Topic: CYBERFUKD Loses its Cool
CYBERFUKD Loses its Cool
The CYBERFUKD team headed up to Thunderhill with a victory as it’s goal. Coming off 3 straight 2nd-in-class finishes, the team was determined to eliminate it’s black flag issues and put it on top of the podium.
The first team member arrived at the track, from Austin, Thursday at 2:30am. Taking pity on him, the security guard opened the gate and let him park inside the track. The rest of the team arrived that evening. Being the virgin trip to Thunderhill for all 3 drivers, the full day track day seemed in order and thank God we did. We found a leak in the new stainless steel brake lines. A couple trips to O’Reilly to get the right hardline and we were back in business.
Come race day, 5 mins until green and 10 seconds from pulling out of the pits, one of the crew was snipping zip ties and cut the ignition wire. Hair on fire, we got it repaired, losing about a lap in the process. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever witnessed.
First driver runs a clean 3-hour stint, second driver runs a clean 2.5-hours, and the third driver’s stint was going well, until about 1 hour left. With water pissing out of the truck, he brought it in and found we had lost the belt and all the water. We replaced the belt, the water, and sent him back out losing only 4 laps in the process. We ended up finishing the day in 8th.
Back to O’Reilly for a couple spare belts and some rear brake pads. When trying to fire up the truck that night, we lost our starter. Oh well, as long as we didn’t stall it on track, we can push start it from the pits. We went back to O’Reilly at 7:30am, our 5th visit of the weekend, but no starter was in stock. Push start it is.
With an hour til the Sunday start we decided we had enough time to cut some hood louvers directly into the hood. Our redneck installation helped the truck run cooler most of Sunday. (Key word most)
30 minutes into the first stint, the truck is pissing water. We were camping by the entrance, so we had the driver meet us at pit out where we replaced the belt, put in a gallon of water, and sent her on her way. 20 minutes later, the same thing happened. We saw a tab that may have been rubbing the belt. Bent it out of the way, slapped on a belt, added water and sent it back on it’s way. 20 minutes later, the truck is again spraying like a firehose. We bring it in and find that the alternator pulley is missing. All the threads are rounded off and the alternator is piping hot. We replaced the alternator, added a belt, and refilled the water from our depleted reserves. Nobody could figure out how we lost the alternator pulley.
The truck ran the rest of the day trouble free. Some aggressive pinging above 4500 rpm told us we probably pushed the timing too far. The 5 seconds lost/lap were deemed to not be worth changing. The second driver ran off the road in the first transition (turn 9/10), self-reported and came back on track quickly. It was our only time visiting the judges all weekend. We considered that improvement something the entire team should be proud of, especially being our first trip to the 5 miler.
We ended up finishing 8th in class, our worst finish yet. But a finish none-the-less. We believe we’re running a good endurance strategy. Halfway through Saturday we had the 92nd fastest lap and were in 27th overall. We’ve been able to bang in consistent 3-minute pit stops and keep the car on the road. Our victory will come.
After running out of water a couple times, the engine is pretty tired. We’re going to explore our options before returning to Buttonwillow in October. Thunderhill is an amazing facility. We can’t wait to return with a few more horsepower.
Our fastest lap of the weekend can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMxN26CFPC8
I’ll share more videos once they’re done rendering. Including the big wreck on the back stretch with 30 minutes to go.