The Exploding Lemon (Page 2 of 2)

Yeah we wern't revving it too high we just had some stupid bugs with the motor. We lost the oil pump on the first lap around t-hill. Like before the green even came out. It seized up on the parade lap so we had to pull the motor and change it before we even got a chance to race. Shortly after getting back on the track we lost the power steering pump and had to run into town to get a belt that would let us eliminate the pump. Then we stuck a valve late the last day and it and the piston became good friends. Turns out the flyweights in the distributor we worn so bad that it was advancing waayyy father then it should have been which resulted in some pre-detonation which was the culprit of our bent valve.  We are also running an automatic behind ours while the v8olvo guys are running i believe a t-5 manual trans. We are pulling a giant parachute as well. The wing just makes the thing so much fun to drive in the turns though we don't want to take it off. Hopefully we have all the bugs out of this thing and we will be able to actually stay on the track long enough for people to remember us at the sears pointless race.

We are running a C4 which only has 3 gears. We, like you were only using 2 gears. Our 3rd gear was perfect. We would hit our red line, which was 5,000 rpm's just at the end of the straight but man was it a dog going from 2nd to 3rd. 

Yeah the wing makes a huge difference. Turn 3 at t-hill was awesome. We could stand on the throttle on the outside and just fly by people. Everyone on the team had a story about how they got crossed up and the wing "saved" them. With the exception of one of our drivers losing a wheel and spinning we never had any driver spin the car.

We are going to try to experiment with some type of springs under the rear wing mounts so that the faster you go the flatter the wing gets. So far we are thinking about valve springs stacked on each other inside of a telescoping rear wing stand. This will require many trips up and down our road though to perfect!

You might consider using a couple of air shocks or air cylinders.  Put a few pounds in them; enough to support the wing at rest (or some target speed).  As speed and pressure on the wing builds the air in the cylinder or shock will compress; lowering your wing.  Might be easier to adjust too:  just add or subtract air to get the desired effect.

Nick