redtopz

Sweet, congrats on qualifying already. Looking forward to meeting you at Laguna. Look for our corvette group in the paddock (me, Chuck, Jim, Oli, Carl, Al, Kyle, Bob, Ken, etc.). Should be a fun week. Good luck with your car work. My experience with buying a built race car is you're gonna have to go over every part of the car at once, or piece by piece one weekend after another. Hard to know what the condition of every component is when it was someone else's car.

redtopz

Pilot bearing is toast, so you were right. Not sure what caused it to fail right away. I just picked up a CF torque tube from 2002Rich who decided not to install it. I figured it was time to replace my torque tube guibos anyway. I'm also swapping in my stock C5 MM6 tranny so I can refresh my other one. If this tranny is good I might just run it all year. The only difference is my current tranny has a C5Z 5th gear which comes in handy at ACS and Miller. I don't use 5th gear anywhere else.

Now that I'm qualified for Runoffs, I won't be racing scca until Runoffs. Two weeks from now I'll be going to T-hill for my first Nasa weekend of the year. Will be fun to see all my nasa friends again. I need to go to 3 nasa weekends to qualify for their nationals. Yesterday I was plotting out my race schedule for the rest of the year and I was surprised to see that I'm not going to make a Sonoma event until the championships in November . Fortunately, I already know the track pretty well.

redtopz

There is a new vendor in SoCal that is supplying parts for track day and race cars. His name is John with Trackspec Motorsports and he is an engineer with a passion for the sport. I saw some really nice looking hood louvers on Oli's car and asked where he got them. Turns out John was at the track with Oli so I was able to meet him and he offered to make a set for my car. Right now I just have some holes in the hood with screening fiberglassed on the inside. The Trackspec louveres are functional for extracting heat and reducing lift on the hood. He has them laser cut and coated. They are the best louvers I've seen. I'll see if I can find a picture of them on Oli's car.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Track...927?fref=photo

DarkMastyr

those look very slick

redtopz

Also, not sure if I mentioned that TC Design has moved to a new and larger shop in Campbell. Here is their new info from their website:

Our address and phone number has changed. Please be sure to update your records!

TC Design
885 S McGlincy Ln
Campbell, CA 95008
(408) 377-7707
(408) 377-7708 (fax)

TC Design is dedicated to quality track and safety products. We specialize in rollbars, rollcages, safety gear, data acquisition, suspensions, and exhaust. Established in 2003 we have quickly become the place for racecar fabrication in the Bay Area. We strive for excellence, in both our work and the customer experience.

http://www.tcdesignfab.com/

redtopz

Getting the car ready for Nasa at Thunderhill this weekend for some TT and racing to qualify for nationals. So far, pulled entire driveline and replaced broken pilot bearing. Installed new driveshaft. Swapped in my stock MN6 tranny. Found a broken axle on the drivers side, replaced with spare. 2 cracked rotors in front replaced with new ones. Installed 4 new ZR1 knuckes/spindles and new skf hubs in front. Put it all back together and did an alignment. Man the car feels smooth now! Shifting is a breeze like it used to be . Maybe my driveshaft was damaged when the old engine blew? I'll be burning through some scrub tires this weekend as I have no need to run new tires. If I'm lucky I might win some hoosiers in TTU. I might also just race SU since there are 7 cars in TTU and SU, but nothing in ST2. Problem is there are some really fast cars in SU now such as Normas. Oh well a small chance is better than no chance.

RMDZidane

That is great that your gearbox is back to 'normal' I went by TC Design and saw their new place. It's nice and they seem to have a lot more room.

redtopz

Cool! My car might be going back there soon for some repairs.

