sign, I should try the brakes, ok little bit of brakes, give it more, more, that's all it has shit shit shit shit downshift shit just throw it through the turn."

Aside from the brakes, the car has never run better. Ever. 7psi of boost means it pulls decently. 10 previous races in the car means we know how to throw it through corners. Suddenly, we're passing cars almost as often as we're being passed. Almost. for 2 hours I giggled constantly as I chased down cars that used to blow past me, and held off others . The best moment for me was catching the 3 Pedal Mafia civic, and getting around it. They got back past me after a few laps, that that one overtake was the highlight of my stint. After 2 hours the broken cool shirt and missing camelbak tube (it fell behind the seat) started to get to me. When I felt the first hint of nausea hit me I knew I had passed my limit in the car for the day and called in to get the next driver ready.

An hour late to the race and we were up to 6th in class. While chugging water our next driver called in with the statement of "The car is amazing now, but these brakes fucking suck!" Yup, sounds about right. I spent the rest of the day in my usual fit of constant worry that it was all about to come apart, but somehow when Dad came in at the checkered we were solidly sitting at 3rd in class. It hadn't really used oil, the water level was normal, temps never got hot during the day, everything appeared to be fine. We swapped around tires to deal with the drivers front that was showing the first signs of cording and called it a night.

We do most of our cornering on the edges of our tires

Sunday we showed up at 9:45 only to find that our transmission had pissed out all it's oil overnight. The axle wasn't staying in for some reason. Some poking revealed that the spring that keeps the CV joint expanded was not doing it's job. Local Autozone had a new axle and by 11 we had them swapped. Playing with the old axle once it was out revealed the spring still existed, it just now pulled the CV joint instead of pushing it out. I'll have to take it apart and see what happened.

Sunday was another blur of a day. I opted to take last stint, and I spent the day trying to distract myself from the fact that the car was running far too well. Overloading the mini-bike by taking my girlfriend for rides around the paddock, taking pictures, trying to help other teams where I could. Ben set some blistering laps, followed by dad setting some blistering laps. All the while inching closer to second, but not fast enough. By the time I got in we knew we weren't gaining any more places, but it didn't matter.

My stint was incredible. dicing with cars, holding some off, losing to others. Jumping in behind race leaders to weave though clusters of traffic. I have never had so much fun in the daytona. If only the brakes would work. We crossed the finish line 3rd in class, 30th over all, and with 431 laps recorded. It's one of the more bittersweet races, because we had the best shot at winning our class, and still stepped on our toes at the start. With the daytona's life rapidly approaching an end, we've got one more shot to make it happen.

Mains and Rods!

It's overkill these days. A while back I'd pull out bearings that were heavily worn, scores into the copper, slight deformation, after a single race. That doesn't happen anymore. Now they have some shiny sections, but are overall good. I think early on we had filthy oil passages and it just took time to get them clean. Now I could do a few races on bearings, but we swap them anyway because it's habit. It's really easy to do. I can pull the engine, swap the bearings, and reinstall all inside a day.

You might get slightly better drain back to the pan, but I doubt you will notice. For all other aspects, the 30w will be worse than the 50w.

If you are starving in corners, first try overfilling by a quart or so. If that doesn't work, then baffle your oil pan.

Has anyone seen this blog before?

https://540ratblog.wordpress.com/2013/0 … t-ranking/

It changed a lot of my perceptions about oil (viscosity, diesel oil, zinc content, etc).  The writer is a seasoned engineer and independent tester with nothing to gain, or any specific brand to push (as opposed to most other oil "research").

One of my biggest takeaways was - viscosity is not an indicator for wear protection.  Just because it's thicker, doesn't mean it will provide more protection.  It's backed up by his testing (no correlation between viscosity & wear protection).

A new revelation for me was the "cold" rating of a multi-viscosity oil.  Even a 0w-X oil is technically TOO THICK at startup temperatures for ideal wear protection.  Startup is also the time where most wear occurs.  So why the hell would I want to use anything thicker than a 0W (much less a 15w).

Another new idea for me was the fact that a thinner oil will flow more volume (at the same pressure) than a thicker oil.  This also carries away more heat from the critical components it's oiling, and could lead to an overall lower oil temp.  A "thin" oil at normal temp may end up being thicker than a "thick" oil that's overheated (not to mention if it gets hot enough to break down).

Thus my curiosity about changing to the M1 5W-30 (from the M1 15w-50).  It actually has a higher wear resistance rating (film strength) than the thicker 15w-50 (which also has more zinc/zddp) according to his testing.

Am I overthinking all this?  Should I just stick with what I've been using?  My only issues so far are starvation under cornering (improved by overfilling), and a slightly low pressure at idle (after a few hours of racing).

Sorry to hijack your thread TheEngineer, but I'd love to hear some other opinions

Here, here!

No magic oil will get to do it's job if the pump cant put it where it needs to be at the pressure needed, and no pump can do it's job if the pan isn't baffled correctly for the correct pickup.  This should be remedy number one for engine life, followed by proper cooling system.  maybe the other-way around, but they are definitely the top two...

After that, I would stick with the known entities for the magic liquids themselves, some people swear by conventional oil, other's zinc. I prefer not trusting a $3K race weekend to old rotten dinosaurs, and 60's engine thinking.

Building a new car right now and this is what will go in over the next few months. with the addition of pump gas and beer!

(For spares we bring two spare oil changes, one of every filter, one spare set of pads, and two spare quarts of brake fluid.  Amazon prime stocks everything and can overnight to the track-side hotel if needed. Heck, order it on Thursday, it'll be there before us on Friday!)