Just got back from Thunderhill. First the good news: we broke the TT2 lap record by 7 seconds and won TT2 both days. I was the only ST2 car there for racing so I just tried to stay out of other people's way. Other than that, it was a good shake down of my recent repairs and a test of how the car will run in super hot temps. The weather at the track was scorching hot. Track surface temps were about 140 F. First session on Saturday, the car ran pretty well. The tranny and driveshaft swap definitely solved my driveline problems. The Synergy engine is running great. I ran with the 60 mm restrictor and water and oil temps stayed nice and cool even in this hot weather. No oil at all in the catch can and good oil pressure all the time.

However, later on Saturday some bugs started to pop up in the heat. My spare axle had a boot blow out and spew grease everywhere. One of my exhaust hangers broke off. I lost ABS again and had a nice lockup in T14 with a near spin. And the persistent oil leak in my engine compartment was getting worse and causing smoke. So, I used baling wire to fix the exhaust hanger, duct tape over the axle boot, and got under the car and tightened some oil fittings on the pan. ABS was still out today and I can't find the cause. I went out in TT2 this morning to see if I could put down a good lap without abs. I need the practice anyway and see how my brake setup is at 10/10ths without abs. I'm not used to running without abs, so it was a learning experience. I did a 1:52.3 which is not great, but not too bad either. I came in after 1 lap due to the oil smoke. After we removed the hood and took a closer look, it was apparent the oil was leaking from the valve covers. So that will be an easy fix. I have 3 more spare axles, so that also will be an easy fix. We're going to install a new catback exhaust with a different design to hold the rear mufflers. The only persistent problem I have is my factory abs. So I will look into it a bit further and if I can't figure it out, I'll take it to TC Design.

BTW, TC Design was at the track in their GTS4 bmw that won nationals last year and they were kicking butt with super fast laps and winning their class. Andrew (Flink) took 1st in GTS3 yesterday and qualified pole today . I highly recommend time trials with nasa. The people are awesome and it's a great way to get some competition without having to cage your car.

Hogtos

Congrats Bill on the new TH lap times! Bummer to hear about the "gremlins" at work in all that heat. And Andrew's kicking **** as well, good news! I'll be out the in the GS on the 7th; just can't wait. I've become a YouTube-junky-follower of your videos as I prep the return to TH. Maybe we'll see each other out there one of these days.
Colin

redtopz

Hi Colin, good to hear you are heading back to the track. Will you be doing the new section also? Not sure when they are opening that up. We were hoping to ride our bikes around it, but the asphalt wasn't ready for us yet.

It's actually really good for me to get all these bugs worked out now before the big races in the Fall. FYI, if anyone needs to get through another race with a torn axle boot, duct tape works! Joe of TC Design suggested I duct tape my boot and we weren't sure if it would hold, but it did and no more grease escaped.

I put the car up on the lift today and started inspecting the ABS system. I broke out my 1999 C5 shop manuals which I wish I would have bought years ago. These are amazing books. You could practically build a vette from scratch with these things! My front wheel speed sensor wires have been cooked on the headers a couple times over the years. I had to splice them back together a year or 2 ago and the wire loom was melted again recently so this was my first area to inspect. I pulled out the whole loom containing the 4 wires for the front wheels and decided to run new lines directly from the wheels to the EBTCM and not through the stock wiring harness. This way I can go straight from the wheels to the ABS and not up past the headers and behind the intake manifold. I tested all the wheel speed sensors on the hubs with my ohm meter and they are all good. Since the ABS failures have been intermittent, it's likely due to poor electrical or sensor connections. Using the shop manuals, I determined where the speed sensor wires from each wheel connect to the EBTCM harness:





I cut the 4 wires at the harness and at the wheels and ran new lines. Then I started the engine and no ABS codes appeared. Hopefully this solved the problem.

Another weird thing that happened was my replacement Stoptech rotors were thicker than my old ones. Same exact part numbers. I noticed they were scraping in the calipers but at first I thought it must be from the ZR1 knuckles. But after scratching my head for a while trying to figure out what the problem was, I held them next to my old rotors and they are about 3/16ths" wider. They barely fit in the calipers, but they should last longer. However, even after getting them centered and grinding down some small tabs on the calipers the inside of the rotors still scraped on something when I turned the steering wheel in the paddock. I thought I heard something but wasn't sure. Here's the inside of the rotor with a nice groove from the lower control arm. I'll have to get that turned I guess and I'll grind down the spots on the control arm where they are rubbing.

trackboss

It's normal procedure, and even mentioned in the stoptech directions, that the parting line in the lower control arm casting may need to be ground down to clear the rotor.
Your rotors should be 1.25" thick when new. Stoptech does offer a 1.375" rotor option, but I've never seen it used on a large diameter kit.

redtopz

Interesting. I've never had a problem since I bought the car 4 years ago and it's always run the same stoptech rotors. But these rotors might be 1.375" because they are noticeably wider than the old ones. They are at a machine shop now and will get shaved down a bit. The rotors already wore down the control arm ends, but I finished it off with a grinder today.

The Trackspec louvers showed up over the weekend so I'll add some pics of my install. Looks like it's going to work perfectly.

trackboss

It's very likely you got 1.375 rotors. Compare them with your originals. Removing .0625 from each side is a huge amount of material and may compromise the rotor. It's possible the additional thickness is all or partially made up from wider vanes rather than thicker friction surfaces and if so making them thinner will destroy them. If it were me I would send them back and get the correct ones. Never a good idea to turn rotors of any sort.

redtopz

Yeah, we are only removing probably 0.001 from the inside, just enough to remove the grooves. All the extra thickness is in the friction surfaces and there's no reason to make them thinner now that the control arm issue is solved. The vane width is the same so actually I think they will be great rotors and last a long time, probably over a year at least. I'll post a pic of the different rotors when I get them back. I think these are only the 3rd set of front rotors I've had to buy for this car so about 1 set per year.

redtopz

Here are some photos of the new Trackspec Motorsports hood louvers. It literally only took me 30 minutes to install these this morning. John included a template for cutting out the sections and the louvers fit perfectly within the stock hood framing. I originally cut holes and fiberglassed in some screen a couple years ago. It was supposed to be temporary... These Trackspec ones look much better.

redtopz

redtopz

It's been a couple months since my last update here. Seems I've been battling issues with axle boots and ABS. I found my oil leak source, which was just the valve covers not completely sealed tight. After trying 2 spare axles, each one blew grease out all over the wheel and LR brake rotor. I guess the boots are just old and cracking right where the band clamp is located. After a quick search I saw someone mention Rescue Tape as a solution so I bought some.



Pulled off the band clamp, wrapped the boot with rescue tape and then used a heavy duty zip tie. After a full weekend racing and time trialing at Laguna Seca, it still looks good as new. Much easier than swapping boots or axles.

I guess my brake setup has been the bane of my car since I bought it. I don't even want to think about how many races my abs system has cost me over the years plus damage to the car. Earlier this year I discovered that my car was heavily rear biased due to the calipers used. So after testing the car at the T-hill 5 mile and continuing to have abs problems I decided to address the overall design of my brake setup and purchase some new rear calipers. I decided to go with the AP endurance rear kit from Essex which balances well with my Stoptech ST60's in front. The AP kit is light and 100% designed for racing. Now my front to rear bias mimics the OEM setup.

Next step is to replace my larger master cylinder with an OEM master to get my pedal travel back to normal. With a large master, and the current calipers, my pedal travel is very high and short which makes it difficult to modulate the brakes. Unfortunately, GM used an oddball thread size for the rear line coming out of the master and I've been waiting a month for the fitting and still no luck.

redtopz

So I had to get the car ready for the NASA weekend at Laguna Seca with what I had. I spent some time weighing my car in different configurations and prepared to get on the dynojet for the first time with the new engine to make the car ST2 legal. I made arrangements to get on the MCE mobile dyno Friday afternoon at Laguna and the car put down mid 390's with my T1 restrictor. Pretty much exactly the same power as I had last year with my LS6 and no restrictor. So I was happy and ready to race.

Saturday morning I went out in TT and ST qualifying and immediately had some issues with the abs. M$ther F&*k! I was hoping my new speed sensor wiring along with correcting my front to rear bias would make things happy, but it wasn't to be. I was running about 2 seconds off my pace from last year which was disappointing but was good enough to win ST2 and TT2 on Sat. I had a nice off going into T2 at nearly 130 mph when my brake pedal went stiff and I had no brakes. First time I've been in the gravel traps at Laguna. I've never seen anyone drive out of there, but somehow I kept my car floating on the gravel feathering the throttle and not letting the car come to a stop. Must have been all the off road mud driving I did as a kid . Anyway, I managed to get the car back on the track, but you can imagine how many rocks were stuck to my hot sticky hoosiers at that point. It felt like I was driving on ice for half a lap as I tried to scrub off all the gravel.

Sunday morning I found a ground strap under the dash that wasn't tight so I hoped that might fix my ABS problems. I had a EBCM internal malfunction DIC but it was a history code. So I went out and tried it again, but no luck. Intermittent abs failure and hard pedal. So I said screw it and finally pulled the abs fuse before qualifying. At this point I still wasn't sure if my rear tires or front tires would lock first so I was pretty cautious, but even so turned my fastest lap of the weekend with the fuse pulled. My abs was even worse than I thought! Many places where the abs was interfering I didn't even need abs. In fact I didn't lock tires at all in braking except for one time going into T11.

So I qualified pole position and raced with no abs also. I passed a couple ST1 cars and won the race. The good news is I think I can race competitively without abs now. But the bad news is I would be faster with a working abs system at least until I built up the confidence of racing without it. And I have less than 2 months before Runoffs. So my plan is to fix the abs for the rest of this year and then look into a permanent removal of abs next year.

Anyway, it was a good/bad weekend for me. Disappointing to be slower than last year coming up on the Runoffs, but I think I'm working out all the bugs. NASA did make me go on the dyno Sunday for TT2 and ST2
for the 2nd year in a row to make sure I was legal. After the race I drove straight up to the dyno and never turned the engine off. It pulled this:



So I was running 25 hp low or 200 lbs over weight for ST2. All good.





For now, I found a new (used off Ebay) ABS harness that I will install along with a used EBCTM module. I have a strong hunch that my cut/spliced harness is the main culprit. I am working on installing both of those today. Next up is NASA at T-hill for the 5 mile course. Hopefully I'll finally have the car at 100% for that event and start building steam before the Runoffs.

JRL

Thank for the update! If I pulled the abs fuse, i'd probably flatspot all tires in the first braking zone
BTW, did you buy the Rescue Tape online or does a store carry it?

Good luck gettin' her ready for Thill

----
John

redtopz

Thanks John, good luck to you as well and I'll see you at T-hill . I found the rescue tape on Amazon and I've been using it to fix leaks at my farm also.

Well, as usual nothing is easy. I pulled out the old harness which was made more difficult with my dry sump tank sitting tightly in the space next to the fuse box and wire connectors. I have the new harness mostly installed, but it has a couple differences from the old one. I guess it's because my car is a 99 and the harness is from a 2000, but they are both for the same abs unit (M code w/out active handling). My old harness had all the unnecessary crap cut out such as AC plugs and headlights, but the new one still has all of them. My old harness had a wire going from the ABS reservoir (low level warning I think) all the way along the firewall and then all the way down to the abs unit with a really long wire. The new one doesn't have that. But worst of all, the new harness only seems to have a wheel speed sensor for the RF wheel and nothing on the left. I see there are 2 extra wires next to the RF wheel speed sensor with a plug cut off. I wonder if those 2 wires are for the LF wheel? Does anyone remember how the LF wheel speed sensor is routed to the ABS unit in a 99/00 C5? Otherwise, I will just have to trace wires back from the abs module and figure it out.